US condos for less than a new car
Last month we showed you what kind of car you could get for the monthly drop in benchmark house prices in some Vancouver neighborhoods. Along a similar theme, reader Avatar points out this round up of 8 condos in the US that cost less than a new car. This one bedroom 770 sq foot condo in Florida is going for $25k:
The condo is spacious and has a half bath, a screened porch, wood floors and is in move-in condition, according to agent Jana Brittenum of Keyes Real Estate. The corner location in the complex gives it nice garden views.
The condo community has good recreational facilities with a swimming pool, clubhouse and exercise area, but maintenance charges are a modest $180 a month.
The last time the unit sold was in 2005 when it went for $115,000. Why so inexpensive now? For one thing, it’s a short sale, which the lender will have to approve. Also, the condo association’s bylaws prohibit renters, so any buyers would have to want to live there.
See the Full article at CNN.com
August 15th, 2010 at 11:55 pm
My good friend who is an accountant has a condo in the states but it has two full baths. How can it only have a "half bath"? Just a toilet and a sink? Shower in the pool? – Oh, and Nokia is still the biggest manufacturer by a fair margin. We'll see how long that lasts but it wouldn't surprise me if it do for a long time.
August 4th, 2010 at 2:06 pm
@realpaul:
realpaul, thats wonderful that you bought all that crap over the years.. I really liked how you compare C64 with nokia phones…
NSeries = N97 is the top model , approx 2, 3 years old software. Not so much of a competitor actually.. E71 is NOT NSeries dude.
I have blackberry, and I really dislike it. Not so much fun of iPhone, but I am getting really excited with android platform. In spite all this, I don't think that the cell phone would make me superior to anyone out there.
p.s there where earlier computers then commodore C64 dude. and I have owned some of those.
August 4th, 2010 at 2:06 pm
@patriotz:
I agree. These aren't tough times. I still have to wait in line to spend $5 for a coffee.
August 4th, 2010 at 2:05 pm
I do believe nokia still sells more phone than any other handset mfgr (a proud e71 user myself). I just got saddled with a blackberry by work and can't stand the damn thing.
POLL: An estate sale of a detached just off Arbutus, close to Stong's. Old place that has been inhabited by 96 year old lady until just recently. they tell me its a tear down (I think that's used a little frivolously in this city); I've never seen the inside, but it looks ok from the outside.
33' frontage. I expect that they'll push the sale.
What will they get? closest to the actual selling value get's nothing whatsoever. Any guesses?
August 4th, 2010 at 2:00 pm
@Anonymous:
That's just down on the day. Look at this one:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/quote?ticker=BDIY:I…
Now set the time frame to 5 years. You will see it is pretty unremarkable and on an upswing.
August 4th, 2010 at 1:51 pm
@Newcomer:
Really?
04 August 2010
Baltic Dry Index (BDI) -7 1957
That's one awful looking chart:
http://www.dryships.com/pages/report.asp
August 4th, 2010 at 1:46 pm
@Best place on meth: Dude! 420!
Is that a subtle grow-op indicator?
August 4th, 2010 at 1:33 pm
#103 A
I am neither living in 'cartoon land' of advertising nor am I a malcontent who has given up my brain to the advertisers in trade for a few minutes peace from the worms crawling around in my skull as you seem to be suffering from. Are they telling you to hate realpaul no matter what the topic????????
Heres a general question…"When psycho's start hearing voices…from dogs and such ( like Berkowitz for ex)…why do the voices always command the nutbag to kill? Why don't the voices ever direct the nutjobs to go have a picnic or bake a cake? Why is it always hatred and deadly venom….like this 'Anonoymous' character. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr, I straightened him out on the BCTF issue and now he's a tight little sphincter of hate….so sad. Woof.
I currently have an E71 and a N97, I have owned a CrackBerry and reviewed the IPhone before it was made public. I bought one of the very first NEC phones back when they first came out, it was the size of a brick and cost $3800 bucks. It wouldn't work in over half the city but really pulled intrest from people down on Howe St…. sci fi at the time. My partner trumped me and bought the first flip phone Motorola and paid $5800 for it. That was in the early eighties or so….both useless museum pieces now. I will also admit to having bought the first Commodore 64 in Vancouver…….thats right….64K …a really powerful supercomputer in the day. Junk…but it did have PONG !!!!!!
For depth of engineering, function and features I will stand on the position that the North American products don't hold a candle to the Nokia. Of course, Nokia isn't given away free with a three year contract, thats probably why you haven't aquainted yourself with one.
Feel free to hate me….but what did the Finns ever do to you?
August 4th, 2010 at 1:29 pm
Update on the $388K house in Collingwood with the right of way.
It sold for $420K.
