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November 23rd, 2008 at 5:36 pm
“Registered my name now because unfortunately, somebody was impersonating me at Rob Chipman’s blog.
Boohoo, gadwin. Maybe you should go tell your mommy.
November 23rd, 2008 at 5:18 pm
Registered my name now because unfortunately, somebody was impersonating me at Rob Chipman’s blog.
Anyways, back to the topic, it looks like November sales are cratering. According to Kopyrightklepto’s projections, on Paulb’s numbers, we may not even hit 1000 sales for November:
Listings: 3257 (-8% yoy)
Sales: 913 (-69% yoy)
Sell/List: 28% (-56 pts yoy)
MOI: 21.6 (473% yoy)
Actives: 19691 (77% yoy)
http://www.realestatetalks.com.....p;start=30
Under 1000 sales for REBGV is a disaster. Prices are imploding now because the sales are off a cliff.
November 23rd, 2008 at 5:07 pm
anon Says:
November 23rd, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Dubai: Tower-of-Babel style hubris, and we all know how that story turns out.
========\
Aw crap, not more languages to learn…
November 23rd, 2008 at 3:45 pm
Bro: your friend wouldn’t happened to be employed by CIBC, by any chance. Champion In Banking Collapse (CIBC) hehehe
November 23rd, 2008 at 3:34 pm
RE: Post 132
I guess this is an early sign on the ground of the deflation many expect to come?
I didn’t study economics in school, so much of this is over my head, but how plausible does everyone think it may be for central banks to stave off deflation in this downturn? The most recent example I look to where a somewhat similar situation developed was when Japan’s asset bubble burst, and the country had its “Lost Decade” (and then some!) of rampant deflation. The Bank of Japan eventually brought their interest rates to 0% (and even symbolically lowered into the negatives for a time), and it didn’t seem to do much over there.
Some of the articles that I’ve read comparing Japan’s bubble bursting to what’s going on in the U.S. suggest that because Japan acted slowly in dropping interest rates, this compounded the problem, and that because Bernanke and the gang have been swift to drop rates, it would be beneficial to the U.S. However, it still seems that the specter of deflation is looming as the MSNBC article that The Pope linked to suggests. Will continuing to drop the interest rates at central banks have much effect in this case?
Also in regards to inflation vs. deflation, iTulip recently posted an interesting article weighing the possibilities. A lot of what they discuss went over my head, but I’m trying to wrap my mind around it. It’s something others here may want to read if they haven’t already:
http://tinyurl.com/6ntbpl
In any case, I’d be interested in hearing what other folks here’s perspective is on the whole inflation / deflation argument. =)
November 23rd, 2008 at 2:35 pm
Ya, nobody knew it was coming.
That is why Bernanke took over from Greenspan who, just by coincidence, happens to have studied the Great Depression in depth.
Undoubtedly boned up on worst case scenario.
IMAGINE IF THERE WERE NO BAILOUTS.
We would be groveling around the trash cans for food.
They knew. DUH.
November 23rd, 2008 at 2:34 pm
I was speaking to an acquaintance in the banking industry who warned me to steer clear of Vancity. She said that they’ve lost a bundle in all the current turmoil and that their days are numbered.
Has anyone heard anything concrete about these guys?
November 23rd, 2008 at 1:39 pm
http://www.europac.net/externa.....p;id=14713
The truth about bailouts………
November 23rd, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Dubai: Tower-of-Babel style hubris, and we all know how that story turns out.
November 23rd, 2008 at 1:14 pm
bdk Says:Dubai in trouble
Thanks for the link…I was wondering when that particular bubble was going to pop; happened sooner than I thought.
Those the gods would humble, they first make proud.
November 23rd, 2008 at 12:59 pm
“So why are they sitting there all mum and letting us “layman” do all the heavy lifting? ”
My thoughts on this are that the world of economics is a pretty complicated place and many people who are in academia are most likely involved in very specific areas of obscure economic theory. Real Estate markets are probably studied by few as a person in the field will personally gain more by focusing on some very narrow specific and technical aspects to get approval from their peers.
