Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interestingly housing is very expensive in the cities in Vietnam, on a relative basis. A friend’s mother sold a 1000 sq ft home in Saigon for $250,000. New apartments are often $100k+. Considering the average wage is $6,000 in Saigon, the housing is outrageous.
Similarly, a good chunk of urban housing in Canada, Australia and NZ are priced completely out of line with what median salaries in those areas could afford. These are likely houses marketed towards "investors", aka rich people who don't need a mortgage or have a network of private lenders who specialize in providing credit for the house-flipping industry.
Most international folks who want to move their money out of the country and into real property. This is particularly true of the Chinese and Vancouver, as the CCP basically owns all banks and can snap their fingers and make you poor. But they can't take land and houses in BC. Similar waves of buys have happened with Russians and a few after the new Saudi royalty started flexing their powers.
But it means a nice house in Vancouver (Kitsalano) goes for $2.4MM CAD while salaries lag behind the US. Even at US rates it would be dicey to buy a house unless you had a lump sum to hedge the risk of losing a job.