Heard today: A property in downtown Vancouver, assessed at 16 mil, was bought by the Wall Group (high profile developers) for 16 mil in 2014. In 2015, a crowd funded group of Chinese-Canadian investors, put together by a Chinese Canadian woman who has lost her realtor's license, bought it for 60 mil. They flipped it a month later to a Chinese-Canadian who has the same name, but not birthdate, as a notorious Chinese fraudster.

So what's going on here? The Wall Group is reputable. They made out like bandits, but I don't see how they did anything wrong except say yes to a windfall offer. The ultimate purchaser is a BC resident - why did he need the consortium to flip him the property, why not just buy it himself right away. If this is shady money being parked or laundered, why pay such a huge sum over the value? I can understand paying top dollar if you want to make a quick buy to park your money, but not almost 400 percent.

WTF?


Another deal is shadow flipping. A realtor approaches the owners of a house and says he has a buyer. The naive owners, in Vancouver's market, think they've struck gold. Meanwhile, the nominal purchaser assigns, ie flips the contract to second purchaser for a quick profit. This can happen several times before the closing date. So the final purchaser pays a lot more for the house, the sellers get far less than they could have for the property, the realtor gets a commission each time the house is flipped, and the middle men each make a quick buck on the deal.

Place is turning into a cess pool. Buyers have to make offers substantially over asking to have a hope of getting the place, and if they try to put subjects in the offer it's rejected. No inspection, no subject to financing. Crazy. And everybody is buzzing around, madly playing this game because they think they'll be left out if they don't.

   

Golly, and you guys thought the Alberta economy was built on quicksand.

   

Yeah when the bubble bursts its going to be like liquefaction.

Eventually, something is going to have to be done legislatively to curb this. Either occupancy requirements (like requiring homeowners to actually live in or rent the houses they own) or heavy surcharges on foreign buyers.

But something has to change or at this rate, Vancouver is going to become a ghost town where no one can afford to live save for the rich bastards on the North Shore and West Van. It's slowly killing the city. Cities need a steady influx of young professionals to sustain themselves and grow, but that won't happen if Vancouver is owned exclusively by rich foreigners looking for a guaranteed return on an investment.

And it's not just Vancouver. Where I live in Abby housing prices have gone up in the last two years from all of the priced out refugees from Vancouver and Surrey.