November 23rd, 2008 at 12:19 pm
As in the United States two years ago, ‘we are now seeing completed units pile up unsold in Canada, a clear sign of overbuilding and an ominous sign given the voluminous supply still in the pipeline.’ And there appears to be no sense of alarm among policy makers while ‘we ourselves are getting more alarmed by the day.
experts have warned recently of an ‘ominously high correlation’ between price movements in Canada and those in the United States two years ago. They cited evidence that bolsters the view that the Canadian market appears be tracking the U.S. market with a two-year lag.
November 23rd, 2008 at 12:09 pm
http://www.theglobeandmail.com.....y01?slot=1
November 23rd, 2008 at 11:48 am
carioca canuck: don’t be such a bloody zealot all the time.
November 23rd, 2008 at 11:22 am
MickeyFinn Says:
A friend of mine went to an open house at 57th and Oak in Vancouver. Asking price $1.7 million.
When he got inside, he knew it wouldn’t sell for that… so he spoke with the listing agent and told her he thought she was wasting her time and he half-jokingly said to her that he figured it was worth $900k… she replied, “will you write an offer?”
The message is loud and clear: Ignore asking prices, and lowball LowBall LOWBALL.
I think I’ll start my wanderings around RE open houses and asking listing agents if they’ll consider 50% of the asking price. May as well get in now (right Dosh?) by price pre-empting the market.
November 23rd, 2008 at 10:53 am
Freako–how does #125 relate to the bit about econ profs? In 125 you are talking about economists like Pastrick, who is most certainly not an econ prof.
November 23rd, 2008 at 10:53 am
The fact of the matter is, most people, even those who should know better, do not necessarily always make decisions by the book. Even if there are warning signs, it may not be enough to counteract group think. It takes time to analyze things from the ground up and easy to miss things, especially under the influence of social peers, which is why blogs are such a good medium to tear down or build up predictions.
But I agree, I have no respect for some of these so called experts. They have access to the data and are supposedly trained to know about such things but still go on the media to make vague and incorrect predictions and arguments which have blatant holes in them. It would have only taken a few influential experts to make a few small corrections a few years ago to prevent this whole mess.
November 23rd, 2008 at 10:47 am
Assessed value is truly meaningless and will be for the next decade IMHO. It is a falsly inflated figure used by municipalities to generate tax revenues.
Our FIAT currency will soon be worth it’s real value…..which is zero.
The USA is BK and on life support from the world’s governments and central banks…..unfortunately, the problem is, said world institutions are also headed downwards into the abyss with the same problems as us.
Consumers are just not buying anything but essentials, companies are failing everywhere, jobs are being lost, housing prices are falling, RE sales are drying up dramatically, stockmarkets have collapsed.
If you need an answer to that question…….you are pretty clueless.
November 23rd, 2008 at 10:45 am
http://www.canada.com/theprovi.....3d5347382e
Dubai in trouble
November 23rd, 2008 at 10:43 am
Browsing the rental listings right now and it appears a lot of places are coming down in price and there is a lot more.
Who saw this coming???
More than 50% of the stock coming online was intended to be rented out and the other 50% were buyers who’re vacating another unit (rental or owned) and the ownership ratio is 70% in B.C. (I read that here and never fact checked it).
So now there are another 2,500 new units coming this year and they’ll be thousands of units going up for rent, once the owners realize there are no rich asians coming to buy them….
Saturday my Wife and I went shopping on Robson street and it was dead plus we got big discounts on everything. The only place that was busy was the Wendy’s on Alberni!
This scared me, the economy is going to choke itself out.
Attention bitter renters get out there and spend some of your savings or this’ll get much worse. Banana Republic & Club Monaco both had sales running about 50% in the first week of Christmas Shopping and the they were still dead!
When we got home I checked the mail and the Wynn wants us to come back to Vegas for $169/night (half price).
I’m seeing a theme here, everything is dropping to HALF PRICE!
It’ll be easy to tell the bitter renters on the street soon because they’ll be the best dressed and won’t look like they’re about to have a nervous breakdown, sporting a tan from their recent vacation…
November 23rd, 2008 at 10:30 am
You’ve heard people say it before: price the market, don’t time the market.