August 4th, 2010 at 1:16 pm
@Joeblow:
They can throw a nuclear bomb too, no?
August 4th, 2010 at 1:13 pm
The Baltic Dry Index is up, Dude.
August 4th, 2010 at 1:12 pm
I'd be VERY surprised to see the 0-40 again. Even if we did, that would simply mean a delay of the inevitable. As others were discussing previously, the cost of sustaining this rube-goldberg bubble gets exponentially expensive – both in budgetary terms and politically.
August 4th, 2010 at 12:59 pm
Enjoyable excerpt from Garth's blog tonight:
"Cameron Muir, chief comedian for the BC Real Estate Association said, “we have seen consumer demand come off,” and blamed higher mortgage rates, tighter borrowing rules for first-time buyers and “fragile” consumer confidence brought about by the HST.
He did not mention the fact houses cost $615,000 in a town where the average household income is $76,650.
Mr. Muir finished his routine by forecasting that BC housing prices will increase this year by 6%."
August 4th, 2010 at 12:55 pm
@specuskeptic:
You are right that the rates can't be manipulated again, but they can go back to 0% down, 40 year amt, etc. There are still tricks in the hat.
August 4th, 2010 at 12:40 pm
@Joeblow
I hear you with the concern BUT…
there is no room to adjust the interest rates downward this time. Kicking it back from .75 will have negligible effect and I think we've seen that last of that. This amp don't go up to 11 no more.
This does not preclude other measures but, as has been discussed here before, it is much more difficult for fed gov't meddling in the fall (autumn) of 2010 because of this and to me, it makes all the difference in the world.
August 4th, 2010 at 12:28 pm
B.C. Lower Mainland real estate sales plummet in July
http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Lower+Mainla…
VANCOUVER — Lower Mainland real estate markets saw their slowest or near slowest July in a decade, the region's real estate boards reported Wednesday, with sales down by almost half from July 2009's red-hot markets and prices slipping from the previous month's levels.
In Metro Vancouver, excluding Surrey, realtors saw 2,255 sales registered through the Multiple Listing Service, a 45-per-cent decline from July 2009, the third slowest July in the last 10 years.
In the Fraser Valley, July MLS sales were off 47 per cent with 1,101 transactions, the slowest in a decade..
The benchmark price for detached homes in , an average for typical homes sold, dipped a negligible 0.2 per cent to $793,193 in the area of Metro Vancouver covered by the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver.
Fraser Valley Real Estate Board realtors saw its detached-home benchmark hit $510,470 in July, down 1.5 per cent from June, and the board reported that its benchmarks in all three categories fell from the previous month for the first time since January 2009.
“With the pace of home sales and listings easing off in our market, we've begun to see a leveling of home prices from the record highs seen in the spring, creating greater affordability,” Jake Moldowan, president of the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver said in a news release.
The board added that since the spring, home prices have come down 2.8 per cent from record highs reached in April.
Deanna Horn, president of the Fraser Valley Real Estate Board said that while real estate sales typically slow in the summer, “we didn't anticipate this level of change.”
Both boards noticed that new listings of homes for sale are also waning.
In Metro Vancouver, new listings were off almost 18 per cent from a year ago. In the Fraser Valley, new listings were down 27 per cent.
Both markets, however, still have higher levels of total inventory. In Metro Vancouver, the inventory of 16,431 homes is 33 per cent higher than July 2009. In the Fraser Valley, the inventory of 10,852 listings is 14 per cent more than in the same month a year ago.
Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Lower+Mainla…
August 4th, 2010 at 12:18 pm
August 4th, 2010 at 5:39 pm
@paulb.: Looks like listings are starting to escalate again…
I would agree. I am getting a LOT of new daily listings for the Tri-Cities area in my VOW auto-updates.
I sure as hell wouldn't want to be in a "MUST sell" position right now.
Some of the listings I receive feature EMPTY houses…probably instances where the owner has already purchased and is trying to unload.
Ugh.(for them, that is)
August 4th, 2010 at 12:15 pm
One thing that makes me cautious is the memory of 2008. We all rejoyced at the starting crash only to see it reversed a few months later. There is no indication that what we are seeing now is not just a temporary thing. I've been burned before so I don't want to dance my happy dance yet.
August 4th, 2010 at 12:10 pm
"Just for public record – the housing bust in Vancouver is happening…"
Just after the mega-dance marathon in Pyongyang?
"The East is Red" and all that.
August 4th, 2010 at 11:50 am
@Kid Fynnland: Thanks for the link kabloona.
I absolutely agree with Kid Fynnland: it seems the goldbugs doth protest too much. It's ironic, and revealing of the lack of seriousness with which goldbugs have analyzed Bernanke's comments (and by the way, it wasn't a "paper" but prepared remarks), that the "helicopter" remark was both i) a reference to Friedman, and ii) in the section of his speech titled "Fiscal policy". Since when is using the printing press considered a fiscal policy?
