Sara Harowitz
Other

Vancouver‘s latest stab at innovative and affordable housing (after laneway homes and shipping container homes) comes in a more unexpected form: a jail.

The former Remand Centre (250 Powell St.) in downtown Vancouver is being turned into a seven-floor unit of affordable housing for marginalized and vulnerable community members.

The project is a collaborative effort between BC Housing, the government, BladeRunners, The Bloom Group, CPA Development Consultants, and Henriquez Partners Architects. The finished product will feature 96 self-contained housing units.

The jail, which was built in 1981 to hold those waiting to appear in court, was closed in 2002. Funnily enough, the original was designed by Henriquez Partners Architects founding partner Richard Henriquez. The redesign, led by the same firm, is in the hands of his son, Gregory.

“We have worked hard to get it off the ground and know it will make an enormously valuable impact on the DTES community, providing stability and dignity to at risk aboriginal youth, women at risk of homelessness and others struggling to build better lives,” Gregory Henriquez told The Huffington Post B.C. in an email. “That my father designed the original detention centre further personalizes this project for me – I’m proud to be breathing new life into his original design.”

“Ninety-five per cent of the kids we work with are homeless when they first start the program,” BladeRunners’ Garry Jobin told Global News. “Our need for affordable, stable housing is unbelievable.”

The rest of the units will be available to women at risk of homelessness and those in low income households. Priority will go to those who already live or work in the Downtown Eastside. There will also be a community garden and a multi-purpose space.

The multi-million dollar project (which is receiving funding from three levels of government) will be managed by The Bloom Group.

“We were really interested in having [the project] be something that we could support and make an asset in our community,” The Bloom Group’s director of resource development and communications Lesley Anderson told The Huffington Post B.C.

While the project was first announced back in 2011, people were reminded of it last week when BC Housing tweeted some photos of the building and its progress.

Anderson says tenancy applications will be open in winter 2015, with people taking residence in spring 2015.

“Lots going on right now,” she says. “[It’s] pretty exciting.”

Copyright © 2014 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc

Lori Pinkowski
Other

The ever-popular topic of real estate in Vancouver is showing no sign of letting up, as it continues to dominate headlines.

For example, the long time controversial program that gave immigrant investors a fast-track to citizenship has now been abolished as of the 2014 federal budget. Most applications were headed for B.C., and as a result I expect Vancouver’s high end housing and condo markets to see downward pressure on prices. This is yet another reason to think twice before buying real estate for investment purposes.

Contrary to what investment industry professionals recommend, Statistics Canada shows that half of our country’s personal wealth is now sunk in property. Many Canadians continue to feel that the real estate market is safer and will give a better return over the long run compared to the stock market; however, there are a number of reasons why investors should reconsider this notion.

There have been times in the past, particularly in Vancouver, where one could see annual double digit returns from property. Unfortunately this appears to be changing and real estate investors need to be prepared for lower returns over the next decade. For those in disbelief, consider a report from TD Bank projecting an annual rate of return to be roughly two per cent for real estate over the next decade when taking inflation into account. In my opinion, better returns can be achieved by investing in stocks over the same period.

When it comes to rental properties, many believe you can generate a great deal of extra income from this type of investment. Unfortunately many rentals are barely cash flow positive, as the expenses and mortgage payments are higher than the income generated. The trouble is, the amount you get paid from your tenants isn’t necessarily your return, it’s what you are making after expenses and mortgage payments. Once you’ve factored in the headaches of being a landlord, it can make the experience all the more undesirable.

When you look at your ability to “get defensive,” a stock portfolio is actually safer. For example, when the U.S. housing market crashed, many people were stuck with real estate that they couldn’t unload. Consider how long it can take to sell a home and the actual cost in selling it? With an investment portfolio of stocks and bonds, you can quickly sell at any time, raising cash in a single day if necessary.

