nomeddie

North of Toronto, Vaughan specifically, quite a few homes on our street selling for slightly under $2m. Over the last two years, three homes were sold to Chinese nationals who never even set foot in them. Viewings were all via video.

The transactions were all brokered /over/ asking price in cash and are sitting empty ever since. They remove the snow, they do basic maintenance, and everything is again documented via video and shipped off to confirm a job done.

Many families came for the listing but all were outbid with much more favourable terms, quick closing, no inspection, no approval required for funds, etc.

The money is definitely being parked in many pockets of the city via Real Estate. Is it exclusively Chinese? No, but they are by far the larger demographics that parks the money in the home and keeps it empty. I've seen others invest in Canada as a means to get citizenship faster but they usually rent out the homes to generate some money back.

Whats there to complain about? Agents are making their commission, the city is getting their taxes, the province is cashing it on their taxes. Everyone is happy.

They build the customer trust by taking financial hits - if you’ve been a long time prime customer they are good at refunding the purchase when you aren’t happy. It doesn’t protect others from ordering the same bad widget but you are at least satisfied not to make it a bigger issue.

The 3rd party market place on Amazon has become Aliexpress with higher markups. Unless I have an immediate need and I can not find the item locally, I just order it from Ali.

Let's hope Siri will evolve better than the auto correct on iOS in this instance to interface to all these appliances.

You are paying more for the design and user experience with Apple. Sure, there is always something better though I doubt many listen to music that is of sufficient enough quality via their devices to hear the difference or had a really good pair to compare it to. Beats headphones proved that audio quality is not always what moves the market.

Snowy winters is a nice idea when you can sip a warm drink cozied up inside and play winter sports.

When you have to shovel the drive way twice a day and five minutes later the city snow plow throws half frozen slush on your drive way, you start to crave a warmer climate.

Not sure even if Google can be trusted as reviews can be from friends/family, I've seen owners give themselves five stars, and recently saw signs posted on stop signs about buying five star reviews for businesses on Google.