The key point you are missing is that housing is being bought almost entirely by people who do not live there and never will, either as investment vehicles, or a way to safely move money out of china (real estate is one of the few things china allows Chinese citizens to invest in outside of china). They have no incentive to even rent, because of both frozen value property taxes, and the house generally forming a small part of their total wealth, generally being held as a rainy day nest egg. There are entire city blocks of high rises in Vancouver that have no lights on at night, no traffic in the morning, and no cars in their parking lots. Your entire post addresses arguments nobody made.
But if you had read the article you would already know that....
The economic activity driving the purchases is not tied to Vancouver in any way, it would continue if nobody lived in Vancouver whatsoever. Its a place for rich mainland Chinese to dump their wealth away from the clutches of the CCP.
