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The Globe and Mail

At a Vancouver forum, experts see immigration adding fuel to the overheated big-city housing market

Kerry Gold, The Globe & Mail, April 23, 2021

Spring is in the air and the outlook is cheery for the next couple of years, according to pundits who spoke at the Vancouver Real Estate Forum held online last week

The opening remarks were delivered by Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce deputy chief economist Benjamin Tal. His tone was far more encouraging than his talk last fall, in which he predicted the next six months would “not be very pretty,” with a housing market that would slow by winter.

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Today’s hot Vancouver housing market may be just a prelude

Kerry Gold, The Globe & Mail, March 19, 2021

One year after the pandemic began, and despite initial worries, it turned out to be one of the real-estate industry’s best years.

“There are bidding wars on many homes throughout the Lower Mainland, on the Island, and even in the Kootenays,” says Rudy Nielsen, an industry veteran who owns Landcor Data Corporation, Niho Land & Cattle Company and LandQuest Realty Corp.

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As Metro Vancouver’s affordability gap widens, a search for answers

Kerry Gold, The Globe and Mail, Jun. 09, 2017

Last year, a series of government interventions was implemented to cool Metro Vancouver’s runaway property market and increase affordability. And yet, the market is hotter than ever, and the gap between house prices and incomes is growing wider in unexpected parts of the region.

Greater Vancouver reached a record benchmark price of $967,500 – an 8.8-per-cent increase from the year before.

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Nearly all detached homes in Vancouver assessed at $1-million or more

Brent Jang, The Globe and Mail, Feb. 24, 2017
 
Vancouver is edging close to having 100 per cent of its detached houses assessed at $1-million or more.

A new study by Andy Yan, director of Simon Fraser University’s City Program, shows that 99.7 per cent of single-family detached properties in the city of Vancouver had an assessed value of at least $1-million last July, compared with 91 per cent in mid-2015 and 65 per cent in mid-2014.

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Vancouver brimming with million-dollar houses as affordability crisis hangs over city

Breng Jang, The Globe & Mail, Feb 13, 2017

Vancouver is awash with detached houses reaching the $1-million milestone as the affordability crisis hangs over the city and nearby suburbs.

Within city limits, 99.7 per cent of the 75,295 detached properties in Vancouver had assessed values of at least $1-million last summer, according to a new study by Landcor Data Corp., which tracks real estate in British Columbia.

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Spiking home prices in British Columbia bite into property-tax relief

Mike Hager, The Globe and Mail, Jan. 04, 2017

The skyrocketing value of British Columbian homes would cut twice as many homeowners out of property-tax relief from the provincial government this year compared to last because their residences are now worth too much.

Last year, 91 per cent of all homes in the province were covered by the homeowner grant program, which offers $570 to owners of properties with an assessed value of less than $1.2-million.

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Vancouver housing market fuelled by Chinese buyers

Kerry Gold, The Globe & Mail, Nov 2, 2015

A new study that puts data behind the widely held but difficult-to-prove assumption that off-shore money is driving Vancouver’s superheated housing market has concluded the vast majority of houses on the city’s affluent west side have been bought by new immigrants from China, many of whom don’t earn their living here.

The data were obtained by David Eby, the NDP MLA for Vancouver-Point Grey.

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Rising tide of Vancouver house prices lifting values throughout region

Kerry Gold, The Globe and Mail, Oct. 24, 2015

Picture a map of the Lower Mainland and a growing wave moving outward from Vancouver, and you will get a general sense of increasing house prices.

The $1-million line used to divide the east side of the city from the west, and then it crept all the way to Burnaby. Now, it’s moving like a rapidly rising tide,

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Equity generation’ squeezing retirees’ savings

Kerry Gold, Globe & Mail, July 17, 2015

Sarah and her husband had done everything right for retirement, squirrelling away savings, paying down the mortgage on their condo and not touching their line of credit.

However, when their daughter ran into financial trouble, they started paying her mortgage as well as other expenses. When their daughter got divorced, they stepped up the support, fearing that their young grandchildren would suffer.

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CBC considers selling Vancouver building to free up money for programming

Frances Bula, The Globe & Mail, May 26, 2015

The CBC is exploring whether to sell its $57-million downtown Vancouver broadcast centre as part of a national plan to reduce its real-estate holdings.

The 2.1-acre site may have “developable density” that could make it attractive as more than just another office building for sale, said Fred Mattocks, the CBC’s manager of media operations and technology for CBC English services.

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