Real Estate

Vancouver housing bubble?

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Deal Expert
Jan 27, 2006
21844 posts
15620 upvotes
Vancouver, BC
Here's an interesting article from Business In Vancouver on the empty homes tax that Vancouver rolled out - Empty homes are fraction of City of Vancouver estimate: report
The City of Vancouver has found 2,538 vacant homes in its first empty-homes tax annual report – about one-tenth of the homes the city said were empty when it first promoted the tax, which has cost $10 million to implement.
This is a clear case of the same government moving the goal post/changing the definition on the same subject (in this case what an 'empty home' is) for one reason or another. The difference is crazy if you consider that the first estimate was off by 90% of the final numbers.
Deal Addict
Dec 27, 2006
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What should I pay attention to when filing taxes? Can I deduct tax on air tickets, accommodation, and transportation?"

"enjoy the government's complete medical and welfare system"
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Deal Addict
Dec 27, 2006
1985 posts
978 upvotes
craftsman wrote: Here's an interesting article from Business In Vancouver on the empty homes tax that Vancouver rolled out - Empty homes are fraction of City of Vancouver estimate: report



This is a clear case of the same government moving the goal post/changing the definition on the same subject (in this case what an 'empty home' is) for one reason or another. The difference is crazy if you consider that the first estimate was off by 90% of the final numbers.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/br ... e38246745/

Vancouver’s empty-homes tax might not affect as many homeowners as predicted
Published March 7, 2018
REUTERS
Rooftops of houses in the Kitsilano neighbourhood and the downtown core are seen in 2017. Vancouver announced a tax on vacant homes in 2016 as property values climbed by as much as 30 per cent in a single year.
CHRIS HELGREN/REUTERS
Almost 8,500 Vancouver homeowners either declared that their properties were empty for much of last year or failed to confirm that their units are occupied, making them potentially liable for paying the city's precedent-setting empty-homes tax.

However, that number is significantly lower than previous estimates of Vancouver's empty homes, which have long been blamed for constraining the city's housing supply and sending prices skyward. The discrepancy is sure to provoke accusations that either people are making false declarations or that the empty-homes crisis was never as bad as some claimed.

And the number of owners who actually pay Vancouver's empty-home tax – at a rate of 1 per cent of a property's assessed value – may end up being far less, because an unknown number of those owners have asked for exemptions, according to information released by the city Tuesday.

Story continues below advertisement

That means it's impossible to have a true picture of tax revenue, observers say.

"Until we find out if the exemptions are 500 or 5,000, it's difficult to say how much money the city will raise from this tax and how many people really are just banking in real estate here," said Michael Geller, an architect and developer.

Mr. Geller has been critical of the new tax because of the way it catches long-time B.C. residents with second-home condos in the city instead of true speculative investors.

The city announced a tax on vacant homes in 2016 as property values climbed by as much as 30 per cent in a single year. Average prices for detached homes in the city have climbed well above $2-million. The vacancy tax was in addition to a suite of provincial measures, notably a tax on foreign buyers, which was recently increased to 20 per cent, as well as a newly announced tax targeting out-of-province owners.

Property owners had until March 5 to declare whether their properties were occupied for at least half of last year. Owners can be exempted from the tax, even if they occupy the apartment or house only part-time and have a principal residence elsewhere, if the title changed hands during the year, if their strata doesn't allow rentals or if they work in Vancouver at least 180 days of the year, among other reasons.

Vancouver's new statistics put the number of declared empty or underused homes somewhat below the number that a citywide study of electrical use found two years ago.

That study pegged the number of houses and apartments with no sign of habitation for 12 months or more at 10,800.

Story continues below advertisement

It's also dramatically below a second number that gets used as a proxy for empty homes, the 25,502 units identified by the May 10, 2016, census as not occupied or occupied by foreign or temporary residents.

However, that figure was criticized for including a high number of basement suites, as well as suites likely rented to students during the university year and newly constructed apartment buildings or houses that haven't been occupied yet.

Of the owners whose homes were empty or underused, about 61 per cent were condos and 34 per cent were detached homes, with multifamily dwellings and other forms of housing making up the rest.

Those figures include about 2,100 homeowners who didn't file any declaration.

The city statistics showed that Coal Harbour had the highest number of apartments identified as empty or underused, with about 2,200 declarations from that area. That waterfront area next to Stanley Park has been marketed as a luxury second-home resort area for a couple of decades to people from around the world.

But the West End and Shaughnessy had the highest percentages, with 8 per cent of homes in those areas declared empty. Oakridge was next, with 228 homes declared empty, 6 per cent of the area.

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Shaughnessy resident Bob Angus was dubious about the numbers for his neighbourhood of 50 years. "That sounds pretty high to me," said Mr. Angus, noting that many houses might appear to be empty but aren't because the owners are spending the winter in the warm American South, as he is.

