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May 6th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
After 2010 there will not only be site C but Gateway, Evergreen, M-Line Extension, new St. Pauls, Childrens Hosipital, East Fraser lands, new bc place roof etc etc. the Projects never stop, they only change.
May 6th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
“This blog is just as biased as the many publications you all claim are biased. Which means none of you have any credibility and no one will take anything this blog says seriously.”
The publications rarely have open debate on a subject. They quote “experts” who don’t have to worry too much about being called out on factual and logical reasoning errors unlike posters and commenters on blogs. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of crap on blogs but rummaging around enough you find some pretty insightful sh*t that will blow your freaking miiiind, man.
May 6th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
I was planning to buy 10 condos myself. Buy high sell low! That’s the way we do things around here like in the 80s and 90s. One purpose of this blog is to help people make good financial decisions.
Like bdk said, what’s the rush? Why not just wait three months to see where the market is going. It can be a touching subject for some because nobody wants to see their investment tank.
May 6th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
richard, “Site C” is in the Peace. Not so much an effect on Lower Mainland employment… I’d start buying Ft. St. John properties now before it’s too late
May 6th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
This blog is just as biased as the many publications you all claim are biased. Which means none of you have any credibility and no one will take anything this blog says seriously.
Regarding “bias”, OK maybe/probably.
Regarding “none of you have any credibility”, be wary of phrases like “none” and “all”.
Regarding “no one will take anything….”, be wary of phrases like “no one” and “everyone”.
You have pretty much defined yourself by your comments and I for one am not impressed. And I’m not that smart! So just think of what the smart people think of you.
May 6th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
Google: House Bubble “Running Out of Land”
Vancouver’s obviously not unique when it comes to running out of land. I’m actually shocked, it’s not even on the first page of results! Seattle, Australia, Florida, California… a few of the results that at some point ran out of land.
Google: House Bubble “Everyone wants to live here”
Not unique here either. Also shocked that Vancouver isn’t on the front page. Everyone wants to live in Sonoma County, Marin County, California, blah blah blah…
These terms must be trademarked by Realtors.
May 6th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
If most of you hate Vancouver, as you seem to allude to by all the negative comments posted here, then why don’t you move somewhere else instead of constantly bitching and wishing ill on the entire city?
General format:
If you/they/he/she/it hate(s) _____ so much, why don’t you/they/he/she/it just leave.
This is the general format of a comment often heard in bars (from people who drink too much) or heard in movies coming from a scene portraying people (often bigots) of limited intelligence.
Whenever people utter it, they think they are so original, like nobody has ever heard their incredible wit before.
Sigh.
May 6th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
BC construction permits down but we’re still building them condos.
So the non residential projects are going down somewhat? I did hear on the news a while ago after the olympic mega projects are done there are still some projects in the pipeline. One mentioned was site-c (whatever that is). If approved, it’s a $6b project, to employ 2,000 over 7 years. Still sounds tiny to me though. I mean, 2,000 employed compared to the tens of thousands now, right? And that’s supposed to be the big project. Other smaller projects mentioned were bc hydro projects, costing $2B.
May 6th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
“Lets see thats 27K unit’s enough to house 55K people, most units take 2-3 to complete, so we’re looking at enough new supply to house 55K over the next 3 years region wide. Pretty sure that’s less the pop growth again.”
I wonder where all the immigrants who arrived 8 years ago lived when annual housing completions were half of what they are now. Wages and rents aren’t growing. You can build as little or as much as you want but you can’t force someone into a house they can’t afford. And given the growth in construction jobs, if the units under construction drops back to the long term average, or worse close to the lows of early this decade, that’s a fair number of jobs and (mortgage payments) that go up in smoke.
May 6th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
Wow! Nice to see some contrary opinions here even if they are a bit raving and odd. Are you guys freaked out speculators? Real estate agents with time on your hands? Or perhaps you’ve just lost your job and are freaked out about the mortgage.
We’ve just laid off 6 people and cut another four back to half-time to try to get through the drop off of US customers in our office, so if thats whats going on you have my sympathy.
It looks like the market really is changing if we’re starting to see more virulent bullish comments on the local blogs.
May 6th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
It’s now an emotion-driven market where people are buying on the expectation of future appreciation.” Increasingly Vancouverites view houses not primarily as places to live but as foolproof, can’t-lose investments. The passionate faith that money poured into real estate will magically multiply is creating a self-fulfilling speculative frenzy that’s bound to end badly.
