Canada's 'housing bubble' deemed close to bursting

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by geotag277

Another sloppy lazy populist hack piece by the Globe and Mail. This media outlet just cannot be arsed to print anything worth while these days.

The entire summation of the research the "journalist" did for this article is in the quoted passage:



13 houses within a 3 block radius is not bad at all. Due to land values increasing many of those properties have a mismatch between the square footage of the existing house and the expectations of the buyers, therefore, newly bought houses will be torn down.

The bigger question for Vancouver residents should be: if land values are so high, why are we still supporting single family detached housing developments on this land when it is unaffordable? (And getting more unaffordable?) Shouldn't we perhaps maybe sort of kind of start rezoning these high land values into multi family developments, low rises, high rises, town homes? You know, the sort of thing that brings the price of these homes down and over time matches the demand? Vancouver should be running single family detached housing out of the city, instead, they are sitting on their hands pointing fingers at foreigners and wondering why they all can't afford their own plot of land in their city of 2.5 million and growing rapidly towards 3.

And I've been in Vancouver several times over the past year. The "empty neighbourhoods because the garbage man says so" meme over there is overblown. Yes, there are properties with the lights off, for several reasons:

- people aren't home
- people have black out blinds
- people generally go out at different times on different days of the week

For condo buildings, the % lights on in most buildings was very similar to Calgary, a place that by all accounts has virtually zero foreign investor problem.

I could say the same about empty buildings in Calgary (and indeed, if you go to the Calgary subforum, you will see similar comments about "abandoned empty buildings because the lights are off) but in actuality it's just baseless anecdotal hooey.

I'm just curious what your skin is in playing this game, you are as quick as std7860 (exposed as a real estate peddlar) to post and try to deny there's a problem?

[geotag277]

Originally Posted by whatnext

I'm just curious what your skin is in playing this game, you are as quick as std7860 (exposed as a real estate peddlar) to post and try to deny there's a problem?

Yes, keep telling yourself that everyone who doesn't buy into the lazy populist 🞵🞵🞵🞵 posted by the Globe and Mail MUST have ulterior motives. You guys sound like a broken record echo chamber. OMG Lights are off. OMG SFH are expensive. OMG Chinese money laundering. OMG if you don't follow us you must be a realtor in disguise.

It's basic supply and demand. Single family detached housing stock is going down in Vancouver, the people are going up. These land values need to be divided.

If you chased out all the foreign investors in Vancouver, you still couldn't afford a SFH. The fact there even is any SFH in Vancouver is the problem and the movement to rezone and rebuild is not where it needs to be to have a sustainable housing strategy.

Look at the prices of condos and town homes compared to SFH and you will see what I mean.

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by geotag277

Yes, keep telling yourself that everyone who doesn't buy into the lazy populist 🞵🞵🞵🞵 posted by the Globe and Mail MUST have ulterior motives. You guys sound like a broken record echo chamber. OMG Lights are off. OMG SFH are expensive. OMG Chinese money laundering. OMG if you don't follow us you must be a realtor in disguise.

It's basic supply and demand. Single family detached housing stock is going down in Vancouver, the people are going up. These land values need to be divided.

If you chased out all the foreign investors in Vancouver, you still couldn't afford a SFH. The fact there even is any SFH in Vancouver is the problem and the movement to rezone and rebuild is not where it needs to be to have a sustainable housing strategy.

Look at the prices of condos and town homes compared to SFH and you will see what I mean.

Nice dodge of the question.

As I've said before, what you advocate is that working Canadians should forget about buying a SFH in Vancouver, because those are all now reserved for Chinese buyers who can pay lots of money for them and drive up those prices. And that is who is buying houses in Vancouver West of Cambie as you would know if you lived in Vancouver. or do you? Your profile doesn't say for some reason. Sorry, I don't agree with that.

[st7860]

Originally Posted by casper

The problem is all the generalization.

Calling the purchase of property in Vancouver money laundering is a stretch. That implies these properties are from the proceeds of crime. I have not seen a single news article pointing to a court case where Vancouver is used to launder money. Has any one else?

