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April 3rd, 2008 at 1:41 pm
Alberta is experiencing, in greater magnitude, the same trend that is evident in BC and Ontario over the last 2-3 months. YOY listings increases and sales declines.
Unless, this multi-month phenomenon has occurred before during the course of the current boom (and I don’t think it has), the national market is certainly turning.
How long until we see people jumping from the windows of their leveraged, negative equity condos?
April 3rd, 2008 at 1:37 pm
From today’s Calgary Herald:
The association’s latest MLS data show unit sales for residential properties (single-family homes and condos) in the province decreased by 30.3 per cent compared with a year ago in February (6,602 to 4,601) while new listings increased by 44.9 per cent (from 7,800 to 11,302).
New listings were at the second-highest level ever for the province.
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Font:****A number of factors are fuelling the phenomenon of soaring listings in Alberta, said Richard Corriveau, regional economist for Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.
“Now that price growth has come to a grinding halt, speculators are looking to get out of the marketplace,” he said. “So people who had purchased in previous months are attempting to now get out of the market because there’s no incentive to wait for future price gains in the near term. We’re still forecasting increases into 2009, but currently prices have levelled off.”
April 3rd, 2008 at 1:29 pm
Before anyone corrects me. I was referring to the parking lots attached to the old high rises in the west end that could have some infill, but not now I mean twenty years from now. Furthermore the low rise zoned areas can be rezoned. There is no shortage of land.
The surface lots and low rises all over yaletown and that area were meant to be separate ideas.
No.4 Road and Alberta in Richmond was 15 run down houses 7 years ago and now it’s how many condo complex’s? With 600+ units?
The whole running out of land B.S. is another intrinsically flawed theory that salesman/realtors spew.
That and the gold plated planes carrying uber rich immigrants into town.
April 3rd, 2008 at 1:02 pm
*
Ok, ok bdk, we believe you already.
The only holdout is that weird krrish person and who the hell would take her serious?
I mean, with inventory starting to spike, could this storm get any more perfect?
It’s about to get really exciting, as sellers start to panic.
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:56 pm
Burden of Proof:
“…The conclusion is that immigrants to this city have enough money to have a decent standard of living in Vancouver. They are far from being destitute here.”
Okay, so maybe you’re not the dim-witted xenophobe Dan is, but maybe you’re a bit lazy in verifying your claims? (can’t quite believe the lack response by readers to Dan’s comments, btw. The silence is a bit disconcerting.)
Anecdotally, I have a completely different experience. I work for a governmental regulatory agency. I see lots of poorer immigrants. Destitute? Maybe not. Well-off? Far from it.
But, hey, sure anecdotes are interesting, but how about some facts? The following, from stats can, though from a report dated a few years ago, appears to supports the conclusion that many immigrants may not be exactly flush with cash:
“In most urban centres, recent immigrants were at least twice as likely as Canadian-born workers to earn less than $20,000 a year. They were also much less likely to have high earnings, that is, more than $100,000 a year.”
From: http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/En.....40818b.htm
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:48 pm
My point was, rich immigrants have more than one option when emigrating.
They don’t just move here because condo prices have gone up..
Middle Class immigrants can go to towns, and the first one I have actually seen is Hamilton and in this case I was thinking of their Polish community that came here with nothing and can actually earn more than minimum wage and don’t have to pay the exorbitant costs of living associated with the Lower Mainland.
I have seen plenty of working poor living in Richmond.
three generations sharing a 2,000 sq ft house doesn’t spell success to me.
Not destitute but they do not have two loonies to rub together.
So when people suggest all immigrants are rich I am inclined to disagree. Of course there are lots of rich immigrants here but there have been all along , it does not mean that every single specuvestor will automatically be able to sell their assignment for (with a trailer park accent) “an easy hundred grand”.
Additionally I’ve seen dozens of Hong Kong investors selling their units over the last couple of years and they aren’t buying here anymore and these were the people buying the units for 15 years when no one wanted them long before random hairdressers from Surrey, and idiot labourers like Krissh even knew what a mortgage was.