Many investors worry about possible volatility and the uncertainty associated with investing in the stock market. It’s a strange love affair Canadians have with real estate – no one worries about the value of their home daily, therefore why stress out over the fluctuations in stocks on such a regular basis. It’s normal and healthy for the stock market to rise and fall (as we’ve seen recently) and as long as you have an active investment strategy in place to protect your portfolio from a significant decline, then you should feel comfortable with your investments in the long run.

The bull market for real estate may be losing steam, so re-evaluate your investments going forward and don’t get stuck attached to the rear view mirror.

Lori Pinkowski is a portfolio manager and senior vicepresident, Private Client Group, at Raymond James Ltd., a member of the Canadian Investor Protection Fund. This is for informational purposes only and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of Raymond James. Lori can answer any questions at 604-915-LORI or [email protected]. You can also listen to her every Friday on CKNW at 5:35 p.m.

© North Shore News

TARA PERKINS
Other

The number of existing homes changing hands in Canada softened for the fifth month in a row in January, but prices continue their upward climb.

Sales of homes over the Multiple Listing Service dropped 3.3 per cent from December to January on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to data released Friday by the Canadian Real Estate Association, which represents the bulk of the country’s real estate agents.

January’s sales were 0.4 per cent above those during January of 2013. Sales activity has fallen 9.1 per cent since its peak in August, the association said. In part it blames weather.

“A number of buyers likely waited out January’s deep freeze before going house hunting, particularly where I’m from in Southern Ontario,” CREA president Laura Leyser stated in a press release.

The majority of Canadian cities saw sales decline in January both from December and a year earlier.

The local real estate board in Vancouver, where the market was in a steep slump a year ago, reported earlier this month that January’s sales were 30.3 per cent higher than a year earlier but down 9.9 per cent from December. Sales in the Vancouver area remain 7.2 per cent above the 10-year average. Sales in Calgary, which is currently one of the strongest markets in the country, were up 17 per cent from a year ago, marking the best showing for January since 2008. But sales in Toronto were down 2.2 per cent from a year earlier, and sales in Ottawa were virtually the same – with five more houses selling and 10 fewer condos than January 2013.

Realtors remain optimistic that the chill on the market will subside.

“Canadian housing market performance in January was a weather report of sorts, with January’s Polar Vortex having dented both resale activity and new construction,” CREA chief economist Gregory Klump stated in a press release. “We’ll be keeping a close eye on February’s numbers for signs of a rebound in Southern Ontario, where sales reflected deferred home purchases due to cold weather rather than home buyers getting cold feet.”

Nationally there was 6.4 months of inventory (the length of time it would take to sell the number of homes currently for sale on the market at the current rate of sales) in January, up from 6.3 months at the end of December.

Despite the softening, prices continued their trek upwards. The average price that homes sold for in January was 9.5 per cent higher than a year earlier, at $388,553.

“Prices remain surprisingly sturdy,” Bank of Montreal economist Doug Porter wrote in a research note. “However, given the sustained slowdown in sales, we would continue to look for an eventual cool-down in price gains. The old rule of thumb is that prices follow sales with about a six-month delay.”

The MLS Home Price Index, which seeks to account for changes in the location or type of homes that are selling to create a more apples-to-apples comparison, was up 4.8 per cent. Calgary and Toronto had the largest increases. The Vancouver area has now seen year-over-year price gains for three months in a row, on the heels of more than a year of price declines.

The Canadian government has taken numerous steps to cool the housing market. While that’s dented sales it’s the rise in prices that keeps tongues wagging among international economists, policy makers and pundits who continue to debate the degree to which home prices here are overinflated.

Earlier this week the Teranet-National Bank house price index showed that prices rose more than economists had expected in January, reaching a new high and marking the strongest gain in prices for the month of January since 2010.

