More on the Canadian Housing Bubble
Several people wrote in and posted a link to this article in Macleans about the Canadian housing bubble. It’s an interesting read and a good introduction to anyone who wonders what all this bubble talk is about.
Room 32 of the B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver is where dreams of owning a home go to die. It’s the main foreclosure court in the Lower Mainland, where banks and other lenders ultimately turn when homeowners can’t keep up with their mortgage payments. The homes get seized, then sold off. “There are many tears on that carpet,” says Andrew Bury, a partner at Gowlings and the top foreclosure lawyer in the city. But lately the cramped courtroom has come to represent something else entirely—the utter insanity of Canada’s red hot housing market.
Last week Bury was in court to seek approval for the sale of a one-storey foreclosed home in central Richmond for $670,000. That was already $40,000 more than the house had been valued at two months earlier. Then, as he always does, Bury asked whether any other bidders were interested in the 2,000-sq.-foot home. Ten hands shot up. What happened next left him stunned. After a secret auction, the winning couple offered a whopping $852,500. “That’s an extreme case, but it’s the kind of thing we’re seeing all the time now,” says Bury. “It’s a feeding frenzy out there.”
The article points out that we have many scary similarities to the US housing bubble and excessive household debt levels that have raised alarm from many corners. All the same arguments have been made for why ‘it’s different this time’ from ‘wealthy foreigners’ to ‘drug money’ to that old ‘running out of land’ gem. Meanwhile the elephant in room keeps getting bigger and bigger. Interest rates going up just a few percentage points ( a near certainty ) will push many people into deep financial trouble. Unfortunately as the situation down south showed us, it’s not just first time home buyers and recent purchasers that get hurt when speculative housing bubbles collapse.
RSS 2.0 comments feed. leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
1
X
Chilled Says:
February 3rd, 2010 at 9:56 pm
FIRST!!!!!
2
X
realpaul Says:
February 3rd, 2010 at 10:29 pm
The situation is only going to get worse as the Finance Guy JF keeps the pedal to the metal. But what the hell, if your going to build a bonfire, why not make it a big one. The losers can always move to Newfie and collect welfare and staying drunk and saying stupid things all the time is socially acceptable. Go east young man. YYYeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeehaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh !!!
3
X
browntown Says:
February 3rd, 2010 at 10:33 pm
hey nutslaps!
I rarely send stuff out but this one is important.
Read this warning carefully. I got caught.
A ‘heads up’ for those men who may be regular Home Depot customers. This one
caught me by surprise.
Over the last month I became a victim of a clever scam while out shopping.
Simply going out to get supplies has turned out to be quite traumatic. Don’t
be naive enough to think it couldn’t happen to you or your friends. Here’s
how the scam works:
Two seriously good-looking 20-21 year-old girls come over to your car as you
are packing your shopping into the trunk. They both start wiping your
windshield with a rag and Windex, with their breasts almost falling out of
their skimpy T-shirts.
It is impossible not to look.
When you thank them and offer them a tip, they say ‘No’ and instead ask you
for a ride to McDonalds.
You agree and they get into the back seat. On the way, they start
undressing. Then one of them climbs over into the front seat and starts
crawling all over you, while the other one steals your wallet.
I had my wallet stolen February 4th, 9th, 10th, twice on the 15th, 17th,
20th, 24th & 29th. Also March 1st & 4th, twice on the 8th, 16th,
23rd, 26th & 30th, three times last Monday and very likely again this
upcoming weekend.
So tell your friends to be careful.
P.S. Sears has wallets on sale for $5.99 each~~I found cheaper ones for
$2.99 at Wal-Mart and bought them out. Also, you never will get to eat at
McDonalds. I’ve already lost 11 pounds just running back and forth to Home
Depot.
