Army of Chinese millionaires plan to emigrate
Among the more controversial findings of the study is that 27% of the more than 20,000 Chinese multimillionaires with more than US dollar (USD) 15,000,000 in individual assets have already emigrated abroad, and around 60% of those with more than USD 1,500,000 in assets, 960,000 people, have already or are planning to do so. Reportedly, this ‘rich exodus’ began in 2009.
If even 10% of these people land in Vancouver, will it have any effect on our bubble?
This post was submitted by Mansur al-Hallaj.
Click here to view all comments chronologically
May 4th, 2011 at 2:58 pm
#24,
did you landlord kick you out again? or did you get laid off again? why so jumpy!
May 4th, 2011 at 10:15 am
I don't want to sound racist but perhaps that is why Asian Conservative candidates were elected in the desirable areas of Vancouver… I don't see the Conservative's pro-business stance let up when it comes to migrants with money.
May 4th, 2011 at 12:55 am
@Anonymous: …There is a huge fire at south east Vancouver. Anyone living nearby and can tell us the exact location of the fire? It can be seen as far as Richmond and Burnaby…..
I'm sure we'll be seeing plenty of fires as prices continue to tank.
May 4th, 2011 at 12:52 am
HAM is at it again. Richmond RE is on fire.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/st…
There are fist sized ash-balls all over 6 Rd area.
May 3rd, 2011 at 11:19 pm
May sales higher than April's? It's hard to argue otherwise. May is usually a huge listings month too so Realtors will be telling you it's "busy".
No signs yet of a heavy crash in Vancouver, from what I see. Other areas of the province, OTOH…
May 3rd, 2011 at 10:53 pm
@Best place on meth: April was the pinnacle month last year, so the rise is not a surprise.
May 3rd, 2011 at 8:07 pm
@chinaren:
Serious logic gap between those two sentences. Canadian banks are legally allowed to lend up to 80% on uninsured mortgages. If they are only willing to lend 65% to a borrower they have no effective recourse against, what does that tell you?
May 3rd, 2011 at 5:44 pm
The development, "The Remy," at 9388 Cambie, was to be a 188-unit condo development that would include varied affordable-housing options.
Ground was broken in June of 2010, and Premier Gordon Campbell was on hand to mark the occasion; taking advantage of building-code changes introduced in 2009, The Remy was to be one of the first developments in B.C. to go more than four storeys high using wood, rather than concrete.
But in 2009, according to news reports, Richmond Fire Rescue warned the taller wood buildings could be a fire hazard, as the city's ladder trucks could only reach 18 metres — around 12 metres short of a six-storey building.
Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Flames+engulf+co…
May 3rd, 2011 at 3:13 pm
There is a huge fire at south east Vancouver. Anyone living nearby and can tell us the exact location of the fire? It can be seen as far as Richmond and Burnaby.
May 3rd, 2011 at 2:55 pm
@paulb.:
15K Party? I need something to celebrate after last night
May 3rd, 2011 at 2:47 pm
Ouch! Look at Squamish's stats. Detached prices down 8.6% YoY and down 24.5% over 3 years. Glad I'm out. Would have lost $44k this year had I held on.
May 3rd, 2011 at 2:33 pm
@STFU:
Sales were down 21% from last month.
Who are you to tell me when I can come back to this blog?
I live here, bitch.
May 3rd, 2011 at 1:52 pm
@paulb.: So happy to see you back!
May 3rd, 2011 at 1:27 pm
Best place on meth Says:
May 3rd, 2011 at 3:43 pm
Stat are out.
Detached benchmark up from 866K to 879K
Apartment up from 403K to 409K
Attached up from $511K to $514K
http://agentwill.com/statistic…..-released/
_____________
Hey Assface – wrong again eh?
No March 18th collapse….
And don't give me some bullshit about higher inventory, slightly declining sales, and distorted average prices.
Go back to your grad class and there – reality bites and you clearly cannot handle it.
