Richmond News July 13 2016

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WEDNESDAY, JULY 13, 2016 n Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s Vivianne Vacias, of Richmond, who was among a group doing yoga at the City of Richmond’s first Sunset Series evening at the Olympic Oval plaza on Sunday. As well as free yoga, the event, which runs every Sunday during the summer, featured live music and an outdoor movie. See more pictures in The Pulse on page 18. Photo by Gord Goble/ Special to the News

What’s inside:

NEWS: Public asked to help find missing 16-year-old girl

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Foreign sales peak on Lulu Richmond by far highest in B.C. for offshore housing purchases GRAEMEWOOD Staff Reporter

GWOOD@RICHMOND-NEWS.COM

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ccording to a small window of data collected by the provincial government on residential real estate purchases in B.C., only 3.3 per cent was sourced from foreign nationals. However, those figures were higher in Metro Vancouver, with one city standing out in particular — Richmond. Numbers crunched by the B.C. government during a 19-day period in June of this year, revealed that one in seven property transfers, or 14.3 per cent, on Lulu Island involved a foreign national (defined by the government as someone who is not a permanent resident or a Canadian citizen). The data was released Thursday afternoon

by Finance Minister Mike de Jong, and was quickly criticized and questioned by local academics and the opposition NDP. “Today, they’re content to ignore warnings from our national banks, from FINTRAC, and from academics, because they’ve collected 19 days of self-reporting data on citizenship status. It’s incredible,” said NDP housing spokesperson David Eby. The data was collected after the provincial government began asking home buyers if they are a Canadian citizen or a permanent resident. DeJong stated 90 per cent of all foreign purchasers were from China. Tom Davidoff, director of the UBC Centre for Urban Economics and Real Estate, called the data “imperfect” and told the Richmond News that it’s important to understand the source of all capital flowing into the hot real estate market. For instance, offshore money can be fun-

neled by foreigners to relatives and businesses, or permanent residents and citizens may be bringing in money on their own. Either way, noted Davidoff, the data on foreign nationals doesn’t paint the entire picture of why Metro Vancouver’s housing market is unaffordable to local buyers, as housing prices far outstrip upper middleclass, local incomes. “I don’t think we learned the extent outside money is driving the market,” said Davidoff, adding it’s important to keep in mind that, overall, other factors such as low interest rates, a weak Canadian dollar and home equity loans are part of a growing red flag. Furthermore, the short window of data may not be entirely accurate, granted June showed a relative slowdown in the market, noted Davidoff, who said a more telling set of data would have been income data on home See Richmond page 4

COMMUNITY: Temple inviting everyone to Buddhist festival 9

SPORTS: RCBA Challenger Baseball program a big hit 23

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