So, we are told, "local demand remained the primary overall driver even as international demand, particularly from China, continued to play a secondary role."

Hmmm. They said the same thing about Vancouver. 

You would have house prices roughly doubling every few years, the first times in Vancouver's history that had ever happened, once from around 1986 to 1990, once from around 2002 to 2006, and once in more recent years...

... and yet the newspapers would say that it was all about local demand, and that anyone was a hateful racist who claimed money from Hong Kong and China explained the historic new phenomenon.  

But then people looked around in all those pricey neighbourhoods and noticed how many public schools had suddenly gone from less than five percent to over seventy percent, in terms of kids with facial features consistent with Chinese ancestry.

I think that was when a lot of people started to realize that newspapers and realtors were spouting propagandist nonsense...