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Friday Free-for-all! May 26th 2017

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89 Comments

It’s that time of the week again… 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:

–Mortgage growth slows
–Low rates solve problems
–HCG deposits decline
–Taxing astronauts?
–Fed rate hike soon
–NDP win crucial riding
–Strata complaints force sale
–Total dollar volume plunges

So what are you seeing out there? Post your news links, thoughts and anecdotes in the comment section below and have a fantastic long weekend!

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bullwhip29

Face it, Canada—you’re a real estate addict, and no one wants a cure
Canada’s housing mania is a collective lunacy fuelled by debt and irrational hope
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-magazine/robmagface-it-canadayoure-a-real-estate-addict-and-no-one-wants-acure/article35105002/

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bullwhip29

Almost 7 in 10 Metro residents will be non-white in two decades
http://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/douglas-todd-almost-7-in-10-metro-residents-will-be-non-white-in-two-decades

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Just me

Worth spending 10 minutes to watch this. Good summary of where we stand.

https://youtu.be/SK_JbaH2QX0

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Just me

Hong Kong’s Throngs of Thousands Defy Bid to Cool Housing Market.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-29/hong-kong-s-throngs-of-thousands-defy-bid-to-cool-housing-market

Snaking queues of thousands of prospective apartment buyers in Hong Kong signaled authorities have made no progress in cooling a red-hot property market, where prices are at records.

People were lining up on Friday and over the weekend at Victoria Skye, a luxury project at the former airport site of Kai Tak, and at the Ocean Pride development by Cheung Kong Property Holdings Ltd. and MTR Corp.

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Fomo

Friends visiting from Seattle (long weekend there). High level professionally employed types. They are Astounded by the numbers we gave them on costs of housing. Said no way could they afford to live here.
#reality

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Sebastien

Are the sellers on crack?:
1907 River Drive, New Westminster
May 17:$1,750,000
May 25: $1,255,000
Change: – 495,000 -28%
Assessment: $724,000

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history

Real estate, in general… Boilerhouse lenders got the Meth.. China meth is very concentrated. When North American Meth was changed to China Fentalyn, many more overdose deaths were reported. But really, it’s just a debt money metaphor.

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Sebastien

Overextended locals?:
4468 Blair Drive, Richmond
Apr 23:$1,478,000
May 25: $998,000
Change: – 480,000 -32%
Assessment: $1,195,000

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Oracle

The Green Party starting to show its true colours.

They are there to split the vote on the left. Word is they are going to support the Liberals on Wed.

The Green base has been played.

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Dyugle

Thank god for recall. Enough pissed voters and a recall campaign can bring down the government. There are enough ridings where the vote splitting caused the election of a Liberal. NDP’s next move if Weaver supports the Liberals. One seat from the Greens and two from the Liberals should be possible through recall. Not easy but definitely possible where 60 % of the people in a riding voted for change that did not materialize thanks to the Greens support of the Liberals.

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YVR

Green voters knew the Greens were not going to win a majority and Weaver was on record in the campaign that he could not work with Horgan. Anyone who voted Green was essentially voting against the NDP. If Green voters priority was to get the Liberals out of power, and were okay with the NDP running thing, they would have voted NDP in the first place. People who voted Green got exactly what they wanted.

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CBM999

Can’t recall an MLA until 18 months have passed. That’s in the legislation.

I doubt the legislature will last that long.

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Spec

I take Boracle’s prediction of a Green/Lib arrangement to be a good sign that it won’t come to pass. Call it a hunch.

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Shut It Down Already

Check out these US bloggers sweating over buying a place for $160/sqft….

https://www.dividenddiplomats.com/holy-bought-house/

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history

http://KEXP.ORG presents Thievery Corporation performing live in the KEXP studio. Recorded October 5, 2016.

the refi peak!!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5eK6SYVyZRk

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Burnaby

Just got back from two open houses in Burnaby south slope area. Both were dead as nails; no one except me and the Realtor and they were looking lonely. Both houses were well under 2 million and not tear downs.

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Fomo

Good. 🙂

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Abdul Lahazi

$25,845,489.87 flow through his professional trust account between May and November 2013. He reputedly took a tenth of one per cent as a fee.

That was too low. He should have charged much more than that to launder the cash. 10% would be good. 10% is still better than using a casino.

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Shut It Down Already

Any idea how many transactions there were in that period and what the total dollar volume was? Or did you read the part of the article which said:

‘He underscored: “The law society conducted a two-year investigation in connection with the transactions under review by the (disciplinary) panel and were not able to identify any wrongdoing or suspected wrongdoing, or illegality involving the transactions.”’

