[ranchlandsselling]

Originally Posted by bizkitgto

I don't think comparing Vancouver to Victoria is relevant....just walk through coal harbour any night and you'll see how one of the densest neighborhoods in the country has almost no foot traffic or business. Locals either individually buy on behalf of foreigner's or set up small companies to purchase real estate, which is why it's so difficult to track foreign ownership in this country - there's always a loop hole!

The Toronto condo boom has been proven to be over-run by foreign money, companies set up in Canada (mostly by Canadians by the way) searching for investor's in Dubai, Moscow, Shanghai etc - these guys are buying up blocks of 50 - 100 condo units at a time. This issue has been well documented all over the news. This has spurred a massive condo boom (I think TO has the most building construction planned in North America right now), and resulted in many average Joe's caught in the middle with over-priced units that are unfortunately built very poorly..... I don't think we can apply what's going on in Toronto to Calgary.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/...0S70CP20141013

http://marketbusinessnews.com/condo-...projects/35604

Same story different poster.

We're not talking about construction quality as that has nothing to do with it. Calgary had the same crappy issues with a condo boom in the 90's and tons of new houses built in the most recent boom by any hammer jockey some builders could find to build their houses.

Your articles mention "no one really knows about foreign investment, could be 5% could be 50%". So until anyone proves otherwise it's a sexy story that's getting old and not sexy.

Comparing ACTUAL numbers of Victoria sales to Vancouver sales makes 100x more sense than comparing made up or unknown numbers for Vancouver and Toronto and applying them to Calgary. Do you not follow that point? There is no numbers for Vancouver and Toronto. So you have nothing to compare.

The people claiming foreign money buying Canadian real estate don't care about quality, don't live in the units/homes and only are buying for a cash safe haven. So then applying information about Victoria and saying Asian buyers wouldn't buy there isn't supportive of the argument that Asians without a care in the world are buying real estate across Canada without discrimination "sight unseen". Either they care or they don't. Not they care and wouldn't buy in Victoria because the stats suggest otherwise but they don't care elsewhere.... No wait; it's the stable and boring banking system they care about. So why would Victoria, the closest major city to Vancouver and even closer to ASIA be so unattractive.

Finally, what's the matter if it even is happening? The rental stock in Calgary is pathetic. The downtown core was pathetic (slowly improving). Money flocking in and buying condo's creates a demand for condos. If they overbuild condo's as a result and they end up rented out that's good for the rental market that we're lacking. Ditto for Toronto with a vacancy of 1% (quoted in one of your articles). And if they flip in 5-10 years and the market was overbuilt or over bought, guess what? Prices will go down.

Home ownership in Canada was at 69% in 2011. Calgary has historically been higher than other cities in Canada and was at 74% the same year. Given how much Calgary has boomed over the years 75% of those people have been buying houses. That’s what’s been driving prices along with low interest rates and good incomes. The condo market is pretty small compared to SFH's in Calgary, so it's mostly been hitting the SFH market, and that's why prices are where they are.
From the CREA

The housing market’s strength is significant enough that it prompted CREA to boost its forecast for sales this year. It now expects 475,000 existing homes will sell in 2014, up 3.8 per cent from last year (457,000). In June, it expected that number to be 463,400

CMHC shows 300,000 new completions in 2013 (house & multi)

That’s 757,000 sales in Canada in 2013.

And here’s a stat from Altus

The Altus Group report estimates that there were about 300,000 first-time buyers in Canada per year on average in 2009-2013. About half of them were in the 25-34 year age group with the median age of 34. Single-person households accounted for about one in five first-time buyer sales.

So, we’ve accounted for 40% of home sales (300,000 approximately) going to first time home buyers and we’ve got 457,000 remaining homes to account for which is about the same amount of existing homes sold. All those people obviously had to move somewhere. Some probably left, some probably rented, but given home ownership rates in Canada AT LEAST 75% of them probably bought a house accounting for at least 48.75% of the houses sold in 2013. That leaves a very conservative 11.25% unaccounted for (probably much less). There’s plenty of Canadian investors, US investors, as well as Asian buyers (because no one is denying they exist). But what’s left over isn’t going to be statistically significant enough to drive home prices out of reach of average Canadians. If anything is going to do that it’s Canadians that are putting too much faith in the value of housing.