What isn't talked about in this article is the effect this is having on the other industries in the city aside from real estate.
I believe that Vancouver has potential to be THE tech hub in Canada. Unfortunately, wages are very low compared to the cost of housing, and so the cost of living is super high. Combine that with extremely low vacancy rates, and it is very hard to attract talent from out of town. In fact, many young, smart and talented people just head south to Seattle or the valley because the wages are so much higher, and the economics of staying in Vancouver just don't make sense.
The other industries that could be thriving and building up a real economy in city are some of the biggest casualties in this whole mess. Unfortunately, all of the politicians from municipal to provincial are in bed with the real estate industry, so nothing truly effective and meaningful will be done.
>> In fact, many young, smart and talented people just head south to Seattle or the valley because the wages are so much higher, and the economics of staying in Vancouver just don't make sense.
Your claim is especially true if those people have families. 60% of Families said they planned on leaving the city in the next year due to the problems surrounding housing. Rental rates are also a problem with only a 0.6% vacancy rates and of those available only 16% are 2 bedroom and less than 1% are three bedroom.(1)
Unfortunately in Canada we've gone for easy money (real estate in Vancouver, oil in Alberta) before trying to establish actual industries. We'd rather just grab US and Chinese cash then vacation in Mexico than actually work.
Introduction of a gradual increase in property taxes, as well as a gradual decease in income taxes, even lower than zero if appropriate, would be the naïve, straightforward economic policy recommendation if the problem has been accurately described. Some details yo resolve would be the numerous people who were using their primary residence as their main investment for retirement, and deciding how to handle people who were improving properties in order to make a living.
As a Vancouverite (well, metro at least) who moved here from Toronto 15 years ago, one of the things that has bothered me most about BC and Vancouver specifically is how reliant the economy is on a few distinct sectors.
In BC, it's resources and literally nothing else. In Vancouver, since resources overall are declining, we run the economy via real estate investment. That's moronic.
As you say, we could become a tech hub easily if we leveraged our easy connection to Seattle and the gateway to Asia that we are. We could become a medical tech hub as well. We could be a centre for finance as well if we invested properly, particularly since oil is now on a downslide.
Our local governments simply have no vision. Our residents are too afraid of change to actually do, well anything really, and all our innovators simply move elsewhere.
This lacks recognition. So many factors could come into play. E.g.
The downstream effects of house prices has to hit entrepreneurship. Previously a bunch of people would be in a good place to take a couple years off to start a business mid-career. Now people have these huge mortgages where your ability to start a business is hampered by your ability to get a financial buffer to take this year or 2 off. And lets not forget most businesses are created form people mid-career, not the TV typical university dropout.
And small community business, how will they exist in the future. If someone wants to set up a local 'physical presence' vet/daycare type business that are typically mixed into residential areas the threshold is now too high to exist let-alone set up a new business. How can a daycare buy a million+ dollar house and expect to make money paying that back on having 30 local kids being looked after.
Also what is going to happen with social services like retirement and periods of higher unemployment. I suspect society will be less stable as either the government has to foot much higher rent costs (unlikely) or we will see increased population movements during retirement, and now the government has to look after older people that before a family who lived nearby could help out with. And during low employment cycles society can no-longer absorb this downturn if people have large income-to-debt loans. Historically people could 'tighten belts' for a year while things improve, harder when you're neck deep in debt. So we will again see more movement of people, debt default etc. It will serve to exacerbate recessions etc.
Also these higher prices skew the economy. When people are tied up in these ever increasing loan/income ratios there will be less spending on dining, holidays, hobbies etc. It will weaken the economy by concentrating the spend in limited areas.
From this I really believe we should be talking seriously about ensuring affordable housing for owner occupiers. Residential investment need to be discouraged (note I'm not saying stopped) as a speculative asset class. I've seen a few suggested methods to achieve this but I feel the simplest is to place a yearly 'asset tax' on non-owner occupied residential property (I would also include farms). Having a % tax would make it easy to adjust to find the right balance given economic cycles change. Also this would encourage property hoarders not in heavy debt to sell for lower taxed asset classes. This I feel is important as most solutions focus on controlling the investment lending side which is limiting in reach. And the 'add supply' will always be a limited case solution.
