Friday Free-for-all
It’s Friday! Lets do our regular end of the week news round up and open topic post. Here are a few stories to kick off the discussion:
-The BC Deficit that wasn’t supposed to be: now 3 Billion?
-How to sell the Harmonized Sales Tax
-HST will hit condo maintenance fees
-Mega homes to return to Surrey?
-Demographic shift to explain high prices
-No children housing policy illegal?
-Rumour: BMO in trouble
-Traders still buying old GM stock
-50% off sale bring boom back to Miami
-US jobless numbers take another leap
-Frustrations over US mortgage relief
So what are you seeing out there? Post your news links, thoughts and anecdotes here and have an excellent weekend!
August 25th, 2009 at 11:45 am
drugs “R” us: You are the first person on the blogs who can see what's coming to serve you.
1. Laneway housing in near future.
2.Shipping Containers in future.
0.If you buy now.
Remember one thing:Vancouver is not a New York or Florida.
August 24th, 2009 at 11:14 pm
Chilled:
#143, you are ( as you say) the only honest civil servant. Thank you for renewing my faith in the system.
August 24th, 2009 at 9:22 pm
realpaul:
" I mean , you can’t lay off your brother in law can you?"
I agree with your point but disagree with its simplistic and stereotypical view. This 'civil servant' saw this shit storm coming 3 years ago, quit a job in the private sector paying 40% more than I make now. I got the job on my own merit and have absolutely no connections from within. I'm proud of that because, yes, it is somewhat unusual. There is definately lots of nepotism within the public service. No out and out 'cooked' hiring practices, but subtle systems have evolved to deliver undeserved advantages to those who don't necessarily warrant them.
I perform a much needed service, I work as hard as I did in the private sector and truly believe that I made the right decision for both myself, my employer and the taxpayer.
But you know what? I still hate government as much as I did when I was the one spewing the venom! LOL
August 24th, 2009 at 8:24 pm
Sub-Prime risk is actually increasing. Its funny how us humans can get used to chaos and eventually even get bored with it, so much so that we fail to recognize it as a problem anymore. I say that because the problem that started the whole mess globally is alive and just as nasty but we've 'moved on' and are drinking another flavour of kool aid. Is this how mass extinction starts?
" Oh, so we only got hit by a tsunami AND a comet today. Thats not so bad, I was expecting two comets and the tsunami didn't get this far down the cul de sac".
http://seekingalpha.com/article/157676-the-antici…
August 24th, 2009 at 7:36 pm
138 X realpaul Says: Reply to this comment
August 24th, 2009 at 5:48 pm
stop the madness:
I guess you need to read the article linked to nat post.
—————
Article is about ONT, not BC. And even there, they say 8% (ONT PST) on 500k = 30k, so their math is retarded too.
And it makes it clear int he article that it is talking about new builds only in terms of the HST.
August 24th, 2009 at 7:16 pm
Looks like VANOC and IOC are in a bit of a pissing match over a few million in cost overruns.
I am getting tired of the BS that the 2010 games are on time and on budget. Pull any number out a hat. IOC can ignore VANOC's pleas, the scam re Olympics is that the host country's taxpayers are always stuck with the overruns.
What is intriguing is that the Provincial Budget comes down this week, early indications are a lot of cuts, and maybe
BC told VANOC to F Off, which makes sense if the suffering is to be spread evenly.
People seem to forget that the Vancouver Trade and Convention Center is actually part of the Olympics, as it will serve as the Media Broadcast Center. Its OVER budget by approx. $500 Million. Of course Campbell will deny this as a tie in with Olympic budgetting.
August 24th, 2009 at 5:48 pm
stop the madness:
I guess you need to read the article linked to nat post.
And by the way, heres another posit for the unbelievers and intellectual shirkers
Aug. 18 op-ed piece by Warren Buffett in The New York Times. In "The greenback effect," he described why the Fed is doing all of this money printing, though he doesn't explain the root cause of what he thinks "necessitated" it in the first place. Let me do so: The root cause is the Fed, which created the housing bubble, aided by the abdication of responsibility on the part of regulators, which led to the near collapse of the financial system.
