Friday Free for All!
Its Friday and that means free-for-all time here on Vancouvercondo.info. This is when we do our weekly roundup of news stories on real estate and economics. Here are a few stories to get you started:
- US Housing market woes bad for BC
- BC Credit union predicts strongest growth since 1985
- Fewer tourists coming to BC
- Video: Dan Rather on the Downtown Eastside
- Canadian home prices almost double in last decade
- Immigrants struggle in wealthy countries
- Gas prices predicted to hit record highs by summer
- Some expect oil to fall on growing supply
- The tell-tale signs of a recession
- Stagflation?
And last but not least:
- Coco News, an economic news blog!
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February 21st, 2008 at 11:11 pm
“It’s important to stay relevant to them,” he said. “There will be a pent-up demand and that market will bounce back. U.S. travelers will return to those destinations that stayed relevant during the difficult years.”
Appears to be soft? Now why might that be?
Pent-up demand from whom? All those Americans with savings burning a hole in their pockets? Yeah right.
February 21st, 2008 at 11:54 pm
Seriously, the DTES problems need to be properly addressed, not just swept under the carpet until the party is over…
February 22nd, 2008 at 1:00 am
February 22nd, 2008 at 7:25 am
February 22nd, 2008 at 7:40 am
we need an acronym for it…. “PUD”
or a variant like “FUD” to go with “FUBBLE’
February 22nd, 2008 at 8:08 am
http://tinyurl.com/29qg2g
“This is a big one,” cautions Harvard Economics Professor Kenneth Rogoff. “If this one got into trouble, it would be a big problem.”
February 22nd, 2008 at 8:16 am
February 22nd, 2008 at 8:20 am
http://www.canada.com/theprovi.....mp;k=75296
If you need to raise money to pay the fine just start another ponzi scheme!
February 22nd, 2008 at 8:30 am
Absolutely Not!
There is too much news out there for me to publish. And… I do like reading this blog occasionally too.
February 22nd, 2008 at 8:39 am
numbers spinpress release hasn’t been…uh…released?Is it normal to release reports more than a month after the fact, or are they just trying to find a way to “frame” the numbers that doesn’t make it sound like the sky is actually falling?
February 22nd, 2008 at 9:13 am
What’s yours?
February 22nd, 2008 at 9:19 am
Personally I think we need to open more detox and mental health centers in the valley and ship people out to them. The NIMBYs can go fuck themselves.
Oh, and lock up the APC while we’re at it.
February 22nd, 2008 at 9:26 am
The Vancouver and BC governments rightly say that this is at least in part a Canadian problem, people on the DTES come from all over Canada because they know they can survive a winter on the streets here. So they refuse to foot the whole bill. The feds say it’s a local problem and refuse to help fund any solutions.
So, no significant amounts of money are ever allocated to deal with the problem and nobody has yet come up with a solution for the problem that’s free or very cheap.
February 22nd, 2008 at 9:48 am
Crack Whore Petting Zoo
And best of all we could starve them of food and crack, then throw Krrrrish in the cave!
Oh c’mon, you know it would work!
February 22nd, 2008 at 10:11 am
Do you live in the valley? Or are you yourself a NIMBY, why not have centers spread throughout the lower mainland? I don’t disagree with your solution but what does the APC have to do with the DTES? They’re just a group that thrives on the attention that they get from people beaking off against them. If they didn’t get any coverage then they’d be just another fringe group that no one cares about.
February 22nd, 2008 at 11:37 am
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23287887/
February 22nd, 2008 at 12:11 pm
I live in east van. Previously I lived downtown. Sure I think they should be spread all over Metro Vancouver, but most importantly away from the source of their problem, which is the drug infested DTES.
The APC actually pulls the reputation of the DTES down, and frustrates regular taxpayers. Who is going to have any sympathy for the people down there that really deserve it when these assholes are running around? Get rid of them and focus on the people who need help.
February 22nd, 2008 at 12:13 pm
February 22nd, 2008 at 12:17 pm
February 22nd, 2008 at 12:22 pm
February 22nd, 2008 at 12:46 pm
unlikely… even murderers get off easier than that here.
