As someone who lives in Vancouver, its quite a different story, and most of those I know, really don't understand where these stats come from. There is not a week that goes by I have someone knocking on the door of our family home asking to buy it. There are four owners left on our street that are the original owners, the rest are vacation homes for Chinese, and completely vacant. This is far from exaggerated.
We sold my daughter's condo 2 years ago, and we're still getting email solititations to buy it. Apparently there's a company sitting behind about a half-dozen shell companies, and they're trying to buy up enough units that they can sit on the association board, and convert the whole complex to rentals; forcing the remaining owners to sell.
I'm glad I got her out of there 2 years ago. The rising crime problem there was the motivating factor.
https://www.fortunebuilders.com/one-third-of-vancouvers-real...
https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/taxes/property-taxes/prop...