Burnaby MP Kennedy Stewart is renewing his call for Statistics Canada and the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation to conduct a housing study, which would include data on foreign property ownership.
Stewart’s raised the issue following a Business in Vancouver article stating the foreign owners were snapping up property around Burnaby’s main town centres.
“It could be that there’s a lot of foreign investment, and we get the sense that seems to be in Burnaby,”
Stewart told the NOW. “That’s definitely been the case in other municipalities.”
But to be sure, Stewart would like to see the two federal agencies conduct proper studies.
“We don’t really know the extent of whether this is happening or not,” Stewart said, adding cities don’t have the time and resources to do the work. “CMHC and Stats Can are supposed to be helping us understand what’s happening with housing markets, and they just don’t do this work.”
According to Business In Vancouver, Burnaby’s been hit by a “wave of land speculators led by mainland Chinese buyers (who are) snapping up old Burnaby rental apartment buildings, driving per door prices above $350,000 and razing the units for high-rise condominium construction.”
Stewart said there’s no real way to tell how many foreigners are buying local property, because sometimes domestic companies make the purchases for them.
Last fall, Stewart tabled a motion on affordable housing in the House of Commons, which proposed examining the impact of investor speculation and housing vacancies on the high price of real estate in Greater Vancouver. It’s unlikely federal MPs will debate that before they dissolve Parliament before next election, at which point the motion becomes null and void.
Coun. Colleen Jordan chairs the city’s committee responsible for affordable housing. She agreed with Stewart’s proposal.
“It’s something that pretty clearly needs to be studied and examined, rather than a whole bunch of people giving anecdotal evidence. We need to know what role foreign ownership plays,” she said.
Jordan was not aware of any city efforts to track foreign ownership.
