Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
contemporaneity: 'what are erased are cultural memories, what is rebuilt
are more profitable buildings' (1997: 80). This is the cultural meaning of
property in which wealthy households from Hong Kong are embedded and
which they carry to overseas markets.
Moreover, while conditions may approach an ideal type in Hong Kong,
they were replicated elsewhere in Asia Pacific. Taiwan has 'one of the most
speculative land and housing markets in Asia—not a modest boast' (La
Grange et al. 2006: 72). Between the early 1980s and the sharp downturn
in 1997, 'the pace of economic development has produced extraordinary
rates of house price inflation in most of the major cities of east Asia', while
'The residential-property sector has been firmly embedded in the develop-
mental strategies of the so-called tiger economies' (Forrest and Lee 2004).
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It is of course these same tiger economies of Hong Kong, Taiwan and South
Korea that provided most of the millionaire business migrants who entered
Vancouver and Toronto.
Bearing Property Overseas
Chloe, a well-connected transnational immigrant, described to me how the
instrumentality of property in advancing class mobility in Hong Kong per-
mitted comfortable settlement in Vancouver:
The source of wealth of many Hong Kong immigrants is the huge real estate
boom of the mid-1980s to mid-1990s. In some cases real estate prices went
up ten times in less than a decade. Pre-buying of an apartment could lead to
forgiveness of a 10 percent down payment. With a 90 percent bank mortgage,
by the time the apartment was built a year later you'd already made money. So
no personal money went into the purchase, and with low interest it was a very
cheap investment and very lucrative. A small apartment of 500 square feet
cost less than $HK100,000 in the 1980s and sold for $HK500,000-$1 million
in 1993. With two of these it was very easy to bring money to Canada, and
have savings of $HK500,000-$1 million after house, car and business immi-
gration costs. You aim to pay off a big chunk of the housing cost, maybe a half
in the down payment. Often you'd buy two [houses] to give rental income.
Invest in property and the stock market.
With the idea of property so deeply embedded in East Asian culture, it is no
surprise that overseas Chinese display very high levels of homeownership.
In Los Angeles, ethnic Chinese, whether or not they were born in the United
States, have homeownership levels well above non-Hispanic whites (Yu
2006). In Sydney, Hong Kong immigrants were the fastest of the larger
minority groups to enter homeownership (Ley et al. 2001). The same pat-
tern has been evident in Canada from the early years of recent Chinese
