I take it those houses are in amazing neighborhoods and only worth the soil they sit on.

Either way can anyone tell me why house prices in Vancouver are so expensive?

Who is the average home-owner in Van - is it a 50 year old married white couple or a first generation Asian immigrant couple?

15/16

You got it. Back in the glory days (about 1987-1998 when Hongers came over in droves), we used to buy crap houses (Arbutus, Kerrisdale, Marpole, Dunbar), tear 'em down, build a "monster home", then flip. Didn't really understand as a kid why my parents never seemed to work much compared to my classmates. My neighbours were all either younger (say 40ish) Chinese families, or retired white couples just taking it easy.

Growing up on the West side, my grad class (1999) was split pretty cleanly. It was basically 45% white hippies, and 45% loaded Honger kids, with 10% CBCs and a couple of brown kids. So to answer your question, it seemed to be about "half and half", though the Hongers lived in all the "new" houses if you know what I mean. Past 2000+, a lot of Hongers went back to the Motherland but now they've been mostly replaced by even richer Chiners. :eek:

I'm hoping the housing price in Vancouver would go down once I graduate.