November 23rd, 2008 at 10:29 am
Anon,
Assessed value is meaningless.
Hold out for the 70% drop.
You ain’t seen nothing yet!
November 23rd, 2008 at 10:23 am
I have a question for everyone on this blog.
If one can get a piece of real estate right now in the lower mainland for 50% off the assessed value, would you take it or would you hold out for a 60 or 70% decline. This is providing you really like the place, it fits your dream, and you can make the mortgage payments under the 6.5% for 10 year term, 25 year mortgage conditions. Also you have the option to rent out a suite if you need to get extra money in the future.
Please comment.
November 23rd, 2008 at 10:09 am
Forgert about the gloves, just fire up the chainsaws….and let’s throw a few realtors into the mix.
November 23rd, 2008 at 10:01 am
OK freako, but after we got them in the same room, let’s lock the doors and drop the gloves.
November 23rd, 2008 at 9:40 am
My last comment referred to the following quote:
“Trust me…there are more than a few econ profs from both SFU and UBC lurking on this and other local blogs.
November 23rd, 2008 at 9:39 am
So why are they sitting there all mum and letting us “layman” do all the heavy lifting?
My experience is with “economists” such as Pastrick who kept coming back with more crap as we ripped him and his illogic apart. Than there is Tsur, but he isn’t an economist.
Why could we see this sh*t storm coming from a mile away? I understand that many “experts” were fooled by the ratings agencies incompetence, but where is the due diligence? Common sense tells you that when pool boys can buy multiple million dollar properties, there are problems in the risk control department. Investigate the red flags for Christ’s sake. Having failed to do so, you have no right put your mug in the MSM saying all is well blah blah blah. Thank god for Peter Schiff et al. I truly hope some high profile program like 60 Minutes does an episode on the all those wankers. Put them all in the same room as Schiff and some angry investors, lenders, homeowners, autoworkers and see if they are still laughing.
November 23rd, 2008 at 7:17 am
RE: Chris Thornberg:
” Economist Chris Thornberg criticizes $700 billion bailout plan
President Bush has signed the $700 billion plan to rescue the battered financial industry. The U.S. House passed it this morning, two days after the Senate approved it. Economist Chris Thornberg has criticized the plan since it surfaced late last month. He told KPCC’s AirTalk he doesn’t think the new version is much different from the plan that the House rejected on Monday.
Chris Thornberg: “Doing public policy on the basis of the drama queen known as the stock is a recipe for a disaster. All right. The market dropped on Monday, it popped back up on Tuesday, it went back down on Wednesday. I mean you can’t run a nation like that, it’s ridiculous.”
Stock = Drama queen? Bang on analogy !
Diane Francis summarized the Stock Market as much like measuring the “blood pressure” of the economy. This continual up -an -down “yo yoing ” is not good for the patient. Stability is what is needed.
November 23rd, 2008 at 7:04 am
That was a good story on the acreage. Home equity loans or loc’s will and already are becoming disastrous. Who are the geniuses who came up with that? You know you’ll be hearing that it was based on “prices always going up”. Our banks are in for a shock when this house of cards they helped create, tumbles down. Just insane.
Rather than boast about how they’re in “relatively good shape” they should stay humble, for the worst is yet to come. Once prices drop below the amounts owing against the homes, the banks will scramble. Looking for liquidity anywhere they can. No wonder the gov’t keeps tossin money their way, they know.
November 23rd, 2008 at 6:59 am
Good article Patriotz
Pretty much says it all. Sure verifies many of my own suspicions. I liked these quotes as well
” In July 2001, Paul McCulley, an economist at Pimco, the giant bond fund, predicted that the Federal Reserve would simply replace one bubble with another. “There is room,” he wrote, “for the Fed to create a bubble in housing prices, if necessary, to sustain American hedonism. And I think the Fed has the will to do so, even though political correctness would demand that Mr. Greenspan deny any such thing.”
