Canaccord Founder Sells $31 Million Vancouver Mansion To Chinese Student
By Tyler Durden
Everybody loves a good Vancouver real estate horror story. Here is a great one.
In the endless series of reports about wealthy Chinese oligarchs, billionaires, money launderers, or mere criminals, never have we encountered anything quite like this yet, because according to The Province, the majority owner of this Point Grey mansion located at 4833 Belmont Avenue and which was recently ranked 16th among the most expensive homes in Vancouver, was sold earlier this year by Canaccord founder Peter Brown for a record $31.1 million is a “student,” property records show. A Chinese “student”… of course.
Land title documents list Tian Yu Zhou as having a 99-per-cent interest in the five-bedroom, eight-bathroom, 14,600 square-foot mansion on a 1.7-acre lot at 4833 Belmont Ave. Zhou’s occupation is listed as a “student.”
The other owner of the property, which boasts sweeping views of the North Shore mountains and Vancouver, is listed as Cuie Feng, a “businesswoman.” Feng has a one-per-cent interest in the property, which was assessed this year as having a total value of about $25.6 million, records show.
Efforts to reach Zhou and Feng through the lawyer listed on the land title documents were not successful, and realtor Cherry Xu, who reportedly served as the buyer’s agent, did not want to comment on the sale, citing privacy considerations.
As the Province amusingly puts it, NDP housing critic David Eby said the fact that a student was able to buy one of the most expensive homes in the city contradicts the government’s messaging that “everything is under control in the Vancouver real estate market.”
Eby said it also links to a theme uncovered in a 2015 study by Andy Yan, an adjunct professor at the University of B.C., which found homemakers and, to a lesser extent, students, are often the listed occupations of the owners of many newly purchased multi-million dollar Vancouver properties.
“It’s incredibly strange that a student would be able to afford such a luxurious and multi-million-dollar property,” said Eby. “This is part of a trend of homemakers and students mass-buying property. I don’t know how that can be possible with the income of homemakers and students typically have, which is close to zero.”
We can only hope he was being serious: that would make his statement all the more fun.
Mortgage documents attached to the land title papers show that a mortgage of $9.9 million was taken out by Zhou and Feng from the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce on April 28. The bi-weekly payments are listed as $17,079.41.
Now this may be a first: traditionally Chinese kleptocrats pay all cash – what is the point of taking out a mortgage when the whole purpose of buying ridiculously overpriced real estate is to park hot or stolen cash. We will have to mull this one over.
Where The Province article gets interesting is where …read more
Source: Canaccord Founder Sells $31 Million Vancouver Mansion To Chinese Student