Good luck. It seems most western governments have stopped caring about looking past the most immediate budgets.
I don't understand how Seattle hasn't had a big housing problem compared to the valley or Vancouver. They have a decent tech sector and they're in close proximity to Vancouver.
Billionaires buying houses does not increase housing costs. You do not need to purchase a Single Family House in Vancouver to have housing. You can buy a condo, the prices of which are totally uncoupled from SFHs, or rent. If foreign investors were leaving the houses they buy empty, and thus removing units from the housing stock, you might be able to make a case for foreign investment negatively impacting Vancouver housing costs, but that's not what's happening. The percentage of homes in the Vancouver West Side, where foreign investors are exceptionally active, (edit to add: 'that are unoccupied') is only 3 percent, which is below the typical rate for major cities.
What this means is that foreigners are not leaving houses that they buy in Vancouver empty. They are being rented out. The rental cost in Vancouver are below Seattle's when you compare it to the median wage so then couver housing as far as rentals is actually more affordable than neighbouring Seattle.
The whole Pacific coast of North America is becoming a gated region, closed off from those without at least quarter of a million dollars saved up. Unfortunately I think the mild weather and beauty of that area mean prices will never go down. Middle class people are seemingly bound to live in places that are too hot, too cold, or too flat.
It is interesting to look at the map of California and wonder at that huge gap between Carmel and Santa Barbara. No development, no population, its even hard for tourists to find a place to stay, or even a campsite.
The tech industry pays all the state's bills, mostly captured by tenured public sector workers, in true socialist fashion. If there's a tech crash, and a few years pass without IPOs, the state will collapse into bankruptcy, and the impoverished residents will start to eye that empty coastline as their most valuable asset. When the tree-hugging hippies die off, 350km of the world's most valuable real estate will come onto the market.
3) Then there is the issue of occupancy. The reason the 15% tax was brought in is because money was coming in to purchase houses which then sat empty. Many have become derelict. When I lived in Vancouver, Yaletown was full of apartment towers, but where were all the people (I believe occupancy in that area has improved). http://www.theglobeandmail.com/real-estate/vancouver/poking-...
Fluff piece? Did we read the same article? It covered at length the issue of the young couple essentially trapped in Surrey, unable to get enough space to have a child.
The author really went out of the way to emphasize the wealth of the investors, describing the buyer wanting a nonexistent car. The only remotely fluffy portion was describing the ecosystem of luxury services associated with the lavish spending. I think the article did a good job of conveying the huge negative effect to the Vancouver economy and way of life.
This shows the the price trend of Detached, Townhouse, and Apartment up to the last 11 years, broken by individual cities in Greater Vancouver.
But it is misleading. If you look at Metro Vancouver's trend, all 3 types of housing have gone up in prices. But if you look at the surrounding cities, only the Detached and Townhouse prices have gone up. Apartment pricing have remain relatively flat until 15 months ago. Since then Apartment price have gone up as well.
This is probably because 15 months ago, the Detached/Apartment pricing have increased to the point where buyers started to consider Apartment as a viable resident.
PS. If you look at the graph, you will notice that the prices have gone up so much it broke the graphing software.
It's happening to countries all around the pacific rim (well, without being too rude, all the stable countries).
Chinese money is land-banking in Vancouver, US north west, Australia, and Auckland in nz.
and countries don't dear stop it because it will tank the real-estate bubble too quickly (it'll go before the tech bubble anyway). But if it does it will actually be good for the economies because capital tied up in unused land is worthless to the economy.
