Quote:
Originally Posted by SutterBrother
The first two of these I read were of a Chinese woman who owned a million dollar apartment, but is living in China (so it's vacant) and of a couple who "left Canada for work".
This feels symptomatic of foreign wealth using real estate in Canada as an investment, and driving regular Canadians out of the market in places like Toronto and Vancouver.
They are victims no doubt, and didn't deserve this. But perhaps if you lived in your home, this sort of fraud would be less likely to occur?
Is the solution simply occupancy?
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It obviously would be much less likely in cases where homeowners are living in the home, but saying it's symptomatic of 'foreign wealth' doing things that harm 'regular Canadians' is just inserting separate grievances and bias into the topic.
It it can happen with anyone who is renting a property and not there to watch it all the time. One of the cases reported recently was of an elderly homeowner who went into a care home and was renting his property. The fraudsters rented the property using fake identities and instead of moving in just put it on the market and used their access to show it to potential buyers. Canadians who own a home but go overseas for work are also by no means necessarily 'foreign wealth'.
A similar thing is happening here in Vancouver with parking spots where vacant parking spots in residential buildings have had usage rights 'sold' or rented by people who don't own the space. Is the problem that those owners just don't have cars, and everything would be fixed if they just had a car and parked it there?
The problem is the criminals themselves, lack of awareness of this risk by victims, and knowledge/use of measures to prevent it.