I don't but f I ran a business in China I would want to move part of my investment out of the country. That is a country where the government has no problem messing with the free market any time it chooses.

People say its money laundering just because some guy doesnt have a salary

[st7860]

Originally Posted by geotag277

Yes, keep telling yourself that everyone who doesn't buy into the lazy populist 🞵🞵🞵🞵 posted by the Globe and Mail MUST have ulterior motives. You guys sound like a broken record echo chamber. OMG Lights are off. OMG SFH are expensive. OMG Chinese money laundering. OMG if you don't follow us you must be a realtor in disguise.

It's basic supply and demand. Single family detached housing stock is going down in Vancouver, the people are going up. These land values need to be divided.

If you chased out all the foreign investors in Vancouver, you still couldn't afford a SFH. The fact there even is any SFH in Vancouver is the problem and the movement to rezone and rebuild is not where it needs to be to have a sustainable housing strategy.

Look at the prices of condos and town homes compared to SFH and you will see what I mean.

Notice how its usually about people buying stuff not about waste of good building materials or something like that.

[st7860]

Originally Posted by geotag277

Another sloppy lazy populist hack piece by the Globe and Mail. This media outlet just cannot be arsed to print anything worth while these days.

The entire summation of the research the "journalist" did for this article is in the quoted passage:



13 houses within a 3 block radius is not bad at all. Due to land values increasing many of those properties have a mismatch between the square footage of the existing house and the expectations of the buyers, therefore, newly bought houses will be torn down.

The bigger question for Vancouver residents should be: if land values are so high, why are we still supporting single family detached housing developments on this land when it is unaffordable? (And getting more unaffordable?) Shouldn't we perhaps maybe sort of kind of start rezoning these high land values into multi family developments, low rises, high rises, town homes? You know, the sort of thing that brings the price of these homes down and over time matches the demand? Vancouver should be running single family detached housing out of the city, instead, they are sitting on their hands pointing fingers at foreigners and wondering why they all can't afford their own plot of land in their city of 2.5 million and growing rapidly towards 3.

And I've been in Vancouver several times over the past year. The "empty neighbourhoods because the garbage man says so" meme over there is overblown. Yes, there are properties with the lights off, for several reasons:

- people aren't home
- people have black out blinds
- people generally go out at different times on different days of the week

For condo buildings, the % lights on in most buildings was very similar to Calgary, a place that by all accounts has virtually zero foreign investor problem.

I could say the same about empty buildings in Calgary (and indeed, if you go to the Calgary subforum, you will see similar comments about "abandoned empty buildings because the lights are off) but in actuality it's just baseless anecdotal hooey.

The same department of Hydro that looks for weed operations with smart meter data could easily find empty homes if it was in fact true. However its mostly a jealous streak recently. Its the main difference between Canada and the US. In the US people jump up and down about people hopping the border, but mostly don't care what you buy. In Canada, they get upset when you buy something they cant afford

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by whatnext

Nice dodge of the question.

As I've said before, what you advocate is that working Canadians should forget about buying a SFH in Vancouver, because those are all now reserved for Chinese buyers who can pay lots of money for them and drive up those prices. And that is who is buying houses in Vancouver West of Cambie as you would know if you lived in Vancouver. or do you? Your profile doesn't say for some reason. Sorry, I don't agree with that.

You missed the part where he advocated for SFHs to be phased out with zoning changes. If that were to happen, neither demographic would be living in them as it would make more sense for them to be replaced by denser housing.