And you think this somehow supports your argument?

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YVR

Yes, $25 million moved through the trust account. Wow, that buys like 3 to 4 HAM houses. Out of tens of thousands of sales in the 7 month period?

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Just me

The law society audits are random (inform yourself). By admission of several members of the law society, this is just the tip of the iceberg and it was something they stumbled upon.
The practice of money laundering by unscrupulous lawyers in widespread. As usual, do some research and even better, ask lawyers you know.
This business is most likely to run in the hundreds of millions per year.

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Shut It Down Already

There was no money laundering or even suspicion of money laundering according to your own link.

You’re clutching at straws again, and your final statement was something you simply made up and isn’t supported by the article you posted.

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Just me

If you believe that money laundering does not happen here, so be it.
I will let the audience of the blog draw their own conclusions, based on the information we all get access to.

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Shut It Down Already

Do you even remember why you posted the link?

I’m sure you’ll not find anybody who thinks that there’s no fraud, money laundering, or any other sort of crime here.

Nobody’s is denying that there’s *some* foreign influence here. The question is how much. Your link does nothing to refute the stats we already have (the ones you deny).

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Just me

The stats are about official buyers, not origin of money.
You keep ignoring the crucial distinction. On purpose.

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Shut It Down Already

No, I don’t ignore it. I’m simply waiting for you to provide some compelling evidence or even a coherent hypothesis.

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Just me

I cannot produce formal stats on money flows. Our government refuses to gather that information.
In fact, they refuse to even enforce our existing anti money laundering laws. Does that not ring some bells to you?

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Shut It Down Already

You don’t need to provide formal stats on money flows, you could start with a compelling reason to disbelieve the data we already have.

But it’s good to hear that when you say you’re following the money you’re just walking blindly through the woods, fearing those nasty foreigners as you go.

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MarKoz

Competitive Bidding For SFH Two colleagues have just purchased single family homes in the last 3 months. One was moving up from a townhouse in North Burnaby, the other from a condo in South Granville. Both reported a hyper competitive market for homes between $1 m and $2 m. Not much information from the one buyer, except that she said she was shocked because she thought the market for SFH was supposed to have cooled (agent told her that was only on the west side). The other told me he lost out on 3 competitive bidding wars (after spending a fruitless $600 a pop on home inspections so they could make their offers free of subjects). He finally got lucky and put in a bid on a home that already had an offer, right after that deal fell through. Not… Read more »

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Just me

The Toronto tax has shifted a bunch of HAM back to Vancouver.
Talking to bank managers suggests that the mainlanders are back in the SFH market in Van.

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YVR

“The Toronto tax has shifted a bunch of HAM back to Vancouver.”

If so I would assume those that have moved are foreigners who will pay the same 15% tax here. Show us the data. Or should we just take your weekly survey of bank managers as proof.

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Just me

Go to Zolo. Look at market trends. Look how many days sfH stay on the market relative to last year. In the 2 million plus bracket, there is precious little locals.

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Shut It Down Already

I know a few locals who’ve spent that much. They now regret it, of course, because they got suckered into the whole “a $2m house will be worth $5m in a few years, we’d be stupid not to buy!” cult.

I don’t have any stats on the breakdown of buyers for any given price point but I don’t think you do either.

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Shut It Down Already

I just checked Zolo again and see that almost every property type is priced higher than it was 6 months ago. There’s nothing special at the $2m plus range. The only real exception is 3 bed condos, but I suspect the small number of transactions makes the average noisy.

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bestplaceonearth

thank you for sharing. only stupid naive bears believe the market cooling/crashing.

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Shut It Down Already

Don’t tell patriotz, he thinks that no seller would ever agree to do a home inspection prior to submission of the offer….

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history

https://www.canadianmortgagetrends.com/2017/05/broker-lender-market-share-q1-2017/

McLister is back with a special report. Rage on Rob

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Burnaby

Christy is good with the bribes and under table dealings.

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Dave

Lol, ain’t that the truth.

Let’s see how many Greens figure out what’s really going on. Their supporters should be upset about this.

Also politicians release bad news on Fridays to reduce backlash so Weaver knows his people don’t want this otherwise this announcement would have been Monday morning.

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YVR

He said there is more commonality between the three parties than public discourse might lead one to believe.

Weaver said he is focused less on picking one party over the other and more on ensuring stability. The Green Party leader has said before that he doesn’t want a coalition, something he reiterated Friday.

“there is more commonality between the three parties” > yup they are all politicians. Just as I called. Greens will side with the Liberals. It makes most the sense for them politically. Sorry there was no Trump running to drain the swamp. Business as usual.

