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Downtown townhouse market tracking

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YLTNBoomerang sent in some extremely detailed townhouse market tracking data for downtown Vancouver with the following note:

Hi,

Long time reader and sometimes contributor to your blog. I sold my place last March in Yaletown (townhouse on Marinaside Crescent) at $890/sqft and have been tracking townhouses in Vancouver ever since. More recently (January) I started recording changes in prices etc. on MLS in a increasingly large spreadsheet. I thought you might be interested in seeing how this specific slice of the market is reacting and have attached this sheet. Please feel free to use or distribute as you please.

Keep up the good work!

The information in this spreadsheet includes square footages, new listings and price changes from January 10 until July 29th (today).  Within the tracked time period for Waterfront townhouses in downtown Vancouver there have been 5 instances of asking price increases and 73 instances of asking prices being dropped.  The entire database is color-coded, with red indicating price increases and green indicating drops.

We discussed options for graphing the data included here, but neither YLTNBoomerang nor I could figure out the best way to do it, so here’s an open challenge to Vancouver real estate market data obsessives & excel graphing gurus: Can you figure out a way to present the information in this spreadsheet in an interesting and informative visual manner?

Click here to download the XLS document.

Want to share a graph? You can email it to me along with the name you’d like credited and I’ll post it here.  If you want to cut out the middleman (me) you can make a post in the discussion forum with any graphs or images attached and link to it in the comments below.

UPDATE: That was fast! Here’s a “day’s on market / price drops” scatter graph courtesy of an anonymous contributor:

dt_th_pricedrops08.gif

UPDATE 2: Yet another anonymous graph-maker sent in this chart showing asking price per square foot for downtown town houses for the first half of 2008:

dt_th_pricepersqft08.gif

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[…] the end of July we posted an excel spreadsheet that YLTNBoomerang is using to track the market for Downtown waterfront Vancouver townhouses.  YLTN just sent in the updated data so I’m posting it here for anyone interested in this […]

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beta

Oversupply is not limited to houses in outlying areas.

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Drachen

Good link Blueskies, he massively overstates his case though. I think if he'd stopped at point #1 he'd have been doing better as some of his later points contradict each other.

#3 Oversupply will drive priced down.

#7 Houses in outlying areas will be worth nothing.

Well #7 eradicates #3, they can't both be true, if housing in outlying areas is abandoned it's no longer housing and the oversupply disappears.

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Informed cleantown

hey non nutslap!

The overbuilding was not the result of meeting demand for housing, it was all about meeting the demand for speculative vehicles. Once the speculators are slowly roasted year after year by declining prices, then eventually nobody will be thinking that housing is a "great investment." Once that belief system has been eradicated via everyone who acted on it being destroyed financially, then housing will once again be viewed as shelter rather than a speculative vehicle for investment or "get rich quick" deals.

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Anonymous

Nice link, blueskies. Especially agree with the bit about low-quality housing going down a lot more than high quality housing. Extreme bargains will be there, for sure, but anybody holding out for a $400k west side home is almost certainly SOL.

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bdk

Great link Bluesikies.

How thw&^%$ could one of the idiotic trolls, who jester about on here, read that and concule prices are going anywhere but down 40%????

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blueskies

interesting read…..

http://tinyurl.com/bigdrop

Oversupply and Compression: How the Median House Price Will Fall from $215K to $70K

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Anonymous

Well this oughta be good for pre-sales – looks like Sea-2-Sky shutdown for a few days due to large landslide at Porteau Cove. 200 mile detour!

"If you lived here, you'd be home by next Thursday."

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admin

Another contributor who wishes to remain anonymous has sent in a graph of the asking price per square foot for downtown townhouses from this data. I've just updated this posting with that graph.

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jesse

"$63K forgone is not bad considering he had to figure out a few things:"

You guys are killing me with all this! "Save me from myself!" It's like asking your buddy to hold your money at a casino because you're a compulsive gambler.