4
X
rp Says:
February 3rd, 2010 at 10:36 pm
Vancouver in all likelihood is setting new highs. Who was it who posted the video of Flahery, who promised to defuse any bubble?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueuauKKjPZI
5
X
Furlong is Paranoid Says:
February 3rd, 2010 at 10:59 pm
RON PAUL WARNS TONIGHT
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqWtiAtSvg0
6
X
It'sBeenALongTimeI'veBeenWaiting Says:
February 3rd, 2010 at 11:47 pm
I walked down around Canada Place today. All the security around scared me and made me feel uncomfortable. I wanted to check whether my fly was zipped, but since I was on camera I didn’t do it.
7
X
rp Says:
February 3rd, 2010 at 11:48 pm
If you drink a pepsi, they have orders to shoot on sight
8
X
ReductiMat Says:
February 3rd, 2010 at 11:50 pm
I walked around BC Place today.
I wasn’t scared. Stuff was happening. People were walking around.
I continued on my day.
9
X
Starving Artist Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 2:15 am
Ten hands shot up. What happened next left him stunned. After a secret auction, the winning couple offered a whopping $852,500.
Seriously, who the hell are these people and how can they be so stupid??
10
X
Vanocbegone Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 2:25 am
Vanoc to auction off Olympic podiums
http://thetyee.ca/Blogs/TheHoo.....umAuction/
I wonder how many hands are gonna shoot up for these?
11
X
patriotz Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 5:11 am
Winter Olympics on slippery slope after Vancouver crackdown on homeless. Canada’s £3.5bn 2010 winter games have triggered a cruel cleanup, critics claim
Note the unintentionally ironic picture accompanying the article – the North Shore with snow.
You can put me in the “no” camp. The trend was already well underway before the games were awarded, and there’s no evidence that any level of government would have addressed the problem differently if the games were being held elsewhere.
One major criticism I can make of this article is that it gives the impression that homelessness is a DTES problem when we know it’s spread all over the metro. But the DTES does provide convenient one-stop shopping for reporters.
12
X
Boombust Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 7:32 am
“Ten hands shot up. What happened next left him stunned. After a secret auction, the winning couple offered a whopping $852,500.
Seriously, who the hell are these people and how can they be so stupid??”
Well, the information was supplied by a lawyer, so it certainly must be true.
13
X
patriotz Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 8:17 am
@Boombust:
If information about a legal proceeding is supplied by a lawyer – not to mention a prominent one – on the record, yes I would certainly assume it must be true. If not the lawyer would at best badly damage his reputation and at worst could get in trouble with the Law Society.
14
X
White Payer Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 8:21 am
Judging by the info I got from my realtor, recent foreclosures that need work do generally sell roughly 10% below asking. This is tr-cities though. I guess the situation is different in richmond.
ReplyCurrent score: 4
Must be the status thing. RICHmond… get it?
15
X
rp Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 10:16 am
oooh, that’s rich.
16
X
Purp Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 10:20 am
From the article, “…They point to countries like Denmark, where households carry twice as much debt relative to their incomes as Canadians do…”
The Danes are also the happiest people in the world:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com.....716022.ece
Hmmm…coincidence? Load up on that debt, don’t worry be happy
17
X
taylor192 Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 10:26 am
From the article:
“What’s so special about Canada that we should be experiencing this while every other industrialized economy went down and stayed down?”
As any bull would say: “Its different here”
Glad I’m a bear.
18
X
space889 Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 10:30 am
@browntown: Uhm…shouldn’t you have learned after it happened the 2nd time? Or at least bring along a buddy?
19
X
patriotz Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 11:03 am
@taylor192:
Well of course that’s not true, the Australian market has been juiced even higher, as we discussed a few threads ago. I think there are also some smaller countries such as Holland which are still levitating.
The main reason why Australia and Canada have been able to delay the outcome is that due to stable commodity exports (most notably raw materials from Oz to China, and oil from Canada to the US), we are less dependent on internal demand and have lagged the busts in more consumer-driven economies such as the US, UK, and Ireland. Also the bubble in Canada was confined to the West until recently, so the mini-bust that started in in Alberta and BC in 2007/2008 did not have the macroeconomic snowball effect that the US bust had.
