As someone who lives in Vancouver, its quite a different story, and most of those I know, really don't understand where these stats come from. There is not a week that goes by I have someone knocking on the door of our family home asking to buy it. There are four owners left on our street that are the original owners, the rest are vacation homes for Chinese, and completely vacant. This is far from exaggerated.
https://www.fortunebuilders.com/one-third-of-vancouvers-real...
https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/taxes/property-taxes/prop...