Governments terrified of popping foreign-buyer housing bubble: Don Pittis

Maybe we should all go live on reservations, and just sell the country to foreign investment.

It can't be much of an economic engine of people can't afford to live where near where they work.

Isn't that the supposed idea behind free trade agreements (and why they suck) - the flow of cheap labour to where the jobs are? What happens when people have to leave jobs because they don't want to live in their van out by the river any more?

Seems to be that's your government's model for economic success is to sell the country off to the highest bidder.

Seems to be that's your government's model for economic success is to sell the country off to the highest bidder.

It always has been with our resources. Now we're just selling the land instead of what's on or in it.

On the upside you're being rewarded with the diverse and multicultural experience of having a bunch of people from China colonizing Vancouver!

Who cares about them, just as we don't care about them when we import people to work more cheaply.

As the op said, if the housing market collapses, there goes the construction industry. And the provincial govts are raking in the big bucks in property and property transfer taxes and such. (But of course there are ways to avoid those.)

I think the foreign investor thing is overblown tho. If there was plenty of housing stock, the foreign investors would bid up the upper end of it, but it wouldn't ripple down the price scale. The big problem is immigration, both from within Canada but especially from without. We keep telling ourselves how wonderful large scale immigration is, but never look at the downside. Not only this ruaway train of house prices, but traffic congestion as well, while nobody wants to foot the bill for building transit to ease that congestion.

I never understood the need to distinguish between foreign investor vs domestic incestor if we're only talking about housing peices. The housing bubble is being driven by Investment speculation PERIOD, most of which is domestic: Property flippers and people looking for second incomes as hobby landlords.

Sure if they're domestic at least they *might* be paying taxes in the income (not a given for rentals) and the money does eventually get recirculated into the domestic economy but that's a different topic. The sheer prevelance of these property investors causes run away inflation in real estate prices and makes housing unaffordable for everyone else.

The reason these property investors are making out like bandits tho, is the high demand for housing in some markets. Ie in migration. And, some of those foreign investors are stashing money here for safety, ie price or even speculation isn't their main concern, they'll pay top dollar just to have a place to park their money. Some of this money is ill gotten. Same with money laundering.

I already posted this, but explain how a property assessed and bought for 17 million a couple of years ago, sells for 60+ million to a local (sort of) Chinese group, who goes on to flip it a couple of days later to a Chinese (as in not a resident) buyer? Don't you think something fishy is going on here?

So the foreign investment money is outbidding the local money, or the local money is flipping to the foreign money.

It's a little early to start drinking, isn't it?

Ha! All thumbs in the mobile device!

You might want to remember that when giving others a hard time over spelling mistakes.

Part of why I rarely if ever post on here from my so-called 'Smartphone'.

Thousands of Metro Vancouver mansion owners avoiding taxes


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