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I disagree that they are ideal owners. They provide absolutely no other income or commerce to the city and it's actually becoming an issue.

http://crescentmovingandstorage.com/problem-vacant-homes-van...

There may be a problem with supply but how are vacant properties a good use of the supply that already exists? What's the point of a city full of empty sky rises?

If it's enough of a problem to cause systemic decline of the city the property prices will have to drop. I just can't see how they would keep on buying and buying till nobody lives there anymore. Granted it is possible, but if they are in fact that crazy then you can still argue it's better to pocket the money and go build another city?

Somebody else mentioned supply is being added at a decent rate. So perhaps there just isn't really a problem?

This has been going on for well over a decade and it's accelerating. There are lots of vacant properties and new properties are purchased instantly for above asking.

Supply is being added at a decent rate for the population of the city but not everyone purchasing property lives in the city.

A perfect source of tax revenue? Or, if you look at it (and implement it) the right way, a perfect way to take back the wealth that was transferred from working class people in western countries such as Canada to China over the past generation.

How did that "wealth transfer" work? When (say) $200 of the $800 I spend on an iPhone goes to Chinese manufacturers, they have $200, and I have an iPhone that I value more than $800.

To me it looks like we're both wealthier, not to mention the American company that's booking a few hundred dollars itself.

Nobody wants to talk about that. The narrative is that if you're foreign (meaning Chinese) it's unethical to provide for your children, especially if you're wealthier than me because you must have stolen it. Except if you came from Hong Kong. Then it's okay to buy your kids a fleet of Ferraris. You're just protecting your hard earned money from the corrupt commie Chinese.

There will be no talk of who is filling the cargo containers that arrive daily!

Not really. Low demand for stuff keeps its cost low for those who are here. Shorter lines, etc.

> The problem is the lack of housing supply. Get rid of the ridiculous regulations, allow more stock to be built, and revel in all the free foreign money that's being showered on your city.

I don't know how familiar you are with Vancouver, but housing starts in Vancouver are at a record high and supply has kept pace with population growth[1].

> But, no surprise, it's always easier to blame the foreigners than it is to risk your political capital.

Demand is clearly overheated by foreign capital. To imply that blaming foreigners is a straw man is to misunderstand what's actually happening in Vancouver.

1 - http://business.financialpost.com/personal-finance/mortgages...

i think this is the right idea

increasing housing supply sounds like the best straightforward solution but the outcome you want to avoid is one where the government rapidly increases housing supply to match demand in order to keep apartment prices stable, but when the cycle reverses and all the foreign non-occupier owners pull out of the market the local occupier owners face a collapse in their home value.

a lot of people feel that their apartment is the key to their wealth, so falling prices hurts (even though it also means they can move out into cheaper apartments because housing as a whole has fallen) and the government will want to avoid that scenario.

this seems to be slightly different from the issue in SF where housing is driven by industry growth and poor public transport (reducing residents' mobility increases desirability of specific areas) in addition to foreign buyers.

if one can easily separate non-occupier owners from local occupier owners and then apply a tax in order to discourage non-occupier ownership and that kind of behaviour (because it masks actual housing need which in turn makes urban planning difficult) then it will help a lot, i think.

the other solution is to create zones that are available to foreign buyers, encourage high-value developments for tax revenue, and then make the balance of the housing stock restricted to owner occupiers - the new sale restrictions imposed on existing stock will reduce the price of existing housing stock but will buffet foreign money driven fluctuations on essential residential stock, but still provide a pressure release value for increasing foreign demand in the city.

> I don't know how familiar you are with Vancouver, but housing starts in Vancouver are at a record high and supply has kept pace with population growth.

So, supply has tracked population growth, demand has outstripped population growth, and that proves that increasing supply doesn't work?

> supply has tracked population growth, demand has outstripped population growth

That implies that demand is still outstripping supply, and thus "increasing supply doesn't work" isn't a good conclusion to draw from the data.

The takeaway is that the current levels of demand exceed the ability to provide supply.

In this case a supply side only solution isn't able to solve the problem and policy to address the demand side is also required.

They are not ideal owners: they do not provide any sort of commerce to the city - which creates its own virtuous cycle. Taken (intentionally) to the extreme, your proposal would create a property-tax-generating ghost town; would you want to set up a business there? Would you want to live there?

People seem to be putting so much blame on foreigners and forgetting that Canadians are also buying homes and participating in the bidding wars. A friend of mine who sold her apt in Vancouver (for a nice amount of money) and moving to Montreal said her mother talks of the Chinese buying up property in Montreal. I thought to myself: "You will be buying property there too." She didn't sell her apt to a foreign speculator btw.

No one seems to talk about this but one reason Vancouver is popular is because it's the only major city on the west coast of Canada (with apologies to Victoria). It's obviously the most popular choice for many Canadians who want to move west or people who want to make their first home in Canada on the west coast. Contrast this to the US, specifically California, which has many nice West Coast cities.

You don't need housing supply for unoccupied real estate. Just do the equivalent of a stock split: split the apartments into smaller and smaller pieces. Before long, you will have speculating foreigners buying an individual one-square-foot "strata lot" for $750K, with a quarter inch "common property" border around it. The management fees will be really low, with tens of thousands of owners in one building! BC place stadium can be rented out for annual general meetings. Not that anyone will go, being in some other country and all.