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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

#341
post #297
post #2

IANAFinancialInvestigator, but skimming through it sounds like: 1. Fraudulent applicants come to the bank with crazy stories to ask for enormous loans/mortgages toward a Toronto house, allegedly to turn hyper-suspicious big piles of cash into a more reputable-looking asset. 2. HSBC goes along with that because they want to suckle on the sweet regular payments of suspicious cash, even though they ought to damn well kn…

This doesn't necessarily even need to have a laundering angle. I have a different take: 1. They come with some money, enough for whatever minimum down payment is required (but notably, the issuing bank will also lower down payment requirements for clients with high income or assets, which are faked anyway) 2. HSBC is incentivized to issue mortgages, yes, that's their business. But the actual fraud here sounds more li…

People have been waiting for decades for the Canadian housing market to tumble.

There are so many Canadians waiting on the sidelines with their down payment ready to be deployed and are out competed year after year.

The pent up demand for housing is enormous. Even with the high interest rates.

Hell, with the rumors of interest rates going down, there is a frenzy to BUY now, suck up the high interest and get a relief in a few years, because people are afraid that if the rates go down, more people will qualify for a mortgage and it will bring more pressure, so better to buy now if you can.

I am convinced it will not go down in my life time ever. Too much demand, not enough supply.

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

#342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got the feeling that the HSBC in Bellevue Washington catered primarily to overseas Chinese clients looking to buy homes in the Seattle area. Most of the employees spoke some dialect of Chinese. I have no idea about the loan officers, however.

Bellevue's population is ~14% Chinese, over 21,000 people, and mostly high income tech salaries. It would be bad business not to have Chinese speakers on staff.

> 14% Chinese, over 21,000 people, and mostly high income tech salaries. It would be bad business not to have Chinese speakers on staff.

What language do these Chinese tech workers speak at their jobs?

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

#343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Willing participants huh. Was the taxpayer a willing participant when we had to pay for the monumentous fuck up of 2008? Did the banks and investors pay for it, go to prison? Pretty sure it was just one scapegoat and that's it.

The 2008 bailouts were all loans and taxpayers made a profit on them as they got repaid - see https://money.usnews.com/investing/articles/2017-01-19/finan...

Where do you think the banks got the money that enabled them to repay the loans?

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

#344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

But the "fraud" is slowing the bubble. Without capita controls, PRC buyers would operate like any other international buyer, except there would be a shit load more of them who would do more cash purchases and outbit everyone else. This fraud to circumvent capital controls is why wealthy PRC buyers who liquidated their extra multi million dollar tier1 units only bought 1 house in Canada instead of 3.

The article discusses how they're not just buying one home outright. Far more profitable to put downpayments on 3 or 4 homes and just push that money to pay those mortgages while AirBnBing and renting a couple of them.

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

#345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 2008 bailouts were all loans and taxpayers made a profit on them as they got repaid - see https://money.usnews.com/investing/articles/2017-01-19/finan...

Where do you think the banks got the money that enabled them to repay the loans?

From the mortgages, just as they should, and just as the borrowers (i.e. "the willing participants") deserved to pay - it's not a burden on some unrelated taxpayers.

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

#346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bellevue's population is ~14% Chinese, over 21,000 people, and mostly high income tech salaries. It would be bad business not to have Chinese speakers on staff.

> 14% Chinese, over 21,000 people, and mostly high income tech salaries. It would be bad business not to have Chinese speakers on staff. What language do these Chinese tech workers speak at their jobs?

It depends on the composition of their teams, but probably something different than their most comfortable, native language.

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

#347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 These aren't purely private transactions. If HSBC Canada fails, Ottawa is on the hook. The defrauded party here is the public. (And possibly the bank's lenders and shareholders.)

This is somewhat counterintuitive but... the fraudulent mortgages are not more risky, they are often times more stable than other local borrowers. I think what many people are imagining is the subprime mortgage situation of yore. But in this case, a lot of the "fraud" is the result of knock on effects from capital controls in the PRC. Many (new and aspiring immigrants) have capital from sales of their property in Chi…

The issue here is that the geopolitical risks are hard to separate from the market risks.

If BC property is being fraudulently leveraged against Chinese real estate, opaque decisions by the ccp can dramatically impact default rate for Canadian loans.

No market actor would expect that in a non-fraud based market. Instead a transparent pricing of Chinese assets would show them as much less valuable on a risk adjusted basis than their book wealth value. Especially compared to western income or equivalent wealth.

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

#348

The issue is not new. I am of East Asian heritage and live in Canada. Several people asked me causally why I went to school and had a regular job. They explained that with the "Chinese money" I should not compete for jobs with folks who really needed the money. Smh...

Can you explain what they are implying? Is there a belief that China hands out blank checks to anyone who happens to be Asian? This sounds insane to me.

Read the article. It's not china giving blank checks, it is the set of rich folks China's stellar rise has created who are property rich and have capital from China they can live off of. There's no blank checks.

The stereotyping is lumping the parent post with this group on the basis of North American racial categories ("Asian" as a group, as if that's a thing.)

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

#349
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of by definition you can't pay more in taxes than you contribute to the economy, therefore unoccupied housing is a drain on the local economy.

Your assertion flips economic principles on their head. Vacant homes paying taxes without drawing on local services represent a net gain, not a drain. Taxes paid on these properties directly fund public services, enhancing the community’s infrastructure without additional burden. Furthermore, the investment in property contributes to the economy through construction, maintenance, and property management industries. T…

> To claim that unoccupied housing harms the local economy is not logical.

Sure, property taxes are paid on the house.

But unoccupied homes don't buy groceries and clothes, don't go to restaurants in the local economy.

So they do harm the economy, in the sense that they don't contribute as much to the economy as an occupied home.

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

#350
post #279

Sam Cooper makes a living with China xenophobia. He was fired from his stint at Global for accusing a Canadian MP of colluding with China according to “sources”. That MP sued Global who fired Cooper. So I take his articles with a huge grain of salt.

Are there more details here? Accusing one of "colluding with China" which is a state does not imply xenophobia.
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