It’s the end of another week and that means it’s Friday Free-for-all time!
This is our regular end of the week news round up and open topic discussion thread for the weekend. Here are a few recent links to kick off the chat:
–Ignorance not bliss?
–Conrad Black, renter
–Not a good renter
–500 imaginary sq. feet
–Fed keeps rate steady
–How FTBs are doing it
–
So what are you seeing out there? Post your news links, thoughts and anecdotes here and have an excellent weekend!
[…] –Where politicians fear success –Best neighborhoods –Smart or lucky? –Foreign money problem –Squamish? –Cracks in the market? – […]
“Brian Hutchinson: Politicians miss mark on Vancouver affordability crisis”, National Post http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/brian-hutchinson-politicians-miss-mark-on-vancouver-affordability-crisis “Mike Harcourt would be the first to admit he’s been fortunate: Successful lawyer, former Vancouver mayor, B.C. NDP leader and premier, survivor of a near-fatal fall from the deck of his Gulf Islands cottage.” “And soon, Harcourt will join the ranks of Vancouver’s biggest real estate prize winners. According to the Province, Harcourt and his son have put up for sale a west side house they co-own. Asking price: $9.988 million. The price was later adjusted to $8.38 million.” “The Harcourts purchased their lot five years ago, for $2.8 million, reports the Province. They demolished the site’s original house and replaced it with an attractive duplex. It’s estimated the Harcourts would have reaped a $6 million profit, had they received their original asking price. This is Vancouver, where… Read more »
But the bigger question is did they demolish a perfectly livable, potentially heritage 50yr+, house to build their duplex?
the real issue is that they (like others) had both insider knowledge and the means to shape future policy in their favor. this is actually an old story now…
This is just sick! Absolutely sick!! What kind low life scumbag would dump not 1, not 2, but 3 of her own babies into the trash just hours after they are born? While keep on getting pregnant?! So she can keep on dumping babies in the trash?
Oh and what kind lawless country would not charge this serial murderer with murder?
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/infanticide-convictions-upheld-meredith-borowiec-094800077.html
We need to keep sicko scumbags like this out of our country!
Oh wait, the woman in this story isn’t a mainlander but a local born & bred red blood Caucasian; and the country isn’t that hellhole China but Canada.
Phew….that’s all ok then…my sense of world order have been restored.
exactly! canada has enough scum bags. no need to import them from abroad.
But then how will the poor people from 3rd world country learn from the great Canadians??
Certainly sick, but at least, she didn’t eat the babies.
Foreign student program is an entry into Canada only. Only the rich can afford international student fees and living here.
These rich brats won’t want to work afterwards for Canadas wages. If immigration is supposed to be for supporting Canada’s future aging population, they aren’t importing taxpayers.
But they already know this. This is for the real estate and banking sectors.
Also for provincial gov’t to reduce university funding, and for those university presidents to act like they are real biz CEO and titans.
Garth in damage control and censoring mode. That report from National Bank came out saying 1/3rd homes in Vancouver are being bought by Chinese.
what kind of asshole lives in ontario and presumes to tell vancouverites what’s going on in their own city right in-front of their faces.
and i’m not just talking about patritoz, this includes garth too!
Based on a supposed survey of 77 rich Chinese people and then extrapolated using some very questionable methodologies. This “research report” is pretty much unless and way worse than methods used by local researchers that uses a home owner’s name spelling method to decide if someone is a mainland Chinese vs HK vs Taiwan (never mind the buyer might actually be local / immigrated long time ago).
If any financial analyst published this kind of crap, s/he would be lucky not be fired.
Another racists driven investigation…
But Horgan raises the disturbing possibility that the government is making a fortune on gambling, booze and property-transfer taxes and turning a blind eye to shady deals.
“The Liberals are, in essence, complicit,” Horgan said.
“Why would they shut down money-laundering when it’s increasing revenues to the Crown?”
