Vancouver Condo Info

There’s been a lot of negativity in the news lately about the increasing cost of hosting the winter games..  people seem to be getting all upset over little things like the city having made a bad bet on real estate speculation, or the fact that Standard and Poor’s have put the city on “credit watch negative” which could make future financing costs higher.

People even seem to be all grumpy that the city won’t reveal their actual agreement details with us, but this is obviously in our best interest.  Math is hard, and even the smart people at city hall seem to still be trying to figure it all out… and they’ve known about this situation since summer of 2007!

But amidst all this doom n’ gloom, we have one voice of reason: Dr. Tsur Somerville of UBC says that the city is making the situation sound worse than it actually is.  We probably won’t owe one billion dollars of taxpayers money once this situation is all worked out.  Once the Athletes Pillage has been completed and the units can be liquidated we’ll probably have only lost $275,000,000!

Now don’t you feel better?

-arit

It’s Friday, and that means it’s time for the Free-for-all, our open topic discussion and news round-up post.  Here are a few stories I’ve noticed lately to kick off the conversation:

-Olympic Village may cost Vancouver taxpayers $875 Million
-Property assesments basically unchanged from last year
-Property tax inequality?
-Banks: ‘business as usual’ as economy slides into recession
-Vancouver-based Teck-Cominco cuts 1400 jobs
-Central bank to ‘stress test’ for risk
-Canadian pension plan solvency at record lows
-US pending home sales plunge to record lows
-Manhattan luxury housing feels the pinch
-Want to write for Vancouvercondo.info?

So what are you seeing out there? Post your thoughts, 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 into your comment will automatically create a clickable hot-link.

Well the official stats are out for December 2008.  How did our local Vancouver real estate market fare?  You can probably detect the general direction of Vancouver house prices in the following graph:

The drop was slightly less than November ’08, falling $18,104 to a benchmark price of $648,421.  So far the benchmark has dropped $122,900 from the market peak last spring.

UPDATE: Bubble lad just posted a link to this story in today’s Sun: Metro Vancouver to see deepest property price dip.

Metro Vancouver’s home prices rose the highest in Canada’s property boom and will fall the furthest in its correction, real estate firm Royal LePage has forecast.  Royal LePage Real Estate Services, in its 2009 market survey forecast released Tuesday, predicted that Metro’s average home price will decline nine per cent in 2009 to $540,100 from a 2008 forecast of $593,500.

That will be almost three times deeper than the national average decline for 2009 of three per cent, which should bring the average home price down to $295,000 nationally.

Royal LePage CEO Phil Soper said that over the long term, home-price appreciation should rise in line with the rate that a city’s incomes rise.  “Over the last seven years, Vancouver prices increased at a rate significantly above the underlying appreciation of people’s incomes,” Soper said in an interview.

Don’t listen to the negativity.  Local incomes are irrelevant.  OUR market is different,it’s fueled by a special blend of upbeat naivety and magic pony-power.

Besides, it’s only money.

richard1 just posted a link to this column in yesterdays Vancouver Sun: Olympic Village finances getting scary for taxpayers:

Thinking it couldn’t lose in the real-estate big leagues, a few years ago the City of Vancouver guaranteed the world it could build the Olympic Village for 2010 — and even make a profit. Now the global financial crisis has turned a supposedly sure thing into a high-stakes gamble.

The dilemma is the local condo market has turned. The Olympic condo units, which were supposed to be occupied by athletes during the Games and then turned over to new owners, are probably worth 10-to-20-per-cent less than initially expected.

Even worse, the prospect of fast sales — most were expected to sell by 2010 — has evaporated. If they don’t want to sell at fire-sale prices, city officials now realize sales will probably need to be delayed until the market rebounds, whenever that might be.

Are those that guaranteed these loans with taxpayer dollars really suprised by the turn in the real estate market?  Sure the economy is going through a rough patch, but it doesn’t take a global economic downturn for the ‘Olympic Curse‘ to end up costing a host city plenty.  Beijing’s slide can be blamed on recession, but Sydney and Athens happened at a time of global economic expansion and still got hit by the post games slump.

Are you ready to pay off your share of the party bill?

It’s open topic and news round up time!  Here are a few stories I’ve noticed as we shift into 2009:

-Metro Vancouver home equity takes a huge hit
-Worse numbers to come
-2008: What a year that was!
-TSX loses 35% in dismal year
-Hiring climate in Vancouver area turns chilly
-Forest sector loses $230 million in 3rd quarter
-Electronic Arts: Job cuts to 10% of work force
-A quarter century of ‘leaky condo’ crisis
-Falling Canadian house prices still better than USA
-Best prediction of 2008: Garth Turner on real estate
-Five tips to keep your credit healthy in 2009

So what are you seeing out there?  Post your news links, thoughts and anecdotes here and have a great weekend and a Happy New Year!