I have a lot of love for Vancouver, but the strange insistence on low salaries in an expensive housing market, with serious traffic and physical natural barriers to transportation, is a real problem.

I know of several developers, whose advice and preference is to move out of the city (closer to skiing/biking/etc) and work remotely for a US company.

There is plenty of evidence of the foreign property issue, and the willful ignorance of the government. Besides everything else posted, here's an academic case study:

http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/in-a-six-month-peri...

http://www.slideshare.net/ayan604/ownership-patterns-of-sing...