[URBAN NOTE] The SCMP on the problems with the Vancouver housing market

[rfmcdonald]

Writing for the South China Morning Post's The Hongcouver blog, Ian Young argues that Vancouver's real estate market is uniquely unaffordable to new entrants largely because of the impact of wealthy investors. Vancouverites and other West Coasters, thoughts?

One position states there’s nothing particularly unusual about Vancouver’s housing situation. Yet this He doesn't have a million either.neglects the fact that the city’s unaffordability is now globally exceptional, exceeded only by that of Hong Kong.

Foreign money might be a factor, concede some, but it must similarly influence other markets, right? Not really – since immigration data demonstrates that the influx of rich immigrants to Vancouver (80 per cent of them Chinese) is unmatched by any other city in the world, at least in terms of wealth-migration schemes that clearly define asset benchmarks.

Others seek to frame unaffordability as inevitable, since Vancouver is a city of limited land supply. But plenty of other cities are in the same boat: New York and Singapore spring to mind. Both are expensive cities, but Vancouver has left them in the dust in terms of unaffordability. If Vancouver (price/income ratio 10.6) could achieve the affordability of New York (6.1), or Singapore (5.0) I’m betting that Eveline Xia would be dancing down Main Street.

Surely Vancouver has always been unaffordable? A quick check of the stats will show that as recently at 10 years ago, Vancouver’s price/income ratio was in dancing territory, at 5.3.

[. . .]

An exceptional cause must be found for an exceptional situation, and for Vancouver, that can be found quite easily in wealth migration, which exploded in the past decade.