Maybe dude had a girlfriend he didn't trust. If they were common law at the time of the purchase he'll be in court anyways.

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scullboy

Anon:

Your right, his girlfriend would have pissed it away on clothes and jewlery. THe logical decision would have been to get himself a boyfriend. THat way at least the could borrow the wardrobe!

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Anonymous

Top tax bracket in BC is 43.7% (fed and provincial together). He could have. Top capital gains tax (which this would fall under I believe) is 21.85%.

This would not be capital gain….interest income would be taxed at 43.7% x 126,000 = $55,000 (instead of $63,000).

Good, his girlfriend would have another $8,000 to spend on clothes, jewellery, etc.

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Drachen

Anonymous

Top tax bracket in BC is 43.7% (fed and provincial together). He could have. Top capital gains tax (which this would fall under I believe) is 21.85%.

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Anonymous

The $126k figure is based on a conservative GIC rate of return of 3.5%. The point being that the cost for taking the time to think over his windfall is shared by the taxman.

Taxman would have taken about 50%, which would net him about $63K.

$63K forgone is not bad considering he had to figure out a few things:

a) His girlfriend would have found a way to piss away $63K in clothes, jewellery, etc.

b) She would also find a way to take a cut of the $3.6 MM windfall

c) Could have invested $3.6 MM in presales last year….hmm, how would that investment look like today?

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Ultraman

DaMann, I'm glad you're not my psychologist.

The $126k figure is based on a conservative GIC rate of return of 3.5%. The point being that the cost for taking the time to think over his windfall is shared by the taxman.

Financially speaking that was not the best decision for sure but considering that numerous studies have shown the adverse effect of winning the lottery, taking time to think about it might not be as bad an investment as it seems. Mind you a year seems a bit much but that's a luxury he can certainly afford.

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ulsterman

Ultraman says…Another reason not to trust any bloger for financial advice. A good chunk of that $126k would have been going to the taxman.

Don't recall mentioning gross or net in the previous post actually. Just drawing your attention to the fact that he stuffed it under the mattress and lost potential investment income. Where he invests it or how much tax he pays is utterly immaterial. He simply made a poor financial decision. I 'trust' you get it now.

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DaMann

Ultraman

Too funny. So making zero is better than 129k before taxes? I'm glad your not my accountant

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Vansanity

So, essentially they’re saying, prices are going up, and that’s GREAT! Oh and by the way, prices are coming down and that’s AWESOME!

LOL! Exactly! Their logic is ironclad!

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Johnny33

A good chunk of that $126k would have been going to the taxman.

So a good chunk of my salary goes to the taxman… does that mean should I just tell my employer I don't want to get paid?

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jesse

"A good chunk of that $126k would have been going to the taxman."

I love deadpan deliveries like this. LOL

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blueskies

So your monthly payment when taken within the context of your net worth is actually…WAIT FOR IT… $700 a month.

paper gains paper losses…..

you'd have to sell to lock in your capital appreciation….. everything else is just BS

…and he does sound a bit desperate…

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Moldcity

So, essentially they’re saying, prices are going up, and that’s GREAT! Oh and by the way, prices are coming down and that’s AWESOME!

Hah! It's almost like they're trying to sell you something.. and will say anything to get the deal done.

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Ultraman

"One year later he cashes it in and has lost 126k in interest from a ficticious GIC investment."

Another reason not to trust any bloger for financial advice. A good chunk of that $126k would have been going to the taxman.

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Moldcity

This is offtopic, but if you wanted to take advantage of the 'vancouver lifestyle' and go up to whistler today…

Well, you just can't:
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2…

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Drachen

Vansanity

I find it more amusing that they contradict themselves without batting an eye.

"Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the average price of a detached home is up 3.9% from last year." (goes on to explain how this makes owning cheaper than renting)

"As sellers wise up to the current market you can expect price reductions, cash bonuses and free plasma TV’s."

So, essentially they're saying, prices are going up, and that's GREAT! Oh and by the way, prices are coming down and that's AWESOME!

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