10 ms·

This is a relatively big problem in Australia - there has been talk of a housing bubble in Australia for the last few years which in part has been propped up by

This is a relatively big problem in Australia - there has been talk of a housing bubble in Australia for the last few years which in part has been propped up by Chinese grey money buying whole apartment buildings for investment, which drives up prices (they can just dictate prices) and keeps young locals out [1]. I cannot afford a house and I have a well-paying job. The government looks the other way since building is one of the last big job creators now that the mining boom is over. For example, there is a government body for foreign investment breaches (rules like you're not allowed to buy 'used' property if you don't have permanent residency, but I've personally talked to quite a few Chinese students whose parents did that for them) but it has never once initiated court action [2]. So everybody profits in the short term - Chinese corruption can move 'dead' money out of the country, Australian government gets to present itself as a job creator. Except young Australians, who have to rent and cannot rely on real estate property for their retirement. In the long term, the bubble is going to pop and then you have dead cities with empty high rises falling apart (but then again, people have been saying for at least 10 years that the bubble is going to pop any day now and it's still inflating) [1] Contains no numbers: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/grey-money-from-china-helps-blow-our-property-bubble-20140928-10n7a8.html http://www.smh.com.au/comment/grey-money-from-china-helps-bl... [2] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-27/foreign-buyer-rule-enforcement-needs-to-be-strengthened/5921518 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-27/foreign-buyer-rule-enf...

