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China has a punishing inheritance tax, really? China has no inheritance tax Sorry; proposed inheritance tax. http://www.ibtimes.com/chinas-proposed-inheritanc

China has a punishing inheritance tax, really? China has no inheritance tax Sorry; proposed inheritance tax. http://www.ibtimes.com/chinas-proposed-inheritance-tax-meets-widespread-disapproval-1413240 http://www.ibtimes.com/chinas-proposed-inheritance-tax-meets... My point stands; Canadian interest rates could double and Vancouver house prices wouldn't budge; some Canadians would have their homes foreclosed on, but there's so much money in the market from China that homes here would still be unaffordable to people working in Canada and paying Canadian taxes. This just isn't a 'bubble'. China has no inheritance tax, it also lacks a property tax or even a capital gains tax. Libertarians would love it here if it weren't for the police state... Nice! This sounds like a pretty good way to game the system; earn all your money in a tax-less free-wheeling libertarian wonderland, cash out, then bring your millions to a place with no wealth tax! The new place will have lots of social services and lots of burdensome income taxes for the locals to pay for them, but you made your money and you don't have income to tax! Win! I should figure out how to get in on this.

seanmcdirmid 11y ago
That is quite old. Anyways, taxes are not a problem in China yet. Anyways we've seen is before with the Japanese in the 80s, and it eventually all crashed down, leaving the Vancouver/Seattle/California real estate markets in a rut for more than a decade! I'm guessing when the Chinese economy comes back down to earth, the exact same thing is going to happen again.
- eightfourteen 11y ago
  Japan had 120 million people in the 80's. China is currently at 1.35 billion. There were a million new millionaires created in China in 2014. I'm not sure that the Japan situation compares to China very well.
  - seanmcdirmid 11y ago
    The way things are going right now, it seems to be playing out exactly the same, just the scale is much larger given the increase in population (million of new millionaires were created in Japan also, of course, with a much smaller population base than China!).
    - CountSessine 11y ago
      I think the point is that if housing prices in Vancouver peak around $2M, the dust settles, and housing prices fall and equilibriate down to $1M, living in Vancouver doesn't really get any more realistic. I too am skeptical of the Japan comparison. China is both a very densely populated but also an extremely populous country and I think its just natural that a lot of Chinese will want to leave for less-densely populated places. Just the number of people involved makes this a problem unlike any other we've seen in history; how many tens of millions of Chinese millionaires now have the option of picking up and leaving their homeland? The scale of the migration is larger but the size of west coast cities isn't; certainly not by a factor of 10.
      - seanmcdirmid 11y ago
        It depends on how much is speculation vs. how much it is Chinese from the mainland actually moving to Vancouver. How many Chinese can actually emigrate to Vancouver, or why would they go there when they can go elsewhere? I'm old enough to have seen Vancouver real estate go through boom and bust before, and I'm just a Seattleite. Anyways, we've all heard "its different this time" before, and it never is.

seanmcdirmid 11y ago

That is quite old. Anyways, taxes are not a problem in China yet. Anyways we've seen is before with the Japanese in the 80s, and it eventually all crashed down, leaving the Vancouver/Seattle/California real estate markets in a rut for more than a decade! I'm guessing when the Chinese economy comes back down to earth, the exact same thing is going to happen again.

eightfourteen 11y ago
Japan had 120 million people in the 80's. China is currently at 1.35 billion. There were a million new millionaires created in China in 2014. I'm not sure that the Japan situation compares to China very well.
- seanmcdirmid 11y ago
  The way things are going right now, it seems to be playing out exactly the same, just the scale is much larger given the increase in population (million of new millionaires were created in Japan also, of course, with a much smaller population base than China!).
  - CountSessine 11y ago
    I think the point is that if housing prices in Vancouver peak around $2M, the dust settles, and housing prices fall and equilibriate down to $1M, living in Vancouver doesn't really get any more realistic. I too am skeptical of the Japan comparison. China is both a very densely populated but also an extremely populous country and I think its just natural that a lot of Chinese will want to leave for less-densely populated places. Just the number of people involved makes this a problem unlike any other we've seen in history; how many tens of millions of Chinese millionaires now have the option of picking up and leaving their homeland? The scale of the migration is larger but the size of west coast cities isn't; certainly not by a factor of 10.
    - seanmcdirmid 11y ago
      It depends on how much is speculation vs. how much it is Chinese from the mainland actually moving to Vancouver. How many Chinese can actually emigrate to Vancouver, or why would they go there when they can go elsewhere? I'm old enough to have seen Vancouver real estate go through boom and bust before, and I'm just a Seattleite. Anyways, we've all heard "its different this time" before, and it never is.