Canada and Australia have been hit hard by the commodity collapse, and their currencies have crashed, so their property has inflated in local nominal prices, as foreigners have bought anything with a roof (or even without). But their internal economies have not reacted to the loss of export business and imported inflation for consumer goods. They keep high-taxes and high-welfare socialist economies which are sleep-walking off a cliff - this will not end well.
NZ is in a slightly better position, because it produces more agricultural commodities than industrial minerals, and it restructured its taxes and regulations to become more friendly to businesses and individuals (no capital gains tax, no inheritance tax). But its real estate market is also in a crazy bubble, which will collapse if the foreign buyers disappear.
The same is true in London, mainly with investors from Russia, China and the Middle East. Compared to their countries, they see these as a 'safe haven' for their money.
I'm disgusted/saddened by the biased reporting that's taken place over this issue. This article points out how Bloomberg and other media are attracted to the "foreign buyers" narrative:
Same in London. In everything except extremely high end property. But it is a common narrative for political purposes because people "feel" it to be right.
Not to mention perfectly valid non-speculative buyers.
Scenario for you: international student completed UBC and started working full-time on local tech company. After struggle to save, put a deposit on a place after saving from working part-time during later years of degree and about to close deal in a couple weeks (when new place is ready). Now, BAM! Gotta have to pony up 15% on home price agreed upon nearly a year earlier. More than original deposit! Tell me how that encourages qualified tech workers to stick around...
They aimed at a particular kind of "foreign buyers" in a crowd, but used a shotgun...
As a vancouverite, and a person that's lived in Toronto for over a decade, I can say that while vancouver has about half the population (of T.O.) it has maybe 1/4 or 1/8 of the tech jobs. Also Canada is not like, say, the US, where there are many different industrial centers (ie Entertainment in LA or Finance in NY). In Canada, most corp headquarters are in Toronto and a small fraction are in Calgary and that's it. Vancouver has little significant industry that isn't tied to real estate.
Even if a crash does happen, the largest crashes to date have only been maybe 30% in '82 (prices recovered in 7 years) and 15% in '08 (prices recovered in 1 year).
What could change the course of the current deluge of chinese capital?
1 Canadian Regulatory change - the federal liberals and the provincial liberals have significant political contributions from real estate agents (look it up). They won't impl any meaningful changes. This new 15% tax will affect few and change little; it is just election season and our Premier, Christi has to look active.
2 Interest rates - The US basically sets our rates and the US is likely going to reduce the rates driving more capital to look for better returns.
3 Chinese cash - are you going to stop buying chinese shit? No, in fact most can only afford chinese made products these days.
4 Chinese Regulatory change - This could happen but most of the cash used to buy homes in BC is likely illegally moved out of china anyhow so...
TL;DR- In the 1-2 year timeframe tho, my advice - mortgage your house and buy as much BC real estate as you can afford. Good luck on finding 25%+ yoy low risk returns anywhere else.
It seems like the Canadian government is responding:
> Foreign investors will have to pay an additional 15 percent in property-transfer tax as of Aug. 2 and city of Vancouver was given the authority to impose a new tax on empty homes.
The additional tax on foreign investors is a good idea, but I wonder how it will be enforced, especially when ownership is often hidden behind trusts.
I think that the real problem is that so many people are trying to concentrate into the densest areas. That creates huge pressures, which are reflected in the price of space.
Take a look at the cities with populations below 100K. You will find lots of people who live great lives, despite not being rich. For those of us who grew up in these little island towns, living in a place like Vancouver is downright depressing, regardless of the price.
I used to think you had to live in an "it" city to make it. Then I realized that I could make my life whatever I wanted to be more easily in a less expensive place. The chains were in my head.
And yet the other day there was an article on here about Canada's issue hiring high tech workers.
The thread was filled with a ton of programmers that left Toronto / Canada to go to Silicon Valley because the wages are so much higher.
Yeah I'm going to make probably less than half of what someone in Silicon Valley can make but living in a medium sized Canadian city means my cost of living is obviously much lower.