kspaans 10y ago
Except young Australians, who have to rent and cannot rely on real estate property for their retirement. This is orthogonal to the money laundering, but what's stopping the young people from investing for their retirement? Houses are not the only way to build savings.
- a_bonobo 10y ago
  That's true, the Australian system of superannuation is actually pretty great, your job pays a portion of your income into your super which gets invested for you, you have some choice as to where it gets invested (high risk vs. low risk etc.) However what I fear is that if the super isn't managed well, inflation hits, or you just don't build up a large enough investment the high rental prices in Australia will eat up the majority of your investment returns.
  - spoonie 10y ago
    But you don't fear buying a house that depreciates in value, or doesn't appreciate enough to cover mortgage interest, property tax, house insurance, and maintenance costs?
    - adaml_623 10y ago
      People don't fear buying housing because we always (as a general rule) need a roof over our heads.
- an_account_name 10y ago
  Because you still have to pay rent - if you could buy, your housing costs would be earning equity.
  - sanswork 10y ago
    It's not uncommon for it to be better financially to always rent and just invest the difference between rent and mortgage+maintenance+taxes. With interest first mortgages as they are it is generally a long time before you earn any equity at all.
    - aianus 10y ago
      This. I did the math when I rented an apartment in downtown Toronto and the rent was less than mortgage interest + condo fees + property tax + maintenance.
      - ec109685 10y ago
        Except if the value of the real estate goes up.
        aianus 10y ago
        Ah but my equities-heavy roboadvisor portfolio has gone up way more than the landlord's apartment...
        tehlike 10y ago
        is it so? Is that still the case when your landlord leverages 20/80?
        nostrademons 10y ago
        Usually when mortgage interest + etc. > rent, it indicates that the property is overvalued and the value (over the long term) is more likely to fall than rise. Every other buyer - or almost every other buyer, except the ones that need to launder money - is making the same economic calculation, and if the cost of money to buy the property is more expensive than the rent you can earn from the property, they're not going to buy the property.
- NeutronBoy 10y ago
  Property investment in Australia has a huge amount of subsidies that make it an extremely lucrative investment category compared to things like shares. If you get into the property market, you can count on capital gains tax benefits and negative gearing against any other income you have. Additionally, other benefits that are means-tested often exclude property (at least primary residences).
- rdlecler1 10y ago
  No, but it takes a lot less work to invest in real estate that you also live in than to try to find and monitor a 6% annual return on your own.
  - kchoudhu 10y ago
    I've been throwing money into broad spectrum index mutual funds for the last 10 years, and in that time have averaged about 9% annually while investing maybe 20 hours thinking about asset allocation ("my age in bonds"), fees ("as low as possible") and deleting brokerage statements from my email inbox ("I know my worth to the cent already, thanks"). Meanwhile, I have invested at least 50 hours touring houses, applying for loans and trading texts with braindead realtors in December of 2016 alone while trying to buy my family's first home. From where I stand, real estate is a terrible waste of time, energy and effort. If you want exposure to the asset class (why?!) buy into an MBS mutual fund; if you feel the itch to be a landlord (again, why?!) toss money into a REIT[1]. Do anything, basically, to avoid a large, career limiting[2] asset of uncertain value on your personal balance sheet. [1] Assumes you live in high COLA area where renting is more sensible than buying. Do your math, I am not an investment advisor, and your situation may be different from mine. [2] To avoid charges of hypocrisy: I no longer have a career, so I am happy to settle down, buy and customize the hell out of a house.
jseliger 10y ago
Chinese grey money buying whole apartment buildings for investment, which drives up prices The nice thing about housing is that one can easily build a lot more of it, and it makes a great de facto investment: http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/05/19/exporting_housing_services_a_huge_economic_opportunity.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/05/19/exporting_hou.... The only thing stopping most municipalities from pursuing this reasonable outcome is politics and resistance from NIMBY incumbent landowners.
- jmspring 10y ago
  No. Those policies are in place because planning makes sense. Not everywhere should be tear down and build up in all conditions. How about the French quarter of New Orleans or historic districts of other cities? This argument always shows up here and is idealistic bs.
  - aorloff 10y ago
    Places that have rapidly soaring housing costs need to get rid of / streamline the permitting process a la trailer bill 707 in CA (which the special interests killed - largely unions because they use the local permitting process to exact concessions). But either we need to streamline the permitting process, or revitalize a serious transit policy (not the BS high-speed rail, but a regional transit solution that makes it feasible to live in Stockton and work in SF).
  - jjawssd 10y ago
    I don't understand
    - jmspring 10y ago
      There are groups of people that seem to think that sacrificing local experience should be shoved aside solely on the basis to add more Housing should be the most important thing.
      - 10y ago
a13xb 10y ago
People like to rag on Chinese investors, but I think the main reasons are insane tax breaks and limited supply.
- kobayashi 10y ago
  Which tax breaks?
  - a_bonobo 10y ago
    Probably negative gearing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_property_bubble#Influence_of_tax_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_property_bubble#Inf... Edit, better link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_gearing#Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_gearing#Australia >Interest on an investment loan for an income producing purpose is fully deductible if the income falls short of the interest payable. The shortfall can be deducted for tax purposes from income from other sources, such as the wage or salary income of the investor.
    - a13xb 10y ago
      Negative gearing is only one piece of the puzzle. There is also a 50% CGT discount if you hold an investment for more than a year. And yes, it applies to shares too, but it's not possible to get this amount of debt leverage for buying shares. There is also 100% CGT exemption if the property is owner-occupied. The worst part is that it extends up to 6 years after you move out (e.g. to rent somewhere cheaper). So you can buy a property, live in it for a year (at which point it's deemed primary residence), then rent it out for up to 6 years, move back in for a year, rinse, repeat, and avoid paying any CGT when you sell. Obligatory: none of this is tax advice.
      - wycx 10y ago
        Centrelink has been speculatively invoicing people to recover undeserved welfare payments based on crude data matching with income tax datasets. How nice it would be if they did some data matching to determine who was actually living in a property as their primary residence, vs. changed their mailing address to that of their residential property to pretend it was their primary dwelling, and issued invoices for unpaid CGT. Given foregone tax from the CGT discount and negative gearing represent significantly larger sums than that spent on Newstart, chasing property investors would seem to be lower hanging fruit...