February 22nd, 2008 at 1:04 pm
The other thing I’d suggest is Riverview be re-opened for the mentally disabled,drug pushers have a minimum of a 5 year sentence first offence and 10 years second offence and 30 years 3rd offence and that they all go to Federal prisons!NO Parole!
Minimum sentencing doesn’t do anything to actually solve problems; it just sticks people in jail for longer. The US is proof that minimum sentencing and the War on Drugs approaches do not work well.
The problem with the DTES is that too many people think there’s a simple solution to the problem of being a frail, fallible human being. The various action groups seem to think housing/services/treatment centres are the answer. They’re not; they might be part of one, but anyone who says “all we have to do is X” is either naive or selling something.
February 22nd, 2008 at 1:10 pm
—
Well, at least they can’t commit any more crimes while theyre in jail.
February 22nd, 2008 at 1:13 pm
http://www.rottenneighbor.com/
February 22nd, 2008 at 2:17 pm
Drugs are not a supply-side problem. If there are people who want to buy drugs, there will be people to sell them. You can keep putting all the low-level pushers in jail for life and more will fill the void. The only way enforcement is a legitimate option is if the cops make a concerted effort to work their way up the food chain and arrest the people at the top. But even that is a temporary fix.
February 22nd, 2008 at 2:17 pm
“Well, at least they can’t commit any more crimes while theyre in jail.”
Yeah, but if your sole purpose is to stop crime without any other concerns then why not just start summary executions. Saves a lot of money on prison time and court costs *AND* you know they won’t be committing any more crimes that way.
February 22nd, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Sounds like you should move to the USA! Half a trillion dollars spent since the mid 80’s (excluding treatment), has drug crime/abuse subsided? No, it’s increased.
The more you spend to make drugs less available the more money there is to be made from drugs. It’s very simple really, and a lesson that was learned (and forgotten) some 80 years back during US prohibition.
Tax drugs, spend tax receipts on prevention, treatment and community policing. Or tax working citizens, spend tax receipts on ineffectual treatment and ineffectual policing. But tell this to the average Canadian and they’ll look at you the same way they would if you ranted about the RE bubble.
February 22nd, 2008 at 2:40 pm
The flip side of ‘pent up demand’ is ‘exhausted demand’, just look south for an example of that.
February 22nd, 2008 at 3:18 pm
http://www.cnbc.com/id/23291851
I have one BIG question from this. Why the heck doesn’t anyone in the MSM (in this case these guys) ask “If Ambac and MBIA are in serious trouble, why do they still have a AAA rating? For that matter, if they are in serious trouble and ARE bailed out, do they still deserve their AAA rating?
February 22nd, 2008 at 3:49 pm
Well, at least they can’t commit any more crimes while theyre in jail.
Yes they can; they’ll just be committing crimes in prison. But hey, out of sight, out of mind, right? That’s what counts, because if you’re not seeing the problem, the problem doesn’t exist. This is what I mean: there is no simple solution to the DTES’s problems.
Yes, criminals should go to jail. No, that is not enough; if it were, the country with the highest incarceration rate (the US) would also have the lowest crime rate. It doesn’t.
Don’t support sloppy thinking.
February 22nd, 2008 at 4:06 pm
February 22nd, 2008 at 4:22 pm
http://fightforjustice.blogspo.....ement.html
Even the shiny new Woodwards building and Bob rennie cannot change this fact.
So the “wisemans” who plan to move into, and profit, from the W are in for a surprise.
Taxing Marijuana would bring in a lot of revenue that could then be used to pay for treatment centres, for the real drugs like meth.
It’s cheaper to pay for treatment than to put the junkies through the legal system repeatedly….
I know I’m being idealistic but who actually loses if drugs are legalised? The ex-janitor who’s become a $1,500 a day dial a doper? Wouldn’t it be cheaper to give the junkies their 12 cents worth of heroine and prevent thousands of dollars in property crime? It’d also lower property taxes and free up some cash to go after pedophiles.
Actually I’ll just go on telling people I live in the best place on earth and deny that there is a DTES.