I agree with you that there should be restrictions on foreign investors looking to housing as investment. . . at the same time, I am worried that they are being used as scapegoats to avoid addressing much larger structural economic and legislative problems behind the inflationary price increase.
In fact I think these foreign investors are more being attracted by the already inflating prices than actually the culprit in the inflation.
All the trillions of dollars that got sent out the trade deficit since the 80s are finally making their way back to the developed economies. We can only export our inflation for so long.
Yeah. Nobody will talk about this. Trillions of dollars went to China in exchange for things purchased legally and voluntarily. Now, people throw around terms like "money laundering" as if the Chinese are a bad ass cartel that's been selling us cocaine all this time.
If would could only find a way to tax that in order to pay off the fiscal deficits we had to accrue in order to make perpetual trade deficits less painful...
The Chinese buyers are paying on average $900k for a house, which is what the average Canadian is buying.
The percentage of Chinese buyers is anywhere from 4% to 8% in the market.
What upsets me here more than anything else is that no one mentioned the CMHC. I suppose people would be more willing to believe that aliens are using mind control on people to drive a real estate frenzy rather than believe that there are institutions creating moral hazard within Canada.
The interesting parts about foreign buyers is that the best story always seems to highlight the super rich, but its not like mansions are the only things going up in price.
I'm sure that a price increase in land results in a "rising tide" effect for all homes, but because someone is willing to spend 64M on a mansion, does it mean condo's should be worth more too?
The city is pretty, but there aren't exactly a massive pile of high paying jobs, nor do we have much of an economy beyond resource extraction, satellite offices, etc.
A running joke in Canada is that BC stands for "Bring Cash". This is what happens in a completely unregulated market. Good in the short term, disastrous in the long.
Isn't the cause of rapidly rising real estate prices also caused by devaluations of currencies, so people with a lot of money are looking for relatively safe places to park it? In the USA real inflation is much higher than our government admits.
> The 31-year-old paralegal and her husband, an apprentice plumber, live in a two-bedroom, 1,200-square-foot (111-square-meter) apartment
They can't afford kids? I have lived in 83-square-meter apartment with my wife and two kids and a I had a friggin' separate home office room to work from home. It wasn't ideal (we have moved when the youngest turned 5, so we wanted to give them separate bedrooms), but it worked pretty well. Granted, it was in Norway, not US, but one can't help thinking that people just don't know how to use the space they have.
Canada is the fifth most popular country with Chinese property investors who is interested in purchasing condos for their children near universities. As a result, single-detached homes move further into luxury budget territory leaving first-time buyers with funds enough for a condo. Source https://tranio.com/canada,new_zealand,australia,united-kingd...
This situation can be turned around into a positive. The higher real estate boom could be used for a massive building boom to reduce unemployment and boost wages in the construction industry. I doubt every last bit of land has been used up, I don't think their density is anywhere near that of Hong Kong.
On a broader scale, I don't understand why (other than politics and legal) this massive multi nationwide demand for housing hasn't created opportunities in the construction industry: building out with existing technologies as well as incentives to produce more efficient methods and tech. Whatever happened to big problems leading to big opportunities? I mean we're talking about a multi-trillion dollar industry begging to be disrupted. I can't name a single unicorn company that's involved in this right now.
[+] [-] lpaone|9 years ago|reply
I believe that Vancouver has potential to be THE tech hub in Canada. Unfortunately, wages are very low compared to the cost of housing, and so the cost of living is super high. Combine that with extremely low vacancy rates, and it is very hard to attract talent from out of town. In fact, many young, smart and talented people just head south to Seattle or the valley because the wages are so much higher, and the economics of staying in Vancouver just don't make sense.
The other industries that could be thriving and building up a real economy in city are some of the biggest casualties in this whole mess. Unfortunately, all of the politicians from municipal to provincial are in bed with the real estate industry, so nothing truly effective and meaningful will be done.