aaron695 10y ago
This is total BS. Although I'm tempted to blame narcistic millennials eating their smashed avocado I tend to think every young generation is this selfish. Australian youth is amoung the richest in the world, it's junk they can't buy houses. They just can't buy down town in big cities in the super rich sections at age 20. How people can think selling overpriced things to other countries is bad for the economy is incredibly strange.
jussij 10y ago
In the long term, the bubble is going to pop and then you have dead cities with empty high rises falling apart (but then again, people have been saying for at least 10 years that the bubble is going to pop any day now and it's still inflating) The reason that bubble has not yet popped is because over the last 10 years Oz has generally seen below average GDP growth and year on year deflation, not unlike the rest of the world. To fight those conditions the central bank (the R.B.A.) has been forced to cut interest rates (again not unlike the rest of the world). Those record low interest rates makes money cheap and property attractive. But going forward, should Oz see any level of real GDP growth, interest rates will have to rise and when that happens that will be the pin that pops the housing bubble.
- cmurf 10y ago
  OK and what's the failure mode if broad GDP growth remains stagnant, but the narrow real estate market continue to grow and increasingly unobtainable? Does it fail or does it in effect behave as two economies?
  - jussij 10y ago
    If the GDP remains low and inflation remains low then property prices will continue to rise. In fact if this happens the rate of rise may well increase over the short term. To fight low inflation and low GDP central banks around the world have all been singing from the same song sheet by adopting the policy of Quantitative Easing (QE). QE is basically a policy of printing money and it was designed to grow inflation, but all it has done is created a massive oversupply of cash around the world. It is this massive sea of cash that is driving up asset prices around the world. If these central banks continue to use QE then these cash levels will keep going up. Now naturally you just can't keep printing money, but the question is when will the party be over and inflation start to bite? The bigger problem is these low GDP numbers have a direct impact on society as it drives up unemployment and drives down wages, creating unrest. You can see this unrest growing with events like Brexit, the rise ot Trump and the rise of extreme right in Europe, Australia and other countries around the world. Without that GDP growth, political parties around the world will continue to feel the wrath of their voting public and politics and political parties will move further and further to the extremes.
spangry 10y ago
There's something terribly wrong at FIRB, but unfortunately we have a Treasurer (ScoMo) either too incompetent or too conflicted to do anything about it (he used to be the 'director of policy' at the real estate institute of Australia, a lobby group). For instance, the chairman of FIRB thought it was perfectly fine for him to take a job with the Carlyle group, a massive international foreign equity fund, while staying on a chairman of FIRB [0]. Even worse, ScoMo was totally cool with this. He's since caved to the public pressure and resigned from Carlyle. There's also the fact that, last year, the ATO were given a bucket of money to comb through their data and find home-owners likely in breach of FIRB rules (they have all the required bits and pieces, including data-matching programmes with state revenue/land-title offices & immigration). As far as I know, the ATO did this and handed the data to FIRB. No further action after that... Our politics has pretty much become a game of hot-potato: whoever gets in to power tries their hardest to ensure the housing bubble doesn't pop on their watch. When it does pop, it's going to be one for the history books, given how long they have kicked the can down the road. It's also pretty worrying to see state-level Chinese 'soft-power' being deployed in Australia, via our traitorous ex-politicians: - Andrew Robb, former Minister for Trade: 'consultant' for Landbridge Group (the Chinese company that was, for some insane reason, allowed to purchase a 99 year lease of the port of Darwin)[1]. - Bob Carr, former Foreign Minister: employed by the 'Australia China Relations Institute' at UTS, an 'independent' think tank on Aus-China relations (funded by the YuHu Group, the Chinese company that bribed Senator Sam Dastyari)[2] - Alexander Downer, former Foreign Minister and Former Opposition Leader: was appointed (but has since resigned) to the board of Huawei, the Chinese company banned as a supplier for the 'National Broadband Network' amid national security concerns [3]. Is now Australia's High Commissioner (ambassador) to the UK. - Bunch of others we are not currently aware of... I am by no means 'anti-China'. But Australia is at a point where it needs to have a serious conversation about how it reconciles its relationship with the US and its increasing economic dependence on China. There's also the small matter of national defence, an area thrown into disarray by the election of President Trump. But it's going to be hard to have a rational conversation, one that produces the best outcome for Australia, if half of the participants are traitorous, paid-up shills. [0] http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2016/09/firb-chairman-brain-wilson-must-resign-national-security/ http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2016/09/firb-chairman-brain-... [1] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-30/andrew-robb-joins-chinese-company-with-control-of-darwin-port/7978648 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-30/andrew-robb-joins-chin... [2] http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:c3JxEyTRKscJ:www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/foreign-affairs/bob-carrs-think-tank-operating-as-a-china-propaganda-arm/news-story/a6ed1b9355937b7cfa86301f58cd13f6+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:c3JxEyT... [3] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-10-30/danby-will-the-china-club-keep-the-huawei-ban/5057110 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-10-30/danby-will-the-china-c...
dmix 10y ago
This was a common fear in Vancouver and Toronto in Canada, but I remember reading that a study found foreign Chinese investment was only 5-10%, while playing a role it wasn't the primary issue everyone made it out to be. Can't find the link just now. I remember thinking they might have just been good at hiding the fact they were foreign by having their student kids or extended family who have moved here permanently buy the properties, or shell companies. Which wouldn't attract as much scrutiny. This is just speculation but it's good to be highly sceptical when people put all the blame on foreigners.
- nostrademons 10y ago
  5-10% of total housing stock, or 5-10% of houses on the market? Prices are set on the margin, reflected by the goods that are actively on the market, and at any given time only a small percentage of housing units are on the market. If 5-10% of total housing units are owned by Chinese nationals, and that percentage has grown rapidly in the last few years, it could easily translate to > 50% of real estate transactions.
trace303 10y ago
You've described the same exact situation that is unfolding in Vancouver, Canada.