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Hibernating Renter

There seem to be a lot of illiterate and semi-literate BCLib supporters commenting on that story.

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patriotz

“Weaver said he is focused less on picking one party over the other and more on ensuring stability. The Green Party leader has said before that he doesn’t want a coalition, something he reiterated Friday.”

No formal deal with either the Liberals or NDP means a Liberal minority government. Watch for Christy to throw Weaver a few more bones like the high heel ban to make it look like he’s achieving something. Also look for a commission on electoral reform which will still be talking without doing anything when Christy calls the next election.

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paulb

New
184
49
Sold
186
TI:8714

Listed today and such a beautiful home. Maclaren not included 😉 – 2851 Woodbine Drive- Edgemont Village – North Van. $4,388,000 https://youtu.be/LDIK0vAPTR0

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Best place on meth

Wok kitchen, rented McLaren, never lived in, professionally staged and filmed…..you’d almost think the target market was a chinaman.

Strange thing is, I would never have thought of Edgemont as being the new frontier for the locust invaders.

Edgemont……weird…. must be for a holding property waiting on prices to go up some more.

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paulb

Edgemont is great. Probably off the radar of Westside peeps. We sold two listings over 4M there in the last few weeks. That’s top of the N Van market pretty much unless waterfront.

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YVR

“We sold two listings over 4M there in the last few weeks. ”

Locals? My guess is yes on both.

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Shut It Down Already

My guess is that Paul won’t say.

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Shut It Down Already

The target market isn’t those who pay $1400/month rent, that’s for sure.

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YVR

“Wok kitchen, rented McLaren, never lived in, professionally staged and filmed…..you’d almost think the target market was a chinaman.”

Actually that seems more like marketing to a local who may want to flip to a Chinaman later. The Chinaman listings rarely include a clear photo and a complete coherent sentence. Staged? Why stage when the house will sit vacant unfurnished.

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Best place on meth

Speaking of farmland, I wonder who paid nearly double the asking price for this blueberry farm?

http://www.westerninvestor.com/done-deals/surrey-blueberry-farm-sold-for-4-million-above-assessed-value-1.20170724

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history

ahh, the problem with a farm, is that you gotta farm. I believe CRA allows only two years of losses, while you figure out your market. And farming is tough, weather dependant. And you need cheap labour. At least that is something an immigrant capitalist can sink their teeth into.

But to buy a farm, and build a palatial house is counter intuitive to a real farmer. Normally, you start out with a shack, borrow money to buy the means of producing your crop (the origins of futures trading). Slowly build your business ‘dont bet the farm’, Modern balance sheet real estate is very weird to me, unless you believe in the vast Left Wing conspiracy that it’s the favored method of birth control, after modern healthcare.

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CBM999

Good Marketing by the realtor. $4M over assessed value.

If you look at the property records it states “Farm land – value set by BC Regulation 411/95”

In other words, artificially low.

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Screwed

Liberals have bought Greens

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Just me

“The issue of the monster homes being built to avoid the foreign buyers tax and the exploitation of tax credits that are meant for farmers is something that any new government will have to address,” NDP MLA David Eby said. “And that goes for B.C.’s housing crisis, in general.”

Don’t you just love David Eby?!?

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Best place on meth

I hope like hell that Eby will gain a great deal of power to enact much needed, long overdue changes to the corrupt real estate market.

“Leave it to Weaver” to see what happens in the coming months.

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Screwed

Weaver is joining libs

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Best place on meth

I might believe you if you could string together more than 4 words in any of your posts.

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YVR

“I hope like hell that Eby will gain a great deal of power to enact much needed, long overdue changes to the corrupt real estate market.”

The only way David Eby will gain any power is if he crosses the floor to the Liberals. That would get him a cabinet post and much of his proposals implemented. If he was smart he would be negotiating this right now and ditch the 5 time NDP losers. Otherwise he is an opposition critic for life with no power.

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Just me

The Liberals will never (I repeat, never) implement any of the policies Eby suggested for housing. They go squarely against their key mantra: ever rising house prices (or at least, never decreasing).
When pigs fly…..

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Abdul Lahazi

Calgary man on lam in Mexico sentenced to 3 years in $27M mortgage fraud:
http://www.news1130.com/2017/05/26/calgary-man-on-lam-in-mexico-sentenced-to-3-years-in-27m-mortgage-fraud/
Fowler admitted to using money raised from investors to support his personal lifestyle, day trading, and to make payments to other investors as dividends and redemptions.