“Oh no, you must have Vancouver confused with some other world class city”
February 22nd, 2008 at 4:25 pm
At the beginning of January there were 16 units listed with an average $840/sqft. The number of total units listed on MLS has been steadily slowly growing (as expected) to the current 29 with an average price of $797/sqft. Over this period, 4 are no longer listed. There was one price reduction from $799K to $759K and three price increases of $958.8->968, $1,689->1,698, and $999->1,025. Lastly, there were 4 mls number changes, 1 for a price drop, 1 for a price increase, 1 for a list / delist over a week, and 1 for what appears to be no reason whatsoever.
Does anybody track similar data for other small subsets?
February 22nd, 2008 at 4:34 pm
maybe getting a little lonely over there?
February 22nd, 2008 at 4:35 pm
“Somewhere I read NYC has done a pretty good job, anybody know about that?”
Yes, the commissioner of the subways in the ’90s was hired because his speciality was cleaning up problem areas. He instituted a philosophy known as “Broken windows” law enforcement. Which essentially says that if many minor crimes are happening in plain sight it encourages more serious crime. Previously no effort had been made to block fare cheating (which was rampant) or graffiti.
Fare cheating was too tough to deal with because if an officer arrested someone he was out for the rest of the day booking the offender and they just didn’t have the manpower. Under the new system officers would collect a “daisy chain” of 20 or so prisoners until the mobile “booking bus” came around to his station. Needless to say once many offenders were being punished fare cheating stopped.
As for graffiti, apparently it took 3 nights to do a “proper” job of the graffiti, first the kids would paint a base coat of white. Let it dry. Then black outlines. Let it dry. Then colour it in. By the end of the colouring in process the kids would step back to admire their work and a painting crew that had been observing the final touches would step out and re-paint the whole car in a half an hour or so.
Major crimes on the subway plummeted, when Giuliani took over he made the guy the Police superintendent and he applied the same philosophy to New York as a whole.
There were other factors at play but it seems that this was one of the most effective ones.
February 22nd, 2008 at 4:43 pm
between the same people not paying their subway fare and outstanding
warrants for other crimes.
February 22nd, 2008 at 5:12 pm
February 22nd, 2008 at 5:32 pm
February 22nd, 2008 at 5:35 pm
February 22nd, 2008 at 6:51 pm
2008-02-22 16:34:34
strangely enough the only posting on robs site today is from Ampa….
And I have been banned so I can’t report the following post:
AmPa { 02.22.08 at 3:38 pm }
Anything in this market will sell.
There are two new developments near Granville island, and both are pre-selling in the 800-900 $/sqft range, and people are buying. No view, nothing spectacular. Welcome to your $600,000 dollar 800 squarefoot shoe box.
Just got an email from my realtor. 3 out of 4 new listings that are required about (in the $350,000 range) were sold 20K above asking price.
Buying Real estate is now like buying a pack of gum it seems.
Blueskies, I have to tell you that my feelings were hurt when you implied Rob banned me from his blog because I was rude.
The truth of the matter is the guy is an emotional cripple with penis envy.
February 22nd, 2008 at 7:23 pm
probably would make a great RE salesperson… oh wait….
February 22nd, 2008 at 7:32 pm
http://vancouver.craigslist.ca/apa/583565997.html
Does this mean that the price is going to go up even more? Will the wisemans pay more Krissh?
What happens to the people who want $1800 a month for the same unit? Do their units increase even more in value because they want more rent?
What are the people who’ve been sitting on their vacant rental properties November, December, January, February and almost March going to do?
February 22nd, 2008 at 7:35 pm
Buy Proctor and Gamble
local sales of “Depends” has skyrocketed recently…. film at eleven…..
February 22nd, 2008 at 9:08 pm
About spectrum unit you have to find out what is the deal just ad is not enough base to comment anything,go find out than come back.
Smartguy,
Wage rates are depend on the type of work you do but real estate is depend on remaining availability of land in the city you like to purchase.
When some one say housing prices are going up because of Consumer Confidence,Increasing Wages,great demand through immigration and migration,low interest rates that’s mean those are factors that creat atmosostspere for buyers to go ahead.
On the specific point of increasing wages mean those buyers who are buying their income or rates of pay are increasing.
On your point for last 30 year imagine some one who start @$2per hour is making $50.
A friend of mine start working @$7.30 per hour in 1997 and his current rates of pay is $29 per hour.other one start working at $20 in 2002 his rate of pay is $50 now.
So it’s depend on what kind of job you got most of unionized jobs are carrying built in raise not the macdad type of jobs.
