There is an undeclared war raging in the "Lower Mainland" of British Columbia and even though no blood is being shed, there will continue to be many casualties. Taxpayers, home owners, and new immigrants from China, to name the most obvious. Trapped like a viper in a basket, the city of Vancouver is desperate to maintain to its decades-old hegemony over all neighbouring cities, and though the combined population and wealth of Burnaby and Surrey overtake it, the Vancouver political elites will continue to sneer contemptuously at harder working sister cities. In addition, the Vancouver municipality will never cease fighting an ideological battle with the Liberal Government in Victoria (they literally hate Premier Christy Clark), and that campaign is at the certain expense of all other communities in B.C. Vancouver is always demanding more power and taxing authority for itself, and constantly generating greedy schemes that will only serve to limit citizen's right to enjoy their freedoms and their property. Like any trapped predator, Vancouver is dangerous. I love my own city, Burnaby, and I find repugnant Vancouver's perpetual plotting for ever more power.
Over the next few weeks I will be sharing a few stories which should matter to those who call Metrotown Burnaby their home.
"Suburb of Happy Homes" - the condescending label applied
to Burnaby in a VANCOUVER SUN article published in 1942.
METROTOWN was a powerhouse location even before the current
development boom. The Metroplace Tower is just one of many
recent projects that are completely transforming the community.
Top Burnaby Metrotown Realtor
Loses License to Sell for One Year
Assuming that advertising doesn't stretch the bounds of truth, Lester Lin has been a very successful realtor of late. Here is an example of one of his advertisements - "#1 Listing Realtor in Burnaby", scraped from the Internet.
If you read his other display ads in the back issues of the Real Estate weeklies you can see what an impressive position he maintained in the marketing of high-end properties, many of them in prosperous South Slope, behind Burnaby Metrotown.
When a realtor of this stature gets censured by the Real Estate Council of British Columbia it's a Big Deal, or at least I thought so. The Council slapped Mr. Lin's hands in a decision rendered on August 17, 2015 and it was published on the Council's website on September 22. As far as I can determine, no news agency covers these releases, but they should, because such unethical practices make the public suspicious about the industry in general, and even mistrustful of other realtors who have spotless records. Mr. Lin actually runs his business from offices in East Vancouver, but clearly Burnaby is his target market. For the coming year he cannot write contracts himself, while he undergoes remedial training, but of course he has junior realtors at hand to service his client base.
For a complete copy of the Disciplinary Decision, go to
the Website of the Real estate Council of British Columbia.
The R.E.G.B.V. statistics released this morning (Nov. 3) show that residential property sales went up almost 20% compared to October 2014. There is an immense amount of money changing hands each month, and honest mistakes are costly enough. Deliberate fraud or deceptive practices can only be wiped out by strict enforcement of standards and greater efforts at educating the public - especially new arrivals from Taiwan and China who are not accustomed to our laws and business practices.