It’s momentum investing, not that suddenly far more people are entering the workforce or moving across the country to higher-paying jobs
When will the day of reckoning arrive? That’s impossible to know. As we’ve seen in the past, bubbles can keep expanding far beyond what sensible observers see as the breaking point. But recent history has taught us something else as well: A market driven by irrational exuberance will eventually come back to earth. The most likely trigger would be a sustained rise in interest rates, coupled with continued increases in a burden on housing that the experts mostly ignore: soaring property taxes. That would help to deflate the rampant euphoria that’s driving the market. After years of being ignored, the fundamentals will reassert their control.
The end of the boom won’t look like a stock market crash, but it could still get pretty ugly. At best you’d have several years of flat or slightly falling prices in the hot markets. But if the economy slowed as well, the damage could be much worse , you may be better off going where the true bargains are, into a rental. And if you’re looking to invest in houses for a quick killing, forget it: This is no time to gamble on the real estate market.
May 6th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
I don’t hate Vancouver. I’m just saying don’t buy at the peak. the basic law of supply and demand and basic psychology indicate that they’ll be thousands of $$$ units on the market and no buyers and this will lead to negative sentiment about the market which will compound the problem further. Consumers are like lemmings. This happened in Vancouver ten years ago but no one remembers. The Asian Flu and the Leaky Condo Crisis hit and the same people who lined up to buy lined up to walk away from their units.
If the buyers really are “immigrant investors” then they don’t consider this a great place to live they just want to make a quick profit. Once these people run for the exit it will create a collapse. It’s sad that otherwise intelligent people are taking on subprime, er, 40 year mortgages now to have the privilege of paying 2-3 times as much as it would cost to rent the same property.
What’s the rush?
Does anyone really thing that more independently wealthy people will arrive? Where are these independantly wealthy people coming from? Why are they only coming to Vancouver now? Why aren’t they going to Miami?
Hawaii is really nice and prices fell there, they have limited land, a nice climate and if employment isn’t an issue then what’s keeping these rich people from going there? Or the Phillipines?
Why does anyone thing buying at the peak of a market makes any sense?
May 6th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
If most of you hate Vancouver
You seem to be mistaking the opinion that speculation has driven prices beyond what they are worth for ‘hating’ this city. It’s really not that complicated, its possible to ‘love’ this city without ‘loving’ the effects of speculative and credit market excess on local families and our long-term financial health.
May 6th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
“This thing is going to get worse before it gets better.””
I’m starting to wonder if prices haven’t bottomed and will go up from now on with comments like that. Maybe he’s resorted to reverse psychology; it worked like a charm when he was with NAR.
May 6th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
I don’t get it. Why is a reduction in the price of housing a bad thing? It’s not negative. Most of the comments from the bears are positive. If fact, the bulls are the negative ones. Isn’t having affordable housing positive? Isn’t owing less to the bank positive. Isn’t higher interest rate positive? Wouldn’t you want to be a saver rather than a borrower?
May 6th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
.
.
.
jj asked:
“where do you get that information?”
All you have to do is look around to know that new houses are’nt sellig. If you can find a new quality house outside of some east Van slum or deepest darkest Surrey that sold in the last 2 months without the builder taking a loss, I’l eat my hat.
As for high-end SFHs in Van west or on the north shore not selling, if you have’nt noticed all the “price reduced” adds screaming for attention, you may want to look at the GVRB stats.
You blind or WTF?
May 6th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
If most of you hate Vancouver, as you seem to allude to by all the negative comments posted here, then why don’t you move somewhere else instead of constantly bitching and wishing ill on the entire city?
Some of you also keep comparing Vancouver to other US cities, and then contradict yourselves by saying Vancouver has nothing to offer that those other cities do.
This blog is just as biased as the many publications you all claim are biased. Which means none of you have any credibility and no one will take anything this blog says seriously.
May 6th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
1>0: What makes it our job to try and convince you of anything?
Please, if you think the market’s going up…go out and buy more units/SFHs. I don’t want any fools like you to have free cash when I decide to buy.
May 6th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
Not in Vancouver…..by choice.
May 6th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
1>0
You’re so right, I’m going to race out and buy another condo downtown, it’s obvious all the rich people in the world are lining up to move here so if I don’t hurry up I’ll never be able to get in at these prices!
I’m going to buy ten!
Luckily I earn millions of dollars a year or I’d be unable to subsidize each unit to the tune of $2,000 per month and since rich people would rather spend $800,000 for a one bedroom that they plan to leave vacant 50 weeks of the year instead of staying in a hotel it’s clear prices will never go down! It’s different here! We have cafe’s!
Any city with cafe’s is guaranteed to go up forever
and the Olympics! Just like Salt lake City, Turin, China and Sochi! Plus there are warehouse jobs here that have regular pay increases! No other Olympic city has cafes AND warehouse jobs!
