What incentive is there for a government to collect data if it tells you a story that is bad politics? It's why the Conservative government got rid of the long-form census - it's far easier to make decisions/not make decisions when you don't have the data to back them up.

No one collects data on the citizenship of home buyers. There's probably incredible resistance on the part of the real estate industry for a government to collect this data. Then, of course, the government will probably run into the legal hurdles when you try to implement something like this.

Even if you implemented something like this successfully, it's debatable how much the public would benefit. People don't really care about an increase in public amenities - they just want lower home prices. A tax won't cool the market - something which makes Vancouver a less desirable place to live/go to school/park money will.

Because buying a fucking house requires basic information that would include your identity.
You don't just show up with a briefcase full of cash and trade it for a key.

If I owned a place in that area, that study would probably lump me in with foreign owner. Been here 35 years and I never bothered with an Anglophone name. Does anyone truly believe .5% of the sales in Vancouver is representative of the whole market? I can show with selective stats that eating rice causes black hair.

they should do a study in the newtown area of surrey and conclude that indians are buying up the lower mainland.

Vancouver west has always been an expensive area anyway regardless of foreigners so I don't get why people are in an uproar over a high end market, even if it drops 50% they can't afford it anyway.

I agree its just sensationalism in the media, however those in the thread that are so excited to imply racism by the media lumping all chinese sounding names in with "the yellows" should probably understand that there is a bit more personal information involved in a home buying transaction than just your name.

The guy who is doing the study is also Chinese. I'm pretty sure he knows the difference between a mainland chinese name, Honger name, korean, etc etc.

unlike buying a car Kappa

Cause they're not just buying on the west side.

They're also buying up all the detached homes in east van, metrotown, capitol hill, coquitlam, burke mountain.

This is the problem, there's always people that try to deny the facts. We are still debating that Foreign money is not playing major role. Everyone in the industry knows it does. Most people in Vancouver know it. If the government actually collects the data like they do in other countries they will find the same conclusions. Like another user said, the sky is blue. . .

We have people saying untrue info like this only represents .5% of all sales in Vancouver? WTF? :fulloffuck:

Also it's not the percentage of sale transactions in Vancouver that matters, it's the % of absolute dollar value. Detached homes cost millions more than apartments, and represent a disproportionately larger % of capital.

People are in an uproar cause it's causing a trickle down effect. High housing prices can cause many social and economical problems - talent moving out, businesses moving out, lack of community, risks of crash and economic downturn, debt issues . . . we've discussed it plenty in this thread.

Not to mention these housewives and students are probably evading capital gain or transfer taxes and possibly assisting in sheltering corrupt or illicit funds from China.

I don't know if this is real or staged but nonetheless, I fuckin lol'd

:lawl:

http://i140.photobucket.com/albums/r...psltomtdji.png

It wasn't written so preposterously, but we have been getting these cards at our place in recent weeks.

Your comment right here reminds me of the addition/removal of the HST a few years back. You may recall having HST will save local businesses (small and large) money in the long run. Of course, the more small businesses flourish, the better our economy is. However, no matter the pros of having the HST, most of the voting population did not like this and was voted out.

Same with foreign buyers of real estate properties. Foreign buyers (mostly the Chinese) boosted up the demand in our market. Who benefits from this ? Pretty all of the folks who have been homeowners in Vancouver > 15 years. they became instant millionaires on paper at least. The American dream in Canada. They saved up, worked their way to upper middle class, and now has a nice cushy retirement.

That's a lot of votes. Mostly adults who show up at the voting poll. I'm not sure any incumbent will want to displease this group of voters.

And that is sometimes where democracy fails us. No one is willing to make the hard but correct decisions whereas people are blinded by their own greed that they can't see that they're destroying their own city in the long run.

So if I were to sell my home, then what?

To keep any sort of profit after selling my home, I would NEED to downsize to an apartment or townhome. Or respectively move further out from metro vancouver where detached housing prices are lower.

For this reason alone, it's why my parents and neighbours aren't selling. If they sold now, they would lose their detached property they worked so hard for, and they would be forced to downsize to keep that "cushy retirement" money.

^ that's how's it's always been regardless of the climate though

Establish a home in a detached house in a community, community grows around it, value goes up, sell and downsize and retire with the profit.

Why buy if cushy retirement is the plan?

Take my professor as an example, he had a place in Point Grey. A beautiful, cozy home that he sold for 3.2M earlier this year. (about 300k over his assessment... he was shocked).