But it’s just a lag. The final bust is inevitable and will have substantial impact now that the bubble has spread to urban Ontario, thanks to our “Conservative” government.
20
X
realpaul Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 11:17 am
Slik Chicagoan company sells Canadian ‘officials’ a tent ……. for $10,000,000.00 Dollars. Now whats more embarrassing, the structure or the stupidity of our so called ‘officials’.
http://www.vancouversun.com/sp.....story.html
Pssst , I have some rarely used camping equipment in my garage, first million takes all.
21
X
Bubble Lad Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 11:30 am
@patriotz:
It seems like people have interpreted the delay that it takes the recession to spread from manufacturing dominated to commodity-based economies as a vote of confidence for BC. The West (particularly Alberta) is just the caboose on the economic train. Once manufacturing tanks, it takes a while for demand for oil/gas to fall off (and therefore price as well).
But the reverse is also true: when the economy turns back around, the price for commodities will have a lag time to go back up – so the West will trail the rest of Canada in the recovery – especially since the oil sands are so labor intensive – you can’t just turn the tap back on like they do in the Middle East. And since the oil companies are mothballing the oil sands (or as they used to be known as more accurately the “tar sands”) as fast as they can, when the recession start to really get a toe-hold out here, it’s not going to be pretty.
22
X
realpaul Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 11:35 am
#11 P
“The anxiety stems from a recent provincial government law empowering the police to force rough sleepers into shelters in extreme weather, a move which homeless groups appear to view as an Orwellian effort at civic image control. Police officers have been told to use only “non-forceful touching” in implementing the Assistance to Shelter Act, but that has not stopped critics calling it the Olympic Kidnapping Act.”
I don’t think that saying the issue is ’somewhere else around the metro area but the reporter is convienianting encapsulating the issue inside the DTES” (to paraphrase) is the right way to understand this issue. The ‘out of sight out of mind’ mentality of Vanshitterites is how this problem has become as extensive as it is in the first place.
Secondly there really has been as is an ongoing ‘Orwellian attempt’ at civic image control, not only on the homelessness front but to curtail our civil rights by the ’shitty council and provincial gov’. These issues provokes such anger that even the police had to back off publicly when I suppose thier lawyers ran into the offices with thier ears on fire.
I happen to know for a fact that the DTES issue is being managed by the provincial government by ‘transferring clients’ from the DTES to other areas through out the province. They have sent these people to Richmond and kelowna, North Delta and Coquitlam by relocating the recipients case workers locations. It really insidious. They are saying to the welfare recipient ‘move to collect your cheque or fuck off and starve’.
As far as I know this is not only evil but unconstitutional as well as it mandates the restriction of freedoms to live wherever in the country one chooses to live.
The reporter from the Guardian is quite correct in his observations. many in Vanshithole are experiancing disonance at hearing this fresh information wash some of the patina of the steady flow of propaganda off the main issue again to make us realise how ugly the problem really is for an objective observer who has not received a steady brainwashing hypnotic droning from the local media spin.
“We’re # 1, we’re #1, repeat after me we’re #1, you’re getting sleepy, you’re falling into a trance, sleepier, you are now under my control and will believe everything I say”.
Saying that ‘its a big problem somewhere else’ is to fall into the spin cycle of the governments propaganda machine and to be misdirected away from the real problem. But you’re a smart guy and smart guys can’t be fooled right?
23
X
addendum Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 11:56 am
Heres an example of how the local spinsters are hitting back and trying to control the message locally when it id becoming obvious to the rest of the world how audacious the lies and the spin coming out of Vanshitzone has and continues to be.