Just STFU until prices started to decline for 6 months…then you can come back to the blog
May 3rd, 2011 at 1:14 pm
@lol cats: go fuck yourself, realwhore scum
May 3rd, 2011 at 1:03 pm
@Anonymouse: "secondly because they can borrow at low rates and get a higher return on their cash elsewhere."
Foreigners and non-residents can borrow easily up to 65%. This has been discussed in details by realtors to prospective foreign buyers online. Q&A, last paragraph. Answer: Foreigners purchasing real estate properties here can borrow from Canadian banks, up to as much as 60% – 65%. The mortgage loan is repayable 20 to 25 years. Currently Canadian mortgage interest rate is much lower than in China. Mortgage loan and the age of the properties purchased are unrelated; neither is the age of the buyer. This from another angle, reflects the confidence of the Canadian banks toward the the housing prices.
If you are interested, read them at sinonet dot org.
May 3rd, 2011 at 12:49 pm
@paradox:
my keen sense of empathy detects a little jealousy.
the beauty of the future is that it is entirely unpredictable, and your crystal ball is scratched and cloudy to boot.
your extended correction may come this fall or in X years.
just because you were born here, it doesn't mean you should get a break on housing costs, sorry.
i sense your life has an extensive history of poor choices, and some serious bong activity.
i feel for your kids too.
May 3rd, 2011 at 12:11 pm
@paulb.: Yay Paulb!!!
May 3rd, 2011 at 10:40 am
New Listings 340
Price Changes 96
Sold Listings 225
May 3rd, 2011 at 9:17 am
Metro Vancouver home sales reached 3,225 in April, an 8.2-per-cent drop from April 2010 and a 21-per-cent decline from March 2011.
Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Metro+Vancou…
May 3rd, 2011 at 9:06 am
YOY inventory down 10%
May 3rd, 2011 at 8:35 am
Election over. Conservatives got their majority. Time for Bank of Canada to rise the interest rate.
May 3rd, 2011 at 8:23 am
Valley stats are out:
http://www.fvreb.bc.ca/mls-statistics.php
May 3rd, 2011 at 8:01 am
@BV
I am not saying this is good or bad, I just dont know what the future impact will be. I have nothing against asians or others, just saying what I see happening before my eyes.
On a side note, I have no sympathy for those rich chinese coming with stolen money through bribery and corruption and bidding up prices to crazy levels here. Only people who got heir money the easy way can spend it in such a manner.
I also worry for the young generation and my kids and others I know with still real jobs and unable to afford a house and start a family here without becoming a lifelong debt slave.
I cant quantify the impact of chinese money here and the fact that nobody else seem to be interested tells me that the powerful lobby that is real estate in this country is reaping large benefits. Good for them.
On the other hand, lots of small shops on marine drive have closed doors.
East marine drive in white rock looks like an obscure street in New Delhi or Beijing suburbs with palm reading shops and some low level dirty chinese indian food outlets. How long before all marine drive becomes like that?
May 3rd, 2011 at 7:56 am
@Bear Vancouverite: "I heard that they are tired of working with the Chinese immigrants."
You mean they'd rather work with people who don't play hardball with commission structures? Let's get some perspective: Realtor commission schedules haven't changed in 10 years at least, when prices were 50% less. Every time a house is sold, Realtors and their agencies are raking in significantly higher commissions on an inflation-adjusted basis for ostensibly the same service, never mind they should be charging less given the technological improvements in the past 10 years.
Enter the "greedy" foreigner who cut his teeth in the highly competitive and adversarial Chinese business climate. He must smell an overpriced service a mile away. He will only pay what the service is worth and it's a heck of a lot less than the going 5%/2.5% schedules the soft pliable locals pay without blinking.
We need more dirty, nasty, adversarial, and raw greed to lean hard on Realtor commission structures. If that means calling in the pit bulls from Mainland China to show us how it's done in the Big Leagues, sounds good to me.
May 3rd, 2011 at 7:43 am
Stat are out.
Detached benchmark up from 866K to 879K
Apartment up from 403K to 409K
Attached up from $511K to $514K
http://agentwill.com/statistics/april-2011-vancou…
May 3rd, 2011 at 7:35 am
Oh here's a fun anecdote for you to counter the idea that the rich Chinese don't care about their money and also to throw doubt on the idea that only the immigrant Chinese are bidding up housing.
