A Fringe of Foam on Foreign Shores

In late May of this year, more than 400 people lined up to purchase apartments at a site in New Westminster City, a suburb of Vancouver. Within two and half hours of the start of the sale, all 153 units had been sold.

The otherwise unexceptional set of properties stood out on the sole basis that they attracted unprecedented excitement from Chinese investors.

Bill Morrison, head of sales for the project, told local media that they had not considered marketing the apartments to Chinese buyers until the project was 50 percent complete, but, "their demand was crazy and Chinese clients accounted for 40 percent of the total transactions."