26 birth houses identified used by Mainland Chinese.

[Bonam]

Interesting. Anti wage controls, pro rent controls. You're an odd duck, Tim.

How the heck did you get "rent controls" from what he said? Rent controls have been demonstrated time and time again to be probably the worst policy choice possible.

[cybercoma]

So price controls for selling but not rent controls for renting.

[Bonam]

So price controls for selling but not rent controls for renting.

No price controls for anything. But protecting domestic housing markets from excessive foreign investment when necessary, sure.

[TimG]

So price controls for selling but not rent controls for renting.

I said nothing about price controls. I said the government should limit the access that foreign investors have to the domestic housing market when the government determines that free access is undermining the primary purpose of the housing market: to provide housing to people who living AND work in the city.

[cybercoma]

"Protecting domestic markets" sounds a hell of a lot like controlling prices.

[TimG]

"Protecting domestic markets" sounds a hell of a lot like controlling prices.

Again, that is not what I said. I said the primary purpose of the housing market is to "provide housing to people who live AND work in the city.". The primary purpose of the housing market is not to be a vehicle to enrich investors looking for places to park their money. Limiting the market to those people that wish to live and work in the city simply ensures that whatever prices the market settles on it will be have some rational connection to what people living and working in the city can afford. If the local economy does well prices will rise. If it does poorly prices will fall. Edited August 26, 2016 by TimG

[Machjo]

Even without that new tax, the market was bound to pop eventually.

[eyeball]

I fail to see why. The only thing that will make our market pop now is if the environments and ecosystems "investors"'are fleeing become healthy and livable again. Quality of life is the real impetus behind most of the money moving to the west coast of North America.

[Bonam]

Even without that new tax, the market was bound to pop eventually.

People had been saying that about the Vancouver market for 2 decades. Still hasn't happened.

[dre]

Affordable housing *IS* the government's job. If the housing prices have gotten to the point where no one living and working in Vancouver can afford property then the government is right to step in an limit the ability of off shore investors, with no interest in living and working in Vancouver, to bid up the price of housing.

Its the governments own policies that caused the housing bubble. Foreign investors only play a tiny part. 10 years of dangerously low interest rates. Tripling the amount of CMHC backed mortgages... If the government wants to cool down the housing market, the central bank has the tools to do it.

I dont have a problem with limited foreign investment... But it wont fix this.

[TimG]

Foreign investors only play a tiny part.

They place a huge role because they change the dynamics of the market. When people are shopping for a home to live in they figure out what they can afford and find a place close to that limit. They don't have any ability to get into extreme bidding wars because they can't afford it. In the Vancouver market bidding wars are common and that is only because foreign buyers looking to park money are not that sensitive to price. This inflates prices way beyond a simple measure of the number of buyers.

I dont have a problem with limited foreign investment... But it wont fix this.

And you may be right. But the first step to fixing the problem is to deal with lighter fluid getting dumped on the fire. At the same time we should be looking at ways to cool the domestic demand for housing by increasing supply or further limiting access to government subsidized credit.

[Argus]

A year later and nothing is getting better.

Maternity hotels dot Canada’s major cities and, in some areas, are growing in number: In July 2016, health ministry investigators in B.C. counted 26 in the province—a threefold increase since 2009. While no such data has been made public for Ontario, Sunnybrook hospital in Toronto also reported an increase in foreign births in 2015, receiving women from China, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. In 2013, Montreal authorities said women from Haiti and French-speaking northern African countries “frequently” arrived to give birth in Canada.

Between March 2015 and March 2016, 295 of the 1,938 babies delivered at Richmond Hospital were to Chinese visitors

http://www.macleans.ca/society/health/why-women-are-coming-to-canada-just-to-give-birth/

[cannuck]

On 8/7/2016 at 9:53 AM, Argus said:

Everything about this country which is good owes itself to money. The Left, of course, don't like to admit that but it's true. You have to have economic success before you can have anything else good, before you can have social services the Left cherishes, for example, before you can have grandiose government funded projects and programs before you can have capable educational systems and institutions, and high quality health care. The higher the number of non-payers, or freeloaders in the system, the more the system bogs down, the higher taxes are raised on those remaining and the lower productivity plunges. Bringing over ever larger hordes of third world rabble who will not contribute much, if anything to the tax base, but will consume it instead, lowers the quality of living here.

Thank you.   That was very well put.