That's not complicated, it's a second negative externality. Foreigners buying and not-occupying large amounts of valuable real estates drives up the cost of new housing, with no benefit the city, even if you squint really hard. A lack of new housing means high prices for the existing housing that the locals are "just bidding against themselves" on. It's a practice that should be taxed into oblivion.

Your argument makes no sense and its just playing into the xenophobic narrative.

There is nobody looking to buy a condo under $1MM mark competing to purchase the 8 digit figure homes in West Vancouver. The rich people selling and buying them aren't hurting at all.

Local Canadians are competing to expand their real estate portfolios and they aren't looking at homes in Langley because they sold their mansion in West Vancouver.

housing markets aren't disjoint this way. people will consider moving up or down a couple tiers if it makes financial sense (or they don't have a choice). if the market for mansions is particularly tight, you will see rich people start buying condos instead, driving up prices in the midrange. some professionals that would otherwise be targeting those condos will be forced to consider more marginal homes in the low end, moving the price there as well. the same thing can happen in reverse if demand dries up at the high end, but you don't see that as often.

> if the market for mansions is particularly tight, you will see rich people start buying condos instead

a west vancouver home easily costs above $10 million, you think they are going to move into a penthouse in Yaletown as their primary residence and thus driving condo prices up?

this makes no sense, people aren't selling their west vancouver home to downsize they are in a position to get even more leverage from the bank and expand their portfolio and likely own homes in North Vancouver and/or abroad already.

the people selling their homes for ~$1MM are downsizing because they can't buy a home at that price range anymore

It's not xenophobic, it's classist. I'd make a similar statement about domestic rich people, but at least they can make the argument that they contribute to the civics of the city in some way by actually being present and involved.

If you expropriated all of the unoccupied mansions and replaced them with normal-priced, mixed housing, the cost of housing in the city would broadly go down, as supply would massively increase. Pricing being bid up amongst specific classes of housing and people is a second order problem - the first order problem is that unoccupied mansions are a criminal misuse of land which must be remedied by taxation.

The crux of the issue are zoning laws that artificially suppress supply. in particular the city of vancouver have resisted rezoning to high density low rise homes because it hurts their voter base who are NIMBY multiple property home owning Canadians who turn around to sell them to whoever will buy them.

and then the masses turn around to blame that group. its straight up xenophobia one that has been in Vancouver for a very long time, anti-asian xenophobia in Vancouver is not new. 80s, it was the japanese, 90s, hong kong & koreans, 2000s, taiwanese and mainlanders.

Yes, one group of people got rich and now a different group of have-nots are mad at the people left holding the land. That is not an uncommon historical trope. That has nothing to do with what I said - unoccupied mansions on valuable land are an economic crime against the average person. If you want to blame that on zoning laws, you’d probably be correct in many cases, but its also a taxation issue.

I’m not from Vancouver, so their xenophobia doesn’t apply to me. Vancouverites burned down their own city after losing the Stanley Cup Finals - I’m definitely not here to defend their character. You can stop going to that well, I only see this as land use issue.

> Yes, one group of people got rich and now a different group of have-nots are mad at the people left holding the land.

Very much so and it probably stings even more for that have-not group, that its people from what they perceive to be of "third world origin". There's just no helping such people, instead of seeking ways to better themselves, they choose to live in a state of angst and anger and expect the government to somehow fix it.

You seem pretty obsessed with xenophobia, but its really just easier to target wealthy foreigners than wealthy domestics. This is a class and land use issue - the have nots don’t need to “better themselves” (nor do they need the implied patrimony in that statement), they need homes on affordable mortgages. The government can do that! We know they can, because they have before, you just need the land. Oh look, some unoccupied mansions…

when you aren't affected by it, you are more likely to discount it. the people aren't going after iranians or russian foreigners. they are literally singling out one group by race in Vancouver.

Again you don't live here and you don't fall in the category so you won't understand how sensitive this issue is here.

I dunno, it kind of seems like I do. My city has the same land use issues, without the alleged xenophobia and we still target foreign wealth way more than domestic. Its just easier.

> I dunno, it kind of seems like I do

how?

A common fallacy when you don't have a good argument is to handwave things away as "you just don't understand". I've already made my arguments very clearly - there maybe a xenophobia issue in Vancouver, but average people didn't wake up and decide to be xenophobic for fun. They woke up and found that they had been outcompeted by wealthy foreign buyers and domestic buyers with money from sectors like finance or technology. Thirty years ago average people could buy a house on a regular wage and now they can't.

That competition is driving the anxiety, and the anxiety is driving the reaction. Wealthy foreign buyers are the easiest target. Wealthy Asian businesspeople have been stashing their money in Canada for a long time, so it's not surprising they've been targeted for as long as you claim. It may be xenophobic, but inherent xenophobia isn't what is driving the behavior, it's a reaction to the class and land use issues, and it gets more intense as the divide grows more obvious.

>There is nobody looking to buy a condo under $1MM mark competing to purchase the 8 digit figure homes in West Vancouver. The rich people selling and buying them aren't hurting at all.

The reason it's worth 8 figures is because of demand. If there was rich people to buy it they'd have to sell it for a reasonable price that locals can afford.

If developers are building "mansions" entirely for a foreign market, that is a very bad for local housing. It means that those houses actually purely speculation vehicles.

Also, "only" 20%? That's a massive number for housing.

> Foreign investors would be buying mansions that locals couldn't afford anyways.

If nobody is around to buy that mansion, it would eventually be sold to a developer who either turns it into apartments, or tears it down and builds an apartment building there. I've seen this happen numerous times in my neighborhood.

Also 20% is huge.

If the zoning laws allowed that yes, Vancouver(similar problems in CA) doesn’t want to rezone , so not lot of supply. It is immaterial what rich domestic or international buyers do as their class of property doesn’t change supply of the property you and I can buy. Same with commercial property no difference to us [1]

zoning makes each class of property non fungible between other classes , it is like price gold doesn’t much have impact on say price of diamonds.

Rezoning benefits the economy and improves the wealth of everyone, even if NIMBYs don’t see it, however it will affect the quality of life of people who don’t want to live in “cities” proper but want the sweet spot where enough density enables them to have niceties of civilization like say neighborhood coffee shops , good schools , hospitals, art /culture/social activists without all the negativities of large cities like homelessness/high crime / poor noise /environment/pollution etc.

There is a racist angle too typically people of color, immigrants and any economically disadvantaged groups will not be able to afford to live in these neighborhoods .

[1] not strictly true for commercial as it can impact demand even if supply is not impacted , i.e. a new big office building is going to draw a lot of workers want to live near by competing for the same housing .

If Seattle can get mansions converted/replaced into apartments, I think Vancouver should be able to as well. They're not exactly worlds apart culturally.

Well my anecdotal evidence from certain real estate agent says otherwise. She told me she would regularly show foreign buyers around new low/high rise developments only to have them buy entire floors in the Vancouver area. There was once where she had a foreign buyer who didn't know what he wanted. She showed him around at houses, condos, etc... and got no visual indicators he was happy with anything. When she was done and finally asked him if there was any he was happy with he said he would take them all. All foreign buyers she worked with were from China (as she spoke fluent mandarin).

20% is a lot in a tight market.