An outrageous suggestion, according to the government. But with billions of dollars in drug money — and billions more flowing every year out of China — it’s reasonable to conclude money-laundering must be rampant.
http://www.theprovince.com/touch/story.html?id=11805058&google_editors_picks=true
nothing to do with revenues but rather windfall profits for certain connected parties (like we saw in US leading up to 2008); when christy clark finally resurfaces after her political career is over we’ll get a better idea why things are being done (or not) and how she ended up banking many tens of millions (at a very minimum) in shady, shadowy funny money. given that the whole system is clearly rotten to the core now and every election campaign rule can and will be broken going forward (since no one is patrolling the streets now), I fully expect the NDP to be washed out to sea in the next election for a whole host of unexplained reasons.
Well, at least in this case, gov’t is getting an easy cut and spillover effects are relatively minor.
B.C. real estate leader warns Christy Clark to use care in crackdown on ‘shadow flipping’
http://www.vancouversun.com/business/real+estate+leader+warns+Christy+Clark+care+crackdown+shadow+flipping/11805073/story.html
>>>kabuki theatre brought to you by the “independant advisory group” comprised of bankers, lenders and RE players (complete with their own website which was surely slapped together in minutes at cost of a few hundred grand of tax payer cash…lol http://www.advisorygroupbc.ca/members). when do the commercials hit the airwaves?
Shadow flipping is not really the main issue or cause here…
“How Budget 2016 affects real estate”, Money Sense
http://www.moneysense.ca/spend/real-estate/investors-watch-out-how-budget-2016-impacts-real-estate/
“Goodbye to rock-bottom mortgage rates and easy money”
Royal centre reportedly sold for $425M back in Jan. Final price comes in at $285M
http://www.vancouversun.com/business/commercial-real-estate/brookfield+sells+royal+centre+tower/11806655/story.html
Article says net proceeds, not final price. The property may have been mortgaged, for example. The stock market is saying the sale was a good idea, which means the purchase was a bad idea.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/markets/stocks/news/?q=BOX.UN-T
if you’re right, seems weird final price not reported. thought the msm (and the RE agents themselves) like to toot their own horns and flash these sexy numbers around esp when sale “above asking” and so forth. they certainly dont downplay things when reporting on residential sales figures. and who was the buyer? still the germans?
“http://business.financialpost.com/personal-finance/mortgages-real-estate/millennials-fleeing-vancouver-for-cities-with-more-affordable-housing-threatening-citys-tech-economy”
Why would any tech company want to set up shop in Vancouver???
If young bright talented minds cannot afford to live in a lousy crackhouse or in a parking lot size “apartment” in Vancouver, why on earth would a tech company go to Vancouver?
This city has been trashed. There is nothing here for young people or young families.
Lets not under estimate the smarts of tech companies and young Canadians. They know better, and I am elated to say “good for them!!”
Go where they value you and want you, ten or even five years from now you will be so happy you left this dead space and got your career/opportunities flying to new heights.
Really? Cuz for every semi-good IT openings, you would get tons of resumes from qualified applicants willing to work for pretty low pay compared to US. If I were an IT company, I would totally want to set up shop here and hire willing wage slaves at a 50% discount relative to WA/CA.
You are wrong again, they aren’t qualified at all. As I said before some obscure Chinese university and fake resume do not make them qualified and they do apply aggressively, you are right on that part, though .
A multimillionaire Chinese citizen residing in Vancouver has admitted that greed led him to team up with hackers in his homeland in a conspiracy to steal blueprints for Pentagon military jet components.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/vancouver-resident-guilty-of-hacking-into-us-military-for-china/article29366478/
Canada should give him some money and a couple of houses on the west side just in case if some racism took place along the process.