Suddenly they pull out ‘a new poll’ (because they want to follow lemming like into line with what someone else has said) about how the outside views the shithole aka vancouver.
http://www.vancouversun.com/sp.....story.html
This is spin doctoring pure and simple by a shyster group of politicians and the media whores who say they are starving for revenue. Its misdirection for local consumption just in case the ‘bad stories’ are being read and discussed around the water cooler.
24
X
patriotz Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 12:00 pm
@Bubble Lad:
Exactly right, and we will see a repeat of the 80’s when BC and Alberta lagged central Canada in both the employment and RE markets.
But it’s going to be a lot worse for BC this time. In the late 80’s, we still had a functioning forest industry which was able to sell into the expanding US housing market. Both ends of this relationship are going to be moribund for some time. As well US consumer demand increased strongly (in large part due to the drop in savings rates) and thus we made gains in sectors like tourism and film making. And high tech did well. But the US consumer is never going back to previous levels of spending.
Alberta still has oil and agriculture for which there will be future demand, and it has had Canada’s highest savings rate which will help keep it going. But IMHO the BC economy is now a walking corpse kept alive by injections of debt and it’s going to take decades for the province to re-invent itself. Needless to say that’s way too long to hold the RE market anywhere near its current valuations.
25
X
Purp Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 12:16 pm
@20 : Oh for pete’s sake. First everyone is moaning how much the Olympics cost, and now they’re moaning that we cheaped out on the Canada pavillion.
26
X
Jim Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 12:19 pm
@Vanocbegone:
Vanoc to auction off Olympic podiums
http://thetyee.ca/Blogs/TheHoo…..umAuction/
I wonder how many hands are gonna shoot up for these?
——
Have you seen them? They look like they’re made of cardboard! Maybe they can be used for east side housing when this orgy or excess is over.
27
X
logic Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 12:38 pm
err, 25 -
Poster 20 was noting the expense of the tent (10 million for a tent, what?!?!), not it’s cheapness. Reading is a useful thing.
28
X
logic Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 12:39 pm
The retards in the story ARE complaining about the cheapness, but that was not #20’s point.
29
X
Purp Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 1:10 pm
@ logic. Point taken. But it doesn’t change my assertion that people would have moaned at whatever was built at whatever price, and the media would have dutifully reported it as ‘news’. I mean it’s pretty much a national pastime.
But #20 is claiming that $10 million is too much. It’s an amazing insight considering none of us have any idea of the finished product. How about we wait until we’ve had a chance to actually see the pavillion before writing it off as a big waste of money.
30
X
realpaul Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 2:01 pm
Did anyone catch that “3.5 Billion Pound” figure that the Guardian reporter included in the article the Patriotz posted. Aren’t the LIBs still sticking to the $600 million dollar story?
Speaking of big lies, this whopper story from George Ure this am on just how the lies are spun regarding unemployment and the ‘improving’ economy. Hold your breath if your one of those people who trusts the governments storyline.
“PTB: Fear the Jobs Number, Steal the ‘Net
Tomorrow’s jobs report should be a masterful work of statistical sleight of hand, if any of the reports going into this are accurate. Take, for example, the report that “824,000 Jobs Will Disappear on Friday” that came out of Bloomberg on Wednesday.
At the root of this is something called the CES Birth/Death Model. It’s a forecasting tool used by the Labor Department to estimate the creation of jobs which would otherwise not be counted since the assumption is that small companies and startups don’t get properly accounted for.
When you look at the Birth/Death model you can see how the statistical ‘confessional’ last January took 356,000 jobs out of the previous year’s optimism.
A little quick time with a calculator shows that with the exception of the January 2009 reduction of 356,000 jobs, the CES Birth/Death Model alleged that 1,238,000 jobs had been ‘created’ in 2009.
To expect this huge creation was going on in the private sector seems absurd yet unabashedly, the CES numbers for 2009 claimed (ex-January ‘09) that 154,000 construction jobs were created in the midst of the housing collapse.
