Friday Free-for-all!
You made it to the end of the work week, congratulations! It’s Friday free for all time! Here are a few stories I’ve noticed this week:
- we just hit 20,000 places for sale in Vancouver
- but we’re still building lots of new condos
- maybe that will solve our growing homeless problem
- it’s been a bad year for forestry
- the dollar is making us expensive for foreign companies
- fortunately the loonie is predicted to fall
- When will the US housing market bailout work?
So what are you seeing out there? Post your news, thoughts and links here and have a great weekend!
note: any conversation on Vancouver, real estate or economics is allowed, please keep it civilized. When posting articles please only quote pertinent points and link to the original instead of pasting the entire article here. Pasting a link will automatically create a clickable hot-link. Thanks!
July 28th, 2008 at 9:47 am
Gadwin
A lot of it will expire. Most people take out a three month contract with their selling agent. Often after those three months are up they will drop the listing if they don't have pressure on them to make the sale (re-locating for a job, death, or inability to pay the mortgage).
July 28th, 2008 at 12:14 am
Who is going to buy up all that inventory? That's 20K inventory that needs to be absorbed. And the supply is growing every day.
July 28th, 2008 at 12:14 am
Well another leg on the stool has been sawn off. How long can it remain standing up?
'Perfect storm' hits Canada's tourism market
"TORONTO — A summer of record oil prices, a strong Canadian dollar and a slowing world economy are creating a “perfect storm” that's putting a dent in Canada's tourism market this summer, industry officials say.
Canada's three major tourist destinations — Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver — all reported noticeable declines in visitors in July, and experts say it's because of a myriad of factors."
July 27th, 2008 at 11:58 pm
Another Temporary Fix
"Before I get to that, let’s be clear about one thing: Even if this bill succeeds in its aims, heading off a severe credit contraction and helping some homeowners avoid foreclosure, it won’t change the fact that this decade’s double bubble, in housing prices and loose lending, has been a disaster for millions of Americans.
After all, the new bill will, at best, make a modest dent in the rate of foreclosures. And it does nothing at all for those who aren’t in danger of losing their houses but are seeing much if not all of their net worth wiped out — a particularly bitter blow to Americans who are nearing retirement, or thought they were until they discovered that they couldn’t afford to stop working."
I'm rather confused about the last sentence. Krugman has correctly called the housing bubble since 2005 – which means that the price of housing is inflated and must revert to fundamental valuation. And yet he talks as though there is something the government can do to stop that from happening.
A house is only worth what you can rent it out for, and people had better get that through their heads. Bubble valuations were an illusion.
July 27th, 2008 at 10:46 pm
Oh and Saskatoon house prices have just started to go down. 50 sales last week, over 1,500 listings. Prices predicted to go down 10 to 20% over next year. Buying Saskatoon for investment kind of dumb move.
July 27th, 2008 at 10:23 pm
At least Vancouver is still growing. After a couple years of moderate population growth, apparently Saskatoon has lost 2,000 people as of late. Over a time when housing prices doubled, and demand went down. For a much smaller city, Saskatoon has 1,500 existing places for sale on MLS, 400 on one additional private website, and a few hundred more in bedroom communities. Now more expensive to live in Saskatoon than: Edmonton, Red Deer, Abbotsford, Chilliwack, Regina or anywhere in Manitoba
http://www.canada.com/saskatoonstarphoenix/news/s…
July 27th, 2008 at 9:45 pm
Forced relocation, which what this basically is, rarely has the right effects. Solve the problem at the source: provide properly funded housing, drug treatment, and psychiatric care. Other cities have done this with great success.
Do you honestly think those people in the DTES were borne there? Is there a Vancouver-raised French-speaking population at Main and Hastings I'm not aware of? Those people relocated themselves to the DTES to partake in the, ahem, 'culture' there.
July 27th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
Franko: I presume you're talking about Westwood Plateau. The last time I visited there was a month or two ago, and I was blown away at the number of realtor trees. The number of open house signs on almost every streetcorner is mind-boggling.
July 27th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
I know they are a developer they also market and sale their own product instead of relying on an outside company such as Rennie or Mac. Bosa does the same.
July 27th, 2008 at 5:03 pm
Don't know what that hillside north of Coqitlam is called, but took a drive through there and could not believe the number of "for sale" signs….I WAS GENUINELY SHOCKED!
WTF is going on there?
July 27th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
Concord Pacific is a developer Chowder.
July 27th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
Wow didn't know Bob Rennie had anything do to with TV Towers, might want to let Concord Pacific know as they thought they marketed that project.
Pretty sure the Woodward people aren't panicking too bad either as there isn't too many of the 500+ units up for sale.