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Combat roach

Movie Top Gun 2 was confirmed recently…

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-navy-aircraft-intercepted-china-jets-pentagon/

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Just me

One more good piece by Sam Cooper. Go Sam go!

Speculators target B.C. farmland after foreign buyer tax introduced for residences

http://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/farmland

Christy Clark calls these speculators “investors”. And welcomes them with open arms, in the name of “economic growth”. Go figure.

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Combat roach

“A rapidly growing trend has people buying farms, building a huge farmhouse, then doing just enough farming to qualify for farm tax breaks.”

Can those esurient fraudsters ever do anything but to exclude some kind of scamming and jugglery? Those monstrous mansions should be fucking razed to the ground with artillery as an exhibition.

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Just me

Here is an important set of data points from the article (these are facts, not conjectures). If we don’t stop it by electing appropriate politicians, we will be crowded out within 15 years. the flows have just started and will not abate unless we tax the shit out of them. Popular two-term Delta independent MLA Vicki Huntington, who chose not to run for re-election this year for health reasons, spent much of her time in office pressing the B.C. Liberal government to protect B.C.’s Agricultural Land Reserve. In the absence of provincial data on foreign ownership, she had her staff digging into land title records. The project took several years, and researchers sometimes had trouble discovering the true beneficial owners, Huntington said, because of opaque ownership structures such as numbered and shell companies. But Huntington says her staff’s research established… Read more »

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Best place on meth

>He points to a November 2016 ad from offshore-focused firm New Coast Realty that says: “In recent years many investors prefer to purchase agricultural land in Richmond, Surrey and Langley … with a big piece of land, build a luxurious house … swimming pool, tennis court … with the same amount you can only get a 2,000-square-foot house in other areas of Richmond.” The ad also encourages speculators to buy B.C. farmland and apply to have it re-zoned for residential development, citing potential windfall profits. An ad from Royal Pacific Realty advertises a small acreage in Richmond with building plans for a 12,000-square-foot mansion: “Set up your own private driving range, swimming pool or tennis court. It’s all permitted on ALR land and because of the farm status, you pay no property tax,” the ad says. Steves also uses the… Read more »

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Best place on meth

Now that they’re gobbling up our farmland which we need to feed ourselves, the name “locust” is more accurate than ever.

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southseacompany

“All heck breaks loose in Toronto’s housing bubble”, Business Insider

http://www.businessinsider.com/toronto-housing-bubble-2017-5

“During the first two weeks in May, according to preliminary data from Toronto Real Estate Board, home listings surged 47% from the same period last year even as sales plunged 16%. The average selling price dropped 3.3% from April – and this, after a 33% year-over-year spike in home prices in March and a 25% surge in April. Something is happening to Toronto’s blistering house price bubble.”

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Hyper-mega-Bull

this is what happens when HAM is mostly hype. contrast this with the situation in vancouver.

if toronto corrects forget about the federal government doing anything to bring down housing prices, in fact they may step in to support prices.

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Hyper-mega-Bull

to clarify, in toronto HAM is mostly hype. in vancouver HAM is reality and the prime mover of the market.

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Combat roach

You shouldn’t say that, watch the shitstorm now…

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elvince

You mean people who work on Bay Street have a better handle on the value vs price principle than those tho work on Hasting?

Next in line, Alberta and Quebec need to introduce a foreign/speculation property surtax. It’ll be a game of whack-a-mole, but at least the mole will hurt badly.

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Oracle

Will the Greens be true to their platform or are they Liberals in green clothing? During the campaign, it sometimes appeared that they were only there to split the NDP vote….. never intending to win a majority.

The BC Libs and MSM were happy to ‘pump’ the Greens and given them ample time on the airwaves. Many BC Libs donated to the Green campaign. The irony…LOL

Now comes the true test. Greens have choice: Libs or NDP

Siding with LIBS mean they will lose their base and be decimated in the next election. Their platform is more alike the NDP.

Siding with NDP seems most obvious. Similar platforms.

BY NEXT WEDNESDAY, IMO, A Green-NDP coalition will be ready to govern. Read the next post for more details.

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Oracle

The BC Green housing platform: A B.C. Green government will work with the federal government to introduce measures to eliminate money laundering and international property speculation from the B.C. residential real estate market. A B.C. Green government will: Enhance the progressive nature of the property transfer tax (PTT) by introducing a sliding scale of rates from 0% on the first $200,000 for a property’s value, to 12% on property value over $3.0 million. (See charts below for implications). Apply the PTT to the transfer of beneficial ownership. Introduce a “speculation” PTT to discourage flipping of property. Expand the foreign buyers tax to apply across the province, and increase the rate to 30% in addition to PTT payable. Introduce measures to tax lifetime capital gains in excess of $750,000 on principal residences on homes bought and sold within 5 years. Work… Read more »

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patriotz

“Work with financial institutions and the federal government to develop protections for recent homebuyers who are negatively affected by market cooling initiatives.”

