Last August, respondents to an Insights West poll in August identified four "primary causes" affecting the real-estate market.

They were, in order of responses, foreign homebuyers (84 percent), population growth (80 percent), shadow flipping (76 percent), and money laundering (73 percent).

But recently released B.C. government statistics suggest that foreign capital is not nearly as significant in the residential market as many might believe.

From January to November of 2018, foreign capital was involved in only 1,438 of the 49,210 transactions in Metro Vancouver.

That's only 2.92 percent of all transactions. The percentage rose to 4.07 percent in November when the market was exceptionally slow. (This information was initially disseminated over Twitter by former Statistics Canada employee Victor Wong.)

The chart below was taken from the DataBC website.