January 5, 2017
China has adopted stringent new anti-money-laundering rules that will make it nearly impossible for small investors — for example, middle-class families who pool their savings — to get their money out of the country in order to buy condos in Canada’s superheated property market (not just Canada, of course!).
This represents another threat to the property bubbles in Vancouver and Toronto, which have already shown signs of bursting after Vancouver imposed a 15% tax on foreign speculators (which had the side effect of forcing buyers to reveal their identities, exposing them to crackdowns in their home countries). New national rules are less stringent, but are still scaring off offshore speculators.