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Thanks.

This weekend the Vancouver Sun ran a story about the top 15 real estate myths and realities which generated a lot of reader feedback. As of last night their website had many comments, the majority of which disagreed with some of the points in that article or the way that it was presented.

Today the comment section looks different. This morning all but two comments had disappeared, with many readers here claiming to have re-submitted comments that have not showed up. I’ve personally submitted a comment that has not yet appeared on their site. Since this morning one additional comment has been posted (congratulations ‘crabman!’).

I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that this is a temporary technical problem rather than a concerted effort to censor public feedback and appease real estate advertisers. If they are experiencing technical difficulties I’m sure they would want to keep the conversation going, so please feel free to post your comments here while we wait for them to solve the problem and re-post reader comments on their website.

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What you are about to witness in this city is going to crush you like a stale bitter melon. Those of us who have lived in this city for a generation know exactly what I mean.

And it always happens when it is least desireable for the hypers. The Olympics are going to be a major flop leaving us with a giant bill and not nearly as many visitors as they expected due to 200.00 oil and food shortages and riots around the world. No one will care about Vancouver by then.

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But this essay

http://www.herecomeseverybody......mouse.html

by Clay Shirky about …about… um…, well, the ability of the internet to channel “cognitive surplus” rather than relying on TV or gin to anaesthetize the general public. He has a book about organizing without organizations, which is kinda what’s going on with VHB — vancondo — mohican — Chipman (commenters) — solipsist, fish et al. Not that it’s a cause or anything, but it is a bunch of folks with cognitive surplus that collaborate in a particular area to create collaborative channels of meaning. And these channels recently interacted with Old Media on the 15 Myths thing, and … well, you know the rest.

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Most of points are irrelevant or don’t say enough to form an opinion.

#3 -Real estate prices in Greater Vancouver can’t keep going up; they’re too high already. No one can predict for certain, but I would guess that realtors and lenders would love for everyone to think this statement is untrue so they can keep on making lots of money. I bet that’s where the info came from.

#5: A bathroom or kitchen renovation is the best way to add lasting resale value to your home. Whoever wrote this doesn’t understand simple depreciation. Everything in your home depreciates in value. The appliances, the drywall, the plumbing, everything. The only thing that has been appreciating (and won’t forever) is the land value. The only renovations that pay for themselves are paint (if you do it yourself and you do a nice job), flooring, and inexpensive landscaping. Everything else is a net loser. Don’t do it for a profit. It doesn’t pay.

#9 New condominiums are commonly flipped for a profit before they have even been occupied. There are so many residences under construction right now, I believe we will soon see a vast number of condos coming on the rental market. This cannot be called either way right now. I suspect we will find it to be true soon enough.

#11 Buying a home outside the city and commuting to work is a good way to save money. It’s good while transportation is cheap. Just you wait.

#12: Buying an additional property to rent out is a solid investment. Once again this is only true in a growth economy. In a receding economy, this will produce some big losers.

#14: The bank owns my house. Semantics. Sure you own your home. If you don’t pay your mortgage, the bank take it away from you. Then they will own it. If you don’t have a mortgage and you don’t pay your taxes, the city can take your home away from you.

#15: You’ve just sold your house and have made a ton of money off it. What a silly thing to say. I think this was put in to entice people to buy with the sole intent of making money. Foolishness. These types of investors are often “caught holding the bag”.

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Employment in the forest industry was clobbered in the 82 recession and never recovered. The industry used the downtime during the bust to automate, and most of the laid off workers were never rehired. And the few that remain are getting clobbered again.

Mining employment is also down substantially due to automation and shutdowns such as the Tumbler Ridge coal mines and the silver-lead-zinc mine in Kimberley. Employment in secondary resource industry like the smelters in Kitimat and Trail is also down.

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Tell them how you feel about hiding the comments about the 15 myths:
http://www.canada.com/share/soundoff

Or email the editor direct:
depenner@png.canwest.com

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“BERTRAND MAROTTE
Thursday, May 01, 2008
MONTREAL — The Quebec government has lured New York finance powerhouse Morgan Stanley to Montreal with a generous package of tax credits.

Morgan Stanley says it will invest $200-million to build a technology centre in the city and create 500 jobs. More to come”

Oh well, just 500 high tech jobs not coming to Vancouver. I expect Montreal’s housing price advantage had something to do with it along with Quebec tax payer generosity.

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*Gold 3X up but not all people can buy gold.
*Fuel 3X up but not all people drive or own cars.
*Energy3X up but not all people pay the bills just home owners or some tenent as per the contract.
*Grocery 3X up but you don’t have to buy all the items in the store.
*Rates of pay 3X up but not for every single employees in bc.
*Home prices 3X up but not all people own a home.
*********************************

misanthropic curmudgeon,
I am glad that you still around us here- wg2c nice to read you again.

“you bellowed?”
Yes indeed miss curmudgeon still in love and i had miss you so much- btw SONIKA screwd up every thing.WG2C cheer up!

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check out the inventories for west van, north van, and van west

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So, the ‘reality’ is we are making less money .. and as the Sun myths/reality article states, job growth is solid and will contribute to demand, they forgot to mention we are making less money and that over half the new jobs in the last year were in construction (28K/55K, statcan).

This confirms previous information. Great to have the most recent statcan data to show up to 2005. The sun ran a similar article about 2 years ago, saying almost exactly the same things related to real income decline.

Strataman, I think during the time of the census forestry jobs were growing and that industry was booming, go figure and skilled tradepeople get paid more than the median, even labourers are up there, I think you can walk on a site for $15, less than median, but certainly not a bad wage for the skill level, that was probably much less before the boom.

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But….but…but I thought incomes went up 3x in the last 10 years for box stackers and baristas! Does that mean that one of our posters is being dishonest?

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Could it be that it’s because our booming economy is based on construction? How much are these construction workers making?

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