Simon Fraser University public-policy professor Josh Gordon said that, although the number of acknowledged empty homes appears low, it's still significant. "First, that's still a large number of units that have been identified. And that number won't reflect that units that have been encouraged back into the system."

Prof. Gordon also said the numbers "won't reflect those who are not honest" and who declared their home a principal residence or rented out when it wasn't.

Top neighbourhoods for vacant or underused homes in Vancouver

Homes where owners either declared their properties vacant or underused (occupied for less than half the year), or where owners did not make a declaration; includes homes where owners may still qualify for an exemption from the vacant home tax

Hastings-Sunrise
Marpole
Dunbar-Southlands
Kensington-Cedar Cottage
Mount Pleasant
Renfrew-Collingwood
Fairview
Kitsilano
West End
Downtown
254
272
350
352
418
424
486
598
735
2,244
254
THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: City of vancouver

×

Area Number empty/underused
Downtown 2244
West End 735
Kitsilano 598
Fairview 486
Renfrew-Collingwood 424
Mount Pleasant 418
Kensington-Cedar Cottage 352
Dunbar-Southlands 350
Marpole 272
Hastings-Sunrise 254
Top neighbourhoods for vacant or underused homes in Vancouver

download csv
Deal Addict
Dec 27, 2006
1985 posts
978 upvotes
https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/arti ... o-a-prison?

For Huawei CFO, an Idyllic Summer Playground Turns Into a Prison
Natalie Obiko Pearson
December 9, 2018, 11:59 AM EST

A home owned to Xiazong Liu, husband of Huawei CFO Wanzhou Meng, in Vancouver. Photographer: Ben Nelms/Bloomberg
Meng Wanzhou owns Vancouver vacation homes worth $16 million

Vancouver plays a special role for Meng Wanzhou, as it does for many a wealthy Chinese -- a place to park some assets, educate your children, and just let your hair down from time to time.

Meng -- chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies Co., a telecom equipment giant present in more than 170 countries -- would carve a few weeks out of her punishing travel schedule every year for a break in the Canadian city.

She’d time it for the summer, when her children would be there and when the city’s crystal waters and craggy mountains would emerge from 10 months of rain to be bathed in long, golden days of sunshine. Just last August, she was seen strolling through a local park, snapping photos with her in-laws.


A home owned to Xiazong Liu, husband of Huawei CFO Meng, in Vancouver.
Photographer: Ben Nelms/Bloomberg
Her place of retreat has now become a jail. On Dec. 1, Meng stepped off a Cathay Pacific flight from Hong Kong around noon, and had planned a 12-hour stopover in Vancouver before heading on to Mexico. Instead, she was arrested by Canadian authorities and faces a U.S. extradition request on charges she conspired to defraud banks, including HSBC Bank Plc, so that they unwittingly cleared millions of dollars in transactions linked to Iran, in violation of U.S. sanctions.

This time, her stay looks to become an extended one -- extradition cases can sometimes take years. Whether she spends that time in a cell or under house arrest may hinge in part upon her ties to Vancouver and if they’re considered deep enough to stop her from fleeing.

Meng’s bail hearing resumes Monday at 10 a.m. local time. It’s expected to last the whole day as her defense team calls witnesses, including security companies, to testify on ways to address flight risk.

“In essence, Ms. Meng vacations for two weeks in Vancouver -- I say that is not a meaningful connection to this jurisdiction,” Crown attorney John Gibb-Carsley said Friday at the six-hour bail hearing in Vancouver as more than 100 spectators watched from a glass-walled gallery.

Meng -- wearing a dark green sweat suit, her posture impeccable -- watched from the back of the courtroom with her interpreter, occasionally taking notes on a sheet of paper. The 46-year-old has an incentive to flee home to China, which has no extradition treaty with the U.S., and she has the vast resources and connections to remain out of reach indefinitely, Gibb-Carsley said.

Canada has long been a favored destination for millionaire migrants, and Vancouver, especially, for the Asian ones. But increasingly that’s been stoking tensions in a city awash in Chinese cash, with wealthy part-time residents blamed for property prices that have made Vancouver the most unaffordable city in North America.

Vancouver, The City That Had Too Much Money

Meng, who first visited Vancouver 15 years ago, bought a six-bedroom house with her husband Xiaozong Liu in 2009 that’s now assessed at C$5.6 million ($4.2 million), according to property records and an affidavit by Meng read aloud in court. In 2016 they bought a second property, a brick-and-glass mansion set in a 21,000-square-foot lot assessed at C$16.3 million. Purchased with mortgages from HSBC, she’s offered to post the family’s equity in both as part of her bail.