At the end not every one is getting pay increased so not every one is buying only people with big bucks and super confidence in the market are buying.
Affordability issue is a global issue not in just our city,Because of competition there is nothing to help.
If affordability is an issue for you to buy $250.000 condo then A millionaire can buy four of those see the difference then you can solve the triangle mystery by your self.
February 22nd, 2008 at 9:41 pm
Global? What happened to the best place on earth……………………
February 22nd, 2008 at 10:00 pm
Did you even pass grade 5?
As usual you made a dumb and ignorant statement that you can’t back up.
Seems like your pattern goes a little something like this
a)say something really dumb
b) say something dumber and hope that those reading forget about the first stupid thing.
c)say something even stupider
Why don’t you start doing seminars Krissh?
You can start by going to Kazakhstan and finding some wisemans to buy leaky condos.
February 22nd, 2008 at 10:04 pm
Best is Best man what are you talking about?
when people like you do not form a line up then affordability erodes. did some one tell you to get in or be priced out?
Tell me if any government or developer will visit your place to pick you up and will put you in line up?
don’t you know you were lining up here not there that’s how affordability erodes in high definition infront of your eyes.
be smart and sit in the wagon right away go! bravo! go!…….
February 22nd, 2008 at 10:04 pm
so it’s okay for krissh1 to make stuff up and spout off dumb shit.
What is krissh1 basing his facts on? Obviously nothing real or relevant
February 22nd, 2008 at 10:23 pm
when you don’t know the detail of rental agreement how can you make some comment?
lets say the owner just want you to rent mom and list his unit for sale he is still making that 1450 extra while his unit get sold real deal is that if he is willing to locked in the 3-5 year lease agreement.
lots more to say but we need some detail about the inside.
February 22nd, 2008 at 10:25 pm
February 22nd, 2008 at 11:07 pm
There are hundreds of units available for rent in spectrum , after five months, so he’s lowered his price. This is smart but still not enough as he’s posted twice now.
So clearly there is more supply than demand, since the landlord has been sitting on a vacant unit for five months already.
If you got past grade 5 you’d understand supply and demand is a very basic principle of economics.
“supply and demand, in classical economics, factors that are said to determine price, by correlating the amount of a given commodity producers hope to sell at a certain price (supply), and the amount of that commodity that consumers are willing to purchase (demand).”
And what are you thinking comparing a union job with pay increases to the whole population as a whole for the past thirty years?
How about a top rate safeway employee? They are making less today than they were, adjusted for inflation, twenty years ago. Does this mean that the whole world’s wages went down? Seriously did you get past grade five?
I don’t know why I keep trying taking the bait and replying to your written diarrhea.
February 22nd, 2008 at 11:11 pm
February 22nd, 2008 at 11:15 pm
February 23rd, 2008 at 8:25 am
“Vancouver developer pulls out of 3rd project.”
http://tinyurl.com/3ajbgc
A Vancouver developer who pulled out of two building projects worth $95 million last November has halted a third development citing financing difficulties, CBC News has learned.
February 23rd, 2008 at 8:37 am
Is it really necessary to migrate this juvenile shit over here?
February 23rd, 2008 at 8:58 am
question is yours, you have to bring the detail and don’t try to read a book of economy for me, what makes different is your own rent for your unit.tell me what are you paying monthly and what were you paying b4?.
btw do not scream in front of me every body know that you are a elder son of STRATAMAN a family on denials.
February 23rd, 2008 at 10:21 am
“Vancouver developer pulls out of 3rd project.”
It’s hard to believe this can happen in Vancouver. With so many Jet-Sets wanting to move here, one would think there would be no limit to asking prices and therefore rising costs would not be a factor.
Could it be the developer knows this bubble is fulled by hot air?
Might it be that the pumpers realize the psychology could change overnight and they could get stuck with a massive exodus of specuvestors?
February 23rd, 2008 at 10:49 am
February 23rd, 2008 at 11:14 am
Warren: Thats a huge drop! Obviously overpriced to start with, but still a shocking reduction. Strataman has been tracking rentals and listings in spectrum here (thanks strataman!) and so far they seem to be holding pretty steady.
February 23rd, 2008 at 11:17 am