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Dear Ms. Clark, I am not sure what good this letter will do or if my words will make any difference, anyhow, it doesn’t cost to write a letter (atleast not for now it doesn’t), may be in next few months, it may even cost to write a letter like this. I am not sure where to begin and how to begin, or I can just get down to the facts and state the obvious, which is - An Average BC resident is SCREWED when it comes to real estate! aaaaaannnnnnnddddd I am done! Thank you! If you are still reading this, then here we go - I have been living in Surrey for last 10 years, have owned real estate and understand seller and buyer sides. Now it worries me and it saddens me to see all this outrage of people who wanted to buy few months back and now they are just stuck. I am positioning this for both Sellers and Buyers. I will not spend time on talking about foreign investors, or flipping, I really just want to understand the situation and but me as an average Canadian, I cannot wrap my head around what has changed in the last 6-9 months really. Why are the prices going up? And if they are going up, are they ever going to come down now? Or are these high prices going to be the new benchmark ? I am sure, a lot of people out there have similar questions and I am sure you get this asked a lot as to what you are really doing about the real estate situation in BC. Now, I saw your speech few days back and some work is going, and let’s see what the outcome is. In the meantime, let me put things in context for you and I will not use some foreign investor Vancouver teardown scenario (media hype), I am going to use a simple basic suburb scenario, - a friend of mine bought a house in Langley, yes Langley (the one from British Columbia and not the one from USA) for $730,000 in March of 2015, it’s a 3500 sq feet house on a 3400 sq feet lot (yes one of those ones which the city approved), nice beautiful home, good enough for his family. His next door house is very similar (built by the same developer with same type of material), bought few months earlier than his for almost the same price, is now listed at $1.15 Million, yes you read that right, a whoopin $400,000 more than what they bought it for a year ago, I mean even google shares didn’t make this much profit for its shareholders (please don’t quote me on the google share part, I wish I was a google shareholder, may be then I could afford a house in New York, oh I meant Langley) . Long story short, or short story which I already made it long (maybe I should try writing more often or not at all), in order to buy a single family home in Langley and its Langley we are talking about not New York (yes people I compared Langley to New York – sorry New York or I should say sorry Langley), up until few months ago I needed about $150,000 as 20% down, and my mortgage would have been approximately $2500/month and city taxes somewhere around $300/month. Now, with the new price I need atleast $220,000 as 20% down, and the mortgage would be somewhere around $3500/month and city taxes will be somewhere around $400/month. Hmm, I should have bought those google shares when I had the chance. I wonder if I lost a tooth may be a tooth fairy would give me $50,000 additional for that down payment or maybe I can rent the luxury 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom, 650 sq feet basement suite for $2500/month, may be that way I will be able to afford my mortgage payments. Yes, screw you tenants, you are only here to pay my mortgage and on the weekends, don’t you dare park in the driveway, go park 6 km away from the house, cause I have guests coming. Now, that was Buyer’s angle, what about the sellers, well they are making money overnight, aren’t they? Well, not entirely true, if you sell in a market like this, you buy in a market like, whether you decide to downgrade or upgrade, you are paying more money than you would have paid few months back. People selling in Vancouver, are driving the markets in suburbs, they sold their residences for multi million dollars, and now have to move somewhere, and guess what, they pay a higher dime for a newer/bigger home in suburbs, which ends up driving that market. Eventually, the space will saturate. So this vicious circle (btw, I got so passionate writing this, I forgot the spelling of vicious and ended up googling the spellings, ah.. those google shares, every time I search something) will only drive the market up. Incomes are not going up, gas prices are not down, transportation isn’t cheap, city taxes are going up, the sun only shined 2 days in last 2 weeks, the lululemon pants for men are still $129 + tax (arghhh, they are so good, if only I could afford those fancy pants), then why is it that real estate behavior is all over the place. I reach out to you as a leader of this province, to tackle this situation, pull a committee together, take some actions, come out with a solution. People are tired of listening to words like foreign investors, flipping and raincouver (I don’t expect you to stop the rain, may be you can, I don’t know you personally). Lets talk about this in open, lets highlight the weakness and strengthen the confidence in people. Please do something about it and if somehow this reaches you, then I thank you for all that you are doing but we need more! Thanks for listening to my rant. Cheers Sid