Nonetheless, Buffett did point out where we are headed in terms of dealing with the massive deficits that have arisen from the bailouts:
"Legislators will correctly perceive that either raising taxes or cutting expenditures will threaten their re-election. To avoid this fate, they can opt for high rates of inflation, which never require a recorded vote and cannot be attributed to a specific action that any elected official takes. In fact, John Maynard Keynes long ago laid out a road map for political survival amid an economic disaster of just this sort: 'By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. . . . The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.'"
August 24th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
realpaul,
only to new-build RE. and I think you'll find 7% of 500,000 = 35,000
math is good.
August 24th, 2009 at 5:39 pm
Who sent the e-mail? The CIA?
August 24th, 2009 at 5:37 pm
BTW, The HST will add an additional $30,000 dollars to a $500,000.00 real estate purchase. That does not include the taxes ( added hst) on transfers, PPT, lawyer/notary,commissions +++++++. Everyone should be at the rally on the 19th and be signing those petitions and getting your angry letters off to your MLA's. I have noticed much to much complacency. The media is playing it down. Bill Good was pooh poohing the disgruntled this AM. YOU ARE GETTING ROYALLY RIPPED OFF AND YOU NEED TO MAKE YOUR VOICES HEARD.
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=16…
August 24th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
Real estate crash foreast in China. I got this as part of an e-vestment letter today and thought that the ratios in China may interest the 'China Uber Alles' cheerleaders on this blog. Maybe the Chinese are running themselves into a wall.
"The Shanghai index just laid a horrible egg. Wall Street fainted and investors world-wide took to the hills.
How could this happen?
Loan growth at China’s central bank fell by 80% in the last 30 days.
After a spate of frantic buying this spring, China has stopped stockpiling raw materials, which it bought for pennies on the dollar. The Baltic Dry Index has plunged 25% since late July.
The massive amounts of cash that Beijing has pumped into its economy has not been properly absorbed. It has hemorrhaged into speculation. That’s why, although profits for China companies are DOWN by 30%, the Shanghai index is UP 80%.
Can you spell BUBBLE?
It’s not just stocks, either. The most expensive housing in the world is now in China. Yes, that is correct. The ratio of property prices to income is now SEVEN TIMES HIGHER in China than in the U.S. It looks like the Japanese land bubble in the ’80s, but with one billion people involved this time around.
Can you spell CRASH?
On October 1, the China Communist Party holds the 60th anniversary of Mao’s Long March. Expect Beijing to Band Aid this Ponzi scheme together until October. But, as the last few days have shown, the lie cannot last much longer. "
WOW !!!!! Seven times higher than the US. That is ( by my recollection) going to be somewhere around THIRTY FIVE TIMES earnings. Just how deep is that pool of corrupt officials again?
August 24th, 2009 at 4:59 pm
Hovering: Re: options. Isn't there always somebody on the other side of every trade? If 48,000 contracts put options changed hands, From the article:
Don't something like 90-95% of all options expire without being exercised? In other words, those buying options don't make money 19 out of 20 times. What is frustrating about options is that you can be right about the general direction of a stock's price, but still lose money. The article noted that as of the last sale of the $45 December put option, the underlying stock would have to fall about 12% for the buyer of the put to just break even. SELLING, not buying, options (while properly hedged) is the way to make money.
August 24th, 2009 at 4:04 pm
Option bears eye Bank of Montreal puts before results
http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idINN2…
this headline apparently translates to: a lot of people (about 34 times as many as normal) are betting that BOM shares are going to fall. It dropped something like 3% today.
Garth at greaterfool.ca doesn't think BOM is doomed but someone sure does. Bank earnings come out this week.. we shall see.