The prices these unsophisticated investors are paying now ($500k) could have bought a detached house in Dunbar in 2001 and wages have not tripled since then nor has rent. In 2001 it was only upper middle class people could afford these prices, what’s changed since then? Wages haven’t tripled…
Judging from the influx of rentals available and the rental prices of downtown Vancouver from this time last year (unchanged) the rent prices will remain unchanged or decrease for some time.
Incoherent ramblings about no surface parking lots aside there is a lot of land left to densify in downtown vancouver and once that’s all been built it’ll just be a matter of getting approval from the planning department to double the allowable building floor space ratio (did anyone think there’d be two 61 story towers on one block ten years ago?) and perhaps throw in some infill buildings on the cavernous open air and low rise parkades in the west end.
Miami arrogantly thought they were different too and scores of unsophisticated buyers lined up without doing their due diligence, now they’re crying.
How can Vancouver be any different? The sales pitch’s are identical.
Does anyone remember when
http://pricedoutforever.com/
was launched?
It applies here too.
In the 1990′s the masses were convinced they needed SUV’s to commute to work in, in hindsight did anyone who didn’t buy an SUV simply because everyone else was lose out?
Have V8 Limited Cherokee’s become the most prized used vehicle? They should have because everyone wanted one….
What’s this? Things have changed since then?
But rich immigrants were lining up to buy them in the 1990′s……Everyone wanted one! The Olympics!
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:37 pm
Burden of Proof,
I like your opinions on immigrants”from the Business demands it and profits require it”immigrants replace the ageing and retiring population it’s good way to get serve and it’s all about gives and takes.
“Well why not check out any farm in the Valley, or any number of small businesses in Vancouver, where you will find loads of poor immigrants, many working for less than minimum wage”.
But they can also enjoy six month of e.i. as farms are seasonal working class can’t be poor but close to poverty line for sure and enjoying the health care facilities on low monthly payments.
There are certain conditions for immigrants like landing fee around $1100 and around $18,000 in pockets to run their first year.Average airline tickets cost around $2,000 per individuals lots of bussiness class and skill workers own huge amount of properties back home once they like it here they can easily switch over their wealth for “best place on earth”.So most of immigrants can’t be poor than those who were mentioned above.
BTW,sheeplessinvancouver thanks for your enecdotal evidence and I was driving by east broadway just had seen a realtors assistant was changing board from sale to SOLD.
Richard thanks for your links there is no question remain bulls were not lying about “BEST PLACE ON EARTH”and about buyers from overseas and from with in provinces of Canada.
British Columbia’s strong economy, low taxes and range of job opportunities are a powerful incentive for people to come to our province.”-SC
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:39 am
I have never met a poor or destitute immigrant from Indian or China in Vancouver.
Well why not check out any farm in the Valley, or any number of small businesses in Vancouver, where you will find loads of poor immigrants, many working for less than minimum wage.
Destitute no – they are getting by, but just.
April 3rd, 2008 at 10:52 am
If you have a look at the graph again prices have “bounced” back up apparently!?! No idea how that works since the data points are for the same months.
April 3rd, 2008 at 10:43 am
Thanks Richard, my, my it is amusing to see how these RE guys spin bad news….
April 3rd, 2008 at 10:29 am
Housing sales slow to 2001 levels in greater vancouver.
April 3rd, 2008 at 10:08 am
Nice post above. I agree 100%. I always see Natives/Canadian borns complain that outsiders take all the good jobs and have made homes too expensive. But I’ve never seen those immigrants complain that the natives/canadian borns have bid up the price of crack/heroin or that all the good cubby holes under the bridge are all taken.
April 3rd, 2008 at 10:03 am
Further, regarding immigration,
Government and business require population growth because it increases the size of the domestic market and therfore increases business profits. It increases the tax base to fund government expenditure, including CPP and public service pension liabilities. Correct me if I’m wrong but 60% of Canadian population growth comes from immigration.
Therefore, immigratioin will continue, so long as Canadians don’t have enough children of their own. Business demands it and profits require it.
“We” may indeed be “bred out of this country” depending on who is the “we”. But this is capitalism. This is the free market. Money matters more than emotional attachments to traditional identities. Therefore, bring on the immigrants and bring on the profits. All “we” can do is to be in a position to cash in.