[+] [-] jlos|9 years ago|reply
Your claim is especially true if those people have families. 60% of Families said they planned on leaving the city in the next year due to the problems surrounding housing. Rental rates are also a problem with only a 0.6% vacancy rates and of those available only 16% are 2 bedroom and less than 1% are three bedroom.(1)
(1) http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/familie...
[+] [-] Mikeb85|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rz2k|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] run4yourlives2|9 years ago|reply
In BC, it's resources and literally nothing else. In Vancouver, since resources overall are declining, we run the economy via real estate investment. That's moronic.
As you say, we could become a tech hub easily if we leveraged our easy connection to Seattle and the gateway to Asia that we are. We could become a medical tech hub as well. We could be a centre for finance as well if we invested properly, particularly since oil is now on a downslide.
Our local governments simply have no vision. Our residents are too afraid of change to actually do, well anything really, and all our innovators simply move elsewhere.
[+] [-] Apocryphon|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Gustomaximus|9 years ago|reply
The downstream effects of house prices has to hit entrepreneurship. Previously a bunch of people would be in a good place to take a couple years off to start a business mid-career. Now people have these huge mortgages where your ability to start a business is hampered by your ability to get a financial buffer to take this year or 2 off. And lets not forget most businesses are created form people mid-career, not the TV typical university dropout.
And small community business, how will they exist in the future. If someone wants to set up a local 'physical presence' vet/daycare type business that are typically mixed into residential areas the threshold is now too high to exist let-alone set up a new business. How can a daycare buy a million+ dollar house and expect to make money paying that back on having 30 local kids being looked after.
Also what is going to happen with social services like retirement and periods of higher unemployment. I suspect society will be less stable as either the government has to foot much higher rent costs (unlikely) or we will see increased population movements during retirement, and now the government has to look after older people that before a family who lived nearby could help out with. And during low employment cycles society can no-longer absorb this downturn if people have large income-to-debt loans. Historically people could 'tighten belts' for a year while things improve, harder when you're neck deep in debt. So we will again see more movement of people, debt default etc. It will serve to exacerbate recessions etc.
Also these higher prices skew the economy. When people are tied up in these ever increasing loan/income ratios there will be less spending on dining, holidays, hobbies etc. It will weaken the economy by concentrating the spend in limited areas.
From this I really believe we should be talking seriously about ensuring affordable housing for owner occupiers. Residential investment need to be discouraged (note I'm not saying stopped) as a speculative asset class. I've seen a few suggested methods to achieve this but I feel the simplest is to place a yearly 'asset tax' on non-owner occupied residential property (I would also include farms). Having a % tax would make it easy to adjust to find the right balance given economic cycles change. Also this would encourage property hoarders not in heavy debt to sell for lower taxed asset classes. This I feel is important as most solutions focus on controlling the investment lending side which is limiting in reach. And the 'add supply' will always be a limited case solution.
Good luck. It seems most western governments have stopped caring about looking past the most immediate budgets.
[+] [-] chocolatebunny|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aminok|9 years ago|reply
What this means is that foreigners are not leaving houses that they buy in Vancouver empty. They are being rented out. The rental cost in Vancouver are below Seattle's when you compare it to the median wage so then couver housing as far as rentals is actually more affordable than neighbouring Seattle.
[+] [-] jackcosgrove|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cognivore|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikhailfranco|9 years ago|reply
The tech industry pays all the state's bills, mostly captured by tenured public sector workers, in true socialist fashion. If there's a tech crash, and a few years pass without IPOs, the state will collapse into bankruptcy, and the impoverished residents will start to eye that empty coastline as their most valuable asset. When the tree-hugging hippies die off, 350km of the world's most valuable real estate will come onto the market.
[+] [-] pedalpete|9 years ago|reply
There are very serious issues in Vancouver, and some suspect Canada is in for a ruder awakening than the US. http://www.vice.com/en_ca/read/meet-the-wall-street-short-se...
1) Canadian Real Estate is being used as a money laundering facility http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/ike-awgu/canadian-real-estate-f... .