“No doubt the frigid temperatures and heavy snowfall across much of the country prevented many from diving in to the January market,” Toronto-Dominion Bank economist Francis Fong wrote in a research note. “As such, when the spring thaw (finally) makes its way across Canada, a bounce back in sales activity would be entirely unsurprising. Indeed, the upcoming spring market could get an additional boost as prospective buyers lock-in to the recent pullback in mortgage rates.”

© Copyright 2014 The Globe and Mail Inc.

Garry Marr
Other

The rental housing market has “passed it peak” but condominium investors can probably rest easy because vacancy rates will only edge up slightly, says a new report.

CIBC says all those real estate bears waiting for the property market to crash may be out of luck.

“Canadian real estate bears are patient. For more than half a decade they have been waiting for the inevitable crash in the Canadian housing market, only to be disappointed by a defying market,” said Benjamin Tal, deputy chief economist of CIBC, in the report. “The market will be tested by higher interest rates. But as things stand now, those bears will have to continue to wait as interest rates are likely to remain low well into 2015.”

CIBC says despite the fact Toronto has 64,000 condo units under construction — up to half of them could end up rented out — it doesn’t expect that to have a significant impact on rental rates. The report estimates Toronto will see about 11,500 new rental units per year, about 1,000 more than are needed based on household growth. He suggests an analysis of the Vancouver market reveals very similar results.

“Such excess supply will raise vacancy rates in the condo space by an estimated 0.3% to 0.4% in both cities in the coming years,” says Mr. Tal. “That is not large enough a damage to derail the market or lead to a substantial softening in rental inflation.”

Related

The other determinant of rental rates is demand and the report says growth for rental units has probably peaked from levels reached in 2012 and 2013.

Mr. Tal suggests the real challenge for investors in the coming years will be higher financing or opportunity costs as mortgage rates eventually rise. Five-year fixed rate mortgages have headed back to about 3% as bond yields have dropped in the past few weeks.

He suggests while there will be a correction but it will be “much gentler” than what is feared by some. That fear is based on a view the increase in supply of rental units will flood the market and force investors to sell in a panic.

“Our assessment of demographically-driven demand for rental units reveals a market that has passed its peak,” said Mr. Tal. “Vacancy rates will probably rise in the coming years and rent inflation will ease. But a careful analysis of the magnitude of the projected supply/demand mismatch suggests a much gentler adjustment than feared by many.”

© Copyright (c) National Post

Other

Vancouver‘s property moguls are in a tailspin following this week’s federal budget decision to cut off the valuable Immigrant Investor Program that has proved hugely popular with wealthy Asians looking to move to Canada.

The scheme offered visas to business people with a net worth of at least $1.6 million who were willing to lend $800,000 to the Canadian government for a period of five years. It proved so popular that the Canadian government froze all applications in 2012 to try and clear the massive backlog. There are still some 59,000 applications unprocessed that will now be declined with all monies refunded.

News that the program is to be axed has raised some uncomfortable questions in the Lower Mainland, as pundits scramble to figure out just how much fuel the system added to the ever-rising local property market.

Immigration lawyer Richard Kurland told the South China Morning Post that he thought the government had thrown “the baby out with the bathwater” and that a better way forward would have been to improve the scheme, rather than scrap it completely.

He expects there to be a dramatic effect on the local real estate market, with the luxury end being most under threat.

“The immediate impact is a heads up to Vancouver real estate agents, who have to expect a reduction in demand for top-end properties,” he told the newspaper. “Until the ‘for sale’ signs pop up on Vancouver lawns like mushrooms, then the locals won’t twig to what is going to hit.”

In an interview with The Vancouver Sun, Kurland noted the possibility that a new program may yet be put in place, with the price of admission being raised from $800,000 to something closer to $2 million.

Vancouver‘s “condo king,” developer Bob Rennie, also thinks a fix is likely in the works, telling Metro News that he foresees a tightening up of residency requirements.

Rennie cautioned against overstating the effects the news will have on the Vancouver property market, noting that the sales likely to be affected would be in the $2.1 million-and-above category.