kspaans 10y ago

Except young Australians, who have to rent and cannot rely on real estate property for their retirement. This is orthogonal to the money laundering, but what's stopping the young people from investing for their retirement? Houses are not the only way to build savings.

a_bonobo 10y ago
That's true, the Australian system of superannuation is actually pretty great, your job pays a portion of your income into your super which gets invested for you, you have some choice as to where it gets invested (high risk vs. low risk etc.) However what I fear is that if the super isn't managed well, inflation hits, or you just don't build up a large enough investment the high rental prices in Australia will eat up the majority of your investment returns.
- spoonie 10y ago
  But you don't fear buying a house that depreciates in value, or doesn't appreciate enough to cover mortgage interest, property tax, house insurance, and maintenance costs?
  - adaml_623 10y ago
    People don't fear buying housing because we always (as a general rule) need a roof over our heads.
an_account_name 10y ago
Because you still have to pay rent - if you could buy, your housing costs would be earning equity.
- sanswork 10y ago
  It's not uncommon for it to be better financially to always rent and just invest the difference between rent and mortgage+maintenance+taxes. With interest first mortgages as they are it is generally a long time before you earn any equity at all.
  - aianus 10y ago
    This. I did the math when I rented an apartment in downtown Toronto and the rent was less than mortgage interest + condo fees + property tax + maintenance.
    - ec109685 10y ago
      Except if the value of the real estate goes up.
      - aianus 10y ago
        Ah but my equities-heavy roboadvisor portfolio has gone up way more than the landlord's apartment...
        tehlike 10y ago
        is it so? Is that still the case when your landlord leverages 20/80?
      - nostrademons 10y ago
        Usually when mortgage interest + etc. > rent, it indicates that the property is overvalued and the value (over the long term) is more likely to fall than rise. Every other buyer - or almost every other buyer, except the ones that need to launder money - is making the same economic calculation, and if the cost of money to buy the property is more expensive than the rent you can earn from the property, they're not going to buy the property.
NeutronBoy 10y ago
Property investment in Australia has a huge amount of subsidies that make it an extremely lucrative investment category compared to things like shares. If you get into the property market, you can count on capital gains tax benefits and negative gearing against any other income you have. Additionally, other benefits that are means-tested often exclude property (at least primary residences).
rdlecler1 10y ago
No, but it takes a lot less work to invest in real estate that you also live in than to try to find and monitor a 6% annual return on your own.
- kchoudhu 10y ago
  I've been throwing money into broad spectrum index mutual funds for the last 10 years, and in that time have averaged about 9% annually while investing maybe 20 hours thinking about asset allocation ("my age in bonds"), fees ("as low as possible") and deleting brokerage statements from my email inbox ("I know my worth to the cent already, thanks"). Meanwhile, I have invested at least 50 hours touring houses, applying for loans and trading texts with braindead realtors in December of 2016 alone while trying to buy my family's first home. From where I stand, real estate is a terrible waste of time, energy and effort. If you want exposure to the asset class (why?!) buy into an MBS mutual fund; if you feel the itch to be a landlord (again, why?!) toss money into a REIT[1]. Do anything, basically, to avoid a large, career limiting[2] asset of uncertain value on your personal balance sheet. [1] Assumes you live in high COLA area where renting is more sensible than buying. Do your math, I am not an investment advisor, and your situation may be different from mine. [2] To avoid charges of hypocrisy: I no longer have a career, so I am happy to settle down, buy and customize the hell out of a house.

