Friday Free-for-all!
It’s Friday again and that means its time for another open topic friday free-for-all post. Here are a few stories from the week:
-Merrill Lynch: Vancouver houses 35% overvalued
-Van west median house sales price drops $298,500 since Feb
-Building permits take a plunge in BC
-BC economy losing some zip
-Revisiting the great Canadian housing myth
-Expensive? Just split the house down the middle
-Floating condos, just like Florida
-Want to talk about your money & retirement?
-US Stimulus effect fades quickly
So what are you seeing out there? Is it a good time to buy or sell? Post your news links, thoughts and anecdotes here and have an excellent 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!
August 11th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
That story about the woman in Oakland losing her house is a little sad but very instructive. She took a house bought in 1954 which probably was probably paid off over 30 years ago and ran up over $400,000 in debt against it. That's hard to do. In fact, I wish the reporter had dug a little beyond saying the woman doesn't know where the money went. Was she living completely off debt while she stayed home taking care of her parents? What did she think would happen?
As much as it sucks for someone to lose their house, I have little sympathy for people who live that far beyond their means. It's simple mathematics–eventually the books get balanced. However much money you are going to earn in your life is how much you can spend. If you spend more now you will have less later. If you spend less now you will have more later. Compound interest just magnifies the result.
August 11th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
pinocchio123 – I totally agree with you.
I have been thinking about this whole phenomenon of people buying real estate as an investment only. I think the dot com bust is where it started. Investors were left without any confidence in the stock market. People became scared and looked for other investments. Real estate being a tangible one makes sense for the fearful for somewhere to park their money. When the bust happened affordability was not an issue with real estate.
Now we're at the start of another bust for a number of reasons, mainly saturation of the market and lemming mentality catching up with all the sellers etc. Will the tables reverse from real estate back to stocks? I think it will be something to watch out for.
August 11th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
Last night I was walking my dog and I overheard three or four people outside the recently finished condo complex (acacia gardens) expressing their disappointment about another complex across the street just being completed (cadence)
They were concerned with the fact that their properties will now lose value, as potential buyers will have more choice and there will be comparing their units to the new ones just completed. Which according to them are nicer and newer and better deal – how unfair.
What I find most striking about it is that they were talking about their homes as merchandise… stuff for sale.
Not something you buy to live in but merely to re-sell at later date with a presumably guaranteed profit.
How can you build strong communities and neighborhoods this way if all you get is sellers competing against sellers and investors looking for quick buck?
Never mind the fact that all these places are essentially gated ghettos with "NO TRESPASSING" signs plastered all over…
Pathetic.
August 11th, 2008 at 11:26 am
Why is it a surprise that a more global culture takes hold in young people?
Who expressed surprise?
Nobody is being indoctrinated by anything.
What a relief. Thanks for clearing that up.
Global culture is produced everywhere, not just in the US.
Hegemony. It ain't just a river in Egypt.
August 11th, 2008 at 10:53 am
From what I've seen over the last year, some of the last buyers are young immigrant families. I wonder how they will react once they realize they bought at the peak?
August 11th, 2008 at 10:19 am
Limey
I think much of what you're noticing in the recent personality change here has a lot more to do with bubble mentality than any particular shift in the local culture or psychology.
I noticed the same phenomenon at the end of the tech bubble, everyone who was deeply involved could not stop talking about how they'd made the smartest financial move of all time. I think it's largely due to fear.
Deep down these people know it's too good to be true but they so badly want it to be true they talk themselves into believing. Then, to confirm to themselves that they're being rational they tell their rationalizations to other people, in a bubble so pervasive as this one that talk often gets magnified because it's often exactly what the other party wants to hear and they repeat it with embellishment.
I suspect the excessive civic pride we're seeing now will start to get shrill over the next few months but it will start to come from fewer and fewer mouths. In a year or two from now most of the people who are Vancouver's biggest fans right now will probably be some of it's biggest detractors. I wouldn't even be surprised to see a mini-exodus of people who lost their shirts and no longer wish to be reminded of their mistakes.
August 11th, 2008 at 10:06 am
http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2008/08/11/housi…
Housing Starts and Prices show more signs of housing market "cooling off"
I love the terms that MSM uses: correction, soft landing, cooling off. When the market was going up I heard a lot of: Hot hot hot, robust, skyrocketing, break neck…etc.
August 11th, 2008 at 8:58 am
The loss of culture is not primarily due to multiculturalism, as a previous poster suggests (though those effects are still felt), but because people, particularly young people, are more influenced and indoctrinated by mass culture (i.e. American culture) than anything local, geographic, ethnic, national.
The reason that culture and language grew to be unique in the first place was isolation and the lack of communication between communities.
In the last century, communication barriers have been rapidly dissolving. Why is it a surprise that a more global culture takes hold in young people? If anything it should be expected.
In no way is culture stagnant. Culture has been dynamic throughout the history on mankind. Trying to force a culture onto anybody is an exercise in futility.
Nobody is being indoctrinated by anything. Global culture is produced everywhere, not just in the US.
August 11th, 2008 at 8:35 am
Hey Limey,
Care to comment on this article.
"We are the international finance and business capital of the world, the world's greatest global financial center, without question," the mayor (of London) told the assembled crowd.
But in general I would agree that european arrogance tends to be a little more subtle.
August 11th, 2008 at 8:11 am
People in Europe tend not to ‘big-up’ their city, as it makes them sound like an American. Everytime I visit Vancouver, which is every other year, it’s seems to be loosing it’s Canadian identity.
Absolutely, and no offense taken (perhaps by the wankers, but not most here).
The loss of culture is not primarily due to multiculturalism, as a previous poster suggests (though those effects are still felt), but because people, particularly young people, are more influenced and indoctrinated by mass culture (i.e. American culture) than anything local, geographic, ethnic, national.
The recent Canadian proclivity for uncritical boosterism of anything remotely 'Canadian' in nature or manufacture may appear eminently patriotic and a sign of our national coming of age. Unfortunately, however, it merely indicates that we have accepted the flawed American model of patriotism and are slavishly aping American behaviour.
Ironically, it is precisely when we mindlessly proclaim empty cliches like "Canada kicks a$$" that we have never been more American.
August 11th, 2008 at 6:20 am
Was driving the wife to work this morning listening to News 1130. They had a Mortgage Broker on to answer the question if the U.S. Mortgage meltdownwas going to head our way. One of his arguements for way it was not: "…some places in the U.S. have declined by up to 50%, meanwhile our real estate has only gone down by 1-2%…."
in-flipping-credible!