Canada's 'housing bubble' deemed close to bursting

[lio45]

Probably because the impact the Chinese are having is so huge it makes the Iranian problem / effect look almost irrelevant...?

[lio45]

BTW, I completely agree that when we mix luxury housing and social housing, it's not atypical to have separate entrances - that's 0% racist, 100% budget-ist.

However, I'll point out that there's at least one little thing that correctly identifying foreign buyers as Chinese does achieve: it allows us to somewhat forecast future Vancouver trends by watching China. If foreign buyers in Van were a random mix from everywhere on the planet, we'd have no such foresight.

In any case, I don't see anything wrong in pointing out a huge chunk of the foreign money flowing into Vancouver originates in the PRC. It would be like pointing out that most NFL players are black. Why would we need to censor that fact? It doesn't really matter either way.

[dleung]

Originally Posted by whatnext

If your hypothesis were true, wouldn't you expect to hear complaints about Filipinos (a greater source of immigration than China) or South Koreans? I've said before, if it was London, it would be directed against Middle Eastern and Russian buyers. The problem is unrestricted Global Capital and in Vancouver's case the vast majority of that is from Mainland China.

I agree with those who point out that labelling buyers as generically "Chinese" isn't helpful. Many of the ethnically Chinese families who have been in Vancouver for generations are struggling just as much with affordability as everyone else, with the added burden now of being assumed to be "rich". No to mention they faced real racism when establishing themselves here.

At the end of the day, the fact is those affordable rental buildings would not have been demolished for condos with a token "affordable' component had foreign capital not distorted the market. The West End was remarkably stable for decades until Vision Vancouver opened a gold rush on properties by upzoning to accommodate developers targeting offshore buyers.

Again, if it were, say, Trump's beloved Norwegians buying up everything, we won't be seeing this gnashing of teeth about "locusts" "invading" and making Vancouver "unrecognizable" looool

[lio45]

Originally Posted by dleung

Again, if it were, say, Trump's beloved Norwegians buying up everything, we won't be seeing this gnashing of teeth about "locusts" "invading" and making Vancouver "unrecognizable" looool

How do you explain Brits lashing out against Polish Plumbers then? Or against Russian oligarchs bidding London real estate to stratospheric heights?

I think a more simple explanation (that fits better with the observable facts) is that job-stealing foreigners are job-stealing foreigners regardless of the color of their skin, and real-estate-hoarding, neighborhood-killing foreigners are real-estate-hoarding, neighborhood-killing foreigners regardless of the color of their skin.

[lio45]

P.S. I don't think the typical Anglo Vancouverite would not rebel against his condo building choosing to operate unilingually in Norwegian from now on. And if I'm right, it means you're wrong.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by lio45

I think a more simple explanation (that fits better with the observable facts) is that job-stealing foreigners are job-stealing foreigners regardless of the color of their skin, and real-estate-hoarding, neighborhood-killing foreigners are real-estate-hoarding, neighborhood-killing foreigners regardless of the color of their skin.

I've heard Canadians complain about Americans, Britons, and Germans depending on the dynamics of the local real estate market. There have been places and times in Atlantic Canada when American buyers were seen as threatening (there are so many of them and they have a lot of money so they might buy everything up) while, say, a Chinese investor was regarded as "cool" and a sign of success. I wonder if that is souring now since so many of these Chinese companies turned out to be speculators and never added anything of value; they tend to flip properties instead of develop them.

It's even more obviously not all racism- or ethnocentrism-based if you live in Vancouver. The city is something like 30-50% Asian including some large percentage of Chinese people. I regularly end up in conversations with ethnically Chinese friends or coworkers about the housing market. It's not really a racially-charged situation as far as I can tell.

I would say there is a bit of a linguistic rift. The Mandarin speakers who don't speak as much English will often stick together, and seem more likely to come and go from the city. If you're Chinese looking but you speak only English you tend to end up outside of that group, and in a mixed group.