“The statistic that you should know is from 2006 to 2012, 69 per cent of all home sales in Greater Vancouver have been to people that already own a home,” he said. “Only 31 per cent of sales have been to first-time buyers, or new immigrants from offshore, so 69 per cent of the market is pretty stable.”

Realtor Lorne Goldman told CTV News that the market may wobble in the immediate aftermath of the decision, but he wasn’t worried about the long term.

“This is a blip and Vancouver will get over it. It’s still a great place to live and people will still want to come here,” he said. “There might be a slight slowdown in the super high end of the market for a few months until it sorts itself out.”

Copyright © 2014 TheHuffingtonPost

Matthew Collis
Other

Real estate is all about relationships. How well you build, grow and maintain them greatly impacts your success in the industry, particularly as it pertains to referrals and repeat business. Using your real estate contact management software, here are four creative ways to keep in touch with past clients that supplement conventional forms of staying in contact such as face-to-face meetings, phone calls, email and direct mail.

I recommend you take a multi-channel approach to communications and make sure you’re reaching out in various ways. Morris Real Estate Marketing Group of Toronto recommends you stay in contact with the homeowners in your community 17 times per year, so try to “touch” those people using a variety of methods.

1. Leverage the power of events: Events such as home expert seminars, client appreciation parties, pumpkin giveaways, Christmas wine and cheese parties and Victoria Day fireworks parties (I’m sure you can think of some more), are all great ways to keep in touch. You can also sponsor a community event, which is fantastic for networking with those in your community and getting your name out there.

Home expert seminars can be tremendously effective for keeping in touch and getting new real estate leads. This is an event where you invite another professional, such as an interior designer, to come and speak to your clients and provide them with tips and advice. Most professionals will agree to do this because it’s a great opportunity for them to get new leads. And you’ll likely get some new clients through the friends and family members your clients will bring to the event with them.

Hosting these events doesn’t take too much time and effort. You can plan, schedule and send out invitations easily with good real estate contact management software.

2. Send cards at unexpected times: A happy birthday or happy home purchase anniversary card is usually unexpected; much appreciated and is something you can do to stay “top of mind” and memorable with your past clients. Just remember to ask your clients for their birth date at some point and record it in your system, which will then automatically remind you when the time comes.

It’s also a good idea to send a card on smaller holidays, such as Valentine’s Day or Thanksgiving, when your clients aren’t getting bombarded with cards from every other business and professional they’ve dealt with (think Christmas).

Cards are great because they’re often pinned to a fridge or bulletin board, which means that every time your clients walk into their kitchen or office, they’ll think of you.

3. Treat your A-List for lunch: Treat your best clients (your A-List) for lunch every now and then. Although this may seem costly, think about the value of doing this from a relationship-building standpoint. People will remember you, use your services time and again and refer you to their friends and family. This will more than pay for all the lunches you’ve treated your A-list to over the years – it’s well worth it.

4. Get personal: Be sure to record interests, hobbies and life events of your clients in your system. So when Bobby’s hockey tournament is over, you can fire off an email to your client asking how it went. Or when your client’s father goes for his surgery, you can send flowers afterwards. This type of relationship-building is so important because it shows you care about your clients, above and beyond simply caring for their real estate needs. It’s a great way to connect with people on a personal level and leave a lasting impression.

It’s not hard to get this type of personal information from your clients. Many times all it takes is a “How was your weekend?” or “Anything exciting planned for this week?”

These ideas will help you stay in touch with past clients and build that coveted, referrals-based business. Staying in touch doesn’t have to be hard and the benefits you’ll reap are tremendous.

Nathan Crompton
Other

Today there is an increasingly skewed perspective about what the private rental market can and can’t do. In the face of unaffordable condo prices, think tanks and governments have promoted rental housing as an affordable housing alternative. The problem is that while the majority of us live in rental housing, that fact doesn’t make our homes any less of an investor commodity. Unregulated rental housing – like condos throughout the 2000s – is today a growing vehicle of financial investment and real-estate profitability.

