Friday Free-for-all!
It’s Friday and that mean open-topic time! Here’s a round up of recent news stories:
-House prices drop nation-wide, Calgary leads with -10% YOY
-Western Canadian markets hit hard by housing downturn
-Market correction not a calamity
-Buy our BC home, we’ll give you cash
-Dreams of proper compensation for a huge inconvenience
-Olympic fever and the post games let-down
-New mortgage rules: Ignorance breeds contempt
-US foreclosures up 55% in July
-Higher inflation brings lower standard of living
-Home owners in denial about realty value?
-Another buy one new home get one free offer
So what are you seeing out there? Post your news, links 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 19th, 2008 at 9:33 am
"People who had cash in the 1930’s did it too, big time."
Maybe, if they had all their cash stored in a mattress at home.
Great Depression. People panicked, there was a run on the banks to withdraw savings. You were only allowed to withdraw 10% of your savings. Banks couldn't give out loans either during that time. Many banks went bankrupt and people lost their savings too.
August 19th, 2008 at 8:47 am
LOL – Oh Jesus, where will the markets turn? – Regardless of that, as you said it IS a nice summary of all the events leading up until now. Plus it gives some insight on the "doom and gloom" in the US as a comparison.
I can't say I took any of what was written as religious sentiment or propaganda, not that you're implying as much.
August 19th, 2008 at 8:23 am
Maybe the article was written especially for us "fundamentalists"!
August 19th, 2008 at 8:00 am
Vansanity,
The Trumpet article you mentioned is certainly a nice summary of several recent news stories. However, the name of the journal, the ads on the website and the opening reference to Noah's Ark should have tipped you off to the religious bent – and it is quite bent! – of the article. !!ARE WE IN END TIMES?! Of a real estate bubble, perhaps.
August 18th, 2008 at 11:34 pm
Wow, there's plenty of reading out there tonight:
"B.C. consumers keep their heads above water despite rising debt"
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/business/…
One thing they don't note is that BC's lumber industry has contracted where construction expanded. No mention of the sustainability of the current construction levels, or lack of.
"Canada's Home Inventories Rise Amid Cooling Demand"
http://www.economicnews.ca/cepnews/wire/article/1…
I found this interesting too: "Electrical Wiring in BC Sub- Par"
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.htm…
August 18th, 2008 at 11:09 pm
Hey Pope, here's a really well written piece by an American on our current economic situation and how it compares with the US:
http://www.thetrumpet.com/index.php?q=5434.3734.0…
"Canadian Countdown: Flood of Job Losses Coming?
A recent report from investment bank Merrill Lynch says house prices in Canada are clearly in bubble territory, with cities in the West especially so. The economic analysis, titled “Peaked: Canada’s Housing Market In Depth,” warns home prices are heading for a sustained downturn.
“We’re most concerned about Saskatchewan, where the doubling of house prices in both Regina and Saskatoon over the past two years has led us to estimate that these markets are now close to 50 percent overvalued—a level that our research denotes as the beginning of the ‘extreme’ zone where bust risks rise materially,” said the report (emphasis mine). After Saskatoon and Regina, the most overvalued homes are in Victoria, Vancouver, Edmonton, Sudbury, Calgary and Montreal.
The report stirred a firestorm of protest, from realtor associations and housing industry representatives, who claimed the report was flawed and that local conditions suggest home prices have not overly appreciated. In July, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty also said: “There is no bubble in the Canadian housing sector, that has not been our concern.”
But to someone living in the U.S., the protests sound all too familiar.
During the lead-up to America’s historic housing bust, the airwaves were filled with the same sort of claims, from the same sort of people, as to why there was no bubble. Federal Reserve Chairmen Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke, the president of the National Association of Realtors, various lenders, builders and other government officials all claimed that soaring housing prices were sustainable—even as prices doubled, tripled and shot to multiples of household income."
It's worth everyone checking out.
August 18th, 2008 at 10:01 pm
Dollars to donuts there are more gangsters in Westvan than the DTES.
August 18th, 2008 at 8:14 pm
Blueskies, do you honestly think the multi billion dollar industry is supported by a few lost souls on the DTES?
