Quote:
Originally Posted by Scott h
Except that it's dirty money coming in from China and laundered through casinos. Yhey are well versed on how to pay no taxes and yet milk the system for as much as they can get. They are now buying up farm land and doing the same thing. I don't think the tax will work because it counts on a certain degree of honesty that is completely lacking in this group of immigrants.
Once the Chinese zero in on Alberta it will become more obvious for you
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I live in a triple Liberal hole, so to speak, in Ontario just north of Toronto (but I grew up closer to the Pacific). I wanted to comment. The above ^^^ is pretty spot on. Out of the last 10 houses sold on my street 9 were purchased by offshore (read: Chinese) buyers. Yup, they have money and they can spend it how they wish.
But the net effects are:
(1) house prices have risen by a factor of 3 or 4 in the past 5 years, with most of the increase over the past 2 years
(2) these foreign buyers were rushing to beat the currency controls being enacted by the Chinese government, and getting their money out any way they could - I don't know how much got filtered through casinos, likely not enough to buy houses, but also by currency runners known to exist in Hong Kong, by overt "investments" in businesses offshore from mainland China, which are sometimes shell companies, etc. Myriads of ways
(3) My sons both make good money, and have saved well into the 6 figures each - enough to buy a typical home ca$h in many parts of the country, but to buy even a small, pre-war 2 or 3 bedroom bungalow in southern Ontario pretty much anywhere, not just in the city, they'd be assuming mortgages of $500 thou, $600 thou, maybe more, which carries for an amount even they, with their decent incomes, would find hard to handle.
To top it off, several of the homes purchased up until a foreign/offshore buyer's tax of 15% was enacted April 2017 (see
http://business.financialpost.com/pe...o-cool-housing) are still sitting empty, with the owners still hoping that the market will recover enough to offload their investment to non-foreign-owners. That ain't happening thus far.
Toronto (City of) is also looking at a vacant housing tax, and good on 'em.
I sincerely hope none of the young people in Alberta are ever forced into perpetual renting instead of home ownership due to the same situation. "Think of the children", to paraphrase, but in a real sense.
O.N.G.