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Old Posted Jun 10, 2011, 4:32 PM
twoNeurons twoNeurons is offline
loafing in lotusland
 
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: Lotusland
Posts: 6,026
It is of note that the majority of buyers are local. However, perpetuating things like "The Chinese are buying everything" does one thing really well. It scares people. It scares people into thinking that the current market is normal and sustained by foreign buyers. As a result, people are scared into thinking that if they don't buy now they'll be priced out forever.

Mainland China scares people. I'd hazard a guess that you can pin a lot of the inflated price, not on the actual foreign buyers, but on the perception that people have of them. The same rhetoric is printed in the paper over and over and over. Eventually, people believe it. You never EVER see cold hard numbers about how many buyers are foreign. YOU ONLY EVER SEE ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE or short pieces focused on one sector.

Why? Is it because these numbers don't exist? Come on. Let's face it, the real estate industry is trying to find an angle to claim that "Vancouver's different" and that "Vancouver is a special case". The reality is quite sobering, when you really come to think about it... We, the people, are responsible for our own state.
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