If I were a pusher, I think I would target a different crowd, perhaps Realtors,and flippers.
Some West Van Stock Brokers and their GF have the bucks as well.
August 18th, 2008 at 8:04 pm
….as always
http://tinyurl.com/downtowneastside
The Downtown Eastside has always been the centre of Vancouver's hard drug trade. In fact, Canada's first drug prohibition law originated here, introduced a century ago after Mackenzie King investigated compensation claims stemming from the 1907 anti-Asian riots in Chinatown and Japantown. Some of the claims happened to come from opium manufacturers and King became especially alarmed when he learned the opium scourge was spreading to white women and girls.
August 18th, 2008 at 8:01 pm
Hey pinocchio,
Just make sure you get your posting name right when you're visiting the webcam girl's site–if you get that wrong you might not have a wife for long!!
August 18th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
Oops, posted under my wife's name. She is going to kill me now…
August 18th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
VHB said:
"Pinocchio, you have much more interesting friends than I do!"
No, not really – they just small-time scam artists mostly.
Except maybe the girl who's got the webcam going on on her site.
BTW, did you guys ever look at the "erotic" services section on craigslist? It's farking amazing, all theses girls selling themselves to the highest bidder. No wonder Yaletown was voted the sexiest place ever. All these condos must have been bought up by hos and their pimps, I guess.
New York and London have nothing on us, we have a thriving erotic services industry!
August 18th, 2008 at 7:11 pm
Interesting things one learns frequenting the RE blogs. For example, group behavior.
I noticed that when one specific poster is not posting discourteous comments on Rob’s blog, some of the regulars, even the polite ones, kick it up a notch and hurl unflattering ,although truthful insults at Rob.
It’s as though It creates a vacuum.
Rob doesn’t want to talk about the Rupert house anymore, although at first he thought it was great for exposure, it seems now he would rather move on with a new subject.
Any bets if you guys don’t stop posting about the Rupert house, he will change the thread to some esoteric subject?
August 18th, 2008 at 6:44 pm
Superman:
I'm getting awfully interested in that deflationary camp myself. As long as there is no confusion with price inflation of things you use: food, oil in all it's forms, clothing, and so on. That's completely different than inflation as a monetary phenomena, until lately fueled by credit expansion. Ever so convenient for governments worldwide, as all this money created out of thin air by the shadow banking system drives the economy so nicely, yet doesn't have the bad effects as simply printing the money would. After all, it isn't real money, because it is all going to be paid back (with interest) and disappear again, so it doesn't have the immediate effect on prices like is on display in Zimbabwe right now.
The trouble starts when the debt defaults, then the imaginary money disappears alright, but from the wrong pockets, and thus starts a disorderly deflation of asset prices all over!
Again, keep price inflation separate from asset inflation. Much confusion between the two. The things you USE vs. the things you OWN.
Price of daily living is going up for completely different reasons, but, yes, I believe a LOT of imaginary gold is going to turn back into lead and/or pixie dust. This is a good thing too, the toilet needs a good flushing now and then. Just be careful that you don't have any of that gold with the extra shimmer to it.
Another thought on deflation. True inflation is good for debtors, as those peddling more and more debt point out frequently. The people who actually run the world aren't generally struggling under a crushing mortgage, and don't really want the runaway inflation which is one way to work out this credit crunch. The other way, of course, is massive defaults, hence the urgency to get as much onto the governments books as possible, and scurry around behind the scenes getting their affairs in order. The pension funds of the little people (you and I) is a great place to have deflation as far as the "Lizard People" are concerned!
August 18th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
Patriotz – You in the Deflationary Camp then?
Just as in the early 80's, asset prices (RE and stocks) will fall and CPI will continue to rise. Wages will go nowhere nominally and total nominal payroll will fall due to reduced work hours.
So what would you like to call that?
Inflation/Deflation is not a single phenomenon, it can and does move in different directions on CPI, assets, and wages.
It goes without saying that if you're saving cash to buy a house only RE price inflation/deflation matters.
August 18th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Pinocchio, you have much more interesting friends than I do!