He then rented a slightly smaller house (still detached) in the same area for 3200/mth. The reason for selling? It's all math and retirement plan. (he has a Ph.D. in economics after all) it didn't make much sense to be paying property taxes on a property valued at nearly 3M when he originally bought it for quite less than 1M few decades ago when he started teaching at UBC.

And if he were to take out a mortgage now to buy a 3.2M home, he'd be paying over 10k a month in payments vs. 3200 in rent.

The money from selling was invested a portion into low (relative) risk stocks (with dividend), another part in higher (again, relative) risk fund, a vacation home in Central America and still keeping over half a mil in his account.

The investments now pay for his rent (plus some), and he has his entire retirement planned out and funded when it's time (in another 2 years, when his current Ph.D. student finishes the research they are working on)

Very good point, however, you are pointing out a very extreme ownership - rental gap. The average homeowner is not selling a 3.2 million dollar point grey house, and $3200 is very low for a detached home.
Either way, the people who'd vote against the regulation of foreign home buyers based on their overinflated retirement plan is just another example of a generation willing to sell out their children financially. I try not to complain much, as I'm in a relatively good position at a reasonable time in my life, and a huge part of that is due to my family giving me every opportunity they could, but the baby boomer generation time and time again has financially fucked the next generation in the big picture. Yet one more prospective example to add to the list.

That's the kind of situation my parents are in. They own an asset worth over a million... but they're living in it and it doesn't pay the bills. It actually costs them money keep and run the place. 5 years into retirement, they're almost out of money and keep hitting me up for money for simple things like food.

I keep telling them to sell the place while the getting is good and invest the money. The dividend they would get is way more than they ever made while working and can easily pay rent or a mortgage on a condo. They'll still have a lot of money left over for the fun stuff too... or just reinvest it.

When it comes to retirement, it's not how much you have... it's how much you have coming in...

Well if you have zero savings and your entire "retirement fund" is in your house, that was just bad planning.

They are lucky to have such a valuable asset to fall back on.

What I found in my old /parents neighborhood is a shit load of people who are very eary on in their retirement cashed out big early on, turning a house they bought for 150-250k into 600-900 and getting out. However, a lot of them are downgrading so severely I think they will probably regret it. Moving from a great, nice home with a yard and good people around them to areas like the row homes in Clayton heights which is turning into a fucking ghetto.

Quality of life and your situation has more to do than just money sitting in the bank and some retiree going to the casino 3 times a week

I agree that boomers fucked us up big time. As far as the rental-owning gap, it's not exactly extreme. Even today, a quick look at a 2-3br unit in Van west range anywhere between 2-5k. Even if we take the higher end, his investment (2M+@4% per year roughly) still has no problem on covering the rent. Not to mention if he decides to move out of that expensive area completely, 3k/mth can get him something nice in GVR.

What I was saying was that, given my prof situation, which he had retirement in mind, his house covered his entire retirement plan with little change in lifestyle. He was looking to downsize because kids all moved out, so the smaller house on the smaller lot didn't bother him too much (he went from a ~2600sq to ~1600sq, lot was smaller too but not much). But when he looked at the options he had, selling, then renting fit his retirement plan the best.

Looking to buy another investment unit DT so put an offer on this one place last week, $20k over asking, and my offer was rejected. Supposedly this one condo had 14 offers. Unless you have cash, no subjects, you're basically out of luck.

The things we do to attain the 'dream'

Pay off your mortgage, live debt free: how one guy did it in 3 years - Business - CBC News

I assume the average Vancouver mortgage would be much higher than what this guy had.

Nonetheless, bravo to this guy though I'm not sure I could do it. My perspective on life differs.

What a shitty way to live for a good portion of the prime (age 25 - 45) of your life. Life is short, enjoy it and what the world has to offer.

Its 3 fucking years and his mortgage is paid off. He now gets to live life without the cost of a mortgage. You know how little money he needs to make to do whatever the fuck he wants now that he has ZERO HOUSING EXPENSES? He's going to be living the prime of his life just fine. Good for him. Hopefully he hasn't become addicted to work. Once he steps back fully, life is going to be so stress free.

Even if I live 3 jobs I don't think I can pay off my mortgage in 3 years.....

other option is (assuming they own it outright):

Mortgage house to a certain level (can HELOC it at prime + 0.5%, if they can't get a conventional mortgage). pay off interest only. live off the rest.

when they die, the house will be sold to more than cover the HELOC.

money is useless when you're dead - right now, there will be approx. $1M of assets available when they die, what good is that to them? live life, you only get 1 shot at it!