Global Recession won’t affect us, we’ve de coupled. You know just like technology stocks de coupled from the economy in the late 90′s! And Miami de coupled from the rest of the real estate market.
I bought a condo last year in Miami and sold it to a rich immigrant for double what I paid! it’s easy and you should be buying too! Tom Vu would be proud!
I’m glad you made it so clear! I need to run out and buy now!
In school they taught us that we needed 3% population growth just to sustain our economy but now I realize Vancouver is different. It’s different here!
Where should I go buy?
Reply quickly, I’ve got to get out there right now and start investing!
L.A. had the4 Olympics in 1984 and now house prices average $32 million and will go up for decades, wages have tripled in L.A. this year!
p.s. Does anyone remember where the 1998 Olympics were?
May 6th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
Maybe you can post a link to where those 18K empty condos are, I’m sure you already know that was a misquote by none other then Dave Cadman a COV councillor with a anti density agenda.
Maybe you could also post a link showing where those 27K units under construction are, as I’m sure they are region wide. Lets see thats 27K unit’s enough to house 55K people, most units take 2-3 to complete, so we’re looking at enough new supply to house 55K over the next 3 years region wide. Pretty sure that’s less the pop growth again. Try harder.
May 6th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
1>0
You’re interested in local RE math. Here are some more figures for you. 50% of DT/FC condos are already owned by investors. Many are empty, ergo, BC Hydro’s estimate that there are over 18,000 unoccupied housing units in the Lower Mainland. That’s more than enough to house one year’s worth of population growth. But wait, there’s more. While all this is going in the Lower Mainland an all time record number of units are under construction – something over 27,000 at last count. Guess somebody found some land after all. So yes, by all means, let’s build more condos still. Our population is bound to double after the Olympics so we’ll need every last one of them.
May 6th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
Make sure you pick up his other classics such as “The Rules for Growing Rich: Making Money in the New Information Economy”, published June 2000.
May 6th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
Lets see 1% growth = roughly 6K a year for Vancouver proper that seems right on the nose. Hmmm pretty sure that’s right around the level of housing being built. Assuming 2 people per household which is also right on the nose.
If Vancouver grew faster then that where would we put them? Guess we’d have to build more condos.
May 6th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
VanLoveBoy
Why do you insist on living in a geographical vacuum? What exactly is it that you believe to be so different about Vancouver that is pertinent to real estate. Please don’t tell us about running out of land, the Olympics or everyone wants to live here – if that were true, our population growth would reflect it, but at an anemic 1 to 1/2% per annum, it doesn’t.
May 6th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
Vanloverboy is obviously being facetious
May 6th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
Why do you all insist in continuing to argue by comparing Vancouver to other cities which are not Vancouver. That just reaffirms that Vancouver is different, and unique, and unlike those other coastal cities, and all other cities, everyone wants to liver here. – - – - – - – - – - – - – – - – - – – - – – -
Interesting how krrish digresses to far better sentence structure, grammar and spelling when he/she/it is in a rush to post. Perhaps he/she/it forgot to run it through the idiot filter. We’re not fooled, troll.
May 6th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
If you don’t like the rain buy an umbrella, it’s a lot cheaper then running a sprinker in Phoenix.
May 6th, 2008 at 1:25 pm
Just a question for Bizznitch, where do you live?
May 6th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
What’s so unique about Vancouver? P*sses rain half the year there, traffic sucks, and has all kinds of issues. And I can *guarantee* you that not everyone wants to live there.
May 6th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Why do you all insist in continuing to argue by comparing Vancouver to other cities which are not Vancouver. That just reaffirms that Vancouver is different, and unique, and unlike those other coastal cities, and all other cities, everyone wants to liver here.
May 6th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
The problem that Miami and LA have that Vancouver doesn’t is that they’re American cities.
Problem is that all three are coastal cities that have had lots of real estate speculation.
Also, I see in the Economist we just edged out Melbourne. There are some interesting charts on Aussie housing these days.
May 6th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
hmmm – guess Krrish decided to change personas to vanloverboy
May 6th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
The problem that Miami and LA have that Vancouver doesn’t is that they’re American cities.
Economist picked Vancouver no.1 place to live in the world again!!!
May 6th, 2008 at 12:30 pm
VanLoverBoy,
While I agree we have characteristics that are different than ROC, the entire country has had three factors in common: super-low interest rates (likely in process of reversing), 40 mortgages (impact probably still “positive”), and CMHC (impact positive).
To what degree each is responsible for current local RE prices I don’t know, but would imagine interest rates take the cake.