Equally rich: The CES Model would have us believe that 312,000 jobs were creased in leisure and hospitality – no doubt from all those exotic vacations we could all afford in 2009.
Almost as good as: The 187,000 jobs created in the private sector in Trade, Transportation, and Utilities while trucking companies were going BK and the Ports were seeing major declines.
Have a glass of well-fluoridated coffee and look at the price of gold this morning (down) and the odds seem pretty good that the Dow today and tomorrow will have a hard time holding onto this week’s gains by week’s end when the reality of the jobs picture sinks in.
But don’t expect too much reality, too quickly: It wouldn’t be good for the sheep to come out and add back the faulty CES estimates because they would push the reported unemployment rate up around 10.7 to 10.8%. Can’t have that, now, can we?
—
The key number to watch tomorrow will be the civilian workforce number. You see, in order to make December look like things were improving, that number alleged that 661,000 fewer people were in the workforce in December. “
31
X
Vansanity Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 2:07 pm
Great article by MacLeans. Not sure if everyone has read it, if you haven’t you should.
Andrew Bury is the top foreclosure lawyer in the lower mainland, I know of him. He has about 10 secretaries working for him right now and he’s just swamped with work. Other foreclosure and personal bankruptcy lawyers are also just swamped with work right now and they know the worse (for them “best” perhaps) is yet to come.
Every lawyer in the field is just waiting for the POP (aka Bubble to Burst)! They know it’s coming, they’ve seen it before and they’ll see it again. Federal Gov’t is simply “kicking the can further down the road”, anything they can do within their power to ensure the POP doesn’t happen while they’re in control.
Due to the fact they’ve left rates low and allowed loose lending to continue, the POP is coming regardless of interest rates. SATURATION being the main reason. There is a saturation point to amounts of debt, affordability, number of buyers. This ties directly into incomes that remain stagnate and they all contribute to the POP without an interest rate change. That’s because they’ve let this asset bubble form and left it unguarded hoping it would last forever. Anyone who’s invested in any asset class (take your pick)can tell you that never happens and likely, they could tell you why it never happens (see above).
US drove off the cliff with their eyes wide open, Canadians are backing in. IMO – best quote of the article.
32
X
realpaul Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 2:09 pm
#29 Purp, are you the guy on CKNW this morning who is bemoaning the international bashing of the Shitcouver Olympics? Some doufus was saying that “It is what it is and we should all get behind the organizers”.
All the ‘forgiveness in the world isn’t going to get the 7 billion dollars back that should have gone into seniors care, hospitals,school books, business incentives for job creation, homelessness etc etc etc instead of this crack whore fest for the 200,000 Olympic ‘family’ members that will nothing behind except a big pile of shit after the two week drunk is over.
Time to fold the tent eh? Even the master deniers of Vancouver (CKNW et al) are admitting that its a huge fuck up from start to finish and are trying to get the pity party started to soften the blow for the hangover that already started to show up.
33
X
Too Funny... Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 3:33 pm
B.C. snow woes are now international punchlines
http://www.ctvbc.ctv.ca/servle.....PrintStory
34
X
taylor192 Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 3:54 pm
As much as I detest tax dollars paying for the Olympics, some of the comments about wasting $6.5B are silly.
We probably won’t know how much we really lost, yet its not $6.5B. Lets breakdown that:
- $900M on security. Its gone.
- $1B on the Olympic village, of which > 50% has been recovered from condo sales. The village includes a park, dock, and community centre all to be paid by condo sales. We might take a loss on this, maybe $100-200M.
- $600M widening the Sea-to-Sky highway. This was an infrastructure project brought forward, so consider our tax dollars spent now or later.
- $2B Canada line. This was an infrastructure project brought forward, so consider our tax dollars spent now or later.
- $180M Speed Oval. This will become a community centre and be value added to the community.
+ $1B sponsorship
+ $80M ticket revenue
+ $2.6B spent on the local economy by Olympic organizers and partners
… and the list goes on.