“As Mr. McCulley predicted, interest rate cuts led to soaring home prices, which led in turn not just to a construction boom but to high consumer spending, because homeowners used mortgage refinancing to go deeper into debt. All of this created jobs to make up for those lost when the stock bubble burst”.
It is often not a matter of if but when. When “when” happens, the longer its been delayed the worse it inevitably gets.
November 23rd, 2008 at 3:52 am
May 27, 2005:
“Now the question is what can replace the housing bubble.
Nobody thought the economy could rely forever on home buying and refinancing. But the hope was that by the time the housing boom petered out, it would no longer be needed.
But although the housing boom has lasted longer than anyone could have imagined, the economy would still be in big trouble if it came to an end. That is, if the hectic pace of home construction were to cool, and consumers were to stop borrowing against their houses, the economy would slow down sharply. If housing prices actually started falling, we’d be looking at a very nasty scene, in which both construction and consumer spending would plunge, pushing the economy right back into recession.
That’s why it’s so ominous to see signs that America’s housing market, like the stock market at the end of the last decade, is approaching the final, feverish stages of a speculative bubble.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05.....an.html?hp
November 23rd, 2008 at 3:32 am
From the NYT article: “But the inventory glut in Long Beach is not limited to imported cars. There has also been a sharp drop in demand for the port’s single largest export: recycled cardboard and paper products.”
So let’s get this straight: up until recently the US was importing Toyotas and Mercedes in exchange for recycled cardboard and paper. And yet nobody saw the economic collapse coming?
November 23rd, 2008 at 3:06 am
And what was the cause of that Steve? Lending against overpriced RE assets, right? You didn’t have anything to do with that, by any chance?
November 23rd, 2008 at 1:45 am
FYI, Harper is calling this the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression:
The crisis is “unlike and potentially as dangerous as anything we have faced since 1929″ – Stephen Harper
http://news.sympatico.msn.ctv......eru_081122
November 22nd, 2008 at 11:54 pm
Please, ANYBODY.. disabuse me of this analysis if you can.
When the November numbers come out from the REBGV the benchmark will be 10-15% off-peak. Do you really think that will mark the end of this bust?
Will that do?
November 22nd, 2008 at 10:54 pm
Octegenarian: “[...] but by my back of the napkin estimates, [...] a modest 10 – 15 % drop, peak to floor. [...]
Please, ANYBODY.. disabuse me of this analysis if you can. [...]”
It is impossible to disabuse you of your analysis because you have not performed one. You have simply made a statement. For your statement to be of any value it must be backed up by argument, which constituted the analysis.
This is something that annoys me endlessly about the pundits on TV. In their wisdom they are constantly throwing out numbers predicting the future, but they very rarely back up their numbers with any sort of analysis.
November 22nd, 2008 at 9:38 pm
The realtor said it is because of slump in development.
Well of course, the only reason land is worth anything is because it can be developed. The farther in the future the development the lower the present value.
November 22nd, 2008 at 9:15 pm
-
A Sea of Unwanted Imports
“This is one way to look at the economy,” Art Wong, a spokesman for the port, said of the cars. “And it scares you to death.”
November 22nd, 2008 at 9:09 pm
Oh, btw, the realtor also told me that acreages and building lots are tanking in Surrey/Langley. They are all listed 25% below assessment and still aren’t moving.
The realtor said it is because of slump in development.
November 22nd, 2008 at 9:06 pm
I went out to South Surrey today to look at an acreage. It is a foreclosure and the assessment price is $1.4 m but the asking price is $800K. The lot has an old house on it that is practically falling into the river. There was a little caterpillar on the property. It looked like the city had sent someone over there to put some fill in behind the house. I don’t know if the city would be responsible for building a badly needed retaining wall or if the buyer would.
Well, anyway, it looks like the owner there bought the place in 1995 for $476K and then took out a few helocs ($200 in 2001 and then $700 in 2006) and was able to do so because the surrounding lots have huge expensive houses on them and the assessment of said lot was based on a computer comparison and not the actual value of the lot.
So now the bank is trying to get $800K for a lot that is worth about $4-5K at best.