April 3rd, 2008 at 9:53 am
Regarding the discussion abut “destitute” immigrants, I have never met a poor or destitute immigrant from Indian or China in Vancouver.
Furthermore, the poor and destitute of the DTES appear to be from two ethnic communities: native canadians and the canadian born children of european immigrants. You don’t see indians (south asians) and chinese begging on the streets.
The conclusion is that immigrants to this city have enough money to have a decent standard of living in Vancouver. They are far from being destitute here.
April 3rd, 2008 at 9:18 am
Home prices still rising across the country.
“Vancouver remained the priciest city in the country by far in which to own a home. The price of a bungalow was nearly double that of the next most-expensive city in Canada, coming in at an average of $852,750, up 12.5 per cent from last year. Two-storey homes in Vancouver averaged $948,750, up 13.3 per cent, and standard condos averaged $455,750, up 12.9 per cent.”
We’re #1!!!
Nearly double… wow… i don’t know how much longer i can take this…
April 3rd, 2008 at 9:17 am
ulsterman,
If the price increases where guaranteed why tell anybody? Buy everything yourself. I’m sure US RE agents guaranteed people in 2006 that houses where going to appreciate in value. Look at the housing prices now. The point I was making is nobody can guarantee price increases or decreases. The market decides that factor.
April 3rd, 2008 at 8:39 am
“You guys should check out the Fraser Valley March stats.
Sales down 25% YoY, listings up 27% YoY and listings up 85% over 2006!
Stick , fork, done.”
Geez, there should be huge drop in Fraser Valley prices VERY soon, listings will continue to rise. Only a matter of time before a 10-15% drop in a hurry.
April 3rd, 2008 at 8:37 am
As far as Dan’s immigrant theory.
The countries you’ve mentioned are classified as poor.
It sure seems like poor immigrants prefer cities like Hamilton, Ontario where they can get high paying jobs and afford to buy housing.
Quesnel,B.C. is another example.
Why would anyone choose to leave a country where they were destitute only to repeat the same process by trying to live in a tiny house while being unable to save due to the high cost of living here and lack of jobs that pay more than minimum wage.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion.
Mine is that rich people are going to L.A. due to the more affordable housing, established immigrant communities, nice climate, mountains, water and most importantly they had the Olympics in 1984 (since it’s imperative to move to an Olympic city with water and mountains)
April 3rd, 2008 at 7:41 am
Dan, how far back do you have to go until your ancestors would be labeled immigrants?
Or do you prefer to keep your cognitive dissonance locked away with your moribund rationality?
April 3rd, 2008 at 6:38 am
sheeplessinvancouver,
i can assure you, that you are full of Sh1t. show use the mls listing. the freaken market is very slow. every open house and every agent i’ve talked to confirmed such.
April 3rd, 2008 at 1:32 am
you think the markets going to crash? really…
just wait till the next wave of immigrants from india and china and serbia arrive. Probably without background checks.
That or wait until the current generation moves on and has 15 kids of their own under their roof. We’re eventually going to be bred out of this country.
April 2nd, 2008 at 10:10 pm
mathamatical said “Hey, if RE agents and developers can guarantee prices will go up I should be able to guarantee prices to go down.”
The difference is that the RE agents and developers have been right for the past 7 years.
April 2nd, 2008 at 10:07 pm
“Best place on earth” but #15 on these lists:
Canada’s best places to live
http://www.canadianbusiness.co.....e/list.jsp
April 2nd, 2008 at 9:24 pm
One more bit of anecdotal downtown condo info. I look at listings in my old building now and then. There are usually 4-6 units for sale at any given time. Right now there are 11! Much higher than I have seen in the last few years.
April 2nd, 2008 at 8:28 pm
Some anecdotal East Van sales info. My source is the neighbourhood grapevine.
1 SFH – sold for around $800,000. Less than 2 weeks on market. Multiple offers with the sold offer $80,000 over asking. Buyers from out of town.
1 600 sq. ft. 1 bedroom condo – sold for around $300,000. No days on market as this was a private sale between people who knew one another.
