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this whole thread started with a typically inane vancouver sun story. a story based on anecdotal evidence and filtered through several levels of people with a stake in the real estate industry. sadly there will always be people willing to harp on an easily identifiable scapegoat, and not bother seeing things from any critical perspective.

mrjauk, nova9, vanhattan, etc. have all provided salient counter arguments; but these seem to be ignored. instead even more retarded vancouver sun articles are being parroted.

here's the thing: the FIRE sector, including real estate and banking are the wealthiest, most politically powerful section of post-industrial canada. The boss of the vancouver sun, paul godfrey is the boss of a tax-avoidance real estate investment trust himself. the vancouver sun also makes lots of advertising revenue from its real estate section. then the banks also advertise in the vancouver sun, and they make lots of money from real estate. then some random real estate agent is interviewed. gee, do you think real estate agents have a stake in perpetuating a real estate bubble?

going on some seemingly endless crusade against a bunch of mostly amateur mainland chinese investors is akin to heckling a mediocre no-name comedian, but looking past the egregious sins of highly paid hacks like kathy griffin and margaret cho. the real players and biggest beneficiaries of the real estate bubble aren't some mainlanders purchasing houses for safe keeping. the ones with stakes in the real estate bubble are the real estate developers and the bankers, and then their sellout politician cronies.

you could argue against chinese real estate industry people... but ethnicity has little to no correlation with real estate itself. if you want to identify the real estate industry, you can look at paragon, omni, concord, rennie marketing systems. they're anglo, italian, jewish, chinese, east indian... basically reflective of the ethnic background of vancouverites in general. 'cept they have more in common with each other than with the hordes of people struggling out there. a lot of you guys are Gordo fans. well, guess how he got rich? you even have his decidedly inarticulate brother proferring crappy financial advice on tv! then you have the bankers. they're mostly WASPs who have come out of the university of windsor's crappy yet tightly connected business school.

next we need to examine how the nexus between real estate and banking have derived fat profits and have driven up the real estate price levels over the past 30 or so years. in the early 80s, "free" market philosophy reigned supreme. ronald reagan bullied the accounting profession to approve double declining depreciation, and he slashed the capital gains taxes. our political hacks followed suit. thus the real estate companies borrow as much money as possible, get a deduction for the interest expense (regular citizens including those vaunted chinese investors do not have this perk are not eligible for an interest expense deduction), then proceed to knock a huge depreciation expense, then after a few years after lots of paper expenses, the building is then sold at a profit (the past 30 years have seen the asset price rises), THEN the resulting capital gains are rolled over into further investments. the real estate companies then begin to start depreciating these buildings AGAIN! a building can be depreciated as many times as it is sold! the real estate industry is the largest borrower from the banks, and the banks make easy money from the mortgage interest.

now will you stop being laughably credulous and stop blindly following some crappy newspaper with an inherent conflict of interest?