Game of Homes

What hap­pened was, I got on an air­plane, un­ex­pect­ed­ly fin­ished my book, and dis­cov­ered there wasn’t much else down­load­ed on that de­vice. So I start­ed re-reading what was there, name­ly Game of Thrones. It’s hard to stop do­ing that once you start, and what’s worse, I can’t help think­ing about Van­cou­ver Real Es­tate.

You may not have thought that our lo­cal home-selling busi­ness fea­tured roy­al in­ces­t, bloody slaugh­ter, and the fre­quent dis­play of bare breast­s. And well, you’d be right, it doesn’t. But bear with me.

Side­bar: The Ice and Fire Books · If you haven’t read these  —  in par­tic­u­lar if you’ve been watch­ing GoT on HBO and haven’t  —  you re­al­ly ought to. They’re a rich, pol­ished tough-to-put-down body of work and giv­en their thick­ness, at thir­ty bucks and change pret­ty cost-effective en­ter­tain­men­t. We start­ed watch­ing the HBO se­ries but gave up on it  —   our video time is lim­it­ed, and GoT is OK but it’s nei­ther Joss Whe­don nor Or­phan Black. Any­how, I’m en­joy­ing re-reading the book­s.

Back to Van­cou­ver · Real es­tate here is ridicu­lous­ly, lu­di­crous­ly ovepriced; both ab­so­lute­ly, and mea­sured by the personal-income-to-housing-cost ra­tio. It’s a re­al prob­lem. Fam­i­lies with kids are be­ing priced out of the kinds of neigh­bor­hoods they re­al­ly be­long. And at work, Amazon’s abil­i­ty to hire se­nior em­ploy­ees is lim­it­ed to lo­cal peo­ple, and to those from similarly-insane mar­kets such as San Fran­cis­co, Lon­don, New York, and Hong Kong. Peo­ple from any­where else can’t af­ford to buy a family-suitable house, even on high-tech salaries.

Two of the rea­sons are easy to un­der­stand. Most ob­vi­ous­ly, Van­cou­ver is one of Canada’s nicest places to live, reg­u­lar­ly scor­ing in the world’s top three in one rat­ings guide or an­oth­er. Al­so we’re boxed in by the moun­tains and the Pa­cif­ic and the USA so we can’t sprawl; which con­tributes on the nice-place-to-live fron­t.

The leg­end · It turns out that a great many peo­ple in Van­cou­ver to­tal­ly be­lieve there’s a third di­men­sion to the real-estate mad­ness:

1. For­eign buy­er­s.

2. Specif­i­cal­ly, Asian for­eign­er­s.

3. Chi­ne­se, to be pre­cise.

4. Not just any Chi­ne­se, but wealthy main­land Chi­ne­se.

5. That wealth be­ing of sketchy prove­nance.

6. The pur­chas­es of­ten left stand­ing emp­ty.

7. Or per­haps in­hab­it­ed by stu­dents or Mom and the kid­s, while Dad works on more wealth back home.

8. And fi­nal­ly, that these in­hab­i­tants re­port no in­come, pay lit­tle or no tax, but use lots of the so­cial ser­vices.

Is this true? To­tal­ly? Most­ly? A lit­tle bit? At al­l? The thing is, no­body re­al­ly knows. Reli­able statis­tics seem un­avail­able  —  to the point that gath­er­ing some was an is­sue in our re­cent elec­tion.

Anec­do­tal ev­i­dence is thick on the ground. Time af­ter time I hear peo­ple talk about their neigh­bor­hood­s; about the dark win­dows at night, about the so­lo stu­dent in the man­sion, about the man­sion be­ing torn down to build a big­ger man­sion.

What’s the ele­phant in the room? Racis­m. Not overt, of course, part­ly be­cause if you have a group of more than about four peo­ple here, one or two of them will look Asian. But ac­tu­al­ly Western Cana­da has a 120-year his­to­ry of anti-Chinese racism . Al­so, Canada’s pop­u­la­tion has been built on wave af­ter wave of im­mi­gra­tion, and there’s a long tra­di­tion of each wave want­ing to slam the door shut be­hind it.

What I think · I bet the re­al­i­ty isn’t as sim­ple as the leg­end, and I don’t see that stuff hap­pen­ing in my neigh­bor­hood. But I’m pret­ty sure that when re­al statis­tics ar­rive, they’ll show that some of the things on that list are hap­pen­ing, to some de­gree.

For straight­for­ward re­portage on what peo­ple think is hap­pen­ing, see Kathy Tomlinson’s Van­cou­ver house-buying fren­zy leaves half-empty neigh­bour­hoods. For a more nu­anced take with good jour­nal­is­tic val­ues, read Frances Bula’s What da­ta is it re­al­ly that we’re look­ing for in Vancouver’s hous­ing mar­ket? It’s easy to be­lieve that, as Ms Bu­la ar­gues, even if our real-estate mar­ket dosn’t have a Chinese-money prob­lem, we quite like­ly do have a global-capital is­sue. She al­so points out the glar­ing ab­sence of hard data, in Why you should be wary of sto­ries say­ing “census proves rich Asians live in man­sions and pay no taxes”.

Why? · Let’s as­sume that buck­ets of over­seas mon­ey are flow­ing in­to Van­cou­ver. The con­ven­tion­al ex­pla­na­tion  —  which I find be­liev­able  —  is that the lo­cal real-estate is be­ing used most­ly just like a bank ac­coun­t; a safer place to put mon­ey than un­der your mat­tress. Why here?

At this point I’d ask you to step aside and read a won­der­ful blog piece from last year: The Rule of Law is Vast­ly Under-Priced, by “Cassandra”. The piece echoes its ti­tle but is rich and en­ter­tain­ing.

And that’s why; glob­al mon­ey slosh­es in here seek­ing the Rule of Law. Which is to say, look­ing for places that are max­i­mal­ly un­like Game of Thrones. I was read­ing one of the episodes where Arya Stark trudges with tem­po­rary al­lies through a war-torn land­scape, seek­ing safe­ty at all cost­s; and think­ing that that’s how peo­ple in many parts of the world feel about try­ing to pro­tect their life’s sav­ings.

There is noth­ing peo­ple won’t do to pro­tect their fam­i­lies. I grew up in the Mid­dle East and have seen the aw­ful land­scapes the des­per­ate Syr­i­ans are trudg­ing through to get to the high-risk boat-ride to Greece. Try­ing to stop peo­ple flee­ing war is not on­ly de­spi­ca­ble, it’s fu­tile.

Try­ing to stop the wealthy from putting their cap­i­tal out of reach of an Anti-Corruption Cam­paign may be not be de­spi­ca­ble, but it’s not easy ei­ther.

The dif­fer­ences be­tween one rule-of-law ju­ris­dic­tion and an­oth­er are qual­i­ta­tive and sig­nif­i­can­t. But once you’ve stepped out­side that Rule of Law, it can start to smell like Wes­teros very damn fast. And these days, you don’t need cross­bow­men in the musician’s loft, or swords­men on horse­back, to cre­ate a cli­mate of fear. And drive up hous­ing costs on the oth­er side of the world.

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