Trust me. I’d rather break my other leg than revisit this topic. Alas, we must.

Two days ago this pathetic blog was overrun with people who love to blame rich immigrants for jacking prices and erasing their dream of living in midtown Toronto or (especially) Vancouver in a house they can afford. It’s a short trip from that to racism, intolerance, xenophobia and simple hating. As we saw. And a load of folks obviously do not distinguish between Chinese people (from China) who buy up properties here and other Chinese people (from Richmond or Unionville) who were raised locally and just want a house. Of course the latter are not Chinese. They’re Canadian. Get over it.

The perceived injustice is exacerbated by the fact there are no reliable stats on where buyers in a specific market actually come from. Now municipal Van politicos want to collect those numbers (somehow), presumably so they can enrage the masses and impose ownership restrictions.

But what if all of this angst is embarrassingly misplaced? What if cash-drenched foreign buyers represent a small portion of area sales, and affect values only in narrowly-defined hoods and price ranges? What if foolish average house prices in, say, Vancouver were simply the result of fools buying them? Then wouldn’t the real estate industry have a big stake in making sure you were pushed into a purchase by the perceived Yellow Peril? Buy now, or buy never.

Actually we do have some numbers. No, they are not for Vancouver but instead the city of Victoria, which is a few puddles away. Turns out the Victoria Real Estate Board does keep track of who’s buying what where, and isn’t shy about sharing the results.

So here you go. In all of 2013, 5,862 properties changed hands (about a quarter of metro Vancouver’s volume).

Buyers who lived locally already: 74.92%

Buyers from elsewhere in BC: 13.77%

Buyers from elsewhere in Canada: 9.67%

Total buyers who live in Canada: 98.36%

Total buyers from outside Canada: 1.64%

Hmm. Okay, this is not a set of data for Vancouver. But a reasonable person has to wonder how much greater the number of foreign buyers would be in Van. Twice? Four times? Even if it were ten times, that would mean almost 90% of total sales were made to people living locally, or from somewhere else in the province or the nation.

So I’ll say it again: while there’s a vast and growing population of Asian heritage in the Lower Mainland and pockets of metro Van especially, the influence of HAM (hot Asian money – from Asia, not Burnaby) is grossly overstated. Houses cost a stupid amount of money because buyers capitulate and pay it – then hobble their lives with tenants living in the basement or the garage. Restricting property ownership won’t bring down real estate values, but it sure will dump all over Vancouver’s efforts to be a hub of Pacific commerce. And HAM will move to Seattle. Lose-lose.

(BTW, if the hicks in Victoria who count on their fingers and toes can cough up stats like this, why can’t the metrosexual realtor rock stars in Vancouver do the same? Would it blow this marketing fraud wide open? Just asking.)

***

In 1975 the CN tower was erected and the beaver made Canada’s national rodent. Trudeau was prime minister and the top song (briefly, thank God) was ‘Rhinestone Cowboy’. If you worked in a dead-end job, you made the minimum wage – about $2.70. Expressed in today’s dollars, that was $10.13 an hour.

Actually, Stats Canada says the average minimum wage across Canada today is almost the same – $10.14. Meanwhile the average Toronto house in 1975 cost $57,581. Expressed in today’s dollars, that equals $216,248. However, the average property is now selling for more than twice that – $549,174, with detached 416 houses averaging $870,000.

So what? So, more evidence real estate values bear absolutely no relation to the ability of people to afford them. A minimum-wage earner might never afford a city house, but incomes in general have also fallen far behind the property curve.

Don’t worry. Things will revert.