Quote:
Originally Posted by jhausner
Not surprising. If there is a correction it won't affect Surrey Central as much as the rest of the region. Surrey units are still considerably lower than equal sized units in say Metrotown, Brentwood, or Downtown. It would be those condos hit far more with a correction than Surrey.
There is also a supply and demand problem still since I know from the small unscientific research I've done, that there is a sizable population of people buying into Surrey Central just because they can't afford condos or units in the other cities. While SC has seen prices increased, as I said above, it is still below the other regional centers.
I'm also still not 100% sold that it is entirely a result of foreign buyers. Take e-clam9 for example who is a poster here and clearly owns and lives in a PA unit. e-clam9 is an example of a local buying other pre-sales in other buildings on a regular basis, that isn't a foreign buyer.
There _are_ people that live here buying pre-sales and paying the prices being demanded for the units. I also do not actually think $379,900 is entirely unreasonable for a 1 bedroom unit walking distance from major SkyTrain in the "downtown" of a major city. 18 year old 1 bedroom condos are selling in Yaletown today for > $700,000. Metrotown they're around $500,000.
If you're a first-time home buyer putting down 10%, $380,000 is still a manageable mortgage for many. And yes I realize that is "STARTING" price.. still scales are similar.
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Foreign buyers were big purchasers, but the thing is most of them had PR or citizenship so there actually Canadians from foreign countries. Actual people buying who are not Canadians is less than 1% now but prices didn't go down any because of it as you'll see from how home prices went down a bit after the tax then climbed back up to normal levels in a few months. Foreign buyers are just a great target to bash, and we will keep beating that horse because its an easy target even if its not a realistic/smart one.
If the government was serious about supporting actual born and bred Canadians it would have policies that target those who didn't grow up here such as waiving the transfer tax for Canadians who have lived and worked here for the past 5-10 years.
Right now the government is targeting locals while pretending its for foreigners with the speculation tax (aka vacation home/cabin tax/weekday condo downtown with big house in Chillwack for weekends), transfer tax, school tax, etc.
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