1 750 sq. ft. 1 bedroom condo – sold for $380,000 which was $80,000 over asking. Buyer was from out of town.
3 listings in a building where a lot of flipping has been happening since 2004. One of them must have been on the market for at least 60 days. They have an open house every weekend and have just lowered the price. Current asking price for this 600 square foot condo is $300,000.
Not many signs, not many more listings, but most signs have been up awhile. If you call “normal” 2002/2003, then things are back to normal.
April 2nd, 2008 at 7:09 pm
Here’s an idea… how about if 20 or so of us go around to all the sellers who are trying to sell their places for waaay too much, and one after the other we offer them 40 or 50 cents on the dollar?
If we do that to enough sellers, do you think we could trigger a pop in the bubble early?
April 2nd, 2008 at 4:51 pm
I checked other Landcor graphs for places across BC and saw similar sharp declines at different times in areas where I was looking and didn’t see the same declines, so I too am wondering where the data comes from.
Does anyone know of similar info on other provinces? No, I’m not selling my Vancouver place (need somewhere to live), but am looking to buy and gave up on BC two a couple of years ago.
April 2nd, 2008 at 4:06 pm
I still think Krsssh Satv whatever… Is an immigrant from eastern communist block country that doesn’t have the foggiest about the fundamentals of capitalism. He has been following the bright light and truly believes that you buy house and get rich. Reality check – pay tooo much for house and crawl back home ashamed.
April 2nd, 2008 at 3:38 pm
Yeah #1 in interprovincial migration.
Just look in the doorways all the bums come here!
Chilli Con Carne:
There is no way krissh understands the concept of Negative Equity, he can’t even use a calculator plus he failed grade 2!
April 2nd, 2008 at 3:37 pm
*
“the RE price correction in the late 80s and early 90s”
As Jogi Berra might have said, the similarities are so similar that it’s dejavu all over again.
I was lucky to have sold an investment property in 1980, before the 81 crash and picked up double the value in 83.
However, not so lucky in 1990, when I tried to unload a rental house with the idea of shopping for bargains somewhat later. I not only waited too long, but turned down a couple of early offers that were much higher than what I eventually sold for. It was during the Mulroney era with all that Meech Lake crap, and very stressful, as the market seemed to collapse in a matter of weeks.
Anyway, lesson learned. Sold all my investment properties over the last year and a half…and the relief is awesome.
April 2nd, 2008 at 3:34 pm
On the other hand, we’re tops in interprovincial migration
April 2nd, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Greater Van Housing Sales Decline
April 2nd, 2008 at 3:11 pm
.
.
.
.
This market is like a slow moving train wreck. It’s a good time to jump off, but not many will.
Call it schandenfreude, but I sure hope a lot of specuvestors end up under the rubble.
With so many specuvestors licking their wounds for years to come, and with so many homebuyers underwater and overextended, it will be decades before the next bubble forms.
April 2nd, 2008 at 2:49 pm
You guys should check out the Fraser Valley March stats.
Sales down 25% YoY, listings up 27% YoY and listings up 85% over 2006!
Stick , fork, done.
April 2nd, 2008 at 2:43 pm
Ask anybody who’s been here during the RE price correction in the late 80s and early 90s. If you lose your job or want to relocate you will be screwed because you won’t be able to sell and you’re stuck until the market bounces back.
I had to convince a girl a month to go not to buy. The only reason she wanted to buy a place was just for the sake of owning a place. She had done zero research on the market. I said wait three months and I guarantee price will go down. Hey, if RE agents and developers can guarantee prices will go up I should be able to guarantee prices to go down.
April 2nd, 2008 at 1:55 pm
Krrish, keep nose and mastache cleans, maybe student journalist and together with law student work on project, lead like horse to water, uncover instead of deep well much mortgage fraud, tax cheats and also land deal not so transparentcy, suspect talk more of you found out.
Also
Imagine if you dare, the Olympics, the best place on earth, RE prices in Vancouver never fall, and we have run out of land, turns out to be a big lie, and now you are stuck with a leaky condo in East Van which you owe twice what it would sell for.
Rob, Krrish, Satv, please explain to the thousands of people who will be in the above situation how negative cash flow is a good thing.
