Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
advantageous price gradient across the Pacific and the encouraging
prospects for population growth in the major global gateways of Toronto
and Vancouver. A business column in Hong Kong's
South China Morning
Post
in 1988 noted 'Canadian property has also long been recommended as
a good investment by real estate experts here for people who do not neces-
sarily intend to migrate to the country' (Abbott 1988). An international
property consultant was quoted stating that Canada was 'the best place in
the world to buy residential property'. Advantages included 'a stable polit-
ical, financial and tax structure, as well as a fast growing economy' with
average growth then exceeding that of the United States and Western
Europe. At the same time 'land in Canada is among the cheapest in the
world and is about a fifth of what the same land would cost in most
European cities' (Abbott 1988). And it was cities that comprised the invest-
ment horizon, as the column directed readers to a two-day sales event in
Hong Kong offering units in a downtown Vancouver condominium.
While some investors were sceptical of the wisdom of buying at weekend
exhibitions they turned over a good deal of property. Michelle, a Vancouver
sales agent I spoke to in 1998, had sold Vancouver real estate for two years
in Hong Kong working with a transnational agency earlier in the decade:
I sold for Park Georgia in Hong Kong. It's run by the three Hui brothers, a
very ethical family. Dennis is in Hong Kong and the other two brothers are
here. I sold a lot of property through exhibitions. We would hold exhibitions
in 5-star hotels with a large room costing $20,000 for a weekend. We would be
selling condos, single-family lots. I would sell half a dozen properties myself
an average weekend. They would be lining up. The exhibition area would take
200, and the hotel security would have to turn people away. I also sold in
Taiwan but didn't do as well there.
But capital is both calculating and flighty, and within a few years economic
slowdown in Canada took fast money to the rapid growth cities of China as
well as London and Sydney, while slow, low-risk money remained in Canada.
Activity in London was particularly brisk after 1992, with a 1997 report from
Singapore suggesting that up to half of current residential development in
London was being purchased by Asian buyers (
Straits Times
1997). However
by the mid 1990s, Vancouver was back in favour, with a story from Hong
Kong announcing 'Hong Kong still sees Vancouver as red-hot market for real
estate' (Chow 1996a; Craig 1996). Primarily this was a matter of value for
money, for data disseminated by Colliers Jardine in Hong Kong priced a
high-end condominium in Vancouver at CDN$333,333, compared with
close to $2 million for a comparable unit in Hong Kong, and figures of
$1-1.5 million in the competing centres of London, Singapore and Sydney.
Under these favourable conditions plus low mortgage interest rates, capital
