Analyst who exposed Vancouver's real estate disaster

Post by AdamM12 » Sat, Mar 30, 2019, 7:57 PM UTC

ArchD wrote: post #18

gerbilly wrote: post #7

> Yan says there may be some solution—a mix of remedies, new laws, purpose-built rental housing, tax adjustments and so on—that does not mean a collapse in Metro Vancouver’s real estate prices. There never will be a solution because no one will vote for a government that will bring down the value of their home.

I never understood the point of having a 'high-value' home that you can't sell anyway because you need a place to live. Sure, you can say you can move somewhere cheaper and pocket the difference. The problem is that until you actually do that, the cost of living will likely follow the property price increase and hurt your wallet. Unless most of the homeowners own more than one property.

Post by bobthepanda » Sun, Mar 31, 2019, 7:39 AM UTC

pascalxus wrote: post #42

bobthepanda wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of what makes cities nice is people actually living in housing. If a neighborhood is significantly underoccupied by residents it kills local businesses that need foot traffic, increases social isolation, and decreases perceived safety. In practice new planned cities work out badly, because location is everything and cities need an underlying reason to exist. Residents don’t want to move to a place with no jobs,…

You just need jobs. Companies respond to incentives, so just make the initial incentives really really advantageous and i'm sure those jobs will show up. Just look at all the trouble a company like Amazon goes through to eek out every last bit of tax advantage, going so far as to have every city in the country bid on it! Once the jobs show up, people will move there.

Post by anthony_barker » Mon, Apr 01, 2019, 2:53 AM UTC

bobthepanda wrote: post #37

AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Foreign investors buy US property because (a) they get a lot of dollars in exchange for all the TVs, cellphones and underpants we somehow cannot manufacture ourselves and (b) US doesn't have much else to offer. US cars? They're "okay" at best. US electronics? Come on, when have you seen a piece of electronic made in the USA last time? We should fight the cause, not the effect.

Chinese people invest in property because they don’t have good experiences with their home financial markets, know-your-customer is a burden, and because it is hard to invest internationally. Everyone else is fine with stocks and bonds and funds and such. The rest of the world has been asking China to free capital markets for a long time, but there’s not much we can do if the Party doesn’t want to.