18 Karat Gold Friday Free-for-all
Hey, guess what? You’ve reached the pot of gold at the end of the week. This weekend is your chance to buy an almost new condo touched by elite athletes. If those don’t catch your fancy there are lots of other options out there for your consideration.. looks to be around 18,000 listings in the REBGV now, and that doesn’t even include Surrey. Lets do our regular end of the week news round up:
-40% off prices key to rebound in Kelowna
-Olympic condo prebuyer protests
-2 bdrm house and lot, 30 minutes to Vancouver $154k
-Police probe massive Alberta mortgage fraud
-Vancouver best business tax climate
-Statscan: Recession was quicker, not worse
-MPs refuse to let Auditor-General review their expenses
-US ramps up probes of banks
-Pretending to live in the lap of luxury
-The bailout game
So what are you seeing out there? Post your news links, thoughts and anecdotes here and have a golden weekend!
May 17th, 2010 at 5:31 am
"A big difference though is you can actually sit on cash here. Bankwest is currently paying 6.15%, ING 6.25% for savings accounts."
How can I get me some of that!!
May 17th, 2010 at 3:20 am
@oneangryslav2:
Of course the city has a motto (not sure what the difference is really) which you can see on the coat of arms: "By sea, land, and air we prosper".
But perhaps it should be updated: "By RE, debt and drugs we appear to prosper".
May 17th, 2010 at 2:02 am
Hi everyone! Great site, I've been following for a few weeks now an decided to get in on the action.
I was living in Calgary at the height of their crazy boom (2006/2007) and decided that renting and hoarding gold was a better option than tying myself down to an oversized mortgage.
We made a choice to move to either Vancouver or Sydney, and are in Sydney for the time being. Prices are just as bad here, same excuses for why the prices are so high – no land, rich Asians, etc – but really it's cheap money and government stoking the fire with housing grants.
A big difference though is you can actually sit on cash here. Bankwest is currently paying 6.15%, ING 6.25% for savings accounts. Nobody is actually saving money so banks are crawling over themselves to attract domestic deposits.
A little carnage in the markets here today, 3.1% drop was the worst performance of the past six months.
May 17th, 2010 at 1:19 am
Further local Chinese MSM news.
key points: Many Chinese immigrants are not the typical "rich" kind, they need mortgages too. Chinese MSM's are becoming less bullish (I wouldn't call them bearish yet), starting to tell people to watch-n-wait.
1. "How to buy/sell RE in this chaotic time?"
http://van.worldjournal.com/view/full_van/7415246…
(use http://translate.google.com/#zh-CN|en| for rough translation)
and I quote:
"I've seen people bringing a Vancouver West house they bought in March on sale in April, with a mark-up of 200k. I've also seen many people in Burnaby marking up their properties by 200k since their purchases in 2009. 'Reasonable prices' are very hard to come by these days "
"Many buyers are becoming cautious. Many people cancelled their offer or were unable to obatin mortages. Recently I have seen many realtors receiving offers but unable to reach a sale"
"Most obviously, newer immigrants who landed within 5 years cannot offer a high enough down payment; older immigrants who landed more than 5 years ago do not have high enough incomes to qualify for mortgages"
"In this current climate, people who have cash at hand should not hurry to buy. They should wait for good deals and aggresively negotiate for lower prices."
(written by a bearish Chinese realtor "Ya Ya Su": http://tw.myblog.yahoo.com/suya790 )
2. "Will RE price in Greater Vancouver go down?" – by same author
http://tw.myblog.yahoo.com/suya790/article?mid=15…
"Mortgage rate is climbing. There are lots of inventory on the market, maybe even exceeding demand. Will house price decline?"
"… one interesting case among the price cuts is a new condo near Canada Place. A unit on 25F initially asked for $959k suddenly slashed its price by $100k to $859k, after only 40 days on the market. If the owner anticipates RE to go up, would he have cut the price tag?"
"Smart buyers should wait for good opportunities to present. You should wait for situations where desperate sellers offer significant price cuts."
May 17th, 2010 at 12:29 am
@vibe: Thanks for the charts Vibe!
May 16th, 2010 at 11:48 pm
Speaking of trees.. Suprise! The Province chops down the trees at Robson Square, nobody at city hall saw it coming:
http://www.vancouversun.com/City+caught+unaware+t…
May 16th, 2010 at 11:43 pm
Trees are a commodity! I buy tree, huzzbah buy tree!
May 16th, 2010 at 11:40 pm
Commodities imploding! Massive buying opportunity for rich Chinese?