Most fundamentally the whole preoccupation with proving or suggesting someone is racist is not logically sound. It is an ad hominem fallacy. Someone can be racist and still right about the housing market being messed up. If some guy said that 1 + 1 = 2 and then he turned out to be racist that would not invalidate arithmetic. It says something bad about our culture, I think, that trying to prove that someone has non-politically-correct beliefs to discredit them is a much more common strategy than engaging directly.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by someone123

Most fundamentally the whole preoccupation with proving or suggesting someone is racist is not logically sound. It is an ad hominem fallacy. Someone can be racist and still right about the housing market being messed up. If some guy said that 1 + 1 = 2 and then he turned out to be racist that would not invalidate arithmetic. It says something bad about our culture, I think, that trying to prove that someone has non-politically-correct beliefs to discredit them is a much more common strategy than engaging directly.

From what I've seen on in the thread, most of the people taking issue with ssiguy's comments aren't doing so to prove he's incorrect, but rather because it's disrespectful and inflammatory to have racist comments or behaviour on the site. Proving someone is racist obviously doesn't invalidate everything they say, but so to does showing that someone is correct about something fail to excuse racist or otherwise disrespectful behaviour. Maintaining minimum standards pertaining to reasonable and respectful discourse on a discussion platform and calling out people who violate them isn't some sort of fallacy.

And in case there's any confusion, the racist part isn't simply stating a fact such as that many foreign buyers are a member of a particular national, racial or ethnic group, it's dwelling on that fact and placing a disproportionate level of focus on it relative to the actual importance of the fact (such as constantly making it the focus of angry rants and raising it at every opportunity regardless of context). Simply stating a fact at a time at which it's useful to the discussion has nothing to do with someone using a particular fact to simply stigmatize a group of people. That's a major problem with prejudism as a whole. It stigmatizes everyone in the group whether or not any individual member of the group is actually "guilty". Not finding this acceptable is not the same as denying that the group might be guilty on average.

And of course when i say guilty, I simply mean doing - having done - what they're being accused of, not that buying real estate in a foreign country is somehow immoral.

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by lio45

Probably because the impact the Chinese are having is so huge it makes the Iranian problem / effect look almost irrelevant...?

Yes, given that those of Chinese descent make up 19.6% of Metro Vancouver's population while "West Asian" which includes Iran make up only 1.9% it is clear the numbers for iran are far, far smaller, even if proportionally more of them were well off.

[dleung]

Originally Posted by lio45

P.S. I don't think the typical Anglo Vancouverite would not rebel against his condo building choosing to operate unilingually in Norwegian from now on. And if I'm right, it means you're wrong.

I didn't say they wouldn't. Just probably not foaming at the mouth like sissyguy on this thread

[ssiguy]

Am I foaming at the mouth ? No but I admit I'm pretty damn close. Vancouver already has the highest child poverty rate and largest gap between the rich and the poor in the country. Vancouver is already Canada's most socio-economically stratified city and the last thing this city needs is doors divided by income. It is nothing short of nauseating made worse by the fact that City approves. This is state sanctioned classism and nothing more.


Should public transit also have 2 doors, the front one for standard fares and the back one for subbsidized one? I wouldn't see the difference. Maybe we should have separate entrances at the hospital, the front one for people who pay their monthly healthcare premiums and the side door off the alley for low income people who don't pay monthly premiems. Again I wouldn't see the difference. The only thing that could possibly be worse than this building is if it also had market rentals for the more middle class so the building would have 3 sets of doors, lobbys, and elevators. The frightening thing is that Vancouver City Hall would have still approved it.


This is an affront to Canada's egalitarian value system. There is a reason why we don't have gated communities in Canada like they do in the US. We see how destructive, alienating, and stratifying it can be on our communities and social cohesion. This is however Vancouver and when developers make demands our grotesquely bribed municiple politicians are more than willing to destroy our social fabric to enlarge their own bank accounts and election warchest.

[milomilo]

I agree the separate entrances are an ugly, visible sign of Vancouver's inequality. London, UK started building these too with similar outcry. But they are a symptom of a much larger problem that no amount of government regulation can fix.

The fact of the matter is land and housing in Vancouver have been allowed to get too expensive, it's as simple as that. Regulations and government funded housing cannot solve the problem, the only thing that can be done is for housing value to be wiped out and have the city start again, which would obviously be catastrophic in the short term. But it's neccesary.

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by milomilo

I agree the separate entrances are an ugly, visible sign of Vancouver's inequality. London, UK started building these too with similar outcry. But they are a symptom of a much larger problem that no amount of government regulation can fix.

