[ranchlandsselling]

Originally Posted by lorenavedon

billionaire Chinese investors can't wait to get their money out of HK or the mainland. They will buy anything in any quantity regardless of the price because they're not investors. They're fleeing to safe assets. Even if they lose %20-%30 during a downturn it's still better than having their cash where it is now. This has already been document in articles in the NY Times and the wall street journal. This is why the Chinese have over taken the Russians in buying up apartments in Manhattan. They're buying anything that moves. Bob the $100,000/year engineer, his stay at home wife and 2 kids are not the ones buying up 20 units at a time in these developments. Condos are being treated like investment vehicles and commodities. This isn't about housing at all. When people understand this they will realize that when they buy to live, they're competing with people that have so much money the price is irrelevant. It's a bubble, it's completely inflated and not based on any type of real-estate or housing fundamentals. It's basic supply and demand. That is why in Toronto they're building complete garbage condos that are falling apart after 5 years because Chinese buyers will buy this stuff sight unseen and not care at all about that. It only hurts the people that need a place to live. Calgary hasn't gotten that bad yet but it's getting there fast. The biggest housing bubble in the history of humanity is currently in china, now that it's maxed out those that caused it are moving it over to hot markets around the world with stable governments. They did a number on Manhattan, London, Paris, Vancouver, Toronto, now it's moving to smaller but well off markets like Calgary.

Originally Posted by lorenavedon

plenty of people in Calgary from all over Canada that have no intention of making this city their home. They're here to churn it and burn it. make the money and GTFO when the pig sinks. Why? Because you can't get a job anywhere else in Canada. The economy is completely dead outside of alberta. These people are willing to pay a premium to rent and be able to bail out at any time. That is why rents are so high and about equal to purchasing. Everyone on planet earth knows Alberta is a boom/bust economy. The only people delusional enough to deny it is Albertans lol. They think this time it's different. It's not. The second oil and gas slows down the pig is toast. Everything depends on oil and gas. The home builders, the blue collar workers, IT companies, software companies, government workers, the girl at the mall selling you a pair of shoes. It's all because of oil and gas trickling down to other industries. When oil and gas slows, everything will shrivel up like a dying plant.

Originally Posted by lorenavedon

%100 economically driven. Nobody moves to Calgary "just to live here". People move to Vancouver, Manhattan, San Francisco, London, Paris, just to live there because those places are safe and will continue to have people wanting to move there regardless of how many jobs are in those cities. If Calgary economy crashes and there are no jobs here it will be like rats fleeing a sinking ship.

Good thing you're not one of those extremely opinionated housing guys, if you were I'm not sure anyone could take these vague generalized posts very seriously.

Oh no, look out for the "Chinese Billionaires" who want to buy $350k condo's and are pricing out the local engineers.

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/08...n_5718705.html

A recent study by Chinese real estate website Juwai concluded that Canadais the third-most attractive marketfor Chinese investors, after the U.S. and Australia.

Chinese investors spent $22 billion on American real estate in 2013, and $17.2 billion on Australian real estate. The U.S. National Association of Realtors recently released a report saying, like in Australia, China is the biggest sourceof foreign investment.

Given both Australia and US are bigger markets for Chinese Investment than Canada, if Canada was half of Aussie investment lets say $8.5 billion and we're also talking about investment in multi-million dollar houses and condos etc. in Vancouver and Toronto. That pie's not big enough to start making major waves in Calgary especially given it doesn't differentiate between commercial and residential real estate. The pie for Calgary residential real estate gets a lot smaller if we're also talking about commercial investment.

The fact is there's no hard data suggesting that what you claim is the least bit accurate.

Here's a good blog by the ever constant housing bear Garth Turner:
http://www.greaterfool.ca/2014/07/16/the-gullible/

He actually provides numbers for Victoria which could be extrapolated for Vancouver something you're doing in Calgary based on NOT having numbers for Vancouver or Toronto.

Actually we do have some numbers. No, they are not for Vancouver but instead the city of Victoria, which is a few puddles away. Turns out the Victoria Real Estate Board does keep track of who’s buying what where, and isn’t shy about sharing the results.
So here you go. In all of 2013, 5,862 properties changed hands (about a quarter of metro Vancouver’s volume).

Buyers who lived locally already: 74.92%
Buyers from elsewhere in BC: 13.77%
Buyers from elsewhere in Canada: 9.67%
Total buyers who live in Canada: 98.36%
Total buyers from outside Canada: 1.64%

You did hear the stories coming out of Vancouver about developers hiring local Asians to line up for condos outside their developments as well as the news stunt where they had a marketing crew take out a helicopter full of Asians "portraying" to be HAM. It's pretty old news and barely relevant a year or three later. But speaks to the sillyness of the whole discussion.