In other words bail out the idiot buyers who are responsible for the bubble in the first place. This negates everything else in their platform. You can’t have it both ways.

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elvince

Not if the idiot lenders who’s also partly responsible for the bubble (you know, those federally-regulated institution whose risk analysis said it was ok to lend a million dollar to a barista to buy a crackshack) isn’t bailed out too.

Plus, “develop protections for recent homebuyers” can simply mean a grace period for defaulters or a small subsidy for renting while the house is being repoed. Heck, making a crappy website to help match vacant apartments with defaulted “homeowner” counts as protections for recent homebuyers in my book.

Or, in political speak, it could mean less than nothing. How often have you heard politicians say they’ll reduce the healtcare budget while they’ll increase service, with less than 0 result? Me, too often to ever believe it.

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patriotz

“Or, in political speak, it could mean less than nothing. ”

That’s the point. The NDP and Liberal housing platforms are at least coherent, whether or not you agree with them. The Greens have just cobbled together a bunch of positions which try to please everyone.

I should also add that a bailout of borrowers is also a bailout of lenders.

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Dave

My personal experience with Weaver is that he is a liar. He’ll say one thing to your face and the opposite in public. Anybody who thinks he is a different politician is sorely mistaken. I think he has federal aspirations of some sort, like getting a Senate seat or maybe being appointed to the UN to be the expert on climate change. He is a Federal Liberal after all and I think there is a reason for that (i.e. he wants some patronage). Think of all the loons he surrounds himself with in the BC Green Party. Somehow the exact same crowd of nuts is a bridge too far when it comes to federal elections? Weaver isn’t even comfortable being a Green. I know first hand that he thinks people in his own party are loons. I think Trudeau will… Read more »

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elvince

Good. Then next election the greens go back to 0 seats as their constituents realize the greens are just Libs-light. They either vote for the real libs or move to the NDP.

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Dave

I don’t think it will play out that way. Weaver will get a couple bones from the Liberals for this budget and will say that Rome wasn’t built in a day. He’ll get flak in the short run. In about six months, he’ll switch from supporting the Liberals to going vote to vote and working with the NDP or Liberals. I think that he will eventually push a poison pill into the Legislature that the NDP and Liberals will vote down triggering the next election (e.g. a straight up ban on fracking). Then he can go back to the electorate and claim they tried to accomplish some of their major goals. People will forget and/or forgive that he gave the Liberals an extra year of power. All that said, this is unknowable and unpredictable. The current situation is the least… Read more »

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patriotz

” I think that he will eventually push a poison pill into the Legislature that the NDP and Liberals will vote down triggering the next election”

A government defeat on a confidence measure (e.g. throne speech or budget) is what triggers an election, not a 3rd party (which they aren’t even officially) defeat.

Weaver is not going to decide when the next election happens. It will be Christy or Horgan.

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Best place on meth

If Weaver is stupid enough to side with corrupt, right-wing traitors, people will lose all respect for him and the Green Party will go back to fringe status.

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Dyugle

The NDP was saying a vote for the Greens is a vote for the Liberals. The Greens denied this so for them to support the Liberals now would prove the NDP correct. This would be the stupidest thing ever. They should get proportional representation and then force an election so they can bolster their numbers. Working with the NDP would make this happen easier than with the Liberals as an NDP-Green alliance would only have a razor thin 1 seat majority.

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Whistler or Bust?

3 seats is fringe status.

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Best place on meth

Sure, in this idiotic electoral system where 16% of the votes gets you 4% of the seats.

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Whistler or Bust?

Oracle you are dreaming. “Never intending to win a majority” Like that was ever going to happen. They were lucky to win 3 seats.

They will side with the Liberals because the people don’t want the NDP to run the province or they would have put them in power. If they bring down the Liberals they will be in the wilderness for the next 20 years. The people don’t want an NDP Gov’t and they don’t want another $44 mil election.

They will have another chance in 12-24 months.

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Best place on meth

“The people don’t want another $44 mil election. ”

Oh yeah, the people are completely against paying 10 bucks each to choose their own government.

That’s like what, 3 fucking coffees?

No way am I paying that price, I’d rather have the communist chinese move in and run the province so that I don’t have to shell out my cash.

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