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There is a fundamental difference between bubbles and what is going on today. If people want to overprice an asset and pay for it with real money that is fine, let them go crazy because they are limited by their wealth anyway. The folks buying condos today are not paying with real money- they are paying with artificially unlimited future money lent to them at artificially low interest and with artificial risk assessment. This is not a natural bubble, this is artificially created madness.

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Yes SIR, I CAN!

How do you like that part of the globe? I remember being pissed out completely in Brussels, when I purchased hamburger (approx double the price here) and was asked to pay 1 euro for ketchup bag.

And its even getting better with the prices there…

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As we see all things consumable have reached untenable values so that affordability has been reduced to a payment as opposed to a purchase.

The Keynsians will have us believe that houses, automobiles and washing machines can continue to appreciate ad nauseum as long as you are drawing a wage. But its the old story “when the last person to have a penny left after taxes please turn out the lights.

Sadly the last people to get this are the governments who have forecast thier wage agreement budgets on the ever expanding tax base of higher costs.

Not only is this stupidity stealing from future revenues but it is unsustainable without a build up of massive national debt which will begin to compete with the consumer markets for net cash.

Now lets see….at last report the CDN consumer was 154% indebted to cash flow. Hmmmmmmmmmmmm. It don’t look good to me.

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The real issue is our government. If they did not manipulate our money we would not have these problems.

Do note that bubbles have been around a lot longer than fiat money, from the tulip mania to the US stock market bubble of the 1920’s (when the US was still on the full gold standard). In RE, you can look at the massive Florida bubble in the 1920’s and right here in Vancouver in the early 1900’s, among others.

These were regional bubbles though, I don’t think a global RE bubble would have been possible without fiat money.

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@patriotz: the government guarantee has the complicity of the Central Bank… Right now BoC and government are exactly on the same page, hard to draw a line.

Well yes. the BoC is a Crown Corporation, i.e. it’s part of the government, although it’s supposed to be independent of cabinet control in its operations. But the BoC has an explicit mandate to preserve the integrity of the banking system, which means supporting Crown guarantees on debt, which means increasing the money supply if need be. It’s not some conspiracy, it’s supposed to work that way. The real issue is the the government’s fiscal irresponsibility.

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http://www.theglobeandmail.com.....le1380906/

This can’t be a good scenario for any other retail sector, even the credit card companies can’t be happy about watching the sky high real estate prices sucking every penny out of the economy.

We see by this article that even singles and dinks have nothing left but debt at the end of every month. When the debt gets maxed out it doesn’t leave anything for lifestyle.

Canada is becoming a slave country where people will travel less, have fewer children and be forced to feed, cloth and recreate those children less ably than any other previous generation.

As such, this subject will be forced to sell in her old age because she has no pension or retirement savings leaving her to live on super inflated costs and a dollar which is increasingly worthless on the world market, meaning the cost of all imports ( pretty much 99% of all CDN consumables)are going to cost dramtically higher in the future as our currency dies along with the USD.

Watch out, Wallmart is going to be too expensive for the average CDN to shop in because of the Chinese currency rapidly appreciating against the Loon.

Look forward to a Canada where you have a nation of million dollar condos inhabited by a people who are eating rats and spiders.

BTW I’m in Finland right now and I just came back from shopping in a supermarket that was offering a head of lettuce for 8.75 Euro or about $14. Can you imagine?

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You have been informed, now it is uo to you what you do with that info.

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128 – wtf?

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This announcement means that there is effectively only one building season left for most of the Province, so all projects will be pushed through because no one wants to be left holding the bag. If you couple this drying up of stimulus funding, with the completion of all Olympic venues, the BC construction boom is all but done. All the emergency bullets to keep the construction boom going have now been used up….

Federal austerity measures are just around the corner….1990s, here we come

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I stand corrected…they aren’t printing money…*yet*. They say they will if they have to. They are almost giving it away though and that is still distorting the market. Not the place to be if you’re a value investor.

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The man made climate change sewindle had been exposed.

google CLIMATEGATE.

You HAVE been DUPED.