Here's the quote, for those of you who haven't read Bernanke's remarks:
Nowhere in this quote does Bernanke talk about printing money. He claims that combining a tax cut with open market purchases by the Fed (and, thereby, artificially supressing interest rates) would combine to produce an outcome "equivalent" to Friedman's 'helicopter-drop' example.
August 4th, 2010 at 11:17 am
Just for public record – the housing bust in Vancouver is happening before the inevitable stock market plunge that is being signalled by the ECRI WLI Growth Index, Baltic Dry Index, Consumer Metrics Institute Growth Index, ISM PMI Manufacturing Index, US Case-Shiller Housing Index, Per Capita Auto Sales, S&P Volatility Index (VIX), Unemployment Rate, Option Arm & Alt-A Mortgage Reset Schedule, Depletion of fiscal policy ammo, and on and on…
August 4th, 2010 at 11:07 am
Kablooma: everyone in economics knows the helicoptor analogy is an old Milton Friedman one. It is a totally benign example used to illustrate the dangers of excess money.
Bernanke did indeed mention it in that speech, but why goldbugs pin it on Bernanke as a sign of his evilness is way beyond me.
August 4th, 2010 at 11:07 am
@The Pope: Cheers, Pope. The housing bust we're witnessing is in part a tribute to this blog.
August 4th, 2010 at 11:04 am
@Anonymous:
#111 was moi.
August 4th, 2010 at 11:02 am
@realpaul: #94
Brilliant realpaul, I was howling reading your anecdote.
You're absolutely right, the latte sippers of Kits have no idea what's going on in the world. They probably have no idea what's going on beyond Granville street.
No good Chinese food there? What a surprise, those people are whiter than rice. If they were any whiter they'd have dwarfs dancing around them. They make Mr. Rogers look ethnic. Ever wonder why there are so few drinking establishments there that have dancing? That's why.
Men in Capris? If they ever made a movie about Kits life, that's what it should be called.
And I concur with slav, the amount of fecal matter in your post was like a perfectly seasoned dish. Mmmm…
My compliments to the chef.
August 4th, 2010 at 10:25 am
#88 – oneangryslav2:
Here is Bernanke's 2002 paper wherein he mentioned a "helicopter drop" to battle deflation. It's an interesting read and gives insight into his thinking regarding the ZIRP boundary and the Fed's various tools to fight deflation in the USA.
http://www.federalreserve.gov/BOARDDOCS/SPEECHES/…
August 4th, 2010 at 10:11 am
patriotz says: You have to understand that governments cannot enact crazy fiscal policies without consequences. The inflation and deficits of the late 60’s and 70’s resulted in high interest rates that persisted until the late 90’s
you may have to consider new assumptions. prevailing thought out there is that the next round of quantitative easing will bring lower real interest rates. mike is correct, that is what government is going to be looking for. u.s. and canadian bond markets do not operate with the same parameters as greece. researching and understanding these macroeconomic issues is essential.
August 4th, 2010 at 10:06 am
At least CBC is brutally honest about the housing market stats: "People don't seem to be in a buying mood….sales volumes last month are the worst in ten years" oh and apparently, "Asian investors are now holding onto their money, rather than buying real estate" WTF? Just two months ago it was all about Hot Asian Money!!!
Ho ya baby, bring it on! Bring it on!
August 4th, 2010 at 9:39 am
@paulb.: Looks like listings are starting to escalate again…
August 4th, 2010 at 9:38 am
@Alum:
why don't you tell us about sales and prices while you're at it?
August 4th, 2010 at 9:23 am
@patriotz:
What you say about inventory??
It is dropping free fall.
Chances are soon there is no apartment to buy downtown like in between 2004-2007
August 4th, 2010 at 9:13 am
@realpaul#94.
LOL, that was hilarious.
August 4th, 2010 at 9:12 am
@realpaul: NOKIA NSeries, it makes the Black berry and IPhone look like childrens rattles by comparison of tech tricks, speed and scope.
Dude? Seriously? Which planet are you from, again?
How about the rest of the claims?
August 4th, 2010 at 9:11 am
Pimps fight back with bogus claims and 'lower rates'.
Sales off 45% in Vancouver in July they admit but don't tell you that this is another bogus 'fluff stat' because the drop is 70++ % in West Van etc etc….
As I noticed today, there has to be a 5 year inventory of listings in Kits alone.
meanwhile the banks come in an 'lower rates'…. .01% of the 5 year fixed. bwahahhahahahahahahah !!!!!!
August 4th, 2010 at 9:04 am
New Listings 252
Price Changes 115
Sold Listings 128