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Vancouver Off-Topic / Current EventsThe off-topic forum for Vancouver, funnies, non-auto centered discussions, WORK SAFE. While the rules are more relaxed here, there are still rules. Please refer to sticky thread in this forum.
Nevertheless, real estate agents are the ones that bump up the prices since they will try to get a house by claiming that they can sell it for more. They can bump the prices up all they want, it doesn't mean that it will sell.
A bit off topic, but in response to the article sarcastically talking about the head tax. Personally, I wouldn't care if they did reintroduce the thing. My great grandparents had to pay it and they never got reimbursed.
For the price of a Vancouver house, you can get more desirable places in Bay Area, San Diego etc etc.. heck you can get a double wide for the price of a 3er in Las Vegas.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bloodmack
Apparently being rich and buying houses in another city and being called out for it now falls under 'racist'.. Anything for a story these days eh?
I can attest personally that there are many people with "Foreign Income" buying homes in Vancouver. These people may be citizens, Permanent residents, international students etc.
It's pretty obvious if you ask me.
- I have friends that work for condo developers and they tell me that approximately 40% of the buyers have Chinese last names. This ratio goes up to 70% in certain areas like Metrotown.
- if you go to any condo pre-sales or sales center, you mostly see asians waiting in line or looking at the units.
- most condos now cater specifically to Chinese people. They don't have 4th floors, no 14th floor, 24th floor etc, suites ending in the number 4.
- marketing is in Chinese and marketed towards them.
Realtors and realtor boards and organizations want to protect themselves and not harm their income so they are going to say the opposite. Honestly, most realtors are a bunch of crooks.
Well, to answer the original question...is it racist to BLAME high prices on foreign buyers? Maybe. Is it racist to NOTE that there are a portion of off-shore investors buying property? Absolutely not.
I don't know, maybe there are people in China saying Vancouver could be a really nice place if they'd just stop building cheap shit that appeals to white guys.
I think the real item here is there is a large population of asians in the Greater Vancouver area. People look at "asians" buying property and scape goat them for the problem of high RE prices. No one asks..."hey...are you just as Canadian as I am?" And guess what...they probably are.
No one asks further..."hey, that's a pretty brilliant system you have there. You loan money amongst family like its nothing to buy houses, and then have family members live in the basement and have a multi-generational house. Oh, and you rent out a shitty suite in your basement for $800 a month...fuck, I bet that pays off a large portion of your mortgage."
Nope...its just "look! they buying all my cheap land!"
I live in van west and approx. 8 houses have been sold over the past year......100% were purchased by mainland chinese.....when I white guy buys in my hood for these prices = not a bubble.
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Sad thing is that these mainland chinese, the dad is almost always a party member of the state or some high ranking bureaucrat. These good for nothing motherfuckers immigrate to canada with their hordes of illicit corruption money. the poor people in china will always remain poor while the rich becomes even richer.
So when the state bust their ass or when they retire or whatever, they have a safe haven to escape to called vancouver, canada where they can safely dock their capitals, and families (wife and kid).
I always find it funny when we talk about communist china and all these rich guys that result from the corruption in the system....the system that was put in place to eliminate said corruption.
FYI: Remember that the investor class VISA is open to anyone with liquid $1.6M CAD. Another emerging group of rich immigrants I've been seeing a lot of and hearing about in the Greater Vancouver area now are wealthy Russians.
The bullshit you hear about the housing market in Vancouver hitting a plateau is only applicable to apartments/condos for entry level working class people. I just had another friend's family sell their house near Deer Lake in Burnaby. They listed for 1.3 and multiple China families went at it and it sold for 1.7 within 2 weeks. And this isn't an isolated case -- I've been hearing these stories non-stop for the past 6 months.
You can't blame chinese buyers for high housing prices.
Why?
Because the market dictates what the perceived "fair value" of what the real estate should be. No one is putting a gun to the buyer's head and telling them you have to pay $XX millions for a house.
In the end it's a zero sum game.
Buyer decides to deploy his/her capital in a certain asset class (Vancouver Real Estate) while Seller decides that it's the right time for him/her to sell for whatever reason.
End Result:
Buyer gains a home over their head.
Seller gains the capital and chooses to deploy wherever he/she likes it. Mind you I've seen many cases where the baby boom 50-60's crowd who have worked hard all there lives and brought a house in the right neighborhood and have sold their home to a financial lottery windfall. This windfall has allowed them to live a very comfortable retirement (new home) and pass on capital (down payment, loan) to the next generation.
People can complain all they want. Just remember the people who are selling didn't get there in 1 day - they had worked hard all the lives are only benefiting from the fruition of their labour.
All said and done, work hard and smart - that and a little bit of luck goes a long way.
Just wait till May when Facebook IPO's.. 20% or so of Facebook is own by the Russians.
Quote:
Originally Posted by achiam
FYI: Remember that the investor class VISA is open to anyone with liquid $1.6M CAD. Another emerging group of rich immigrants I've been seeing a lot of and hearing about in the Greater Vancouver area now are wealthy Russians.
There is truth in the article. If you are of Asian heritage, a large portion of the Canadian population will never care to distinguish a 4th Gen Canadian Chinese and a FOB. The perpetual foreigner stereotype is alive and well.
I get this all the time, they ask me what I am, I tell them "I'm Canadian" and usually the answer i get along with a laugh is "no, what are you really?".
Asians have a love affair with owning a house before anything else.
Westerners have a love affair with living within their means.
Different values. That's all.
You must be retarded. Home ownership is fucking woven into North American culture. Just listen to the last state of the union address where Obama cites "so we can achieve the goal of helping every American realize the dream of owning their own home". It's literally like a commandment in the North American religion.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jackmeister
Asians have a love affair with owning a house before anything else.
Westerners have a love affair with living within their means.
Different values. That's all.
I am curious to know why you think westerners have a love affair with living within their means? To me, I don't necessarily agree because the fact of the matter is Canadians have a lot of debt outstanding (trillion+ in credit card debt alone) so I think this suggests that we live more for today than tomorrow. Look at the US debt problem since most of their debt is owned by China. It was stated that one key difference was that Chinese families were able to save as much as 50% of their household income while the American saving rate was a meager single digit percentage in comparison.
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The thing to remember is the current crop of immigrants from China to Canada is roughly 100,000 a year.. from a country with a population of 1,300,000,000.. that's 0.007%. Can you imagine when China let the yuan trade freely and loosen their emigration policy? The majority of the China populace works a lot harder and more hungrier for jobs than most Canadians.
More the reason to work hard, stay in school and think smart (ie if you don't have the grades, go for a trade instead of a liberal arts degree). It is globalisation, adapt to it, rather than be a cry baby while the world passes you by.
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