Since it is not too wild of an assumption to say that Vancouver RE has had the benefit of hot money (unlike like places such as Ottawa), we may well end up paying a price just like Miami and LA once interest rates rise or sentiment falls. Time will tell.
May 6th, 2008 at 12:30 pm
Lereah has what to do with Vancouver exactly? It is a fact that Canada is different from the US, and it is a fact that Vancouver is different than the ROC.
Is that a double negative?
I’m guessing you’d file this story under ‘reasons not to listen to the predictions of salesmen’. Funny how every crashed US housing market had ‘its different here’ as a reason that the bust wouldn’t come.
May 6th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
Now that he is working as a consultant for the financial industry…
Let me get this straight – the NAR “bamboozles” the public but the financial industry does not…?!?!
Come on now….
May 6th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
and Lereah has what to do with Vancouver exactly?
It is a fact that Canada is different from the US, and it is a fact that Vancouver is different than the ROC. As such that makes Vancouver doubly different, and RE here, as it is a unique place to anywhere else in the world, is special.
May 6th, 2008 at 11:49 am
Sorry for being a little off topic with this post however I am interested in the groups opinion:
Most days while I eat my lunch, I update a spreadsheet from the public MLS sites for what’s listed in my “area of concern” Coal Harbour and False Creek North. I’ve uploaded the spreadsheet to the link below and am interested in anybodies thoughts on what they see:
http://www3.telus.net/YLTNBoom.....0North.xls
The sheets reasonably self explanatory, I highlight price increases in red and decreases in green (I’m a bit of a bear hence the colour reversal). When a listing disapears I gray it out as too many times it pops up again and doesn’t really represent a sale. I’ve also included notes for when the MLS number changes as well as some basic calcs.
Thoughts?
May 6th, 2008 at 11:42 am
Let me get this straight.. Wall street is looking to the guy who predicted that the housing market will not fall for his predictions on when the housing market will stop falling?!?
May 6th, 2008 at 11:37 am
Hey ‘sky is falling’, don’t worry – when housing markets crash people find new things to bet on. I’m listing to news radio out of Rhode Island and just heard a report on the slump there. Sales of houses and condos is way down and prices are dropping as well. The local government is suffering from reduced sales tax revenue as people spend less, but not to worry, ‘gaming’ (gambling and lotto) income is way up this year!
May 6th, 2008 at 11:32 am
Once a treacherous cretin, always a treacherous cretin. What he’s saying now may be more in line with what the local bears believe (myself included), but I suspect what he’s saying has more to do with who’s signing the cheques than anything else. Any apparent objectivity is purely coincidental; he’s simply changed troughs.
May 6th, 2008 at 11:15 am
So if his endless-bull call marked the top, wouldn’t that suggest his endless-bear call is marking the bottom?
It didn’t mark the top – it marked his entire tenure at NAR. Lereah was being paid to bamboozle the public and that’s what he did.
Now that he is working as a consultant for the financial industry he is giving them the straight goods because, again, that is what he is being paid to do.
Sort of reminds me of the USSR when they had two kinds of publications – the mass media like Pravda which were just propaganda, and objective news reporting which was limited in its distribution to the party brass.
May 6th, 2008 at 11:11 am
When the bullish NAR was writing his cheques, there was no top. Now that a worried wall street is writing his cheques, he’ll probably never call the bottom (if the market turns wall street won’t be quite so worried).
May 6th, 2008 at 11:06 am
Can’t wait to see all these overpriced condo owners on the street when their precious properties aren’t worth 1/2 of what they are now. The rest of us will be LAUGHING our asses off while we do you all a favor by buying your condos at 1/2 price. LOL!!!
Let the foreclosures begin! The Vancouver condo market is fucked and is about to collapse, exactly what we’ve all been hoping will happen for years!
May 6th, 2008 at 11:03 am
Anonymous, the sky is not falling, that’s impossible, Vancouver RE prices are falling, and soon they’ll be plummeting.
May 6th, 2008 at 10:58 am
So if his endless-bull call marked the top, wouldn’t that suggest his endless-bear call is marking the bottom?
May 6th, 2008 at 10:56 am
THE SKY IS FALLING!!!
THE SKY IS FALLING!!!
May 6th, 2008 at 10:36 am
Hombre, where do you get that information?
May 6th, 2008 at 10:22 am
Folks, I gotta tell ya…new house sales have hit the wall. They have stopped selling completely, and spec builders are in deep dung.
High end SFHs in Van west and on the north shore have also come to an abrupt stop.
If awareness of this general resistance spreads, there is a chance that GVRB inventory could reach 18.000 by the end of May, and that would be enough to set off the biggest crash we have ever seen.