James Surowiecki at the New Yorker has a really interesting column up this week about the effect of the global rich on local real estate markets. Surowiecki points out that the most expensive housing market in North America right now isn’t San Francisco or New York – it’s Vancouver, because the stable Canadian real estate market and relative closeness to the Pacific Rim have attracted a wave of Asian investors.

Even if outside investors make up a tiny slice of the market, their deep pockets can help raise prices substantially across the whole metro, Suroweicki suggests – Vancouver real estate prices are nearly triple that of some American cities of similar size and median income.

But if tiny, rainy, boring ol’ Vancouver can manage to have an average condo price of well over $1 million, imagine what heights can Boston achieve. Tracking the influence of foreign investors on the market is difficult – there are plenty of wealthy Americans equipped to pay for a luxury condo with cash, and there’s no way to tell from a land record transaction where the buyer might have originated from. But anecdotally, many brokers here say they are seeing more foreign buyers. That would be a good thing for developers – a downright necessary thing – if the 10,000-something luxury condo units currently in the pipeline are to get filled out. But  if the numbers are sufficient to drive Beantown to Vancouver-like prices, that could affect buyers and sellers all the way out to 128, never mind the South End and the Back Bay.