Personally I'm not convinced that SFH should dominate the city proper of any major Canadian city. That just encourages the to remain lower density which allows fewer people access to property in the central part of cities. The question isn't whether working Canadians should find it affordable to buy SFHs in Vancouver (they shouldn't) but whether they can afford to live there and have easy access to the city, period (they should). Reducing the number of SFHs and replacing them with denser forms of housing simultaneously reduced the affordability if the former and increases the affordability of the latter.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by TorontoDrew

Really? For the past 6-8 years of impending about to burst bubble talk it has never happened. It's called a bubble because it's unstable and unpredictable. What you're describing is a market fluctuation which can last for decades. I never said a bubble lasts only 2-3 weeks get real. Bubbles don't last 312 weeks and counting. Feel free to say I said they don't last that long, not some ridiculously small number like you wrote. Not to mention this whole thread started on an article that said that market prices would drop by 25% by June of 2014. That never happened.

Yes I will keep dreaming, and you keep having your nightmare. This thread continues to make me LOL.

TorontoDrew in 1990: "The Japanese real estate market isn't in a bubble, bubbles don't last for years."

TorontoDrew in 2000: "The so-called 'dot com bubble' isn't a bubble, bubbles don't last for years."

TorontoDrew in 2005: "The US Sunbelt real estate market isn't in a bubble, bubbles don't last for years."

[st7860]

Japan is the only modern country in which even a person that knows the local language and customs flawlessly won't be fully accepted into all parts of society.

[Stryker]

Originally Posted by casper

The problem is all the generalization.

Calling the purchase of property in Vancouver money laundering is a stretch. That implies these properties are from the proceeds of crime. I have not seen a single news article pointing to a court case where Vancouver is used to launder money. Has any one else? .

Lol look around it's well established the entire business model of chinese money is based on corruption.

[st7860]

Everyone says (insert name here ) launders money but so ok where are the cases ? Most cases are online on canlii.org also I saw on the news people thought foreigners were omg bringing cash through the airport .
Most people also don't know yvr has dogs ( real animals ) for finding cash

[Stryker]

Originally Posted by st7860

Everyone says (insert name here ) launders money but so ok where are the cases ? Most cases are online on canlii.org also I saw on the news people thought foreigners were omg bringing cash through the airport .
Most people also don't know yvr has dogs ( real animals ) for finding cash

It's the nature of how the chinese economy functions.

How do you think anyone gets a million bucks, in a country where the average wage is about 12,000 a year.

[casper]

Originally Posted by Stryker

It's the nature of how the chinese economy functions.

How do you think anyone gets a million bucks, in a country where the average wage is about 12,000 a year.

I don't know, perhaps because it is worlds second largest economy with a GDP of $10.38 Trillion US Dollars. For comparison, Canada is the 11th largest economy in the world at just over $1 Trillion. Basically China economy is 10 times the size of Canada.

It is has been around 8 years since I have visited Shanghai. Big city with a pretty big middle class. Lots of new looking cars.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

The question isn't whether working Canadians should find it affordable to buy SFHs in Vancouver (they shouldn't)

I don't think it's necessarily bad to have affordable single-family dwellings. One thing to keep in mind is that in Vancouver it isn't the case that houses are only unaffordable to working class or poorer people. They're also unaffordable to people making some of the highest incomes in the city. Normally you'd expect that if a city were 1/3 detached houses (or whatever), 95th percentile of earners would easily be able to afford some kind of detached house. I doubt that's true in Vancouver. It's probably true of every other city in Canada, including Toronto.

This conversation is difficult because there are a bunch of real factors at play combined with some red herrings. The real issues in Vancouver are zoning and construction costs (what is developed), transportation (where you can reasonably live and work), wages and incomes (allowing locals to earn enough to buy property), credit and monetary policy, and foreign investment (making sure that it is channelled productively to benefit locals as much as possible). For housing to be as affordable as possible in Vancouver all of these factors need to be managed. Several of them are seriously out of whack and a couple of them don't get much attention.

Other questions like the nationality of who's buying what or whether or not their money is ill-gotten are not relevant to the question of housing affordability.

[ssiguy]

Anyone who thinks this new cash elite are not corrupt as the day is long are hallucinating. Corruption, nepotism, and repression are not just part of the Chinese economy but at it's very core.

Business try to make it look like the Chinese are really "ok" so they can justify investing there but that is pure propaganda.

