It may be true that the Chinese are not buying outside of China with converted renminbi, wealth from within China, but this does NOT mean they are not buying.

They have invested so much in the rest of the world, that the returns in dollars on these investments is continuing the spree.

The Waldorf Astoria in New York is a perfect example. They bought it, and are now converting it to condos, that they will sell for American dollars. This return will never be brought back to China, but will be used to continue the buying spree.

Just the interest alone on the trillion dollars of US debt that they own, payed in American dollars, makes 40 to 50 billion dollar loss in wealth coming out of China insignificant.

They are buying up the rest of the world, using money they are getting in dollars from the returns on their holdings outside of China. They don’t need any more wealth to actually leave China to continue the buying spree. They are using the wealth they are sucking out of the world economy to do it.

Found the person that doesn’t deal with money or housing for a living.

1. Canada had frothy levels of real estate speculation in 2001. Canadians didn’t have a tech bubble, they pumped their cash into extra condos and homes for real estate developers.

2. A jump from 7.85% to 8.7% is a massive jump in terms of total homes. Canadians just don’t understand numbers, which is why they think almost any home in the country is worth 17% more just one year later. Housing typically moves just above inflation, it doesn’t make money by the day.

Sidenote, my firm has sent people to walk the grounds in cities like Toronto and Vancouver. In Vancouver, you can find so many boarded up houses it looks like Detroit. Toronto is slightly better since it’s so spread out, but there’s also a huge number of houses waiting for the great re-zoning everyone that can afford a second home is waiting for. Got news for those people, developers don’t want your extra house at 30% above, they’re waiting for you to sell it in a fire sale.

The article I read about City of Vancouver stats says that it’s the number of unoccupied dwellings on census day (in May). Taking that at face value, it seems likely that student-occupied dwellings would tend to be unoccupied over the Spring/Summer session, i.e. outside the normal University calendar. This count of empty homes is more than double the year-round number CoV came up with based on hydro bills.

Secondly, look at the trend! As far as we know Canada’s rate has always been much higher, so the numbers are most likely different for a methodological reason. There’s certainly no reason for the gap to close anytime soon. The idea that we have more empty homes because we’ve “only” been keeping stats for 15 years is ludicrous.

It would appear that low rise housing may be reaching a peak though not even this is certain since government intervention may have caused a sea change in sentiment/perception and ultimately the slowdown in sales. On the other hand more affordable options such as condos continue to sell a tenant a brisk pace for ever increasing amounts.

Toronto is in a cycle. It I see neither good nor bad. The Toronto economy and housing sectors are healthy and willing remain so in the foreseeable future.

Not sure what your point is, or if you are just missing my point entirely.

“Academics have been subtracting the total number of private dwellings from the number of occupied homes to determine how many are “not occupied.””

The problem is not the ‘occupied’ bit, it is the ‘number of private dwellings’ bit. What constitutes a ‘private dwelling’? This figure can be greatly inflated if it includes ‘not yet built’ dwellings. Once a builder starts to build, that is a ‘private dwelling’, but obviously not able to be occupied. Same as registered-and-sold-but-not-built condos.

* Canadians are either over concentrating in certain areas, and leaving areas that have already been developed empty. This is the case with places like Newfoundland, where the government has failed to keep locals in place.

* Canadians are holding homes empty for speculative purposes. The Ministry of Finance has released numbers and said they know this is a problem.

* Canadians are over commoditizing housing compared to their peers south of the border. This is neither good, nor bad – and I don’t believe the author made any claims to either side. It just shows that Canada have a larger vacancy number than the US, which in a similar economy – with similar pay and cheaper housing. You can not say that the majority of Canada needs to be priced 2x to US homes, it’s insanity.