I do know the Vancouver economy has boomed, we’ve brought forward planned infrastructure projects, and I’ve got semi-finals hockey tickets.
35
X
Anonymous Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 4:09 pm
Ummm…you cannot assume that the infrastructure projects would have been “brought forward.”
The movement to get a Sea to Sky improvement has been going on for 20 years, but was continuously rejected for obvious reasons. It was only the Olympics that provided the “rationale” for improving a highway so the well off could get to their chalets faster
You forgot that Convention Centre – close to a billion dollars. Of course, we all know that if convention centers were anything by revenue losers the private sector would have kicked in to pay for it, as they had “promised.” Oh, right, I forgot that they failed to “partner” after aggressive lobbying to build a new one…
Unfortunately, you will NEVER, EVER know the true costs (free tickets, expenses, “in-kind” contributions by the Province for corporate sponsors, the cost of Olympic “volunteers” seconded by the Province and involved cities, etc,..)
36
X
FromTheStates Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 4:15 pm
I’m from the states (but own a condo in Vancouver). The bubble talk in Canada is very reminiscent of the talk in the US, except:
Canada doesn’t have the crazy 105%, teaser loans. Aren’t most purchases done with at least 10% down?
There’s no mortgage interest deduction as in the states, so people are not motivated to over consume (on a primary residence, at least)
If/when the US dollar strengthens against the loonie, I think there will be more Americans up there buying.
Canada banks (and the government) are in a stronger position than their US counterparts.
It doesn’t mean that the bubble won’t burst, of course, but I wonder if you’ll see the same 40%+ drops in values that have occurred in parts of the US.
37
X
Purp Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 4:23 pm
@taylor 192 — Good point, people keep throwing these 6-7 billion dollar totals around without qualifying which of those are actually Olympic related costs. A quick google search comes up with:
$1.8B – Operating costs (covered by private sector)
$0.58B – Venues (gov’t)
$1B – Security (gov’t)
$3.2B – Sea to Sky, RAV line, Convention center
So we’re talking about $1.5B if you don’t include the infrastructure upgrades. Still a pretty big number, but not as alarmist as the 3.5B pounds or 7 billion CAD.
38
X
realpaul Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 4:35 pm
Gordo on the CBC lashes out at international news organizations. He says that ‘exercise is a better investment than healthcare’. He says ‘mentally ill people are choosing to live outside’. He laughs at the idea that the hundreds of thousands of jobs that haven’t come out of the projections is an issue.
Bwahahhahahahahahahahaha , what an idiot. I’m sure the gov is going to be spending millions on advertising the lies so that the locals have no idea whats going on. The local press of course is going to read everything they’re handed. Sluts and fools , what a great combination.
39
X
Drachen Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 4:41 pm
@White Payer:
“Must be the status thing. RICHmond… get it?”
You do know that’s why there’s so many Chinese people living there right? No joke.
A friend of mine in HS had parents who’d emigrated from China, his mom chose the anglified name, “Penny”, because it’s money.
40
X
Due Diligence Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 4:42 pm
If you don’t even take the time to do a little due diligence to defend the value of your “asset” up here, don’t even post.
First, we do have “sub-prime like” mortgages and the interest “teaser-like” rates. For 2.5 years we had 0 down/40 year amortizations. We now have a minimum of 5% down, but with “cash back” mortgages from the bank, they are effectively 0 down mortgages. And unlike you with your 30 year fixed term amortization periods, the most you can get up in this fair country is 10 years, with most people opting for 1 year to 5 year mortgages. In essence, the current rates are historically and artificially low, and hence “teasers.” When people go to renew their mortgages in the coming years they will face a new rate as interest rates only have one direction to go.
Second, interest deduction, if implemented up here would simply inflate values further. Fortunately, our government does not want to give up that revenue base, so it is unlikely it will coming to this fair nation anytime soon.
