The rest of the country is not balanced or slow at all.  Look at Calgary - with 50,000+ oil industry layoffs, prices should have been in a freefall since mid-2015.  But they have been held up by the offshore money coming in and buying everything in sight.  I suppose if you are a laid-off drilling worker, accountant or engineer, it is a godsend to be able to sell for $700k, when your old infill would otherwise have gone back to, maybe, $450-500k.  But it disrupts the usual cycle, wherein a young couple in non-oil work might have had a chance to get in.  More importantly, it is just not good for the nation to have Vancouver and Toronto unaffordable to local incomes, and other places moving that way.