The realtor told me that this is a case of financial error “like what happened in the states”.
Interesting….
November 22nd, 2008 at 9:05 pm
I had a funny (to me) interaction a few weeks ago. A guy was complaining about a house he and his wife had bought in PoCo from a builder presale that completed recently. Surprise, the unsold units were now going for $30,000 less. He was royally pissed. Another FB, I thought.
Then he mentioned where he worked. A Lamborghini dealership. Gulp. How’s business? I asked. Ah, fine, he said, his voice shaking imperceptibly. Yeah, sure, those sales are going to hold up when the wealthy have just lost 47 per cent of their life savings and 10 per cent of their home values and sinking… Tanking sales, depreciating house: good times, good times. You couldn’t pay me to be a homeowner now!
November 22nd, 2008 at 8:44 pm
Went out to visit some lonely realtors this weekend. Same as always, there they were bored and alone sitting at open houses. What a change from a few years ago when there were lines out the door!
The realtors all told me I’d better buy ASAP because come spring everyone who is currently sitting on the sidelines is going to rush out and make offers, thereby sending prices sky high again. Hurry hurry, no time to waste!
November 22nd, 2008 at 8:28 pm
Here are some dots to connect.
Last Spring, (Spring being the highest selling season) we had;
- no credit crisis
- no stock market meltdown
- no confimred recession anywhere that matters on Earth
- high employment
- loose credit
- a recent history of double digit price increases
- an eonomy humming along
- a tremendous amount of infrastructure spending
- irrational exuberance on the buy side (at least until the very early Spring)
Next Spring, we will have the reverse, on all counts. What do suppose might happen?
November 22nd, 2008 at 8:10 pm
Dosh, if you have been quoted out of context then find one thing you’ve ever said that wasn’t 100% wrong and paste it here.
The market is already down 50% Where have you been?????
This has nothing to do with the credit crisis. This has been an ongoing discussion on this blog for years and you were here reading along but it obviously didn’t get into your thick skull. Luckily t morons like you enabled a a few spculators to get in and out with some money leaving the fools like you economic slaves for life.
You might not understand the term economic slave yet but you will figure it out when you go to increase your line of credit in order to pay your mortgage and they laugh.
Then you’re $10/hr job won’t even pay the mortgage and you’ll end up having to rent your room out and sleep in the “generous flex room” ,that most people consider a closet, for the next 40 years while spending 99% of your income on an asset that will never increase in value.
November 22nd, 2008 at 8:07 pm
Thats a lame attack, not every economist has access to that kind of media exposure or can get it.
Who gives a flying f#ck how much access the academics had to the mainstream media. They didn’t even raise the issue within their own circles.
Oh by the way, there was nothing to stop these people from posting under their own identities on this or any other website, or starting one themselves. Or submitting articles to Tyee or similar online publications. Or making use of that ancient institution, the letter to the editor.
Do a little bit of googling on Chris Thornberg to see how a little-known academic can raise the issue if he really wants to. This one man puts the whole academic community in Canada to shame.
November 22nd, 2008 at 7:55 pm
Dosh
“what did you expect when we have a global economic crisis?”
I guess you didn’t notice that the slide in local real estate started before the other problems?
You are a joke. The funniest part is you won’t even get the punchline for another year or two.
November 22nd, 2008 at 7:53 pm
35 Dosh Says:
January 8th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
The facts are these:
despite a downturn in the US market Vancouver is as robust a market as ever, in fact prices have NEVER been higher than they are now. Complaining about that is like wishing you could still use a payphone for dime. Its simple. Stop throwing your money away, get into anything you can afford NOW and watch your asset grow.
November 22nd, 2008 at 7:52 pm
Dosh are you joking around and pretending to be the stupidest person alive, like John, or are you actually serious?
How many condos have you bought lately?
November 22nd, 2008 at 7:40 pm
“Just because we see a temporary dip in the market…”
Dude, ALL dips are temporary unless they are permanent. Stalingrad was a “minor setback”. See you in Berlin.
November 22nd, 2008 at 7:40 pm
John, I think that if RE doesn’t get you, your gluttony will.