August 24th, 2009 at 2:25 pm
drugs “R” us:
Re #126 It's actually not to big a stretch to assume that market value rents will be out of reach for the poor. N-O posted an ad recently about a yard house ( similar to a laneway) in Richmond was asking $350 p/m for 10×10 '100 sqft' no kitchen, no room for furniture. This already the maximum for a welfare recipient.
I saw a british doc about prostitutes running their business out of shipping containers conversions. The girls looked pretty beat up but the cans were not bad.
August 24th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
Mish has posted an excellent video presentation by the Australian econonist, Steve Keen. He looks at the historical relaitonship in the USA and Australia between debt and indicators of economic well-being, particularly employment. Really nice done. I wonder if somehow here knew where to get the data to create similar charts (such as those he uses in his powerpoint presentation) for the Canadian (or British Columbia) economy.
One very interesting point he makes near the end of the presentation is his suggestion to change the nature of residential real estate appraisal. He argues that real estate should be appraised on the basis of rental return, his example being 10X annual imputed rent. Moreover, he would make it illegal for banks to lend more than 10X annual imputed rent.
Hmmm…I wonder what this would do for the real estate market in Vancouver? Can you buy any place right now for 10X annual imputed rent? The place I'm currently renting is probably "worth" (i.e., if the owner were to sell it right now, he could find a greater fool to buy it for) about 20X annual rent.
Chec out the presentation; it's about 19 minutes long, but well worth your time to view it.
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2009/0…
August 24th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
#126
What do you mean by "subsidized middle class"? Are we living in some bizarre parallel universe here?
I just saw an episode of House Hunters last week where a young couple were looking for a house and they had a hard time choosing from three beautiful homes in $150K range each. I didn't catch where this was, all I know it was in US…
I so wish someone would round up people like you , stuff them in shipping containers (great idea, btw) and ship them back where they came from.
I can't believe I just said that, but you really pissed me off, moron.
August 24th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
Not a condo owner… but keep in mind its a continual infrastructure upgrades in multi family even if it is well built.
Strataman can verify this, but my understanding (from various parties living in them) is that the plumbing (hot and cold water lines) have a limited life in multi family buildings and need to be replaced every 20-30 years. In SFH they last much longer.
August 24th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
Alright Strataman I'm sufficiently paranoid about construction quality– but is there a way to check for these types of things without tearing open walls though? Can an inspection reveal these defects?
August 24th, 2009 at 11:56 am
"RE prices in Vancouver will be determined by RE fundamentals"
What fundamental?
Service to any kind of fundamental most likely creats crisis between previous Buyers,Developers,and Government, there is no authourity that can yeild to any type of fundamentals other than market forces itself.Governments buyers,and Developersfundamentals protect each other from falling down.EYEWITNESS sees when prices shows slide there were only 6,000 buyers to purchase Vancouver Real Estate and when prices shows upward trend there were more than 40k buyers in 2005 40k in 2006 and more than 45k in 2007.Since the prices start showing upward trend again,We have flood of buyers throwing multiple offers while there was nobody to catch more than $300,000 per million discount to purchase of property from motivated sellers last year, even bears don’t believe in slides.Basically Vancouver Real Estate is always in line with fundamental.
The only way to service low income group is to provide size of unit that identically does not exist in the market.I.E. 150 sq.ft. unit for homeless people,Laneway housing for low income group,and support to subsidized middle class with good income.If laneway housing comes to an existance and tenants fill all the units then there is new development will come to serve lower income group it’s called “shipping containers.”
August 24th, 2009 at 11:54 am
124
Of course, if the predicted El Nino front does materialize and make it warmer here in February, we could actually look like a great place. That fact, coupled with the snow making machines on Whistler, means that VANOC might just pull off the "best place on earth" show. I shiver at the thought, and hope that we just get our usual crappy February. I will be doing my rain dance that month
And yes, for the record, I am anti-Olympics. I do not buy into this motto of "the Olympics are here, so lets stop complaining and just make it the best darn event possible." I will not put on a happy face for two-weeks which will cost me a lifetime to pay off….