Over the weekend I had a talk with a Canadian born Chinese realtor friend whose brother is one of the top realtors of Vancouver (400-500 homes sold per year), and I heard that they are tired of working with the Chinese immigrants.
Apparently these Chinese immigrants don't think realtors offer a valuable service and always try to convince realtors to give deep discounts on their fees. They also refuse to bid at "market prices" and consistently lose on properties because they feel they can buy the homes cheaper. How's that for a complete opposite stereotype to what others (such as myself) notice?
May 3rd, 2011 at 7:28 am
@paradox – I visited White Rock a few times last summer and didn't notice a serious change in the areas I went to. I think areas like White Rock, Chilliwack, and Abbotsford are the places where you are least likely to see the true impact.
Come visit us in Richmond, but keep your eyes and mind open. Not all Chinese are alike. But one thing is for sure, I know and talk to too many non-Canadian Chinese who think that real estate here is very reasonably priced. You compare that to a Chinese person who is either born here (such as myself), or has lived here most of their lives (such as my relatives and their friends), and you get a very different opinion.
Depressing as it sounds, some of these nouveau rich Chinese aren't looking for value and don't care about sound investments, they just want to settle down and they don't care to rent. If you could understand what they say (and I do) at open houses and compare to what you yourself are thinking, you'd be shocked at the gap in value perception. We can all hem and haw but that's the sad truth and I definitely see this more than many of those on this blog.
But I think this mentality will evaporate quickly when an extended correction occurs. Many of these buyers still think it can never come down, to them its not about value, its about the lack of perceived risk. Call them names all you guys want, they still ruin it for the rest of us and for who knows how long.
May 3rd, 2011 at 7:26 am
@Eddie:
Don’t these people have to stay somewhere before they buy?
They stay with their relatives (therefore wealth) or go strait to their new homes by being able to conduct a bidding war directly from the airplane before they hit the tarmac on YVR. On another note, last evening I was amazed with cars parked at the Costco underground parking, it was hard to see anything below 70K. Lot's of Porsches and X6 bemeers and their owners carrying full bags with onions and cabbages, unreal!!!
May 3rd, 2011 at 7:09 am
I better learn Chinese as the city will become another Chinese city soon.
May 3rd, 2011 at 7:08 am
@DaMann:
Why are they fleeing China in the first place?
Doesn't sound too promising for that country.
May 3rd, 2011 at 7:00 am
For how long will China allow this mass exodus of cash?
May 3rd, 2011 at 6:58 am
"If rich asians are buying with cash then why is BC household debt the worst in the country?"
Firstly because they probably make up a very small section of the market, and secondly because they can borrow at low rates and get a higher return on their cash elsewhere.
May 3rd, 2011 at 6:45 am
If rich asians are buying with cash then why is BC household debt the worst in the country? Who is buying in Calgary and other bubble cities? How come rents are reasonable and hotels are mostly empty? Don't these people have to stay somewhere before they buy?
May 3rd, 2011 at 6:36 am
raiding the treasury is not a sustainable activity
corruption and fraud using real estate leaves a trail
what happens when the authorities crack down?
on a side note:
TSX down 242 points today
election halo effect?
May 3rd, 2011 at 6:34 am
This is not to be taken lightly.
I live in White Rock for many years and never have I seen in my life such rapid change in the character of the city.
Three years ago you could barely see Asian people here, whereas now they are visible at large numbers in the schools, recreation centers, swimming pool, streets, etc.
All open houses I have attended are crowded with Chinese; you can barely see any other ethnicity there. And they are selling. Those are facts. What will be the long term impact, nobody knows I guess.
May 3rd, 2011 at 6:29 am
i don't even know what to say to that.
i'm already depressed after the election last night.
better hurry up and buy. it's now or never.
May 3rd, 2011 at 6:09 am
Forgot the link: http://globalvoicesonline.org/2011/04/26/china-th…