Here are the best neigbourhoods in Vancouver according to Vancouver Magazine: http://vanmag.com/best-of-the-city/vancouvers-best-neighbourhoods-calculator/ 1 False Creek 56.8% 2 West End 56.6% 3 Lynn Valley 55.7% 4 Main Street (Riley Park) 55.4% 5 Downtown 55.2% 6 Olympic Village/Fairview 54.8% 7 UBC 54.5% 8 Yaletown 54.2% 9 Kitsilano 54.1% 10 Killarney 54.0% 11 South Granville 53.9% 12 Kensington-Cedar Cottage 53.7% 13 Capilano 53.1% 14 Hastings Sunrise 52.7% 15 Seymour/Deep Cove 52.7% 16 South Cambie 52.6% 17 Dundarave/Ambleside 52.6% 18 Crosstown 52.0% 19 Gastown/Chinatown 51.9% 20 Commercial Drive 51.9% 21 Renfrew-Collingwood 51.4% 22 Coal Harbour 51.3% 23 Lonsdale 51.3% 24 Mount Pleasant 51.1% 25 Pemberton/Pemberton Heights 50.8% 26 Sunset 50.8% 27 Victoria-Fraserview 49.7% 28 Strathcona 49.4% 29 Downtown Eastside 48.7% 30 Horseshoe Bay 48.3% 31 Marpole 47.4% 32 Caulfeild 47.2% 33 Shaughnessy 46.5% 34 West Point Grey 46.2% 35 Kerrisdale 46.0% 36 Dunbar 44.3%… Read more »
If you play with the interactive calculator, the worst neighbourhood for property crime is Shaughnessy.
Here are the top 10 for ethnic and income diversity:
1 Sunset 82.9%
2 Kensington-Cedar Cottage 82.7%
3 Renfrew-Collingwood 81.6%
4 Victoria-Fraserview 81.3%
5 Coal Harbour 80.4%
6 Killarney 79.7%
7 UBC 79.6%
8 Marpole 76.6%
9 Hastings Sunrise 76.0%
10 Crosstown 73.0%
one could argue that #1,2 represent two of the better opportunities for gentrification within the confines of the city proper. the big prize over long term is Port Town neighborhood which will undergo the very same redevelopment that we saw with the expo site.
Makes sense, the worst neighborhoods are primarily the ones that are locust infested.
Yah!! White power! You go bro!
Maybe you should move to the territories, I think there are almost no Chinese there.
State sponsored public canabilsim in China during cultural revolution
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/01/06/world/a-tale-of-red-guards-and-cannibals.html
At some high schools, students killed their principals in the school courtyard and then cooked and ate the bodies to celebrate a triumph over “counterrevolutionaries,” the documents report. Government-run cafeterias are said to have displayed bodies dangling on meat hooks and to have served human flesh to employees.
From the traditional nutrition perspective it is a small change to go from dog to human meet to satisfy daily protein needs.
Quote from article – nice of you to leave that out to make it seem like it was widespread practice.
——————————————————————————————————————
The cannibalism described in the documents was apparently confined to parts of Guangxi Province, a relatively remote area, and was subsequently kept quiet. There is no evidence that anyone in the national Communist Party leadership endorsed it or even knew of it
——————————————————————————————————————-
Off course, we can also safely assume that BC is populated with serial child & women molesters & murders based on reports of criminals like Clifford Olsen, and Robert Pickton right? And they didn’t even have the excuse of a mass social upheaval like Cultural Revolution to blame it on!
7K party!
Über jerk strikes again, get a life asshole.
Says the person who only ever posts in reply to me…..
Noone is selling any more. . .what do bears say?
Is the foreign investor love affair with Canada over? (BNN Video)
Wow!
The Ottawa liberals promise the spend the whopping sum of $500k on the issue of foreign ownership. That’s less than a downpayment on a Vancouver house, and it shows how much they care about the situation.
Fucking disgusting!
Kevin O’Leary believe the proper amount to spend is $0.
Hedgies continue to up their short positions on CDN banks
Short squeeze! I’m sure all the smart bears here have on the right trade?
What me worry?
“Canada to introduce ‘bail-in’ bank recapitalization legislation”
Canada will introduce legislation to implement a “bail-in” regime for systemically important banks that would shift some of the responsibility for propping up failing institutions to creditors.