August 24th, 2009 at 11:40 am
“2010 will attract an estimated 250,000 people, and Olympic broadcasts will beam images of our fair city around the globe…”
Because nothing is as attractive as downtown Vancouver in February. The slate-gray sky and blattering rain will be great advertising.
August 24th, 2009 at 11:32 am
(RE prices in Vancouver will be determined by RE fundamentals,)
What an absurd Low-intelligent,and idiotic utterance it is.
Van RE is solely depended on inflow of Chinese money and local Chinese. More and more Chinese top-ranking officials and elites regard Vancouver as a safe heaven for their money earned either from bribe, under-the-table deal or business.
Also,close to 50% of west-side single houses are Chinese owners and over 65% east-side and Burnaby properties respectively are Chinese household. Are you smarter than those clever Chinese who are good in making and hoarding money?
August 24th, 2009 at 10:52 am
Re VanMag article:
Tsur Somerville, of the Sauder School of Business at UBC, takes much the same view. “Prices have fallen, interest rates are low, and if you’re secure in your job and have a decent income and a good idea of what you’re looking for, then yes, buying now makes sense.” He warns, though, against thinking that Vancouver is “magically immune” from further economic malaise if the U.S. fails to recover soon.
Over the long term, Somerville believes, a house will appreciate more than a condo. “The issue of overbuilding is much more of a danger on the condo side than the single-family-home side. The commodity that’s in short supply is land.”
===============
The authour of this article seems pretty naive.
He implies he bought in Dunbar.
He either has an illegal suite now made legal or soon will have one.
Then he drools in anticipation of laneway housing to add another tenant.
I wonder when they bought.
He seems to be drinking the same kool-aid of Vancouver is different.
Rental shortage? I guess he'll post on Craigslist and then crap when he sees how many units are for rent.
QUOTE:
" We further max out the value of our 50-foot lot by regularly engaging in home exchanges, and though we’re unlikely to go the Craigslist route of subletting the place every time we’re out of town for a few days, we may well help out Olympics organizers scrambling to find accommodation during the 2010 Games. Apparently, this public-spirited act could net us another 15 or 20 grand ".
Does he seriously think he can rent out their digs for 15K t0 20k? COV has stated they need a special permit for short term rentals.
This was one of the dumbest most naive RE articles I've read in a while. Further evidence is talking to a couple of the RE experts, ie Ozzie and Tsur…why? it seems token and more like a spoon fed info – mercial
August 24th, 2009 at 10:45 am
crabman:
#114 CM, the author of the article is a great drinker of the bath water kool aid. No wonder he forecasts nothing but blue skies. LOL. Ozzie Jurock has no intrest in anything that doesn't relate to suckering the gullible into his cheesy seminars. Given that the mag is underwritten by real estate developer ads I wouldn't take it too seriously.
August 24th, 2009 at 10:34 am
No Longer Looking:
#115 CM, The real estate market in Sydney was in decline in the lead up to their Olympic fiasco and continued to fall through and after the games. It has proven to be a fallacy that the Olympic Games wrecking ball has any benefit to a local economy long term. Beijing is another good example. The 40 billion spent there sent the economy into a death spiral afte the games were over. In fact tourism droppped percipitously in every year.
We would have been much better off to spend the 6 billion on internals for seniors housing, school books, hospitals etc etc than to piss the money away on a drunk. The stated infrastructure plays though not as sexy would have proved up just as many man hours for labour and provided far more long term economic benefits for the economy. When the Olympics are over ( as they are winding down already) it's really going to sink the labour stats in BC. The false economy will have no more slush funds to draw on.
