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"Fake Chinese income" mortgages fuel Toronto real estate bubble: HSBC bank leaks

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Re: "Fake Chinese income" mortgages fuel Toronto real estate bubble: HSBC bank leaks

#151

Post by mistrial9 »

radicaldreamer wrote: post #128
ThisIsMyAltAcct wrote: post #25

> The whistleblower, whom The Bureau is calling D.M., immigrated to Canada as an international student from India, making him a minority among mostly Chinese-Canadian co-workers at the Aurora branch. > “I am going to reveal potential mortgage fraud at HSBC Bank Canada and possibly some employees benefited from the fraud, financially pocketing thousands of dollars, which I call the proceeds of crime.” > FINTRAC’s stud…

Are US banks just a lot more strict about source of income than Canadian banks?

a non-trivial portion of residential real estate transactions across the USA never apply for a loan. In certain areas it is more so. When real estate retail value rises fast, money appears from everywhere -- hint, not from first time home buyers.

The USA Federal system of mortgage loan gurantees has been gamed seriously, over and over since the 80s. It is a whack-a-mole for enforcement. All the parties close to the transactions have exactly the wrong incentives, most of the time. One of the defendants in a recent "pay cash to get your kid into elite school via fake sports" scandal was a mortgage broker in San Diego County. The Judge after reviewing evidence, reportedly told the man on the record "you are a thief." etc

Re: "Fake Chinese income" mortgages fuel Toronto real estate bubble: HSBC bank leaks

#153

Post by bostonsre »

beiller wrote: post #105
ABCLAW wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We should be seeing many people holding mortgages at HSBC not able to pay. Not really. Lying about the source of cashflow doesn't mean the cashflow isn't real. The end objective for a lot of these frauds isn't to sink the bank with fake loans. It's to launder money.

Makes sense I wasn't thinking about the full on laundering aspects. But even so, if the real estate is used in laundering, it will eventually have to be sold to get back clean money. This should still run up prices at the start, and run them down in the end. So I think the majority of the point still stands: there should be an uptick in sales (which there is not). They could be speculating on top of laundering, in wh…

I think they want to get their money out of china and parked into a safe place. If they pay off their mortgage, they don't want to find a new place to park their money, they can just keep the house as an asset. I think a lot of investing in china is real estate based and is part of the reason that market is struggling over there so much now. It would make sense for them to continue to follow that investing model when exporting their wealth to other countries.

Re: "Fake Chinese income" mortgages fuel Toronto real estate bubble: HSBC bank leaks

#154

Post by ysofunny »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #108

I have said this over and over again: Canada is the most overrated of all the developed countries. The whole country is a gigantic house of cards propped up by real estate, with horrible service quality, terrible healthcare, no jobs, ZERO innovation, risk taking and entrepreneurship. Having lived and travelled extensively, most Canadians want a house somewhere in the woods instead of doing something meaningful with t…

at least now that the king of england has cancer they can somehow negotiate their way out of having to reprint all their money? that should be more cost effective than exiting the commonwealth? ahahah

Re: "Fake Chinese income" mortgages fuel Toronto real estate bubble: HSBC bank leaks

#155

Post by jeffbee »

uLogMicheal wrote: post #142
SunlightEdge wrote: post #100

To maybe offer a different perspective: I think the Canadian mortgages linked to Chinese accounts will likely all be paid. What may be happening is that there is a lot of underground chinese financial activity that is not recorded in Canada and part of this 'network' is utilized to get money out of china.

It's not a matter of if they get paid, it's the unfair advantage this gives in an already competitive market. 2/3 of these properties are probably rented out at inflated prices and the two probably pay the mortgage of the third owners live in. This is a free money glitch, aka fraud.

If the market will bear the rent, why does changing the nationality of the owner improve anything?

Re: "Fake Chinese income" mortgages fuel Toronto real estate bubble: HSBC bank leaks

#156

Post by topspin »

jabbany wrote: post #106
silent_cal wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still fraud

You can label it however you want, if both the lender and borrower are willing participants, it will be difficult to prevent this from happening. Like mentioned in the article, often times the material is very obviously suspicious and banks probably know this and still turn a blind eye to it because these borrowers are low risk and much less sensitive to the high/rising interest rates of today...

