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This article should be flagged.
I want to point out that Vancouver’s municipal election is today (I’m standing in line for it), and many of the candidates are running on platforms related to the housing crisis. Whatever you think of the issue, this particular article isn’t “about” the issue so much as it is a precisely-timed propaganda piece aimed at influencing the election.
how is it meant to sway the election? is this good news or bad?
It's hard not to see the overall solution to the housing crisis in some North American cities as simply building more housing. A speculation and/or vacancy tax makes sense in cities with a high number of foreign buyers like Vancouver and New York but in other cities it seems like the biggest road block is simply zoning restrictions that prevent supply to meet demand. There are second order effects that need to go w/…
A proper speculation/vacancy tax that disincentivized empty properties in SF, Vancouver, NY and other major cities that have that issue would probably result in a noticeable rippling effect to reducing values in smaller cities.
Regardless, an economy where many people are working just to pay exorbitant rent is not a healthy economy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could be both. The house where I rent is owned by a woman in China who phoned up a local real estate management company, bought the first 20 houses on their list, and wired them the money. It's probably more complicated than that, but that's the short form story the management company told me. The company also said it's very common.
And yet we're told by the MSM that foreign ownership is 5%, makes one wonder if situations like this are even statistically detectable. If this article is remotely true and this is the start of a trend set off by having no rules whatsoever and then suddenly a whole bunch of not terribly well thought out rules, it's going to be interesting to see how this all plays out, especially when good old "fear is stronger than…
I don’t know about Canada, but forming as domestic shell company to make your real estate holdings look local is pretty easy in the United States, and can be done online.
The Vancouver municipal election is today. This is a propaganda piece written by Glacier Media Real Estate. The goals of this piece is to muddy the water and convince people to not for candidates proposing an increase of housing supply. This article should be flagged.
Your claim seems plausible, even if missing the word 'vote,' but I can't evaluate without more evidence.
This is a garbage article when compared with the headline. The “experts” is two property managers who don’t even agree on what’s happening or why. The 20% figure comes from a quote that sounds like an off-the-too-of-my-head assessment from one of them: ”What we’re seeing is that rental rates have decreased up to 20 per cent from the spring of 2017, and it’s getting even worse.” They also say they’ve never seen anythi…
Ten whole years—almost one market cycle...
Also the entire purpose of laws an regulations like Dodd Frank is to prevent debt bubbles.
Whenever someone says that we are "Due" for a correction they are falling for the gambler's fallacy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
how is it meant to sway the election? is this good news or bad?
It is great news, the Vancouver housing market is untenable in its current state. The rent:average income ratio is completely out of balance. This is propaganda to try and elect development friendly candidates in our election today
Earlier quoted context omitted.
For the last 20 years Vancouver has been adding housing stock, mostly in the form of multi-family dwellings, at one of the highest rates in North America. We're adding as much as we can as fast as we can. The situation now is worse than ever, so "build more housing" is clearly not a solution, and in fact may be making things worse by adding a lot of investment vehicles that attract foreign capital.
We're adding as much as we can as fast as we can This is not even remotely true. Much of the city is still zoned exclusively for single-family housing, although that may be (very slowly—too slowly) changing: https://www.sightline.org/2018/08/14/vancouver-housing-of-al... . About two-thirds of Seattle is also single-family only: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/amid-seatt... . Those factors alone like…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could be both. The house where I rent is owned by a woman in China who phoned up a local real estate management company, bought the first 20 houses on their list, and wired them the money. It's probably more complicated than that, but that's the short form story the management company told me. The company also said it's very common.
And yet we're told by the MSM that foreign ownership is 5%, makes one wonder if situations like this are even statistically detectable. If this article is remotely true and this is the start of a trend set off by having no rules whatsoever and then suddenly a whole bunch of not terribly well thought out rules, it's going to be interesting to see how this all plays out, especially when good old "fear is stronger than…
Also, what's not mentioned in that report is the percentage of purchases by foreign-owners last year or the year before. The 4.8% number is total Vancouver residential foreign-ownership - it's just a snapshot.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could be both. The house where I rent is owned by a woman in China who phoned up a local real estate management company, bought the first 20 houses on their list, and wired them the money. It's probably more complicated than that, but that's the short form story the management company told me. The company also said it's very common.
And yet we're told by the MSM that foreign ownership is 5%, makes one wonder if situations like this are even statistically detectable. If this article is remotely true and this is the start of a trend set off by having no rules whatsoever and then suddenly a whole bunch of not terribly well thought out rules, it's going to be interesting to see how this all plays out, especially when good old "fear is stronger than…
When non-residents own 5% of a market that typically only has 1-2% listed at any time, prices quadruple like in Vancouver.