It's quite bizarre any jurisdiction would allow someone to buy housing there when they can't legally live in it.
> bizarre any jurisdiction would allow someone to buy housing there when they can't legally live in it Foreign-owned homes are a problem for asset acquirers. Vacant homes are a problem for anyone who needs housing. The former seems to get a lot of visibilty when concerns around the latter get raised.
> Vacant homes are a problem for anyone who needs housing.
But they pay taxes without demanding any services and the seller assessed they had better use of the capital, they could buy or build a more suitable home.
If I lived in a location with 50% vacant homes all paying property taxes then wouldn’t my schools and streets and all local government services be extremely well funded?
HSBC funneled $1B (that we know about) for cartels, it came out as 100% knowingly committed, and no one went to jail. Basically the government asked for their cut. Why wouldn't do they this again and again? They are above the law, they are the law.
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…
How many fraud issues has HSBC had over the years? Why are they allowed to still do business in the US and Canada?
HSBC funneled $1B (that we know about) for cartels, it came out as 100% knowingly committed, and no one went to jail. Basically the government asked for their cut. Why wouldn't do they this again and again? They are above the law, they are the law.
It's HSBC being HSBC, I can't say that I'm surprised. Drug cartels and money laundering are at the core of their brand value.
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 is not really news, this is certainly not exclusive to one bank or another
I remember some years ago I saw a comment somewhere that, for real estate purchases "proceeds from a certain country were subject to AML regulations... but not from China"
Really. I can imagine a Canadian banker saying that with a straight face.
HSBC funneled $1B (that we know about) for cartels, it came out as 100% knowingly committed, and no one went to jail. Basically the government asked for their cut. Why wouldn't do they this again and again? They are above the law, they are the law.
It's HSBC being HSBC, I can't say that I'm surprised. Drug cartels and money laundering are at the core of their brand value.
Hopefully Canadian citizens are the "lender of last resort", just like we Americans are the "lender of last resort".
The bankers must be made whole -- nothing else matters.
That's an issue absolutely, but it doesn't answer the question of whether non-residents should be allowed to do what residents can.
> it doesn't answer the question of whether non-residents should be allowed to do what residents can Raise that fence too high and you turn landlords into the community's gatekeepers. (How else could a non-resident become a resident?)
Don’t worry the HN crowd seems to be so far gone from reality and understanding free markets that I’ve encountered numerous discussions where landlords are categorically evil, which is overwhelmingly empirically understood to be extremely beneficial to housing and communities to have landlords invest in them! Of course given the trend has been to remove all education of market fundamentals and inject eduction systems with endless collectivist propaganda we should not be surprised.
Why? Should we restrict other investments with similar logic? For example should non-residents not be allowed to purchase vacation properties and lease them? The impulse to enlist the government to regulate private property and investments is not productive and results in endless encroachment of individual liberties and rights to governments.
Yes. Restricting foreigners from owning domestic assets is the beginning. Next comes restricting / heavily taxing domestic owners that own more than one home. Sooner or later, housing gets closer to being what it's supposed to be (shelter and space for people who need it) rather than a financial vehicle.
This proposal is a slippery slope to economic disaster. First, restricting ownership rights—foreign or domestic—distorts the market, disincentivizes investment, and ultimately harms those it claims to help by reducing the supply of housing. Second, treating homes purely as shelter ignores the reality that property is also an investment and a key component of individual wealth and economic freedom. Imposing heavy taxes on those owning more than one home would not only penalize success but also discourage rental market contributions, exacerbating the housing shortage. The real solution lies in encouraging development and reducing bureaucratic barriers to increase housing supply, not in draconian measures that trample on property rights and stifle economic growth. Let’s not replace a market-driven approach with a command economy that history has repeatedly shown to fail.
A lot of it doesn’t even sound like money laundering, just fraud. You say you have a job paying you lots of money from China, verification is loose, you get the loans, and then try to make mortgage payments via Airbnb. The risk is mostly with the bank, and if it doesn’t blow up you make all the money.
While that may happen too, the article alleges the mortgage payments are being made with funds wired from China. If the borrowers are making the mortgage via rent/Airbnb of the properties... then they are somehow keeping it secret within Canada and also sending it on an international round-trip, which seems like a strange stretch for any small-time "lie on the loan application" crook.
The article states more cases than that. One of the examples the mortgage payments aren’t being made via Chinese wires, they are being paid locally and the Chinese income doesn’t exist at all.
They could be making round trips with Chinese banks but I don’t see why. You can transfer funds from China into your account before your monthly mortgage was due, the mortgage provider would never know. You can also put dollars into a Chinese bank account and do wires in demand, since it isn’t R!B there are no controls on it.