Many Vancouverites blame foreign investors for driving up housing prices in the city. But is the claim fact or fiction?
Realtor Tina Mak moved here from Hong Kong in 1991. Now she works to help other Asian investors buy a piece of Vancouver paradise.
"Vancouver and Canada are very safe places. Politically we're very stable. Our banking system is very safe," said Mak.
Along with the mild climate and mountains and ocean, Vancouver is an attractive place to buy property.
Urban planner Andy Yan says scenic Coal Harbour is a desirable neighbourhood for foreign investors from America, Asia and Europe.
Yan crunched the 2011 census data on the downtown housing market and found around 25 per cent of Coal Harbour condos are sitting empty, owned by foreign investors.
He also discovered up to 60 per cent of condos in downtown Vancouver are also owned by investors who don't live in them. But because government officials don’t collect data on foreign real estate ownership in Metro Vancouver, it’s difficult to know if those investors are local or foreign.
Sotheby's International Realty Canada studied luxury home sales in Vancouver during the first six months of 2013. It found that foreign buyers accounted for 40 per cent of the sales. Most of those buyers were from Iran, the U.S. and China.
That’s not surprising information when you look at how closely Vancouver housing prices have mirrored China's Gross Domestic Product over the past twenty years.
The B.C. Real Estate Association's chief economist admits that foreign buyers are a factor in Vancouver's luxury housing market.
"We do see a lot of foreign activity in the very high end of the market as the uber-rich buy into Vancouver as a recreation destination," said Cameron Muir.
But while luxury home prices have taken off, Muir points out that prices in the condo market in Metro Vancouver have stayed relatively flat.
“The idea that foreign investors are coming into Vancouver and buying up all the housing and driving up prices so people can't afford it, I think that is a bit of a myth," he said.
Still, without hard data, most of the experts CTV News spoke with agree it’s difficult to get a clear picture of what is going on. But the government says it does not track citizenship when it comes to the real estate market and has no current plans to do so.
The fact no one can dispute is that real estate is expensive in Metro Vancouver. But the B.C. Chamber of Commerce thinks it has a possible answer as a way to cut costs for the average British Columbian trying to buy real estate.
Tune in to CTV News at 6 on Tuesday for those details.
