Even as the probability that Vancouver housing sinks at least 50% peak to valley, I have an anecdote, a silver lining of sorts, that refutes conventional negative expectation. The going wisdom is, that as homes rapidly depreciate, the "wealth effect" is lost and these homedebtors stop buying consumer goods, thus hurting the local retail economy. But in my experience — four friends with expensive homes in West Van, now down 20 – 25 per cent — negative equity won't affect their spending because all four couples were maxed out on their resources to even be in those homes to begin with; they have not been spending like good little profligate consumers since Day One. So where is the loss? I suspect Vancouverites as a group have been so overly invested in their inflated homes that they have not been big… Read more »

Here's a sneak peak at a story you might be seeing in the next few weeks: a friend of mine who rents in Spectrum 4 told me one person rented close to 30 suites in the building and sublet them. He pocketed 2 months of sublet rent, not paying rent himself of course, before skipping town.

If the story is true, let's hope the MSM picks it up. Sounds like a great leader. Remember: you heard it at VCI first.

PaulB's latest stats for SFH have the median price less than $600K for the last 4 days. Three days are in the low $500K range. Here's the numbers from the last 5 days: Nov 20 $538,500 Nov 19 $510,000 Nov 18 $536,000 Nov 17 $585,000 Nov 14 $785,000 Admittedly, low sales volume makes analysis difficult, but the trend is showing. A month ago a sub-$600K day was rare. Three months ago a sub-$700K day was rare, and sub-$600K never occurred. When do we hit our first sub-$500K day? These are the prices that are selling now. Only a few $M places sell to the uber-rich. And there are very, very few of those. And they're not gonna buy in East Van. It's gotta be the most difficult and painful thing for the east van flipper to realize this. The realtor.ca… Read more »

Re: 124 lunatic gold bug blog

LOL. Well said, except that Mish is not a lunatic gold bug. Mish called this deflation/meltdown/crash/whatever you call it very, very well. Mish is well worth listening closely to, unlike our least favourite lunatic gold bug.

And Mish is NOT calling for gold to the mooon!

Mish is young and doesn’t have the wisdom that… others who have been in the game for awhile have.

Mish is a boomer in his early 50's. He sometimes talks about the differences in consumption between when he was a kid in the 60's and now.

@Randallbard: "it is becoming obvious that inflation is at our doorstep in a big way, a big Weimar way." Well, I don't think it's obvious, but I'll agree with you that it's one of the two things one should be actively preparing right now to be dealing with inside a decade, yes. The other alternative, which I deem more likely, is a Soviet-level regime of wage and price controls with the foreseeable consequence of the functioning economy being pushed underground. "the price of gold will rocket much faster than the nominal prices of stocks." If you figure that's a sure thing, you've got to explain why from 1980-2001 prices in general doubled but gold fell from $850 to $257. The only inflation hedge worse than gold was silver. I'm with the theory that gold is a hedge against and predictor… Read more »

"There isn't a sector of the economy that won't feel the impacts but because we have diversified our economy, I think we won't see nearly the impacts that we might have expected. We're still expecting to see some small economic growth this year." Premier Gordie!! For god's sake where in the crap does this guy live? obviously not in BC we are the most un diversified economy in North America! Construction of Condos and Houses Baby that's all we are and all we'll ever be! You wanna see the worst bust in North America we're gonna put Las Vegas and Miami to shame they won't hold a candle to us! And how come the Premier lives somewhere else other than BC? He has too cause NOBODY is that damn stupid!

patriotz

For now gold is holding up better than the market in the current environment of asset deflation. But when the pendulum swings back to inflation (I suspect months not years) the price of gold will rocket much faster than the nominal prices of stocks. I'll place my bet alongside the 5000-year history of failed paper currencies against hubris of economists who think they have figured out a better system.

Here is a link to the video on this house:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1ED4ohCZNk

I was listening to Diane Francis on the radio.

She stated Warren Buffet in bottom feeding mode has no idea of how "low" low is going to be.