Recently a business writer analyzed the rising profitability of rental housing in Vancouver. Michael Marckwort, writing for the Western Investor, noted that Vancouver’s real-estate economy has witnessed a “market shift” away from condos and into private rental housing. Market analysts such as Andy Yan and Bob Rennie have long pointed out that more than 50% of new condos are placed on the housing market as rental housing. Purpose-built rental is also, according to Marckwort, positioned at the forefront of real-estate profitability in Vancouver.

In the last decade, renters have faced housing demolitions in Vancouver at a rate of 800 dwellings per year. In 2012, a total of 1,034 dwellings were demolished in Vancouver, often containing multiple units and multiple tenants. Since the 1990s, a virtual freeze on social housing construction and the expiry of operating budgets for co-ops and non-profit housing providers have created deep scarcity, at a five-year vacancy rate of 0.9% and steadily rising rents. As a result, rental investment is becoming increasingly lucrative. According to Marckwort, the list of new buyers includes corporate investors, pension funds and real estate investment trusts.

A second factor contributing to increased profitability, according to Marckwort, is municipal housing policy for rental housing investments. For five years Vancouver’s municipal government has followed a trickle-down strategy to affordable housing, giving tax breaks and fee exemptions to developers under the guise of producing affordability. The Vision-controlled government has refused to regulate the housing market or tax landowner profits, choosing instead a combination of austerity and neoliberal trickle-down measures. Rent control in particular has been deemed “infeasible” because it would “unfairly force landlords to lose money,” according to Vision councillor Geoff Meggs.

After half a decade of Reaganomics, Vancouver is more unaffordable than ever. Worse yet, a pro-market rental housing strategy has been used as a policy to legitimize real-estate development and gentrification in Vancouver’s most affordable neighborhoods.

Chinatown and the DTES

Investor appetites for new rental housing product is nowhere more evident than in Chinatown and the Downtown Eastside (DTES). Despite a process of urban displacement that is well underway, as recently reported by the Georgia Straight, market rental housing has been promoted as the “solution” to the housing crisis. The idea, increasingly circulated in the media, is that new market-priced rental housing can take the edge off gentrification. According to one developer currently investing in Chinatown’s real-estate market, “It’s not about owning any more – it’s about access.”

Recently the city has finished a draft of its Local Area Plan (LAP) for the Downtown Eastside. In one DTES sub-area, the Oppenheimer District (DEOD), the plan is for rental-only housing. This has been interpreted by some as a victory for local housing activists. The LAP aims for 100% rental housing in the DEOD for all new developments. Furthermore, those developments must contain 60% social housing.

The problem is the fine print. The large portion of “social housing” is pegged to market rates. The break-down for the 60% is as follows: “the target for affordability for new social housing will be one third at income assistance, one third up to HILs (Housing Income Limits) and one third at affordable market rents.” The current HIL average for a one-bedroom in Vancouver is $950. Rents defined as “affordable market rates” will be even higher. at the Rental 100 building on West Broadway, $1350 was deemed affordable rate for a 1-bedroom. So much for anything recognizable as social housing.

Furthermore, the LAP document contains no mechanisms for enforcing even these weak commitments. On the contrary, the document is full of caveats that allow exemptions on the social housing requirement, which “may be subject to review as economic conditions change,” according to page 92 of the document.

Prior to the arrival of Vision Vancouver, there was at least a clear definition of “social housing,” particularly for the 20% inclusionary zoning of the Oppenheimer District. Today the pretence of a fair definition has been thrown out the window. At new projects like 955 East Hastings and Sequel 138, one-bedroom units designated “social housing” will rent for $900. After a series of re-zonings and blank height increases approved by city hall, property values in the DTES have also changed, making previous DEOD constraints easier to circumvent for developers. The new LAP policy only further opens the DEOD to speculative market housing development.