Third, our dollar will remain at, or close, to par with your dollar for some time as we are commodity driven. Check the price of commodities sometime. The hey day of buying properties at 65 cents on the dollar are gone my friend. In fact, watch for our dollar to surpass yours again following the end of this current US dollar rally.
Your American brethren will not be buying up property here when over 1/4 of your countrymen are underwater in their mortgages; when you face another round of foreclosures as all your good ol’ mortgages reset and your banks release their shadow inventory; when your unofficial unemployment rate hovers anywhere between 16-20% despite your official rate of 10%; and when your savings rates are still negligible. Your nation is broke, as are your countrymen – all for the sake of home “ownership.”
My countrymen are buying your foreclosed and distressed properties in Arizona and California and Florida, often at less than the cost of either the land for the cost of building the homes.
As for our banks, they are not “stronger.” Our government was just smarter in “bailing them out” without an official bailout, as they quietly bought $75 billion of the riskiest bank mortgages in October 2008. Our banks also have the sweetest deal where they get to dish out mortgages to everyone with a pulse but socialize the risk through CMHC insurance on mortgages with less than 20% down (which is virtually all of them in the last few years).
41
X
Due Diligence Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 4:43 pm
40 was for 26 – From the States
42
X
oneangryslav2 Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 4:43 pm
@Anonymous:
Public entities and private entities are very different creatures. Answer me this: what percentage of the positive economic externalities of hosting events in the convention centre would a private company procure? The answer is zero. You put 10,000 conventioners into the city and of all the hotel taxes, and liquor taxes, and taxi license fees, etc., waiters’ and bartenders’ income taxes generated off-site, not a single penny would redound to the private company. All of that money, however, does flow into public coffers.
43
X
patriotz Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 4:52 pm
@FromTheStates:
Those are just details (or excuses). The only things that really matter are price/income and price/rent, and these ratios are as high in Vancouver today as in any US city in 2005.
Period.
44
X
patriotz Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 4:57 pm
@Drachen:
Sounds better than “Loonie” I guess.
Did his dad call himself “Buck”?
Reminds me of the nutty names people used in the early days of the USSR (from “Stalin” on down). Materialistic ideologies are big on them.
45
X
Jim Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 5:04 pm
Of course this might hurt Warrn B, but no impact to Vancouver port trafic, right?
http://www.businessweek.com/ne.....ilway.html
46
X
patriotz Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 5:08 pm
@oneangryslav2:
You could make the same argument for any business which draws visitors (i.e. exports services) – sports arenas, race tracks, etc. or exports goods for that matter. It’s really just an export subsidy which is a form of protectionism, and like all forms of protectionism it’s negative sum because everyone ends up getting in on the game.
Let them pay their own damn way.
47
X
patriotz Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 5:26 pm
@patriotz:
Forgot to add, if government really wants to spend money on something that would deliver positive economic externalities to everyone in town and visitors too, it should get the homeless off the streets.
Apropos the topic, you do know that the present convention centre has lost business (explicitly) because of this problem.
48
X
mino3 Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 5:32 pm
Canada real estate, and BC real estate in particular is seriously f**ked. As a Canuck who has been stateside (california) for the last 5 years, I guarantee when this is all over there will be lots of tears.
The housing crash will end up taking down the REST OF THE ECONOMY. Consumer spending and business revenue has been juiced by massive numbers of loans guaranteed by the good old CHMC (i.e. the taxpayer). Down here the economy is more or less finished. It’s like a mental post-apocalypse, I’m sure just like Japan was post ‘89.
Hosting Olympics almost always stimulates the economy in the short term, driving speculation, but almost all of them end in a post-Olympic bust (SLC recreational property comes to mind). The entire western world has gone gaga over debt loads and it is going to bring us down for decades. Thank your central banker
49
X
logic Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 6:34 pm
from article @45
“China, poised to overtake Japan this year as the world’s second-biggest economy, may boost exports by 20 percent during the first quarter as the global economy recovers”
————–
If! “If” seems not to be in their dictionaries!