> if both the lender and borrower are willing participants

Eventually this behavior goes overboard and everything crashes. In the meantime, law-abiding people are screwed by the bubble. Then they are made to pay for the clean up.

Fraud is costly, and rationalizing it contributes to the problem.

Re: "Fake Chinese income" mortgages fuel Toronto real estate bubble: HSBC bank leaks

#157

Post by ysofunny »

hnarn wrote: post #121
ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #108

I have said this over and over again: Canada is the most overrated of all the developed countries. The whole country is a gigantic house of cards propped up by real estate, with horrible service quality, terrible healthcare, no jobs, ZERO innovation, risk taking and entrepreneurship. Having lived and travelled extensively, most Canadians want a house somewhere in the woods instead of doing something meaningful with t…

> The whole country is a gigantic house of cards propped up by real estate That’s quite the statement, I assume you have quite the source for it. The price-to-rent ratio isn’t that far off from the US, for example.

there's a tiktoker that compares real states prices in Canada and in various parts of Europe

it's funny to see dozens of examples of european castles (buildings with tens of rooms and bathrooms, plus huge gardens) whose cost is in the same ballpark as 2 or 3 bedroom houses in random (but well [sub]urbanized) parts of Canada

Re: "Fake Chinese income" mortgages fuel Toronto real estate bubble: HSBC bank leaks

#158

Post by maxglute »

nimbius wrote: post #123
ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #108

I have said this over and over again: Canada is the most overrated of all the developed countries. The whole country is a gigantic house of cards propped up by real estate, with horrible service quality, terrible healthcare, no jobs, ZERO innovation, risk taking and entrepreneurship. Having lived and travelled extensively, most Canadians want a house somewhere in the woods instead of doing something meaningful with t…

>most Canadians want a house somewhere in the woods instead of doing something meaningful with their lives or try and innovate to build something. to be fair most Canadians were promised this as part of their countries stratospheric growth under neoliberalist policies. that they are not capable of it is no fault of their own. that they want this is at all is not a bane. > Where US got the best talent from India, Cana…

>dividing immigrants into "good ones" and "bad ones" is pretty vile

TBF that's the inherent insinuation in points / skill based immigration. The goal of immigration driven growth to is to maximize return potential via brain drain and wealth drain from other countries who foot the bill for talent development, or to extract wealth via foreign elites who accumulated wealth in host countries. When crisis reach critcal levels when it obviously becomes a class warfare issue, the solution is going to be punish the immigrants, before them become PRs or citizens. It's not the immigrants fault for policy failures, but until they get right to vote they are escape goats for bad politics.

Re: "Fake Chinese income" mortgages fuel Toronto real estate bubble: HSBC bank leaks

#159

Post by mgbmtl »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #108

I have said this over and over again: Canada is the most overrated of all the developed countries. The whole country is a gigantic house of cards propped up by real estate, with horrible service quality, terrible healthcare, no jobs, ZERO innovation, risk taking and entrepreneurship. Having lived and travelled extensively, most Canadians want a house somewhere in the woods instead of doing something meaningful with t…

I'm surprised that you didn't mention the role of petrol in Alberta and hydro power in Quebec. They play a key role to sustaining the economy and social services. It's not just that though.

People are definitely less risk-taking, workaholics, despite having a social safety net, or maybe because of it. It's just maybe less in our culture to "go big or go home". Having a cabin in the woods and free time to live your life is nice.

Maybe because I live in Quebec, and language is definitely a barrier (requires immigrants to be trilingual), but I haven't met many shady people from China or India, on the contrary. My ancestors came here by accident from different countries, taking a random boat in a port, worked hard and made it. I hope we can give that opportunity to others too.

Re: "Fake Chinese income" mortgages fuel Toronto real estate bubble: HSBC bank leaks

#160

Post by JumpCrisscross »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #108

I have said this over and over again: Canada is the most overrated of all the developed countries. The whole country is a gigantic house of cards propped up by real estate, with horrible service quality, terrible healthcare, no jobs, ZERO innovation, risk taking and entrepreneurship. Having lived and travelled extensively, most Canadians want a house somewhere in the woods instead of doing something meaningful with t…

> Canada is the most overrated of all the developed countries

You're also a politically stable energy and resource exporter bang next to a global economic superpower and security guarantor. Oh, and access to two oceans and soon a third.

Canada has plenty of problems. But it's also tremendously blessed.

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