2) Canada also has a healthy (well, actually unhealthy) sub-prime lending market http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2016/05/18/subprime-lending-can...
3) Then there is the issue of occupancy. The reason the 15% tax was brought in is because money was coming in to purchase houses which then sat empty. Many have become derelict. When I lived in Vancouver, Yaletown was full of apartment towers, but where were all the people (I believe occupancy in that area has improved). http://www.theglobeandmail.com/real-estate/vancouver/poking-...
4) Lastly, the shadow flipping, again, mentioned in the article, but didn't get the attention it deserved http://bc.ctvnews.ca/house-flipping-concerns-as-368-vancouve...
Don't worry if you don't want to read the articles, it will be a movie in a few years along the lines of The Big Short.
[+] [-] linkregister|9 years ago|reply
The author really went out of the way to emphasize the wealth of the investors, describing the buyer wanting a nonexistent car. The only remotely fluffy portion was describing the ecosystem of luxury services associated with the lavish spending. I think the article did a good job of conveying the huge negative effect to the Vancouver economy and way of life.
[+] [-] Fifer82|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] guardiangod|9 years ago|reply
You really should include a link to this as well- Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver MLS Home Price Index http://www.rebgv.org/home-price-index?region=all&type=all&da...
This shows the the price trend of Detached, Townhouse, and Apartment up to the last 11 years, broken by individual cities in Greater Vancouver.
But it is misleading. If you look at Metro Vancouver's trend, all 3 types of housing have gone up in prices. But if you look at the surrounding cities, only the Detached and Townhouse prices have gone up. Apartment pricing have remain relatively flat until 15 months ago. Since then Apartment price have gone up as well.
This is probably because 15 months ago, the Detached/Apartment pricing have increased to the point where buyers started to consider Apartment as a viable resident.
PS. If you look at the graph, you will notice that the prices have gone up so much it broke the graphing software.
[+] [-] jimjimjim|9 years ago|reply
Chinese money is land-banking in Vancouver, US north west, Australia, and Auckland in nz.
and countries don't dear stop it because it will tank the real-estate bubble too quickly (it'll go before the tech bubble anyway). But if it does it will actually be good for the economies because capital tied up in unused land is worthless to the economy.
[+] [-] mikhailfranco|9 years ago|reply
http://www.acting-man.com/?p=46075
Canada and Australia have been hit hard by the commodity collapse, and their currencies have crashed, so their property has inflated in local nominal prices, as foreigners have bought anything with a roof (or even without). But their internal economies have not reacted to the loss of export business and imported inflation for consumer goods. They keep high-taxes and high-welfare socialist economies which are sleep-walking off a cliff - this will not end well.
NZ is in a slightly better position, because it produces more agricultural commodities than industrial minerals, and it restructured its taxes and regulations to become more friendly to businesses and individuals (no capital gains tax, no inheritance tax). But its real estate market is also in a crazy bubble, which will collapse if the foreign buyers disappear.
[+] [-] lucaspiller|9 years ago|reply
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/dec/26/londoners-mi...
[+] [-] vorg|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] msie|9 years ago|reply
http://www.straight.com/news/735161/revisiting-real-estate-r...
Study finds foreign buyers impact Vancouver real estate but likely can't account for sky-high prices:
http://www.straight.com/news/720471/study-finds-foreign-buye...
[+] [-] easytiger|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ijamj|9 years ago|reply
Scenario for you: international student completed UBC and started working full-time on local tech company. After struggle to save, put a deposit on a place after saving from working part-time during later years of degree and about to close deal in a couple weeks (when new place is ready). Now, BAM! Gotta have to pony up 15% on home price agreed upon nearly a year earlier. More than original deposit! Tell me how that encourages qualified tech workers to stick around...
They aimed at a particular kind of "foreign buyers" in a crowd, but used a shotgun...
