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Comment by fdhfdjkfhdkj | Hacker News Reader

Sold my house in Woodbridge, North of Toronto. To a unmarried couple from China studying at University of Waterloo for 1.85M, no home inspection nothing... Paid over ask. It is all about the wealth fleeing from China and nothing else

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Think about how desperate you have to be to buy in Woodbridge if you’re studying in Waterloo? I think they were more likely victims of the situation not perpetrators, c’mon.

Waterloo is a legit school, not unexpected for it to draw international students and of course they have money, international tuition ain’t cheap.

$1.85m student purchase. Sounds like a perpetrator rather than victim to me. They could have bought something or rented near the university. It was clearly a choice to buy in the GTA and tuck cash into “safe” Toronto real estate. Likely not the students themselves but their corrupt parents siphoning cash from China into Canada.

Why are the parents assumed to be corrupt?

Canadian parents do this too, I’ve known several students whose parents bought homes to live in while they study. It’s not necessarily a naked investment ploy, it’s simply very difficult to maintain a certain quality of life for your children in rental accommodations. I’m not commenting on the ethics of it, just the suggestion it’s specifically a Chinese behavior.

Supply in KW is far more constrained that GTA. I bought here in 2019 after selling a Brooklyn condo and had to buy something under construction. There was nothing reasonable (ie didn’t need a ton of work) on the market.

It's surprising how the Canadian government is letting the Chinese buy up properties like that.

Some regions are implementing various taxes on foreign buyers or penalizing those who don't occupy whay they buy.

The thing about Canada is that we seem to take everything slower and more moderately. To put simply, we're like American policy put through a low pass filter, smoothing down the extremes.

Should we be more protectionist? Probably. Will we do so? Probably. Will we rush to implement significant and severe new policy? Probably not.

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