Quote:
Originally Posted by ssiguy
Also those "foreign buyer" don't include the tens of thousands of Chinese who have already bought their citizenship but of course don't live in the country little alone pay tax.
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Yep, actually foreign buyer stats would be a lot higher if we included immigrants. Most Chinese buyers who bought in Vancouver in 2015-2016 are Canadians. When we talk about foreign buyers in Vancouver, stats don't really support this, what people are really referring to is buyers who made their money outside the nation but have obtained Canadian citizenship. However, accusing immigrant Canadians of being the problem isn't "politically correct" so we call them foreign buyers. Actually its not just Chinese, Indo-Canadians are about half as significant as Chinese and do bring a lot of money from India. Persians bring quite a bit of money from the Middle East and have bought up downtown and West Van.
Some of this comes from the BC immigrant investor programs, after the BC economy collapsed in the 90's, we partially rebuilt our economy with foreign money. In the end there are pros and cons to every policy. We benefited from the money but of course with more money & demand prices go up. When we sell resources like wood this drives the price of wood up (which also makes homes more expensive) but also benefits us from taxes and employment. BC/Vancouver uses the higher home prices to reap huge amounts of taxes and fees which they put towards social programs, environmental initiatives, infrastructure, etc. Go to LA and you don't see bike lanes, buses, etc like you have in Vancouver. You also won't see homeless housing in downtown and its dirty everywhere. There are benefits and downsides to everything. All the stuff done by the government that makes BC/Vancouver great also costs us. I really think people should go visit other West Coast cities that have lower prices so they can see that Vancouver is definitely #1 if you ignore home prices...and nightlife.
Its clear that most buyers have citizenship or at least PR from the fact that homeownership rates in BC have been increasing despite everyone saying prices are not affordable. You wouldn't expect ownership to increase if prices were bad. In fact, Vancouver appears to be much more affordable than Montreal with a higher homeownership rate. What I suspect people don't like is that they are competing with families that made their money abroad and now have Canadian citizenship. That's a common complaint in most global cities like London, locals get shut out. However, there are benefits like jobs and as BC's employment usually leads the country its clear we have also benefited from being a global city. Look at Halifax, their homeownership rate is lower despite housing being much cheaper, thats likely because the economy sucks. Vancouver used to be Halifax and then we started bringing in immigrant investors. I know between 2002 Vancouver and 2018 Vancouver which one I would choose. 2002 sucked and most of us who remember 2002 agree on this.
Btw I suspect most nations wonder what we're talking about when Canadians say we have a homeownership problem, look at the stats below for whats normal around the world. Canadians really need to start focusing on national happiness, income, and lower rent and stop their overwhelming focus on home ownership.
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