BuryTheLedeVeryVery
DeepVille
From the very bottom of Joanne-Lee Young and Rob Shaw's recent Vancouver Sun piece on the 'critics' response to the Wizards of Clarklandia's "pretend-to-do-something-but-not-really-anything-actually" release of 'foreign' buyers of Lotuslandian dirt and sky in June:
...The Liberal government’s abrupt release of data marked yet another shift in its position on a hot topic file that’s expected to play a prominent role in the May 2017 provincial election.
Just a few months ago, de Jong has said he’d need between six months and a year to analyze the foreign buyer data before drawing conclusions, but Thursday he admitted the public wasn’t willing to wait that long before seeing the data.
It also marked a continued softening of government’s long-held reluctance to intervene in the housing market amid intense public pressure.
The Liberals had at one point all but ruled out a tax on foreign purchases in the real estate market, arguing the government has long encouraged foreign investment in the provincial economy.
Now, de Jong is willing to analyze the impact of a foreign buyer’s tax and whether it would simply generate money for the government or actually reduce foreign housing purchases.
Premier Christy Clark has said all options are on the table, and last week revoked the real estate industry’s ability to police itself amid concerns of unethical practices among some realtors.
The government is also now seriously entertaining Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson’s proposal for a vacant home tax, which last year the premier appeared to dismiss with a counter-argument that cities should reduce red tape and speed up approvals for new housing developments.
So.
What, exactly, is the point that Ms. Young and Mr. Shaw are trying to make by telling us all these things/options on the table that the Wizards of Clarklandia are now suddenly 'willing to analyze' and 'seriously entertain'?
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I'll save my take for all this for the comments.
Hey...If you haven't been over to Laila's today yet, head on over and read her great piece on the very real human toll of this disgraceful bus pass clawback from our fellow citizens that need (and deserve) our help most.
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Links to the Press Release AND the Report
http://blogborgcollective.blogspot.ca/2016/07/bc-mls-home-sales-activity.html
thought it was the comedy hour when Mickie dedumbdumb did his act, gee only 5% of homes bought by foreigners from Communist China. gee, now is he going to tap dance, not so much. blamed municipal government for not green lighting more development. How is that a plug for all the developers who so generously donated to the B.C. Lieberals. Ya, its the municipal government's fault for not permitting more building. Nice try mickie, but I'm not buying.
Municipal governments are smart to take their time. They have to ensure there are enough building inspectors to cover all the building being done first of all. They have to ensure the development suits the area, not just the developers dreams of big profits. they want to ensure they have the infrastructure to support more housing. You know mikie, things like SCHOOLs, hospitals, police, fire, roads, day care, etc. Oh, right its the Christy clark school of development: build, build, build and when the peasants scream for schools promise them something some day. In the meantime make sure there are lots of private schools.
what Mikey doesn't seem to get is why would municipal governments and neighbourhoods permit more building when it doesn't get purchased by locals. why disrupt your neighbourhood/city for a bunch of millionaires from Communist China?
We need only look south to the Silcon valley where the largest mass eviction in the State is taking place. 600 renters being given the boot so taller buildings with higher rents can be built. Rents are currently $2K per month for a 2 bedroom. People are considering moving 150 miles away to find affordable housing.
As smaller apartment buildings are bought up by developers who evict tenants and build new more expensive condos, where will all these renters go? On the streets? To tent cities? We like the Silicon Valley will become a city of haves and working people (under $72K) a year will have to make do or move to make way for the rich and foreign.
No Mikey I'm not buying your line of drivel. We don't need more buildings for well to do or just obscenely rich foreigners. We need to stop the buying of our homes by foreigners. End of story.
Funny how the MSM was low key on disbelievers. The Minister said less than 5% foreign ownership after a 19 day reporting period. That 5% is the exact same number of public that believe him.
" “No. Absolutely not,” said an incredulous Byron Burley, Shanghai-based vice-president of Chinese-language juwaii.com, China’s largest foreign residential real estate search engine. “It is way, way higher than that.” Burley noted that millions of Chinese nationals use his site, which has from 3,000 to 5,000 residential listings from B.C. at any time."
" “I would say 50% of house buyers, maybe 60% [are foreigners],” said Eve Chuang of Macdonald Realty.
Chuang and other agents at the AREAA conference said it is not the nationality of the buyer but the source of the capital that is important. "
And just think these people are in the industry. The Liberals must use it's own experts ie: Bob Rennie.
Guy in Victoria
https://www.biv.com/article/2016/7/asian-real-estate-conference-ridicules-government-/
antone tired of last 15 years of reactive diasater management?
at war with public perhaps?
My take?...
The fine folks at the VSun were fed meaningless insider accessed information so that said info would then be floated so that public reaction could then be gauged.
That way the Wizards reckon they can get a feel for how much further they need to go with their limited hangout.
Put another way...This call for regulation and a recognition of a 5% problem is not the big, big change/turnabout by the Clarklandians that the local proMedia is telling the rubes that it is.
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It’s probably higher, but even if the $400 million figure for 19 days is representative of the actual foreign influx, that works out to over $7.6 billion per year. Is Mikey trying to tell us that it has nothing to do with BC’s “booming” economy? In less than the time it would take to build the LNG infrastructure proposed by Petronas, the total influx would be more than the total $36 billion the BC Liberals say will be invested in that project.
The government gets the property transfer tax on this amount. How much is that? $250 million per year just on the influx? Would the budget be balanced without it?
And don’t forget, when the foreign interest buys a home from a BC homeowner, that existing homeowner invariably will then buy a replacement, and the seller of that replacement will do the same, and on and on spreading throughout the province. Real estate fees and property transfer tax galore, all triggered by the foreign “investor”. Real estate sales aren’t booming because of the great economy, the economy is booming because of the great influx of foreign real estate dollars.
But here’s the rub. When the foreign investor shows up, he or she doesn’t bring a home to the party like the existing citizen participants do. So every home purchased and parked by the foreign investor essentially reduces the inventory. Take at least $7.6 billion worth of inventory off the market each year, and it doesn’t take long until there’s a shortage and what’s left is overpriced except for the foreigner looking for a place to park some cash. As we are now finding out, despite the best efforts of the usual suspects.
From a recent Province article:
"When a B.C. home is sold, the government takes a percentage cut. The higher the price, the more the government collects.
With prices soaring, the government is making a transfer-tax killing: an astonishing $1.49 billion in the last fiscal year, a 40-per-cent increase in one year.
The transfer-tax take was $562 million more than the government budgeted at the start of the year, allowing the Liberals to balance the books and giving Clark a key re-election talking point.
How big is this pot of money? It’s more than the government got from lotteries and casinos. More than the carbon tax. More than tobacco. More than liquor. More than royalties from forestry, mining and natural gas combined."
http://www.theprovince.com/mobile/story.html?id=11993565
Of political abuse in BC
Hugh--
Or, put another way, the pot is 'bamboozle-the-rubes-into-believing-the-budget-is-balanced' big.
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Distraction, Dysfunction, & Dissonance,delete,deny,discredit
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