April 2nd, 2008 at 1:40 pm
People in East Vancouver are selling their homes to move into condos downtown. If you like cafes and restaurants, downtown is the place to be!
April 2nd, 2008 at 1:13 pm
Pope
“indecipherable comments will be deleted.”
To paraphrase one of my favourite movie lines, “We need to get bigger delete keys… Big %&*$ing delete keys.”
- Dick Durkin
(best Rutger Hauer film ever by the way, highly underappreciated)
April 2nd, 2008 at 1:12 pm
Did Krissh buy it? or was it a homeless person from China waiting to go to the moon?
April 2nd, 2008 at 12:25 pm
My coworker finally received an offer on his place (25 DOM) – $20K below his original asking price of $469K. He took it immediately. $449K is still crazy for a 700SQFT Coal Harbor condo, but at least there weren’t multiple offers OVER asking price.
April 2nd, 2008 at 12:11 pm
yes please, we can probably all do without mt krish/satv/etc.
On another note, here’s an amusing story from another once-very-bullby housing market (and a city that like Van is in the top 10 liveable cities lists):
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/sect.....d=10501736
April 2nd, 2008 at 11:25 am
Krrish2 – really bad signal to noise ratio today, even for you. I can tell you like to be the center of attention, so here’s your special moment:
The Krrish Rule: you represent 1 (perhaps 2) individuals amongst the thousand or so that read this site each day, but you post an inordinate number of nonsense posts. I have no problem with your contention that Vancouver is a magically fairy-land where prices will rise at a higher and higher rate, you’re entitled to your opinion but please try to make it as clearly as you can. In recognition of your assertion that prices are up nearly 20% so far this year you get a special 20% rule – you can take up to 20% of the comments, which I feel is very generous. Badly off topic or completely indecipherable comments will be deleted.
April 2nd, 2008 at 10:58 am
Lager not Logger,
One of my friend just sold his 590 sq.ft. unit for 215K and the assessment value of that unit was around 180k
split 180,000/590=$305 per sq.ft.2007
$215000/590=$364 per sq.ft. almost 19% up 2008.
April 2nd, 2008 at 10:53 am
Is it possible that the landcor data includes the sale of entire apartment buildings and MLS only tracks the sale of individual units? I seem to remember the completion financing for Sophia had crazy high interest, somewhere above 20% annual rate. If the credit crunch is making large scale loans trickier would that drive prices down like this? This would also an investor segment that would care about things like rental return.
April 2nd, 2008 at 10:42 am
Even if that price data is based on transactions rather than a benchmark its still a pretty clear example of demand drop off – apparently people are less willing/able to pay as much for East Van apartments as they were just a few months ago.
April 2nd, 2008 at 10:40 am
Krrish2 above I appreciate your comments thanks atleast Sonika can smile on BEACH.
Alright then let’s all together put this elephant in a cup of coffee.
1.Landcore is not reading the graph for us, like we are missing the headlines to direct this graph and we are missing the field discription to discribe this graph.
East Vancouver market is more stronger than the west even recent listing percentage for east shows only 2% Increase while west side is way beyond compare to east side.
will be countinue as situation arise.I am waiting for more thoughts from you guys.
April 2nd, 2008 at 10:38 am
Has anyone tried writing Landcor and asking them for clarification? If this data is not benchmarked it’s strange that they would use the term HPI, which is what MLSlink calls their benchmark price.
April 2nd, 2008 at 10:33 am
True, I use MLS data with a grain of salt as well given the source. I would like to know where the source of the Landcor data is as well.
April 2nd, 2008 at 10:21 am
I noticed this too. I would trust the GVREB benchmark price more than this. It seems they do not quality adjust so it could easily mean the sales mix changed, however the last 2 months are significantly anomalous so maybe this is something more substantial or it might just be a data error.
April 2nd, 2008 at 9:39 am
I’d be much more inclined to believe Landcor’s numbers at face value, because we all know the RE guys will stop at nothing and have absolutely no conscience when it comes to the way they do business. I always use MLS data with a grain of salt, since the potential for bias is large and likely.
Still, I want an explanation of the source of the Landcor data.
Anyone?