Meng and Liu live in Shenzhen with their 10-year-old daughter. She also has three sons from a previous marriage, one of whom attends a prep school in Massachusetts. If granted bail, the family would move into one of their Vancouver homes and the son in Massachusetts would join them for Christmas, Meng’s lawyer told the court.

Photographer: Dennis Zhe/Huawei Technologies Co.
Three of her four children have done part of their schooling in Vancouver, and they still spend weeks -- sometimes months -- in the city during summer. Meng, who also goes by the names Sabrina and Cathy, holds two passports, one from China and one from Hong Kong, and until 2009 also had Canadian permanent residency.

Her defense argues that those ties are substantive, and proposes she wait it out at one of her houses, under surveillance, tagged by a GPS device, and subject to unannounced police checks.

“She would not flee,” Meng’s defense lawyer David Martin responded. “She has a home here.”

Meng is the daughter of Huawei’s founder Ren Zhengfei, whose net worth was estimated at $3.2 billion, according to Gibb-Carsley. A million-dollar bail to that family is equivalent to a C$156 bail for an upper-middle class Canadian family with C$500,000 in assets, he said.

“I’m not saying that wealthy people can’t get bail,” said Gibb-Carsley. “But I’m saying in terms of magnitude to feel the pull of bail, we are in a different universe.”
Deal Addict
Apr 10, 2011
3914 posts
4767 upvotes
Canada
craftsman wrote: She has two homes. From the Global News footage, they are standard newish west side homes so $5 to $6 million apiece. We ain't talking about mansions. She also has a kid going to school here as well as her husband. It also turns out that she was a permanent resident here at some point.
It seems her facts are being updated...

"A home owned to Xiazong Liu, husband of Huawei CFO Wanzhou Meng, in Vancouver. (Bloomberg)
Meng Wanzhou owns Vancouver vacation homes worth $16 million"

I wonder what's going on in those homes, and her other 'family' homes in Vancouver that don't have her name on the title.

They'll probably use trusts or corporate numbers for those to remain more anonymous.

Pretty sure those occupants are all a little more known now by US and Canadian authorities.

What a difference two years can make. I wonder how much she likes Vancouver now?

How'd she get her $16M out of China when they limit outflows to $50k/year? Maybe she knows someone who knows people.

Why does someone spend $16M in Vancouver houses and claim to only spend 2 weeks each year visiting them? One week each house? Really?

That's (and they're) the problem. There are hundreds of them in greater Vancouver. They don't buy one house. They buy 5-10 houses, often saying "They're for future family members." The ultimate hoarding of a limited resource to benefit one family group from one country.

Tell me how their behaviour doesn't influence a small limited market like Vancouver.

.
Last edited by RxMills on Dec 9th, 2018 7:03 pm, edited 5 times in total.
Deal Expert
Jan 27, 2006
21844 posts
15620 upvotes
Vancouver, BC
RxMills wrote: It seems her facts are being updated...

"A home owned to Xiazong Liu, husband of Huawei CFO Wanzhou Meng, in Vancouver. (Bloomberg)
Meng Wanzhou owns Vancouver vacation homes worth $16 million"

I wonder what's going on in those homes, and her other 'family' homes in Vancouver that don't have her name on the title.

They'll probably use trusts or corporate numbers for those to remain more anonymous.

Pretty sure those occupants are all a little more known now by US and Canadian authorities.

What a difference two years can make. I wonder how much she likes Vancouver now?

How'd she get her $16M out of China when they limit outflows to $50k/year? Maybe she knows someone who knows people.
You can't be sure that either or both (or X number) of homes are indeed truly occupied. This links into that empty homes tax as well as income tax.... a family can't claim two principle residences in Canada at the same time so does that mean one of them is subject to the empty homes tax and if so, which one? And if you extend that out to overseas, if some spends the bulk of their time out of town, does that mean that their principle residence for tax purposes is also out of town?

As for outflow limits, the limits were applied recently so the family could have moved a lot of funds out years ago. You have to remember that her father founded the company and the company is multi-national so any un-patriated funds (ie not brought back into China) may have been part of her salary OR those company funds were used to purchase the houses. Laws and best practices of keeping private and company funds separate really only existing in Western countries.... The other possibility is there has been some grease money paid to get the funds out.
Deal Addict
Apr 10, 2011
3914 posts
4767 upvotes
Canada
"Police investigate break-in at Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou's Vancouver home"

More and more, it's becoming a Vancouver Real Estate story.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/canada/po ... -1.4211648

Vancouver police say the break-in was reported just before 5:30 a.m. at the home on West 28th Avenue and the suspects fled the area after being challenged by someone in the house.
Deal Expert
Jan 27, 2006
21844 posts
15620 upvotes
Vancouver, BC
RxMills wrote: "Police investigate break-in at Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou's Vancouver home"

More and more, it's becoming a Vancouver Real Estate story.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/canada/po ... -1.4211648

