Hacker News Reader

The argument being made is that this wild speculation is enabled by the money laundering. If you know laundering will keep happening with impunity and that the whole thing is tacitly approved and backstopped by the Canadian government, then it becomes rational to participate too.

View on HN

That may be true, but it doesn’t change the fact that locals share a large portion of responsibility. Money laundering is no doubt happening, but the activity is tiny as a fraction of the market.

To give an example of how exaggerated it is: before implementing the empty homes, the city of Vancouver estimated that 25,000 homes were empty. The final result: only 2,500, one tenth what everyone thought.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com