Letter: ‘Sneaky’ Burnaby speculators exploiting every loophole to ruin housing market

Editor:

I have serious concerns about the Province of B.C.’s planned cooling-off period because of the opportunities it will offer speculators who have already ruined the Burnaby real estate market.

Speculators are sneaky in that they look for and exploit every loophole there is to outbid regular folks who are simply trying to find their dream home.

Just look at the housing market right now and how many older properties are flying off the market in just a few days for well over the asking price.

Now we’re going to implement a system in which speculators can just bid on multiple properties with little or no obstacles to pulling out of a deal? What’s to stop these professional buyers from just bidding on five or six properties at a time and then dropping out at the last second if they don’t like the situation?

Meanwhile, regular people struggle to even put together one bid. They will end up being priced out of each deal even more than they are now.

The market is already tilted enough in favour of sellers – now even more buyers will be taken advantage of.

I get that the province is trying to help buyers, but this is not the way to go about it.

Anthony Phillips, Burnaby