John Lovelace of Sutton Seafair Realty, the real-estate agency based in Richmond, BC, announced on its official website on Jan 2 that Zhong Ya Group Hebei Canada-China Co, the company from China’s Hebei province, bought Bradian, an abandoned town located in the Bridge River Valley north of Whistler.

The ghost town named Bradian, a 20 hectare community once built for a successful gold-mining operation, with streets, fire hydrants, vacant lots, and all of its 22 homes, was vacated in the 1970s after mining waned.

"We had an unbelievable response from potential buyers all over the world," said Lovelace in the official news release. "But at the end of the day we feel that the Chinese company will be a good fit.

"The company told us they plan to rehabilitate the town but I think they are prepared to take the time to plan everything out first," he said. "That planning process will undoubtedly take considerable time," he added.

Michael Mills, the spokesperson for the Bradian town project, speaking on behalf of the real estate agency, told the Huffington Post that the company would start to rebuild and upgrade the infrastructure in the first stage of the development.

Chinese investors in recent years have become the major force of foreign investment in the real-estate market in BC province.

Vancouver has been seeing heavy investment in recent years from tens of thousands of investor-class immigrants from the Chinese mainland, who have viewed the city as an ideal place to park their capital in luxury property.

According to Macdonald Realty Ltd., one of the largest real-estate companies in BC which has more than 1,000 agents and staff, 33.5 per cent of the 531 single family homes sold by its Vancouver offices in 2013 went to people with ties to China.

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