Great read about another 'bullshit comes home to roost' in Philly where too much false economy revenue from real estate taxes in the boom years created a monster that the city council is loath to put down. This has been the case in Vancouver. The boom years saw a huge rise in revenues which have now been penned in as permanent by the local governments in raises and new hires. Reality has come back and the bloated bureacracy is causing a huge budget shortfall. What doews the government do? Do they lay off the fat? No….the first excuse is always to raise taxes isn't it. Hello HST. I mean , you can't lay off your brother in law can you?
http://www.philly.com/philly/hp/news_update/20090…
August 24th, 2009 at 10:22 am
I don't agree with the articles reasons for the bull market to stay in RE here, they are too easily debunked. I do like to read bull opinons and consider them anyway. Thanks for posting it Crabman.
August 24th, 2009 at 9:54 am
"There was a housing complex (in BurnabyPoCo area?)"
It was located alongside the Freeway on Government Rd. southwest of Lougheed/Austin.
It's quite a nice development now.
August 24th, 2009 at 9:41 am
^^^ jesus, another retarded article
Laneway housing will save the market!
August 24th, 2009 at 9:37 am
No Longer Looking: How much effect, do you reckon, does having another house in your laneway have on the price of the MAIN HOUSE???
Could be equalizing.
If I were buying a nice $2.5M house in Dunbar, I wouldn't really want someone else living in a house in my backyard!
August 24th, 2009 at 9:32 am
crabman,
Thanks.
A lot of magical thinking in that article written by a recent Westside homebuyer.
"Developers typically pay $100,000 or so for enough land to build an apartment unit, but for us this patch will be delivered free of charge."
There is no "free". If he bought after it was announced, it was priced-in. In Vancouver, EVERYTHING positive is already priced-in, probably more than once.
"I prefer to call a Fonzie scheme, in honour of the rough-edged yet carefully groomed sitcom character who provided added value to the Cunninghams by bunking above their garage."
That's right, you'll get the cool guy with the leather jacket and motorcycle for a tenant. I'm sure your Dunbar neighbours will love you
"we may well help out Olympics organizers scrambling to find accommodation during the 2010 Games. Apparently, this public-spirited act could net us another 15 or 20 grand."
BWAHAHAHA
"2010 will attract an estimated 250,000 people, and Olympic broadcasts will beam images of our fair city around the globe…"
Blah blah blah whatever…and the good folks in Salt Lake City thought the same thing.
August 24th, 2009 at 7:45 am
The current issue of Vancouver Magazine caught my attention yesterday. The cover shows a house as a piggy bank, and asks the question "Time To Buy?".
http://www.vanmag.com/Real_Estate/To_Buy_Or_Not_T…
August 24th, 2009 at 2:25 am
108: Nice story. In a tower where I used to on a condo some idiot on one of the top floor decided to hang his dry cleaning from the fire sprinkler head. You can guess the result.
I also heard of a tower downtown where a guy fiddled with the air conditioner unit in the wall. It ended up with geyser spaying 20 feet out into the street from 15 floors up, and a river of water running down the fire escape.
When you share in a large strata structure, there are bound to be a couple of imbeciles in the bunch, just killing time before raising everyone's insurance costs.
August 24th, 2009 at 12:49 am
SUPRAboy – you dumb fcktard.
i can buy a 1000sf condo in Causeway Bay for $4280000 honkong dollar.
thats $596000 in hongcouver dollar.
which one do u think is the best deal.
for u, the one in hongcouver of course, cuz your a dumb fcktard.
u dont deserve to drive a stinking toyota.
from now on yer name is DATSUNboy
August 23rd, 2009 at 10:54 pm
Law of easy money
http://www.economist.com/businessfinance/displayS…
Interesting article about the perils of maintaining assets above their fundamental value. History may prove to be the more important predictor of what is yet to come. The problem is that the history of bubbles is something which is so easily forgotten and erased from the public consciousness every generation. You get the feeling we've been through all this before but just that no one told you about it.
August 23rd, 2009 at 10:15 pm
Interesting anecdote:
Family member was talking about an outing in PoCo area.
Park has a large concession stand.
