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A better title would be “absentee foreigners.” I think this is part of Airbnb blowback to some extent. Are these people really competing for even middle class h

A better title would be “absentee foreigners.” I think this is part of Airbnb blowback to some extent. Are these people really competing for even middle class housing? Seems weird to me. A few wealthy foreigners pipping millionaire Canadians for penthouses doesn’t really seem like a problem for normies. Am I understanding this wrong? Portugal is also de facto eliminating its “golden visa” which basically lets you be an absentee owner with residence, but it’s still easy to move there if you want to you know actually live there. Some countries are embracing this. Costa Rica just lowered its residence through real estate threshold to 150k USD.

brailsafe 4y ago
Middle class housing is a ridiculous investment vehicle in the primary few viable Canadian cities, and has provided wild returns to people who bought a few years ago, to the point where only the rich can really afford anything now. Even people who live in modest old 1 bedrooms that they bought a few years ago couldn't afford their own places if they needed to. It's not by any stretch exclusively wealthy foreigners influencing the market though, otherwise the government probably wouldn't be enacting any legislation that specifically targets them.
Tiktaalik 4y ago
I think yes this is the real concern. There's heaps of people from mainland china coming over here to retire in Vancouver, becoming a permanent resident and so forth. I don't think the government cares about that at all. The concern is the foreign investors with no interest in moving to Canada (read: foreign capital), people who look at secondary condo ownership in Hong Kong and get sticker shock and decide "oh I'll buy a bunch of condos in Canada instead." Worse than that are the super rich who were buying condos to leave empty as pied a terres and not even rent them out.

brailsafe 4y ago

Middle class housing is a ridiculous investment vehicle in the primary few viable Canadian cities, and has provided wild returns to people who bought a few years ago, to the point where only the rich can really afford anything now. Even people who live in modest old 1 bedrooms that they bought a few years ago couldn't afford their own places if they needed to. It's not by any stretch exclusively wealthy foreigners influencing the market though, otherwise the government probably wouldn't be enacting any legislation that specifically targets them.

Tiktaalik 4y ago

I think yes this is the real concern. There's heaps of people from mainland china coming over here to retire in Vancouver, becoming a permanent resident and so forth. I don't think the government cares about that at all. The concern is the foreign investors with no interest in moving to Canada (read: foreign capital), people who look at secondary condo ownership in Hong Kong and get sticker shock and decide "oh I'll buy a bunch of condos in Canada instead." Worse than that are the super rich who were buying condos to leave empty as pied a terres and not even rent them out.