text: (continued) I would seriously suggest crunching the numbers on pop. growth as a driver though. I don't see it. The Lower Mainland growth #s right now are lower than they were a decade or two ago, when prices were relatively flat. When you look at housing completions against the total # of people coming to the region, it's seems more than enough supply is being made.
  
  It is those with their hands on the policy levers (gov't, gov't agencies) that have chosen this course. We are overly comfortable with the twin grotesqueries of easy debt (an explosion in gov't-guaranteed mortgage debt, a laundry list of boutique tax treatments for real estate) and foreign money laundering. The rapid (~30%) devaluation of the CAD against the USD and CNY at the exact time when foreign capital aggressively started looking for a home made things worse. And the financial hit many took in 08/09 created enough voters to support real estate hyperinflation to make up for their loss (forget sustainability).