However, it's been closed most of the summer .
It's only open for a short time each day.
The operator says business is dead,(can't hire students)as people are coming to the park with their own meals from home.
Read into that as you will.
August 23rd, 2009 at 10:10 pm
Days Away From Economic Chaos?
(NOTE: Article date August 21, 2009)
http://www.lewrockwell.com/sardi/sardi116.html
America is just a few days away from a possible day of reckoning. I again call attention to this day, August 25, when the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation issues its 2nd Quarter report for 2009 on the state of health of American banks.
It has not particularly alarmed Americans that its growth and prosperity have been built upon debt. The American public is a bit desensitized, particularly since the Y2K threat fizzled. We must wait and see how Americans respond to the upcoming FDIC report.
Alison Vekshin, writing for Bloomberg, indicates
"The failure of 77 banks this year is draining the fund, prompting the agency in May to set an emergency fee of 5 cents for every $100 of assets, excluding Tier 1 capital, to raise $5.6 billion in the second quarter. The agency has authority to set fees in the third and fourth quarters, if needed, to prevent a decline in the fund from undermining public confidence."
Vekshin goes on to report that 56 bank failures since March 31 have cost the FDIC an estimated $16 billion. (For comparison, in the 1st Quarter, bank failures only cost the FDIC $2.2 billion.) That $16 billion bank rescue would fully deplete the FDIC fund as it only had $13 billion at the close of the 1stQuarter. It’s possible the FDIC has already tapped into its line of credit at the Treasury Department without setting off alarm bells to the public.
The FDIC is required by law to maintain a reserve ratio, or balance divided by insured deposits, of 1.15 percent. It was at 0.27 percent as of March 31. It could be near zero at the current moment.
===========================================
Hiding losses
Banks have been slow to foreclose, allowing mortgage holders a few months before their home is deemed in default and giving another 2 years before the property is foreclosed on its accounting books. This practice has been able to temporarily hide most of the banking collapse.
But banks must eventually write down their real estate home mortgage losses. First-quarter net charge-offs of $37.8 billion were slightly lower than the $38.5 billion the industry charged-off in the fourth quarter of 2008.
====================================
Zombie banks
The FDIC, which claimed only about 300 problem banks in the 1st Quarter of 2009, but hid the fact there were about 2000 total lame banks among its 8400 members, This has given rise to the term "zombie banks," which are defined as "a financial institution with an economic net worth that is less than zero, but which continues to operate because its ability to repay its debts is shored up by implicit or explicit government credit support."
============================
How do American banks make profit today?
So how to American banks make any money today? You can see in the following chart that in the recent past American banks derived most of their profits (45%) from residential and commercial property loans. These income sources are obviously crashing.
So the FDIC 1st Quarter report tells all – our so-called conservative American bankers, entrusted with your hard-earned savings, with no place to turn to generate traditional profits, have entered the gambling parlor. Here is how the FDIC said it:
Sharply higher trading revenues at large banks helped FDIC-insured institutions post an aggregate net profit of $7.6 billion in the first quarter of 2009.
Trading revenues means profit generated from trading stocks and other risky investments. Recall, when your money was being financed commercial and residential property it had some collateral behind it. An asset (real estate) was held in balance against the risk of failure to pay the loan. Now bankers are "investing" your money in the stock market in what appears to be a replay of how the Japanese propped up their stock market in recent years – by simply having major companies purchase each other’s shares to prop up value.
The FDIC's 1stQ report says: "Total equity capital of insured institutions increased by $82.1 billion in the first quarter, the largest quarterly increase since the third quarter of 2004 (when more than half of the increase in equity consisted of goodwill)."
What the hoot is "goodwill" you want to know? It is how the banks are cooking their books. Arbitrary value is being given to bank holdings.
===================
Good article, with very interesting charts and graphs.
