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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

#231

Post by raydev »

m3kw9 wrote: post #140
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…

Despite what you have “heard” the heath care system is quite nice

How quickly can you book an appointment with your family doctor? How did you acquire your family doctor?

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

#233

Post by ysofunny »

vizzier wrote: post #209
ysofunny wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why would they need to reprint money, old monarch's faces are still perfectly valid currency.

hmmm, so if the current king wants to see their face on money they gotta pay for it themselves? I guess this isn't that important given that governments want to push a cashless economy now

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

#234

Post by Ericson2314 »

cbsmith wrote: post #184
Ericson2314 wrote: post #176

Canada needs more housing supply. Blaming foreigners' mortgage applications, sketchy or otherwise, is just cope.

Canada does need more housing supply, and ironically an influx of fraudulent real estate money like this helps to fuel more growth in the supply. Still, fraud is fraud. Stopping it won't fix Canada's housing problems, but that's not a reason to stand idly by.

I would say land value tax makes mortgage fraud a lot less enticing ;)

Sapping demand for the crime is the most effective enforcement! (Like Semaglutide is probably the best silver bullet yet to "win the drug war"...)

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

#235

Post by raydev »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #192
radicaldreamer wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Total conjecture: 1. US banks do not face nearly as diverse a set of applicants, and 2. are only required to hold the loan for 5 years. 1. It is very common in Canada for a person with wealth acquired outside the country to apply for a home loan. At the time I was approved as a guarantor for a home loan for over half a million CAD, I had only been in the country for 2 years, and had no credit history with any Canadia…

> They accepted copies of my American credit history and bank statements, but had no real way to verify their truth

I'm skeptical here, given how closely the US and Canada work together, both US and Canadian banks share an incredible amount of info with each other and not solely because of cross-border commerce. There is also a non-trivial number of US citizens living and working in Canada so there are services available to them given their special tax requirements.

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

#236

Post by raydev »

avidiax wrote: post #193
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.

> I think the Canadian mortgages linked to Chinese accounts will likely all be paid. This is a "heads, I win", "tails, you lose" type of scam. The mortgage holders are all judgement proof. They have no income or assets to go after. So if the housing market crashes, the banks have no recourse. It's the same as taking out a mortgage and instead of buying a house, you go to the casino and bet double or nothing. Sure, th…

> So if the housing market crashes, the banks have no recourse

The housing market must first crash before the problem is tangible, and there's no sign of that happening.

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

#237

Post by seanmcdirmid »

stormfather wrote: post #212
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Housing supply and demand isn’t uniformly distributed across the United States. When we say “housing shortage” we only mean in popular places to live.

So where have housing prices fallen?

Places you don’t care about, like Jackson Ms, Detroit, Toledo, Gary. Recently, we see falling housing prices in Las Vegas and Phoenix, although they are probably ahead of where they were before the pandemic.

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

#238

Post by vel0city »

ericmcer wrote: post #78
alchemist1e9 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blaming foreign investors for a housing crisis is a smokescreen. It's not the demand from investors that's the issue; it's the government's stifling regulations that choke new construction. The mess is because of state failure, not market failure. When sellers freely sell their homes to foreign buyers, they're making choices that benefit them. Why should we deny them that right? The real absurdity is ignoring the ele…

USA population has increased ~10% in the last 20 years. Why has that small increase in population caused a humongous lack of housing? It feels like something else is going on other than "we need to increase supply by 10% but can't"

As Sean mentioned, not only have we increased in total population we have also changed where we are living. Lots of small towns have seen their populations decrease, with some completely disappearing. Large neighborhoods of cities like Detroit and elsewhere essentially emptied. We need more housing and we need to shift housing resources to where the demand is.

There are loads of cheap houses in the USA. They're just in places where most people don't want to live.

Here's a cheap house:

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/420-Tyler-St-Gary-IN-4640...

The commute to Southern California is pretty killer though.

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

#239

Post by robocat »

quink wrote: post #191
robocat wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New Zealander here: much the same. New Zealanders definitely hate entrepreneurship - one political party wanted to introduce a wealth tax if you had more than $1 million equity. Median house price in Auckland is just over $1 million! Auckland has about 30% of the population, and house affordability (price compared to income) is similar as bad as Sydney or San Francisco. I have done okay for myself founding a software…

Guardian, December 2023: > The wealth tax contemplated by New Zealand Labour would have required couples to pay an annual levy of 1.5% on any assets they held over a $10m threshold. The estimated $3.8bn in revenue would have funded income-tax cuts for the vast majority of Kiwis. Labour’s potential coalition partners, the Greens and the indigenous-led Te Pāti Māori, ran on similar platforms. > Plus the relentless atta…

> I’m not seeing the problem.

The problem is what is the incentive to keep working once you've earned a house and bach? Why bother save for retirement if your savings are to be taken from you at a significant percentage per year? A few percent is a huge penalty (see index funds versus mutual funds), and the wealth tax is on top of taxation of salary and dividends.

  assets over $1m - a threshold the party thought would hit the wealthiest 6 per cent of New Zealanders. The higher [$2m] threshold means only the wealthiest 0.7 per cent of households will be targeted. The $2m threshold is a net figure, meaning people with mortgages and other debts would need $2m of equity before they began paying the tax.
I'm not talking about Labour, I'm talking about the Green's 2.5% wealth tax 2023: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/wealth-tax-hikes-will...

And incentive is to borrow money on property which is whacko, and then next thing CGT will also be added.

Houses should be for living in, not financial instruments.

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

#240

Post by tharmas »

ashconnor wrote: post #224
diego_moita wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an immigrant into Canada: even if that description were true, it still would make it a lot better than the majority of other countries in the world. Luckily, Canada is a lot better than your description.

The comment is complete hyperbole and isn't even correct. Real estate is bigger in the US than Canada. Every developed country is running into immigration and housing issues. Canada isn't alone and isn't even the worst case.

Yes, but there's Canada's climate. If you try to live in a tent outdoors in Canada you will likely die.
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