IT IS NOT YOUR FAULT.

Send you representitive info detailing the fat that you do not want him/her to vote for this GLOBAL TREATY.

This is my last email at the 11TH HOUR to you. Time is of the essence and I must move on to get more RELEVANT people involved.

Do not laugh at me until ou have reviewed the evidence….

which will no matter after 7 days from now…or review it and anaylize it and take action.

This is the ENDGAME.

I said my piece.

what did you do?

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http://www.theprovince.com/bus.....story.html

What a town!

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CMHC is also buying large quantities of mortgage backed securities from the banks. So technically this is creation of money/credit, channeled through the housing market

No it’s not. CMHC is not a central bank. The money that CMHC uses to buy mortgages is borrowed on the bond market.

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Yeah those “investors” have the balls to load up all right. If you are still living with Mummy and Daddy, doesn’t that mean you have no balls at all? I guess it must be convenient, far less “tucking” needed to get you into those teeny tiny little skirts. Are you lubing your thighs up with coconut oil to help you slither into them?

You’re funny, dude who looks like a lady. You live at home, you have no skin at all in the game and yet you post lie you’re Donald Trump. It’s even funnier because I have to point out, the faster prices rise, the faster you yourself are priced out of the market.

I’m already priced out of the market, in that I flat out refuse to borrow half a million bucks for a shitty, leaky condo. I hope prices rise another 20% too, because then you’ll be locked in Mummy and Daddy’s basement eating rat poo dim sum and waiting for your parents to kick off.

Won’t that be fun! At least it’ll keep you in Richmond and out of downtown Vancouver.

Unlike you, I’ve ben east of the Rockies and know what life in other parts of Canada is ike. I can’t say I’d enjoy an Alberta winter, and Toronto isn’t my kind of town but like in Montreal can be fun. I’ll bet now that they finally paid off their Olympic debt they’ll have some money for infrastructure projects, too.

One way or the other though I don’t buy into the “Best place in Canada” hype, much less the “best place on earth” bullcrap.

By the way dude, if you drive a Ferrari, why is your nickname on here “supraboy”? I’m sure we’d all love to know.

On an unrelated note, I did my first decent grocery shop here in Nova Scotia. I was surprised how prominently produce that had been locally grown was market. My dad was telling me farmer’s markets are extremely popular here too. People like to buy locally made good as much as possible, which I thought was very cool. I thought it was cool because it’s surprisingly hard to find BC produce grown in Vancouver. In most stores it’s not clearly marked.

That’s just an annecdote, not a hard data point.

I was impressed with the local liquor stores too. They all have my favorite beer, an English import. It’s 50 cents cheaper too which is nice. I cold only ever find it in one location in BC.

I’m not looking for much in life really, a decent roof over my head, good food on the table, family and friends nearby. It seems more likely I’ll find that here.

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ditto…

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Yalie…you’re really up against the BoC. They’re the ones generating more cash without generating anything of value. That’s what’s causing these market distortions.

No they’re not. Yields on common and preferred shares, and corporate debt are still quite high. If yields on RE were being depressed (i.e. prices inflated) just by an increase in the money supply the yield on all assets would be affected.

The real cause is government guarantees on mortgage lending. If these did not exist lenders would be demanding much higher down payments and interest rates, regardless of the very low rates on deposits and government bonds.

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Yalie…you’re really up against the BoC. They’re the ones generating more cash without generating anything of value. That’s what’s causing these market distortions. If responsible savers were earning what they deserve, this wouldn’t be happening. Write your MP.

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Sub penthouse unit in 30 year old concrete hi rises,2 bed, 2 bath, 980 sq ft $1400.

Palisades X3 asking $1900 for 900 sq ft, all would negotiate lower for a lease today.

With the Olympics coming you’d think rent would remain flat or even increase and yet rent has dropped as much as 40% since last summer……

Maybe the morons that lined up last night to buy at Mark will rent me a unit for $1100 in 2013.
They can pay the additional $2,000+ to subsidize me while they live with Mommy and I’ll go eat dim sum.

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