Highland House: Cameron Muir

Liu Dept: But starting in April, Mr. Liu noticed a slowdown that lingers through today, affecting the remainder of units being marketed at Highland House and also raising concerns for other projects on the 64-hectare 160-acre UniverCity neighbourhood on Simon Fraser University s Burnaby campus. Highland House is now five-storeys tall in the construction phase and 80 per cent of the project s units have been snapped up, but Mr. Liu believes it would have been easily sold out by now were it not for a number of factors that have sprung up to disrupt the Metro Vancouver housing market, according to Globe and Mail. Industry experts have estimated the proportion of foreign buyers in the Vancouver region s housing market at 1 to 3 per cent, said Cameron Muir, chief economist at the B.C. Real Estate Association. The perception of offshore money pouring into the area to acquire properties without foreigners even visiting them has been overstated, Mr. Muir said Tuesday, adding that many investors arrived in Canada several years ago. Here is one case in point. Mr. Liu s father, Kevin, immigrated to Canada from China in 1999 and has been a Canadian citizen for the past decade. In 2007, the elder Mr. Liu bought three condos at the seven-storey Hub residential and retail development on the UniverCity site and he has agreed to purchase three units at Highland House and map: Pinpointing the locations of Brent Jang s Neighbourhood Watch columns The slump in the number of condos, townhouses and single-family detached homes sold across the Vancouver region can be explained by a variety of factors. There have been tighter rules on mortgage borrowing, consumer jitters due to economic uncertainty and restrictions on Ottawa s immigrant investor program all contributing to the chill in the broader real estate market, said Mr. Liu, a 28-year-old agent at Sutton Centre Realty who speaks Mandarin and English. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.