[+] [-] RandyRanderson|9 years ago|reply
Even if a crash does happen, the largest crashes to date have only been maybe 30% in '82 (prices recovered in 7 years) and 15% in '08 (prices recovered in 1 year).
What could change the course of the current deluge of chinese capital?
1 Canadian Regulatory change - the federal liberals and the provincial liberals have significant political contributions from real estate agents (look it up). They won't impl any meaningful changes. This new 15% tax will affect few and change little; it is just election season and our Premier, Christi has to look active. 2 Interest rates - The US basically sets our rates and the US is likely going to reduce the rates driving more capital to look for better returns. 3 Chinese cash - are you going to stop buying chinese shit? No, in fact most can only afford chinese made products these days. 4 Chinese Regulatory change - This could happen but most of the cash used to buy homes in BC is likely illegally moved out of china anyhow so...
TL;DR- In the 1-2 year timeframe tho, my advice - mortgage your house and buy as much BC real estate as you can afford. Good luck on finding 25%+ yoy low risk returns anywhere else.
[+] [-] hoodoof|9 years ago|reply
Great for those who own real estate and sell it.
[+] [-] et-al|9 years ago|reply
> Foreign investors will have to pay an additional 15 percent in property-transfer tax as of Aug. 2 and city of Vancouver was given the authority to impose a new tax on empty homes.
The additional tax on foreign investors is a good idea, but I wonder how it will be enforced, especially when ownership is often hidden behind trusts.
[+] [-] happyslobro|9 years ago|reply
Take a look at the cities with populations below 100K. You will find lots of people who live great lives, despite not being rich. For those of us who grew up in these little island towns, living in a place like Vancouver is downright depressing, regardless of the price.
[+] [-] jackcosgrove|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Deinumite|9 years ago|reply
The thread was filled with a ton of programmers that left Toronto / Canada to go to Silicon Valley because the wages are so much higher.
Yeah I'm going to make probably less than half of what someone in Silicon Valley can make but living in a medium sized Canadian city means my cost of living is obviously much lower.
[+] [-] flukus|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] serge2k|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] icantdrive55|9 years ago|reply
I'll get hammered for saying this, but I feel it's wrong on so many levels.
[+] [-] vivekd|9 years ago|reply
In fact I think these foreign investors are more being attracted by the already inflating prices than actually the culprit in the inflation.
[+] [-] jackcosgrove|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] OneNoteIsFree|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] narrator|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Canada|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hx87|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skylan_q|9 years ago|reply
What upsets me here more than anything else is that no one mentioned the CMHC. I suppose people would be more willing to believe that aliens are using mind control on people to drive a real estate frenzy rather than believe that there are institutions creating moral hazard within Canada.
[+] [-] hifumi|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] engizeer|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] branchless|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] steve_taylor|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thinkingkong|9 years ago|reply
I'm sure that a price increase in land results in a "rising tide" effect for all homes, but because someone is willing to spend 64M on a mansion, does it mean condo's should be worth more too?
The city is pretty, but there aren't exactly a massive pile of high paying jobs, nor do we have much of an economy beyond resource extraction, satellite offices, etc.
[+] [-] FreedomToCreate|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ktRolster|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mark_l_watson|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dottedmag|9 years ago|reply
They can't afford kids? I have lived in 83-square-meter apartment with my wife and two kids and a I had a friggin' separate home office room to work from home. It wasn't ideal (we have moved when the youngest turned 5, so we wanted to give them separate bedrooms), but it worked pretty well. Granted, it was in Norway, not US, but one can't help thinking that people just don't know how to use the space they have.
[+] [-] jonesalice34|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pascalxus|9 years ago|reply
On a broader scale, I don't understand why (other than politics and legal) this massive multi nationwide demand for housing hasn't created opportunities in the construction industry: building out with existing technologies as well as incentives to produce more efficient methods and tech. Whatever happened to big problems leading to big opportunities? I mean we're talking about a multi-trillion dollar industry begging to be disrupted. I can't name a single unicorn company that's involved in this right now.