Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
immigration. The 1986 Census revealed that Chinese-Canadians had
ownership rates almost 20 percent higher than the native-born and second
only to Italians among larger immigrant groups (Balakrishnan and Wu
1992), while among 1996-2001 immigrants, 44 percent of Chinese-
Canadian households were already homeowners in 2001, way above the
figure of 30.4 percent for all immigrant households (CMHC 2008).
A further nuance to such analyses is the existence of distinctive intra-
metropolitan variations. In several studies Vancouver is an outlier, with unu-
sually high rates of immigrant homeownership. After only five years of
residence, immigrant owner-occupancy in Vancouver overtook the rate of
the native-born, far faster than in Toronto or Montreal, despite Vancouver's
status as the most expensive housing market in the country.
5
This anomaly
is accounted for by the disproportionate role of business immigrants in the
Vancouver market, for their homeownership rate was more than twice that
of other immigrants (Mendez et al. 2006). A special tabulation of the 1996
Census separated out the 37,000 households in Vancouver who self-
identified as Chinese and had landed in Canada as immigrants between
1986 and 1996 (Figure 4.1). This period covered the most intense move-
ment of migrants, including business migrants, from Hong Kong. Among
this ten-year cohort, 81 percent were already homeowners in Vancouver's
expensive housing market in 1996; among the entire population of native-
born and immigrants the level was much lower, 59 percent. It seems the
more costly the district, the higher the homeownership level. In one tract on
the city's very expensive Westside, all 215 new overseas Chinese immigrant
households were already owners by 1996.
As Chloe's comment above indicates, if buying a house was a good thing,
buying two was much better. Real estate became the leading form of invest-
ment in Vancouver as it had been in Hong Kong. A business newsletter
informed by interviews with bankers established the typical investment
strategy:
A house purchase is the leading purpose for borrowing for independent and
entrepreneur immigrants. As they settle down, they begin to borrow for invest-
ment purposes. Rental properties rank among the top investments for these
immigrants followed by new businesses usually related to retail or real estate
(Pacific Business 1995).
A leading financial consultancy in Hong Kong identified the same prefer-
ence among medium-sized investors for 'residential apartment blocks, small
shopping centres, businesses and land, mostly in Toronto and Vancouver…
Almost all investment portfolios… comprise some sort of land acquisition
coupled with a percentage of shares and government bonds' (
Chinatown
News
1988a). Some Vancouver real estate managers referred to 'Hong Kong
