Look Who it Was Random video

Foreign Buyers Tax scrapped - Chinese are Back ! Prices CLIMB Again in Vancouver!

747 views · Published 18 April 2017 · 6:30 · Indexed 4 November 2026

Channel: Mike Martins · 2017 · News & Politics

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“Vancouver will become a ghost city.” - Mike Martins

We’re back on the Vancouver Housing Crisis, and this April 2017 video looks at a Royal LePage report warning prospective buyers that Vancouver’s housing correction might be short-lived.
At the time, the big argument was over British Columbia’s foreign-buyer tax. The article suggested the tax had frightened buyers out of the market, sharply reduced activity, and potentially created a “whiplash effect” as buyers began returning. The report cited Greater Vancouver home prices climbing 12.3% year-over-year, with the aggregate figure reaching roughly $1.2 million during the first quarter of 2017.
But I had a major question:
What about all the empty homes?
I had already been covering vacant properties across Vancouver, Burnaby, Richmond, Coquitlam and other parts of the Lower Mainland. To me, you couldn't discuss Vancouver's housing shortage without discussing properties that weren't being used as permanent homes.
I also push back against making the entire discussion exclusively about Chinese buyers. Foreign investment wasn't coming from one country. Vancouver had become attractive to wealthy investors and capital from around the world. My argument was that the real issue should be the structure of the housing market itself and whether ordinary residents earning local wages could still afford to live there.
And I repeat one of my biggest warnings from this period:
Vancouver could eventually become a “ghost city” if housing becomes increasingly disconnected from the people who actually work there.
By this point I had already made my own decision. My family and I had left Vancouver for Merritt, British Columbia. In the video I contrast Vancouver prices with what approximately $260,000 bought me in Merritt: a dramatically larger property and a completely different lifestyle.
This wasn't just about homeowners watching the value of their properties. I was looking ahead at what these prices could mean for Millennials, the next generation of buyers, businesses trying to hire employees, families trying to establish themselves, and the long-term health of Canadian cities.
Housing isn't simply an investment chart.
People actually have to live there.


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