Rental housing for who?

It is time to recognize that market rental housing is not a solution to the housing crisis. Even if a renter doesn’t own their housing, somebody still does. Rental housing is still about ownership – just not for the tenant. On a microscopic level, we know that renters uphold the personal wealth of small-scale property owners, whether by renting secondary suites of basement apartments. Renters are what developer Michael Geller has called “mortgage helpers.” But the reality is that the rental economy has now shifted into first-place among financial growth sectors. It props up not just the personal economies of single-family homeowners, but large-scale property investors too.

The municipal government believes that the solution to the housing crisis is more market rental housing, a policy first implemented through STIR and now through the ‘Rental 100’ program. Those policies have been used as a trojan horse for millions in tax breaks for billionaire developers like Aquilini Investment Group and Wall Financial. The basic problem in all of this is that unregulated rental housing, as much as condos, is a vehicle of financial investment and profitability. Investor-owned rental housing has just as little chance of bringing actual affordability than the private ownership market. As Jackie Wong has recently asked: rental housing, but for who?

© 2010-2014 The Mainlander

Tens of thousands of applications from wealthy investors scrapped after two years on hold

Other

Real estate agents in Vancouver say property prices could take a hit, after Canada scrapped a program which allowed wealthy immigrants to fast-track the visa process.

The Immigrant Investor Program, launched in 1986, offered visas to business people with a net worth of at least $1.6 million who were willing to lend $800,000 to the Canadian government — for investment across Canada — for a term of five years.

By 2012, the scheme had to be temporarily frozen due to a huge backlog of applications from wealthy mainland Chinese hoping to come to B.C. Now, the government has announced it will end the program for good and scrap all 59,000 applications backlogged worldwide.

The decision came less than a week after the South China Morning Post published a series of exclusive investigative reports into the controversial scheme.

Property prices could take a hit

In West Vancouver, real estate agent Clarence Debelle is still receiving offers from mainland China for luxury property, but he’s concerned the end of the investor program will have an impact on the local economy and the high-end housing market.

“I deal directly with these people who bring a lot of wealth, who are creating lots of jobs for local Canadians — builders, trades, architects, realtors like myself,” said Debelle.

“Most of the buying is coming from Chinese immigrants who are wealthy, so if we make it difficult for them to come into this country, we have killed 80 to 90 per cent of the buying in West Vancouver.”

Immigration lawyer Richard Kurland agrees.

“When you suddenly stave off the intake of literally hundreds of millionaires in the Vancouver property market, prices can only go one way and that’s down,” said Kurland.

Market impacted by more than investors

Others aren’t so sure. Even with the investor program frozen, housing prices continued to rise.

Tom Davidoff with UBC’s Sauder School of Business says the market is driven by other things like low interest rates and the local and global economies.

“Given that in the last couple of years, we haven’t seen the market cool off, it’s hard to believe that freezing the investor market is going to kill even the high-end in Vancouver,” said Davidoff.

The government has also announced the end of the Entrepreneur Program, a smaller scheme for business people who plan to own and manage a business in Canada.

However, wealthy investors can still come to Canada through the Start-up Visa Program, which encourages immigrant entrepreneurs to partner with private sector organizations to invest in local start-ups.

Copyright © CBC 2014

Over 60% seeking Canadian wealthy investor visa are from China and want to live in British Columbia’s main city, data shows

Other

A South China Morning Post investigation into Canada’s immigration programme for millionaire investors has revealed the extraordinary extent to which it has become devoted to a single outcome: Helping rich mainland Chinese settle in Vancouver.

Immigration Department data obtained by the Post suggests there was a backlog of more than 45,000 rich Chinese waiting for approval of their applications to move to British Columbia as of January last year. They are estimated to have a minimum combined wealth of C$12.9 billion (HK$90 billion).

