Tag: URBANISM

We’ve all heard anecdotes about global capital and foreign ownership. I recently wrote about the market externalities affecting my own community of Strathcona. A well-financed west-side investor set about purchasing a number of homes in the neighbourhood: in cash, with no subjects or conditions, and always over the asking price.

Strathcona has a limited land base, maybe 350 detached homes in all, and this particular investor may have purchased a dozen of them—about 5 per cent.

Coincidentally, five per cent is about the same number that the BC Real Estate Association claim as the relatively insignificant amount of foreign ownership in Vancouver. A little higher at 5.8 per cent is the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s figure for percentage of foreign ownership in the downtown peninsula.

Housing affordabilty in Vancouver isn’t really news, of course. Since the federal government stopped funding new social housing in 1993, we’ve seen increasing pressure on low income Vancouverites. Today, after fifteen years of low interest rates and steadily increasing housing prices in Vancouver, what was once a social justice issue for this city’s most vulnerable and their allies, is increasingly taking its toll on middle-income owners — and the politicians and pundits are taking notice.