The proposed plan outlined in the federal budget released on Tuesday would allow authorities to convert eligible long-term debt of a failing lender into common shares in order to recapitalize the bank, allowing it to remain operating.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-canada-budget-banks-idUSKCN0WO2Y5?mod=related&channelName=ousivMolt
Chinese Buy One-Third of Vancouver Homes: National Bank Estimate
Clusterfuck, roaches strategically cemented their stronghold on North-American soil by using dumb and shortsighted politicians. Now they have created conditions to heavily influence entire BC economy and jeopardize freedom and democracy in the long run. Doing same with Toronto will basically close the circle and have them dominate the entire nation.
It is quite odd that the US doesn’t take the closer look at this Vancouver shitshow assuming the proximity to the border and undermining criminal activities following this historical proprietary transition.
It is odd. I think they have not been paying attention, and were just assuming that it was still the Hong Kong people who were coming over. I think this on the basis of a couple conversations I’ve had with people who would run in the same circles as those with the responsibility of paying attention. I think that up until recently it was hard for people (for various interesting reasons) to wrap their heads around the idea that the recent Chinese immigrants did not fit the classic idea of an immigrant, struggling by working long hours in a labour- intensive occupation to make a better life for himself, and seeking to integrate into the society he had moved into
Maybe , for example, factors like American exceptionalism (whatever that is, exactly) combined with habits of mind formed by old patterns of observation and experience about what threats look like, combined with the complacency of Canadian politicans at the provincial level and at the national level in recent years have resulted in Americans just overlooking this whole thing.
Too bad the first nations people didn’t have the ability to bar those nasty European immigrants a few hundred years ago.
And what’s with the new immigrants. Don’t they know the proper way to take over someone’s land involves biological warfare, culture destruction, and open air prison camps, oh sorry, I mean reservation system.
Extrapolated from a sample of 77 buyers? That’s quite an extrapolation.
U.S. National Association of Realtors? No mention of what this data is that no one else here can access.
More questions than answers. So much for investigative journalism – just cut and paste a press release from a lending institution.
Even the headline isn’t correct. It’s not 30% of homes, but 30% of homes that sold. That’s a tiny fraction of all homes, even if their methodology were correct.
Actually, they don’t even mean home sales – they state it’s 33% of the total dollar value of sales. Considering high priced homes, that are super expensive, only amount to a small amount of sales, yet can skew the total dollar value up, that headline is misleading.
coming to a “public” beach near you…
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/metro/beach+chair+umbrella+rental+english/11802518/story.html
>>> i wonder if the fee will include drink and food delivery directly to your seat too? hey, better yet open this service up to online reservations so one can monopolize the whole beach by just pressing a button.
Hey Garth what do you think about this?
i wonder how much remax and/or that specific agent had to pay to have the vanc sun use their pic?
my bad. saw same article in vanc sun
http://www.vancouversun.com/business/bc2035/chinese+investors+third+vancouver+homes+national+bank/11804486/story.html
bloomberg doesnt need banner advertising
how convenient that elizabeth denham story got completely lost in all the other news about brussels, federal budget, US election, rob ford yesterday
if this doesnt tell things are beyond rotten to the core, then i dont know what will…
worth a listen…
The great fear, of course, is that any serious and robust response to the affordability problem might collapse current house prices
Time to ring the bell. Someone in the media finally came out and said it.
Study reveals awfulness of Canadian investor immigration; income tax averages C$1,400 per millionaire
British Columbia ends up housing ten times more rich newcomers than Quebec – but Quebec gets ten times more of their ‘investment’ than BC
Simple fix, stop bringing people whose sole purpose is to get a quick easy passport. Or at least charge an appropriate amount, like say $5M donation to the Fed gov’t and another $1M/yr for 3 years to the province of residence.
Better yet if we don’t let them in at all!
Make the $5M and the $1M/yr retroactive, then deport the bastards.
Ban all immigrants from China.
Students too.
“Pete McMartin: The other side of the housing coin”, Vancouver Sun
“If Metro Vancouver has a Silent Majority, I bet it’s those homeowners who tsk-tsk the insanity of the market but who, in the back of their minds, can’t deny the craven whisper of, “Please God, let this market stay hot until I can cash out big.””
The Unsettling Acquisitiveness of Anbang, a Chinese Insurer, in the U.S.