The Chinese queue for British Columbia under the scheme – which halted new applications to deal with the backlog in 2012 – is about six times the combined annual applications from all nationalities to the investor migrant programmes run by the US, Britain and Australia. It also holds more than twice as many Chinese immigrants as have moved to the province under the federal investor visa scheme from 2008 to 2012. This suggests the queue could sustain the current pace of millionaire migration to the city for a decade to come, even if applications remain frozen.

Ottawa has vowed that the applications will be processed and few are typically rejected.

The queue of millionaires at Vancouver’s doorstep has major implications in a city where housing is rated the second-least affordable in the world, behind Hong Kong. Census data shows 96 per cent of all recent Chinese immigrants to British Columbia live in greater Vancouver and the proportion among the wealthy is even higher.

Kerry Starchuk is a lifelong resident of the Vancouver satellite city of Richmond, the most Chinese city in the western hemisphere and a favoured destination of wealthy mainland Chinese. She fears the potential impact of the visa queue.

“Money is taking precedence over everything,” said Starchuk, 56, who has campaigned for increased English signage in Richmond. “It’s taking over the social fabric, Canadian culture … You can see [the wealth disparity] in the houses that are being built – it’s no longer a single-family home, it’s a mansion with gates and security.”

The Post‘s estimates are conservative, since they do not include Chinese who enter via a separate investor immigrant programme run by Quebec, 90 per cent of whose arrivals eventually end up living elsewhere in Canada.

Ottawa has pledged to process the backlog of federal applications. Under the scheme’s current rules, principal applicants worth a minimum of C$1.6 million must loan the Canadian government C$800,000, interest-free, for five years. They and family members can later apply for citizenship.

The overall queue for federal investor visas included 57,308 applications lodged in Hong Kong and Beijing, according to an Immigration Department spreadsheet obtained by the Post, dated January 8, 2013. That is more than 75 per cent of the whole queue, and separate provincial arrival data indicates about 99 per cent of the applicants are mainland Chinese.

Since 2007, 80.8 per cent of Chinese applicants to the scheme have sought to live in British Columbia, the Post‘s data shows. If that holds true for the backlog of applicants, some 45,800 rich mainland Chinese would be bound for the province, representing 61 per cent of all applicants.

The trend appears to be growing. Chinese immigrants planning to settle in British Columbia made up 65 per cent of all applications to the popular wealth migration scheme in 2011.

The Post‘s documentation was provided by Vancouver immigration lawyer Richard Kurland, who obtained it via freedom-of-information requests, costly data searches and scouring of obscure data.

Previously released statistics on investor immigrant arrivals released by the British Columbia government give no hint of the sheer volume of Chinese millionaires seeking to move there. That data showed arrivals between 2005 and 2012 averaged about 4,600 per year.

Yet the Post‘s investigation shows the number of applications to migrate to the province has dwarfed arrivals in recent years. In 2010 alone, there were 27,535 such applications, with 92 per cent of them coming from Chinese applicants.

David Mulroney, Canada’s ambassador to China from 2009 to 2012, said there was “a degree of inevitability [that most rich Chinese will seek to settle in Vancouver] given the profile that Vancouver enjoys”.

“It’s hard not to be impressed with Vancouver … but it would be nice to see more parts of Canada benefiting from immigration and the dynamism that that brings,” Mulroney said.

“People at the end of the day are free to move and will live wherever they want, but … we need to be ready to work more creatively with the provinces and ensure that people understand the advantages that Canada offers east of the Rocky Mountains. Vancouver is a wonderful place but there are lots of wonderful places in Canada.”

The Post‘s data also suggests authorities may be trying to mitigate the impact of the scheme on British Columbia. From 2003 to 2010, the province consistently received around 50 per cent of all investor migrant arrivals in Canada. However, in 2011 British Columbia’s share fell sharply to 36 per cent. Its share of investor landings fell again in 2012, to 28 per cent.

Copyright © 2014 South China Morning

Resort living in the heart of White Rock

Other

Download Document