August 23rd, 2009 at 9:48 pm
WOW:
Garth's latest blog topic is dedicated to the BMO collapse rumour.
http://www.greaterfool.ca/
Garth seems to think it's all BS.
However Posters on his blog seem to lean towrds believing the rumours.
Also on BMO rumours:
http://whispersfromtheedgeoftherainforest.blogspo…
QUOTE:
The issue is drawing keen US interest because last Fall, when Citigroup and Bank of America were begging for bailouts, many investors started to think of all of the big Canadian banks as a sort of safe haven in the financial sector … after all, the shares collapsed “only” 50-60% in 2008, not the 95% that many US banks suffered through.
BMO, for one, is actually just about even with where the shares traded a year ago, which is something you can’t say about a lot of big American banks.
Amoss is expected to suggest that this safe haven allure has blinded investors to the fact that many of the Canadian banks have the same kind of asset-writedown problems coming as do the banks in the United States.
That’s just a guess, but let's face it… Canada’s economy is weak thanks to our close ties to the US. BMO and our other Canadian banks are global banks now, so they’re getting a taste of the global slowdown.
Amoss claims BMO is in trouble because of their exposure to the oil and automobile industries and to the communities impacted by unemployment in those industries, and because they have not been earning enough to cover the dividend (a dividend cut at BMO would, in Amoss’ opinion, cause the shares to crash).
Interestingly BMO's next quarterly report is due on August 25, the day after Dan Amoss is scheduled to release his report. Amoss also implies that the dividend cut might come as soon as with this August earnings release.
Right now it's all rumour.
But next week has the potential to put Canada on the world stage, front and centre.
==============================
Finally
http://renaud.ca/wordpress/?p=74
This link predicted this BMO failure back in Dec 2008
August 23rd, 2009 at 9:08 pm
Strata….
For some reason, some don't think anything is wrong, and they try to delay any affect/effect.
One friend I know does not know how to turn the water off from a leaky toilet. Instead of a fix, it leaked for months until it was detected in the sub garage level.
How does one fix these strata owners? My friend is an owner!!!
August 23rd, 2009 at 8:41 pm
I read this, what do you guys think, be careful folks..we are going to places that all generation alive today have never been
August 23rd, 2009 at 7:44 pm
I hear big water leaks at the Black Swan. And the developer still owns the majority of the units and is trying to shaft the people who own the leaked-on unit.
August 23rd, 2009 at 4:56 pm
Post 102
Don Amoss stuck his neck out with a prediction and will name the bank (TBA tomorrow).
Time will tell if he is right and if he is credible.
If he is simply trying to create a herd mentality, well, credibility is somehat shot.
IMHO, I am just finding the bubble fans more and more out to lunch.
August 23rd, 2009 at 4:52 pm
Strataman:
Awesome … many thanks !
Reminds me of an old saying…" watch the pennies, the dollars will take care of themselves ". ( I guess it is obvious whose pennies became $$$'s)
PS If any more problems come to mind, let us know.
August 23rd, 2009 at 4:32 pm
Strataman,
Another great post. You are one of the few people on the Vancouver real estate blogs who isn't full of shit.
Since 1985, construction quality has gotten worse and worse every year.
In gratitude, I offer the following piece of info: Watch out for the kevlar ropes on new elevators.
August 23rd, 2009 at 3:58 pm
incidentally, that rumor about BMO, was written by Dan Amoss. I don't know who he is, so i googled. he writes for the "Strategic Short Report". Hmm… i don't know.. doesn't exactly sound unbiased to me.
August 23rd, 2009 at 3:41 pm
pricedoutfornow: "I don’t know ANY who consistently pay over $3000/year for maintenance."
That's because they don't pay themselves the going wage. If SFH owners were to "pay themselves first" they would be paying way more than $3K per year in maintenance, or they would be eating it through depreciation.
With condos you have to hire someone to do your handiwork. Some buildings have the occupants chipping in to do regular maintenance and lower the strata fees. With big condos with high % of rentals that just isn't feasible.