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In the investing to rent scenario, you’re putting $300K down one way or another in leverage or monthly payments or whatever, so that the rents pay the carrying costs. And $300K is a huge opportunity cost if the rate of appreciation even slows, because rents here are not going to make anyone rich, when vacancy loss, cleaning, upkeep, etc. get factored in. There are far better investments, and rich people the world over are rich because they make good investments.

If they’re immigrating, pretty soon you’ll run into the cost of living issue in Vancouver. It’s an expensive place to do business year round. They become part of our numbers. And our numbers don’t support these prices.

So the third idea is only way the Rich Foreigner scenario might work – that Vancouver will become empty resort town. Resorts ARE always more expensive.

Only Whistler, which is more obviously a resort town, has watched its prices suffer.

Etc.

Didn’t Florida and Vegas each already have this conversation? The world outside of Canada is ON SALE, and there are many places where you can go, at any point in the year, and have sun. And if you’re rich, you can bring friends and relatives to you. At Vancouver prices, you’d still be saving money.

I love Vancouver, but I’d be hard pressed to say it’s worth that much more as a second home when the world’s your oyster than some places up the coast, or than Vegas, or Hawaii, or Spain, or France, or Australia, or even New York. And in New York, which is at our price point, the rents justify the prices, and even we could buy out in the boroughs. And I imagine I’m the least wealthy bear here.

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Ms. Matthews is one of many Canadians being abandoned by a breed of alternative lenders that have stopped lending to customers, who, because of poor credit scores, lower-paying jobs, or minimal home equity, couldn’t obtain financing from a traditional lender, such as a bank

These people had no business buying a house in the first place.

Records obtained under the Access to Information Act show that a lobby group representing these lenders has warned the federal government that, unless taxpayers offer help, they will be forced to foreclose on as many as 30,000 homeowners over the next three years.

Isn’t “free enterprise” great?

If these “homeowners” could meet CMHC’s (minimal) standards, any bank would be happy to refinance their mortgages. But since they can’t, the borrowers and lenders want the taxpayers to bail them out.

Well TFB.

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Keep in mind that China’s population is also 39 times that of Canada. In fact, pretty much every place in the world is more dense than Canada. If foreigners are willing to live more densely, they can pool together resources to purchase. We’ve been hearing about this type of behaviour since 2006, so it’s not out of the question.

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/200.....liday_jobs

Sure theres a lot of good food in London, but buying a pound with a CDN suck buck means having to pay double price for everything. It sucks to be CDN travelling in Europe if you can’t expense everything. I remember a time when CDN’s dominated the travel scene in Europe. Now, they’re a rare bird.

This why I’ve said that I suspect CDN internal policy is being affected by the type of travel CDN’s do now, which is strictly third world on the cheap or stay home.Two generations of CDNs have been shut out of Europe because of the low dollar policy.

These people are now bringing back the ideas that they picked up in the third world instead, devolving CDN society into a third world soup instead of to what was once a more enlightened and progtressive system. With the focus of CDN politics shifting more to the needs of the third world we are becoming a third world country ourselves.

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http://www.theglobeandmail.com.....le1390721/

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....player_emb

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What building was it in?

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We _are_ lucky here to have such a variety of good restaurants.

87 – Sushi in London is good, but is an expensive dinner out (but what isn’t in London?). I like the good quality reasonably priced sushi here.

But then again, this hardly makes Van unique.

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Have you ever left BC? Tell me where you can get good sushi in London or Chinese food in Rome. It just isn’t there Vancouver is very lucky in that sense.

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But like I said not an apologist for anyone there is a lot of blame to be spread around here.

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“We can put light where there’s darkness, and hope where there’s despondency in this country. And part of it is working together as a nation to encourage folks to own their own home.” — President Bush, Oct. 15, 2002

Eight years after arriving in Washington vowing to spread the dream of homeownership, Mr. Bush is leaving office, as he himself said recently, “faced with the prospect of a global meltdown” with roots in the housing sector he so ardently championed.

There are plenty of culprits, like lenders who peddled easy credit, consumers who took on mortgages they could not afford and Wall Street chieftains who loaded up on mortgage-backed securities without regard to the risk.

But the story of how we got here is partly one of Mr. Bush’s own making, according to a review of his tenure that included interviews with dozens of current and former administration officials.

Read this article and try to tell us with a straight face that Bush did not promote, and then deny, the US housing bubble.

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Where does one start?

The White House didn’t set interest rates, it didn’t oversee Fannie and Freddie and certainly didn’t tell the banks to lend and the rating agencies to go batty. Try Dodd and Frank over in the Congress if you want to find truly culpable politicians.

Where do I start?

The Federal Reserve is in charge of interest rates, right? Who appointed Bernanke as Fed chair? Bush, right? Now read this:

Bernanke: There’s No Housing Bubble to Go Bust: October 27, 2005

Ben S. Bernanke does not think the national housing boom is a bubble that is about to burst, he indicated to Congress last week, just a few days before President Bush nominated him to become the next chairman of the Federal Reserve…

Many economists argue that house prices have risen too far too fast in many markets, forming a bubble that could rapidly collapse and trigger an economic downturn, as overinflated stock prices did at the turn of the century. Some analysts have warned that even a flattening of house prices might cause a slump — posing the first serious challenge to whoever succeeds Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan after he steps down Jan. 31.

Bernanke’s testimony suggests that he does not share such concerns, and that he believes the economy could weather a housing slowdown.

I suggest you also try a little googling on, for example, “bush a home of your own”.

As for Congress, which party controlled both the House and Senate from 2002 to 2006, the period during which the bubble because obvious to any objective observer? The Republicans, that’s who. Not the party of Dodd and Frank.

And nobody told the banks to lend. No US law or regulation ever required banks to lend without a down payment, without verification of income, without reasonable debt service ratios, or with nutty amortization schedules. The banks – and more importantly the nonbank lenders such as Countrywide – decided to do this themselves.

Do a little research on the saying “the buck stops here”. The length to which some people will go to try to excuse Bush and the Republicans for things that they bear full responsibility for is unreal. Take your nonsense to a US blog where you’ll have more company. See you at the “tea party”.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ydo2Mwnwpac

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