The fact of the matter is land and housing in Vancouver have been allowed to get too expensive, it's as simple as that. Regulations and government funded housing cannot solve the problem, the only thing that can be done is for housing value to be wiped out and have the city start again, which would obviously be catastrophic in the short term. But it's neccesary.

Actually government regulation an fix it pretty easily: have an outright ban on foreign ownership and require that every purchaser of real estate produce five years of Canadian tax returns to verify where they got the money to purchase property.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by whatnext

Actually government regulation an fix it pretty easily: have an outright ban on foreign ownership and require that every purchaser of real estate produce five years of Canadian tax returns to verify where they got the money to purchase property.

Won't work unless the policy is unpalatable authoritarian.

Canadian citizens can borrow from private sources (such as a billionaire Chinese relative) and use the money on whatever they want (say, Vancouver real estate). Honestly, I don't see that we can ever consider changing that.

[1overcosc]

If we make it annoying enough I feel like we can get them to buy elsewhere.

I mean, if there's one thing governments are good at it it's scaring away investment. Why can't we do it for this too?

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by whatnext

Actually government regulation an fix it pretty easily: have an outright ban on foreign ownership and require that every purchaser of real estate produce five years of Canadian tax returns to verify where they got the money to purchase property.

If the regulation results in erasing 50% of the value of the Vancouver housing market, yes you're right. But all the tinkering with regulation to encourage low cost housing is useless and ignoring the problem, the only solution is to destroy the market and start over. People need to lose their shirts, or housing cannot be affordable - it is impossible to have the best of both worlds.

That's why I'm so opposed to people talking up the market in my city and the rest of Canada. It's easy to make house prices go up, but near impossible to get them to go down. I wish people could see this, but they don't and I'm sure eventually Calgary will meet the same sad fate.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

If we make it annoying enough I feel like we can get them to buy elsewhere.

I mean, if there's one thing governments are good at it it's scaring away investment. Why can't we do it for this too?

Yeah, if we're actively trying to stop them it shouldn't be too hard. And once the table is tipped and people start pulling their money out, then there will be no reason for them to invest here anyway.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by milomilo

That's why I'm so opposed to people talking up the market in my city and the rest of Canada. It's easy to make house prices go up, but near impossible to get them to go down.

That's not true. Real estate bubbles can (and do) pop. It happened in Toronto in the late 1980s, and more recently we saw it happen in the U.S. Sunbelt barely a decade ago.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

If we make it annoying enough I feel like we can get them to buy elsewhere.

I mean, if there's one thing governments are good at it it's scaring away investment. Why can't we do it for this too?

Actually we're doing the opposite - Canada's particularly welcoming of questionable Chinese capital compared to its peers, which is why Vancouver is in a league of its own compared to Seattle or SF or even Australian cities. We could change that if we wanted, but it seems we don't.

In our defense, the effect on Vancouver could easily be devastating, so I can understand why our elected officials are being very careful about it. Even Toronto would be greatly impacted.

[someone123]

I think the potential devastation of a drop in property prices in Vancouver is typically exaggerated, although there would definitely be winners and losers. The potential losers (real estate agents, speculators, developers, politicians, people running luxury businesses) have been by far the loudest in the media. These are the winners under the current order and the rest of us are the losers.

A lot of property owners would lose wealth on paper but survive just fine. These are the people who have houses that would go from $2M to $1M. Some of them would have to scale back their retirement, but then again I wonder how great it is for the city to have a generation retiring during what would be their peak earning years. That's what housing did for people who were able to buy a detached house before 2000 or so.

Another factor is that a lot of businesses struggle to grow here because of the high cost of real estate. Skilled workers tend to move away and businesses have a hard time finding space.

If well-located housing here were used to house people who work nearby rather than serving as an investment for people from overseas traffic would potentially be a bit better too.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by lio45

That's not true. Real estate bubbles can (and do) pop. It happened in Toronto in the late 1980s, and more recently we saw it happen in the U.S. Sunbelt barely a decade ago.

OK, but if a politician in Vancouver said "I will make housing in Vancouver more affordable - by reducing the value of everyone's house", their chances of election would be zero. There is far greater opposition to eroding house value than increasing it, which is stupid when you think of it. What other necessity do we cheer to be more expensive? Would we be happy if the price of water went up 30% every year, even though we could horde and profit off it?