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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

#411

Post by cbsmith »

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?

Looks like my short answer wasn't well received, so I'll try a longer answer: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-seeks-crack-down-real-es...

The irony is the US talks a lot about financial transparency for other countries, but the US itself is the preferred place if you're looking to launder money.

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

#412

Post by rokkitmensch »

rybosworld wrote: post #382
rokkitmensch wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You assume these are poor people, other assume they're quite wealthy and laundering untaxed income into assets in .ca. If the latter, they may even have a proportionate pile of assets to seize locally. I betcha you could restate your point to come across a little less jingoistic.

> "You assume these are poor people" The OP is right, the income isn't real. It's right there in the article: "Aurora branch had direct knowledge of faked Chinese income mortgages" You assumed that the OP assumed something. Then you assumed that the OP's (non)assumption was motivated by jingoism. Comments like yours are the worst.

> Comments like yours are the worst.

This is HN's vaunted grace?

From what I responded to:

> You can't meaningfully garnish the wages of a part time casino dealer.

It is entirely plausible that there are oodles of untaxed income getting funneled over there from hasty emigrés.

No need to get vituperative, good grief.

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

#413

Post by msie »

nojvek wrote: post #376

Could someone explain why Canada with their 40M population (almost 10x smaller than US) is running into highly overpriced homes? Canada is one of the largest countries on the planet. Why can’t Canada build more homes? Also why can’t we ban foreigners from owning homes? Same issue applies to US as well.

Canada did ban foreigners from owning homes. But that ban didn’t extend to Canadians and Canadian companies from investing in RE. Foreigners are not the majority of RE owners and unfairly focused upon.

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

#414

Post by cycrutchfield »

ysofunny wrote: post #407
cycrutchfield wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait until you see the maintenance and heating costs for those castles, or any old building in general. The sticker price isn’t the whole story.

I know that, but the comparisons are still ridiculous the canadian properties are in some cases less than 100 square meters, getting compared with land properties of square kilo meter scales! the discrepancies in land value are artificial and are part of the global inequality crisis but on the global scale the inequality is not between individuals, but between cities and states (and countries)

Huh? Artificial? A plot of land in Manhattan is worth more than a plot of land in the Sahara desert. Not surprising at all.

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

#415

Post by randomdata »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #410
randomdata wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was the crash of 2022, seeing a nearly 30% haircut nationally while at the bottom. For comparison, the US housing crash of the oughts saw a peak decline of 33%. Everyone in banking was surely around to see that major correction happen. Granted, the market had ramped up so quickly, and then crashed so fast, that the number of underwater mortgages was likely small – and probably haven't come up for renewal yet. S…

Where are you getting a 30% drop in 2022? The BoC data shows https://housepriceindex.ca/#chart_change=c11 If you cherry pick the localized data, even the worst off suburbs of Toronto you see a dip of just over 22% with a pretty quick reversion to the mean. If you look at metro areas, none of the cities in Canada saw greater than 10% drops from 2022 peaks, and they have all recovered from the bottom.

CREA.

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

#416

Post by dghlsakjg »

randomdata wrote: post #415
dghlsakjg wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are you getting a 30% drop in 2022? The BoC data shows https://housepriceindex.ca/#chart_change=c11 If you cherry pick the localized data, even the worst off suburbs of Toronto you see a dip of just over 22% with a pretty quick reversion to the mean. If you look at metro areas, none of the cities in Canada saw greater than 10% drops from 2022 peaks, and they have all recovered from the bottom.

CREA.

ah. CREA reported a ~30% drop in average sale price across all transactions, true. That is very different than a 30% drop in the value all real estate.

If you break it out into type of home, it shows that the average price drop is about ~10% for any given market. This shows that consumers in 2022 shifted buying preferences from expensive home types to cheaper home types. This makes a lot of sense given the push for multi family housing and rising interest rates.

The value of individual housing didn't change 30%, it was mostly just a market shift towards cheaper housing. If people shift from buying Mercedes to buying Kia, the average transaction price for a car will fall a lot, but that doesn't mean that Mercedes is on sale for cheap.

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

#417

Post by rybosworld »

rokkitmensch wrote: post #412
rybosworld wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "You assume these are poor people" The OP is right, the income isn't real. It's right there in the article: "Aurora branch had direct knowledge of faked Chinese income mortgages" You assumed that the OP assumed something. Then you assumed that the OP's (non)assumption was motivated by jingoism. Comments like yours are the worst.

> Comments like yours are the worst. This is HN's vaunted grace? From what I responded to: > You can't meaningfully garnish the wages of a part time casino dealer. It is entirely plausible that there are oodles of untaxed income getting funneled over there from hasty emigrés. No need to get vituperative, good grief.

It's entirely plausible that you're not on the moral high ground you think you are, calling other commenters jingoistic because you didn't read the article is prime example.
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