50
X
Its All In the Name Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 6:36 pm
Look at RICHmond in Metro Vancouver and RICHmond Hill in the GTA – there is truth behind why certain groups reside in these communities…
51
X
bestplaceonmeth Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 7:46 pm
Gonna be a lot less rich Asians around with the Asian stock markets plummeting.
Ah yaa!
52
X
FORREST Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 8:42 pm
I would “short” China. Who are they gonna sell stuff to if nobody gots any money left? They will ultimately be just as f**ked up as the rest of us debt whores.
53
X
logic Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 9:04 pm
52. yes.
54
X
!(EconomicsDegree) Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 9:57 pm
@FORREST: “Who are they gonna sell stuff to if nobody gots any money left?”
They can start buying the stuff themselves. In a bizarro world. Chinese citizens have high savings rates for a reason.
55
X
!(EconomicsDegree) Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 9:58 pm
@Its All In the Name: “Look at RICHmond in Metro Vancouver and RICHmond Hill in the GTA “
How do you explain MARKham?
56
X
usnews Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 10:10 pm
Friday’s unemployment numbers will reveal that government has under estimated job losses by nearly 1 million jobs!
The end result will continue to panic investors, trigger a drop in consumer spending, and shred profit margins as consumers pull back their horns finally realizing the recession is far from over.
And while I can’t tell you exactly how many more jobs will be lost in this month, I can tell you this: the nearly 1 million jobs that were under reported from April 2008 through March of 2009 won’t be coming back for a very long time.
57
X
logic Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 11:02 pm
“@FORREST: “Who are they gonna sell stuff to if nobody gots any money left?”
They can start buying the stuff themselves. In a bizarro world. Chinese citizens have high savings rates for a reason. ”
—————–
Well, they used to. That was before the xplosion of credit there in recent years that has turned their new middle classes into debt-slaves just like the West.
Also, one has long needed saving in China, as there is little or no social safety net – no EI if you get laid off, no old age pension. You either save when u are working or you starve in bad times.
58
X
Anonymous Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 11:04 pm
@Starving Artist:
9
X Starving Artist Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 2:15 am
Ten hands shot up. What happened next left him stunned. After a secret auction, the winning couple offered a whopping $852,500.
Seriously, who the hell are these people and how can they be so stupid??
============================
Hey, I bought a car last week! The MSRP was $32,000 and I got it after a bidding war! I only paid $38,000!!! The salesman told me to “get in now” or I’ll be bussing it until the day I die.
I’m both lucky and brilliant!!!
59
X
GreenAndGold Says:
February 5th, 2010 at 1:12 am
Olympic team defies order to take down flag
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/briti.....alcomments
60
X
logic Says:
February 5th, 2010 at 1:26 am
Ha, good on the ozzies. Hope the tell VANOC to “take a flying fuck”.
61
X
FromTheStates Says:
February 5th, 2010 at 2:33 pm
@Due Diligence
I’m not “defending the value of my ‘asset’”. I’m just wondering whether Vancouver will suffer a similar 40% drop. Did you even read what I said?
About the US/CAD dollar, I am well aware of the current exchange rate. But commodity prices are dropping currently, add to that the flight to safety as people by US dollars, and it’s just as likely the USD goes up compared to the loonie as the other way around.
I’m not arguing it’s not a bubble. I’m saying that US and Canadian economies are different (US is 10x the size of Canada, reserve currency, and all that), and the bubble may not play out in the same way in both countries.
62
X
neeo Says:
February 17th, 2010 at 3:12 am
This is spin doctoring pure and simple by a shyster group of politicians and the media whores who say they are starving for revenue. Its misdirection for local consumption just in case the ‘bad stories’ are being read and discussed around the water cooler.
………………
neeo
uk mortgage