jseliger 10y ago

Chinese grey money buying whole apartment buildings for investment, which drives up prices The nice thing about housing is that one can easily build a lot more of it, and it makes a great de facto investment: http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/05/19/exporting_housing_services_a_huge_economic_opportunity.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/05/19/exporting_hou.... The only thing stopping most municipalities from pursuing this reasonable outcome is politics and resistance from NIMBY incumbent landowners.

jmspring 10y ago
No. Those policies are in place because planning makes sense. Not everywhere should be tear down and build up in all conditions. How about the French quarter of New Orleans or historic districts of other cities? This argument always shows up here and is idealistic bs.
- aorloff 10y ago
  Places that have rapidly soaring housing costs need to get rid of / streamline the permitting process a la trailer bill 707 in CA (which the special interests killed - largely unions because they use the local permitting process to exact concessions). But either we need to streamline the permitting process, or revitalize a serious transit policy (not the BS high-speed rail, but a regional transit solution that makes it feasible to live in Stockton and work in SF).
- jjawssd 10y ago
  I don't understand
  - jmspring 10y ago
    There are groups of people that seem to think that sacrificing local experience should be shoved aside solely on the basis to add more Housing should be the most important thing.
    - 10y ago

a13xb 10y ago

People like to rag on Chinese investors, but I think the main reasons are insane tax breaks and limited supply.

kobayashi 10y ago
Which tax breaks?
- a_bonobo 10y ago
  Probably negative gearing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_property_bubble#Influence_of_tax_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_property_bubble#Inf... Edit, better link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_gearing#Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_gearing#Australia >Interest on an investment loan for an income producing purpose is fully deductible if the income falls short of the interest payable. The shortfall can be deducted for tax purposes from income from other sources, such as the wage or salary income of the investor.
  - a13xb 10y ago
    Negative gearing is only one piece of the puzzle. There is also a 50% CGT discount if you hold an investment for more than a year. And yes, it applies to shares too, but it's not possible to get this amount of debt leverage for buying shares. There is also 100% CGT exemption if the property is owner-occupied. The worst part is that it extends up to 6 years after you move out (e.g. to rent somewhere cheaper). So you can buy a property, live in it for a year (at which point it's deemed primary residence), then rent it out for up to 6 years, move back in for a year, rinse, repeat, and avoid paying any CGT when you sell. Obligatory: none of this is tax advice.
    - wycx 10y ago
      Centrelink has been speculatively invoicing people to recover undeserved welfare payments based on crude data matching with income tax datasets. How nice it would be if they did some data matching to determine who was actually living in a property as their primary residence, vs. changed their mailing address to that of their residential property to pretend it was their primary dwelling, and issued invoices for unpaid CGT. Given foregone tax from the CGT discount and negative gearing represent significantly larger sums than that spent on Newstart, chasing property investors would seem to be lower hanging fruit...

aaron695 10y ago

This is total BS. Although I'm tempted to blame narcistic millennials eating their smashed avocado I tend to think every young generation is this selfish. Australian youth is amoung the richest in the world, it's junk they can't buy houses. They just can't buy down town in big cities in the super rich sections at age 20. How people can think selling overpriced things to other countries is bad for the economy is incredibly strange.

jussij 10y ago

In the long term, the bubble is going to pop and then you have dead cities with empty high rises falling apart (but then again, people have been saying for at least 10 years that the bubble is going to pop any day now and it's still inflating) The reason that bubble has not yet popped is because over the last 10 years Oz has generally seen below average GDP growth and year on year deflation, not unlike the rest of the world. To fight those conditions the central bank (the R.B.A.) has been forced to cut interest rates (again not unlike the rest of the world). Those record low interest rates makes money cheap and property attractive. But going forward, should Oz see any level of real GDP growth, interest rates will have to rise and when that happens that will be the pin that pops the housing bubble.

cmurf 10y ago
OK and what's the failure mode if broad GDP growth remains stagnant, but the narrow real estate market continue to grow and increasingly unobtainable? Does it fail or does it in effect behave as two economies?
- jussij 10y ago
  If the GDP remains low and inflation remains low then property prices will continue to rise. In fact if this happens the rate of rise may well increase over the short term. To fight low inflation and low GDP central banks around the world have all been singing from the same song sheet by adopting the policy of Quantitative Easing (QE). QE is basically a policy of printing money and it was designed to grow inflation, but all it has done is created a massive oversupply of cash around the world. It is this massive sea of cash that is driving up asset prices around the world. If these central banks continue to use QE then these cash levels will keep going up. Now naturally you just can't keep printing money, but the question is when will the party be over and inflation start to bite? The bigger problem is these low GDP numbers have a direct impact on society as it drives up unemployment and drives down wages, creating unrest. You can see this unrest growing with events like Brexit, the rise ot Trump and the rise of extreme right in Europe, Australia and other countries around the world. Without that GDP growth, political parties around the world will continue to feel the wrath of their voting public and politics and political parties will move further and further to the extremes.