Vancouver police say the break-in was reported just before 5:30 a.m. at the home on West 28th Avenue and the suspects fled the area after being challenged by someone in the house.
I would bet that it may have been Chinese government operatives which were reminding the family where their loyalties lie and what may happen if they thought otherwise.
Deal Expert
Feb 22, 2011
16515 posts
21855 upvotes
Toronto
RxMills wrote: "Police investigate break-in at Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou's Vancouver home"

More and more, it's becoming a Vancouver Real Estate story.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/canada/po ... -1.4211648

Vancouver police say the break-in was reported just before 5:30 a.m. at the home on West 28th Avenue and the suspects fled the area after being challenged by someone in the house.
Vancouver RE story? This is a battle over tech supremacy. China is trying to shrug off the cheap product reputation and become a leader in tech. American companies have billions on the line to make sure that doesn't happen. Not a coincidence older iphones just got banned from selling in China.
Deal Guru
Feb 9, 2009
12381 posts
11307 upvotes
RxMills wrote: "Police investigate break-in at Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou's Vancouver home"

More and more, it's becoming a Vancouver Real Estate story.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/canada/po ... -1.4211648

Vancouver police say the break-in was reported just before 5:30 a.m. at the home on West 28th Avenue and the suspects fled the area after being challenged by someone in the house.
this is why i hate the media, what the hell would you make a private address public like that? I hope she sues their ass for this...
Deal Addict
Apr 10, 2011
3914 posts
4767 upvotes
Canada
Sanyo wrote: this is why i hate the media, what the hell would you make a private address public like that? I hope she sues their xxx for this...
The Vancouver Sun was even more specific...

"The house in the 4000-block of W. 28th Avenue is owned by the husband of Meng Wanzhou."

https://vancouversun.com/news/local-new ... -executive

Nice mansions in a very private area, right near St. Georges Private Boys School.

Sue? I don't think she could.

BC land and property titles are public information.

Plus, her lawyer and private security company have repeatedly been disclosing in court documents her houses/properties.

Lastly, 911 calls may also be public.
Deal Expert
Jan 27, 2006
21844 posts
15620 upvotes
Vancouver, BC
RxMills wrote: The Vancouver Sun was even more specific...

"The house in the 4000-block of W. 28th Avenue is owned by the husband of Meng Wanzhou."

https://vancouversun.com/news/local-new ... -executive

Nice mansions in a very private area, right near St. Georges Private Boys School.

Sue? I don't think she could.

BC land and property titles are public information.

Plus, her lawyer and private security company have repeatedly been disclosing in court documents her houses/properties.

Lastly, 911 calls may also be public.
AND (may be the most important thing) this isn't the US where you probably could sue over the publication of public information! :)
Sr. Member
Jul 26, 2015
517 posts
604 upvotes
Vancouver, BC
The LTSA system in BC allows ANYONE to search for properties owned by a certain person in the province for $11-16 depending on the service subscription. You put in the owner’s name and get all the properties he or she (or a company) owns in the province. It’s that simple. The information is for sale. No privacy.
Sr. Member
Jul 26, 2015
517 posts
604 upvotes
Vancouver, BC
craftsman wrote: AND (may be the most important thing) this isn't the US where you probably could sue over the publication of public information! :)
Unfortunately there is no privacy for property owners in BC. All the information is less than $20 away, officially.
Sr. Member
Jul 26, 2015
517 posts
604 upvotes
Vancouver, BC
Sanyo wrote: this is why i hate the media, what the hell would you make a private address public like that? I hope she sues their ass for this...
Searching for any property ownership details in BC is way too easy and the cost is similar to getting a combo at a fast food chain.
Deal Guru
Feb 9, 2009
12381 posts
11307 upvotes
Sam286 wrote: Searching for any property ownership details in BC is way too easy and the cost is similar to getting a combo at a fast food chain.
Yes I agree but how many were looking before this?

It’s likely the burglar was some low life criminal and not a top dog criminal who, if they wanted too, could get in and out without breaking a sweat.
Sr. Member
Jul 26, 2015
517 posts
604 upvotes
Vancouver, BC
Sanyo wrote: Yes I agree but how many were looking before this?

It’s likely the burglar was some low life criminal and not a top dog criminal who, if they wanted too, could get in and out without breaking a sweat.
Well, there are many ways to look at this “burglary”. This unfortunate event pretty much makes everything at the house inadmissible as evidence since there was a possibility of a third party tampering with it.
Deal Expert
Jan 27, 2006
21844 posts
15620 upvotes
Vancouver, BC
Sam286 wrote: Well, there are many ways to look at this “burglary”. This unfortunate event pretty much makes everything at the house inadmissible as evidence since there was a possibility of a third party tampering with it.
According to Global, there was a cleaning crew at the house today so I'm sure everything was 'scrubbed' clean.

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