China is a military dictatorship and nothing more and I don't know of any military dictatorships where being Mr.Nice Guy gets you numbingly rich. This backed up with a culture of nepotism which would even make Greeks blush, and you have an economy where wealth and social standing are bought thru bribe and intimidation.

[dleung]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

You missed the part where he advocated for SFHs to be phased out with zoning changes. If that were to happen, neither demographic would be living in them as it would make more sense for them to be replaced by denser housing.

Personally I'm not convinced that SFH should dominate the city proper of any major Canadian city. That just encourages the to remain lower density which allows fewer people access to property in the central part of cities. The question isn't whether working Canadians should find it affordable to buy SFHs in Vancouver (they shouldn't) but whether they can afford to live there and have easy access to the city, period (they should). Reducing the number of SFHs and replacing them with denser forms of housing simultaneously reduced the affordability if the former and increases the affordability of the latter.

Also what is a "working Canadian"? Working class? Canadians who work? Do I count? Bitter xenophobes always seem to mix up local Chinese with "foreign". Common sense would suggest that to be able to afford a single detached house in the central city, one really can't be "working class" but instead rather successful at their work lol

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by dleung

Also what is a "working Canadian"? Working class? Canadians who work? Do I count? Bitter xenophobes always seem to mix up local Chinese with "foreign". Common sense would suggest that to be able to afford a single detached house in the central city, one really can't be "working class" but instead rather successful at their work lol

University graduates? People earning median wages? Even people earning way above median wages? No one is suggesting someone working at McDonalds should be able to buy a house in Vancouver, but the situation is much worse than that.

[st7860]

Originally Posted by dleung

Also what is a "working Canadian"? Working class? Canadians who work? Do I count? Bitter xenophobes always seem to mix up local Chinese with "foreign". Common sense would suggest that to be able to afford a single detached house in the central city, one really can't be "working class" but instead rather successful at their work lol

the popular thing these days is to say that even the basic workers have the right to live in the best areas however

http://www.thetyee.ca/Opinion/2015/08/20/Foreign-Ownership-Affordability-Vancouver/
"Buying into the conversation about foreign ownership as it is currently cast risks reinforcing threads of racism that have, for too long, shaped civic

culture in Vancouver. It is too easy -- and too risky in terms of building a tolerant, multi-cultural and racially diverse civic community -- to reduce the
housing issue to one of foreign ownership. It foists the problem off onto the shoulders of "foreigners." It allows the federal government to continue a policy of neglect with respect to its responsibilities to ensure that all who live in Canada have access to adequate housing.

Here's what we need: a federal government that reinvests in social housing provision; a federal government that joins that ranks of the other G7 countries by having a national housing strategy; a federal government that enacts policy supportive of affordable rental housing, not merely helping the wealthier buy increasingly expensive homes; and a federal government that deals with poverty and income inequality as key parts of an equation that adds up to the housing

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by dleung

Also what is a "working Canadian"? Working class? Canadians who work? Do I count? Bitter xenophobes always seem to mix up local Chinese with "foreign". Common sense would suggest that to be able to afford a single detached house in the central city, one really can't be "working class" but instead rather successful at their work lol

And just how exactly did you jump to the conclusion that I said all residents of Chinese extraction don't count as "working Canadians"?

Working Canadians are those who earn their income in Canada, pay Canadian income taxes and file a Canadian tax return.

[ssiguy]

I hate this political correct speech.

It's pure money laundering and nothing else.

Now, wait for it, these "foreign investors" are NOT Chileans, or Latvians, or Indonesians, or Jamaicans, or Italians, or Nigerians or Irish or Thai, or New Zealanders, or Guatemalans, or..............well every country on the planet. No, they are CHINESE and the politicians and developers they bribe have turned Vancouver into a resort from a city and left the place hollow, uninteresting, class ridden, hyper consumeristic, and completely unaffordable. Making it, dare I say, unliveable for the vast majority in income earners.

It is the Chinese who have made this happen and if someone calls you a racist then remind them that Chinese is NOT a race.