spangry 10y ago

There's something terribly wrong at FIRB, but unfortunately we have a Treasurer (ScoMo) either too incompetent or too conflicted to do anything about it (he used to be the 'director of policy' at the real estate institute of Australia, a lobby group). For instance, the chairman of FIRB thought it was perfectly fine for him to take a job with the Carlyle group, a massive international foreign equity fund, while staying on a chairman of FIRB [0]. Even worse, ScoMo was totally cool with this. He's since caved to the public pressure and resigned from Carlyle. There's also the fact that, last year, the ATO were given a bucket of money to comb through their data and find home-owners likely in breach of FIRB rules (they have all the required bits and pieces, including data-matching programmes with state revenue/land-title offices & immigration). As far as I know, the ATO did this and handed the data to FIRB. No further action after that... Our politics has pretty much become a game of hot-potato: whoever gets in to power tries their hardest to ensure the housing bubble doesn't pop on their watch. When it does pop, it's going to be one for the history books, given how long they have kicked the can down the road. It's also pretty worrying to see state-level Chinese 'soft-power' being deployed in Australia, via our traitorous ex-politicians: - Andrew Robb, former Minister for Trade: 'consultant' for Landbridge Group (the Chinese company that was, for some insane reason, allowed to purchase a 99 year lease of the port of Darwin)[1]. - Bob Carr, former Foreign Minister: employed by the 'Australia China Relations Institute' at UTS, an 'independent' think tank on Aus-China relations (funded by the YuHu Group, the Chinese company that bribed Senator Sam Dastyari)[2] - Alexander Downer, former Foreign Minister and Former Opposition Leader: was appointed (but has since resigned) to the board of Huawei, the Chinese company banned as a supplier for the 'National Broadband Network' amid national security concerns [3]. Is now Australia's High Commissioner (ambassador) to the UK. - Bunch of others we are not currently aware of... I am by no means 'anti-China'. But Australia is at a point where it needs to have a serious conversation about how it reconciles its relationship with the US and its increasing economic dependence on China. There's also the small matter of national defence, an area thrown into disarray by the election of President Trump. But it's going to be hard to have a rational conversation, one that produces the best outcome for Australia, if half of the participants are traitorous, paid-up shills. [0] http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2016/09/firb-chairman-brain-wilson-must-resign-national-security/ http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2016/09/firb-chairman-brain-... [1] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-30/andrew-robb-joins-chinese-company-with-control-of-darwin-port/7978648 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-30/andrew-robb-joins-chin... [2] http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:c3JxEyTRKscJ:www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/foreign-affairs/bob-carrs-think-tank-operating-as-a-china-propaganda-arm/news-story/a6ed1b9355937b7cfa86301f58cd13f6+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:c3JxEyT... [3] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-10-30/danby-will-the-china-club-keep-the-huawei-ban/5057110 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-10-30/danby-will-the-china-c...

dmix 10y ago

This was a common fear in Vancouver and Toronto in Canada, but I remember reading that a study found foreign Chinese investment was only 5-10%, while playing a role it wasn't the primary issue everyone made it out to be. Can't find the link just now. I remember thinking they might have just been good at hiding the fact they were foreign by having their student kids or extended family who have moved here permanently buy the properties, or shell companies. Which wouldn't attract as much scrutiny. This is just speculation but it's good to be highly sceptical when people put all the blame on foreigners.

nostrademons 10y ago
5-10% of total housing stock, or 5-10% of houses on the market? Prices are set on the margin, reflected by the goods that are actively on the market, and at any given time only a small percentage of housing units are on the market. If 5-10% of total housing units are owned by Chinese nationals, and that percentage has grown rapidly in the last few years, it could easily translate to > 50% of real estate transactions.

trace303 10y ago

You've described the same exact situation that is unfolding in Vancouver, Canada.