The Hongcouver | Broker behind Vancouver real estate ‘crowdfunding’ website says it was a mistake
Jason Liu says he wants to help rich Chinese investor migrants, but site that listed multimillion-dollar properties should have been deleted when rules banned large-scale crowdfunding
Vancouver-area realtor Jason Liu says he just wanted to help the city’s wealthy Chinese investor migrants, and to help Canadians understand that “most of them are good guys”.
Instead, he has found himself answering questions from the British Columbia Securities Commission about one of his firms, Canada Luxmore Crowdfunding, and its website that listed multimillion-dollar investment properties across Vancouver and BC – golf courses, a winery, a retirement home, and more.
Liu, a mechanical engineer by training who immigrated to Canada from his native Shandong province in 2005, is exasperated by the attention. “I have lots of trouble now,” Liu said in an interview in his office in the Vancouver satellite city of Richmond.
Luxmore’s “canadazhongchou” (“Canada crowdfunding”) website has now been deleted, but it remained online at least eight months after the securities commission last May banned crowdfunding of more than C$250,000 per project.
Liu said it stayed online by mistake, and that it never recruited any funds.