Comments on: Friday Free-for-all!

By: Arwen

Arwen — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 23:05:35 +0000

@Dave: This is average weekly wage - which is different than income earned - and still comes out to under $40K per year. Plus it's not household income. Real wages or not, gain or not, this wage isn't terribly helpful to your case vis house prices. 'Sides, Statscan is reporting what's *really* earned, and you can find it for metro vancouver, which matters - since the wages in Prince George don't really mean anything to Vancouver's housing market. Your chart shows lower wages than Statscan, being BC wide.

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By: logic

logic — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 18:32:26 +0000

@logic: None of that is true. Year over year, the average income in BC is up 2.5%, which is greater than the inflation rate. --------- Dave, you an illiterate retard. I said between 2000 and 2005, as they are the most recent relaible data available - as "kill dave" quoted.

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By: Ugh

Ugh — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 11:31:51 +0000

In the real world everyone gets paid in real dollars. On payday the real value equals the nominal value. The next day the value of that money may have changed; nominal is just a very special and fleeting case of real value, and of little use, except to the sophist.

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By: Not much of a name

Not much of a name — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 11:28:17 +0000

It doesn't matter how you look at income and RE growth. RE growth has far outstripped income growth in both real and nominal terms.

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By: Kill Dave

Kill Dave — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 11:07:55 +0000

@Dave: Let's let Dave argue why "real" prices, incomes, etc, are irrelevant to any discussion of real estate like he has in the past numerous times, and we can all laugh at him. The point Dave, is that if incomes were stagnant in Vancouver in real terms from 2000-2005, why have house prices increased, say 60-70% in real terms in the past 7 years. A point of reference in regard to Purp's point. If house prices increase at 5% nominal per year and incomes increase at the rate of inflation, say 2.5%, in 30 years house price growth will have doubled income growth. Anyone wishing for ever-increasing house prices (above wage growth) is implicitly wishing for new home buyers to be impoverished.

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By: Dave

Dave — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 10:44:53 +0000

@Kill Dave: Isn't it obvious? The point is that 'real' dollars are imaginary dollars. In the real world, people get paid in nominal dollars.

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By: Purp

Purp — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 10:42:02 +0000

Regarding income and home price, remember we are dealing with exponential functions. If they are increasing at even small differences say 2% income vs 4% home prices, people are priced out of the market in a small number of years. In terms of absolute dollars this effect becomes more pronounced the higher prices go, especially with 10% annual home price increases as we've seen recently. This can be offset by making money cheaper through lower interest rates, which we've also seen in the past few years, to keep this bubble inflated. However, rates can't go any lower, and I just can't see incomes increasing significantly, so the pressure on home prices should be down. I'm not sure what data is available to lead someone to believe the opposite? If it's out there I'd love to see it. The question is when and how fast? I'm concerned that government will do everything in their power to keep this thing going as long as possible.

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By: Kill Dave

Kill Dave — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 10:00:40 +0000

@Dave: What is the relevance of your question? The aggregate data for BC is quite poor, and since it doesn't fit with your contrived set of facts (real estate always goes up here, the economy has great future prospects, people are so wealthy here, blah, blah, blah)you question the data.

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By: Dave

Dave — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 09:39:44 +0000

@Kill Dave: Do you know anybody who gets paid in nominal dollars?

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By: Dave

Dave — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 09:38:16 +0000

@Disbelief: Wages and wage growth: http://www.bcstats.gov.bc.ca/pubs/eet/eetdata.pdf... Use any mortgage calculator to see what $9000 per year can get you at the five year rate. ING Direct has a good one. www.ingdirect.ca

Current score: -4 (to vote for this comment, please visit the site)