On the way into the bank today to cash a commission cheque, a guy maybe 40 walks up to me (after seeing my logo on my vehicle) and says, "How's the market?"

Before I could answer he says, "Nightmare, eh?"

So we strike up a conversation. He's builds fences. He sees the slowdown. So does my wife, the landscape designer. So does the guy who does my graphic design.

Anecdotal? Sure. But so was "we gotta buy now or we'll never get in" or "the market won't go down here. Victoria is different."

Man on the street knows.

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Dave, you may have OCD.

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"It is akin to using the data for rental rates and occupancy."

Which you have argued in the past are invalid. Essentially you're using data which you would argue was invalid if someone else was using it against you. Thank you for the clarification on your duplicity. The case for the 'speculation' statistic is far weaker than the argument for using rental rates an occupancy I might add.

Lager not Logger

"So in other words our speculation stats don’t look too bad since they don’t take the most speculative sector into account?"

The statistic is really misnamed, it's called 'speculation' and Dave likes to pretend that it has a real world value for measuring speculation but it really only covers cases where there were two completed transactions on an actual property (not one in development) within a six month period. Speculation cannot be measured that way.

How many people do you know who have "investment" properties they're not planning on selling until after the Olympics or similar distant point in time?

How many people are buying a place to live in for the rest of their lives on the assumption it will appreciate significantly over the years?

How many people do you know who 'flip' assignments?

I think it's entirely debatable that 90-99% of people buying residential property in Vancouver right now are speculators.

Dictionary.com says a speculator is:

"someone who risks losses for the possibility of considerable gains"

Using that definition ANYONE buying property that is above it's fundamental value is speculating and therefore 100% of the Real Estate sales in Vancouver over the past few years have been speculative (with the possible exception of a few cases where family/friends sold a property at a huge discount as a 'gift').

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So in other words our speculation stats don't look too bad since they don't take the most speculative sector into account?

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The metric for speculation is useful, but not perfect. It is akin to using the data for rental rates and occupancy. Although not absolute measures, such metrics are very good for demonstrating trends and good for comparing with past data. For example, we know that occupancy rates are lower today than they were five years ago. I don't think anybody would debate that. However, some may take exception of the published rate of 0.5% (or wherever it is now) and argue it is really higher (or maybe lower). Similarly, the volume of units flipped (something speculators do), isn't that high and is much lower than the 1980 crash. It also peaked out a few years ago and has been declining since. I am not sure why you would want to discount such useful information.

Again, I have yet to hear a better metric for speculation. Feel free to publish your Craiglist index.

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So, essentially what you're saying is you'd like to use a number you know is false to support your argument and we should all just ignore the man behind the curtain?

When you're busted using your known false statistic you simply point at others and say, "Some of them used numbers that have even less support."

Just because other people use an argument that is 'more wrong' does not make your argument any better. It just makes you look like a five year old pointing fingers.

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It's not an argument at all. It's simply the best statistic that is available from MLS data. I readily admit that it doesn't capture the entire market because pre-sales aren't recorded as transactions on MLS.

I have asked numerous times for somebody else to provide a better metric and to date, nobody has. Rather, commentary provided by others on speculation are purely anecdotal, which is basically useless.

In the meantime, the level of speculation, as defined by multiple MLS transaction for the same unit within a six month period, is a low percentage of overall activity in the marketplace.

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"Minor amount of speculation. Really."

He hasn't demonstrated anything before. He's run out of arguments so he keeps bringing up old ones that were completely shredded by users here and on NVCondos. He has a bad habit of taking discredited arguments and re-hashing them as though they were solid. He's even taken arguments that have been shown to be completely false one place and within hours of being disproven he's taken those same arguments to a different forum, hoping for a dumber audience I suppose.

His "Speculation" argument is based around some highly questionable statistics that completely fail to actually represent the actual amount of speculation. In fact I can guarantee that the number he likes to cite is less than the actual amount of speculation.

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Minor amount of speculation. Really.

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