First!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Re Richmond fire: ""This fire happened at the worst possible time," said Sean Tracey, Canadian regional director of the national fire protection association, a non-profit association that does codes and standards for buildings as well as fire service."

Lol, because once occupied would have been a better time. What better illustration of the province's unspoken perspective towards the construction industry do you need? This place is nuts.

@paradox:

Not a chance. Why would they give them their money back? COV is already losing big money on the Village, no way they will bail them out. And so they shouldn't.

MoneySense: Should we all become landlords?

It sounds simple enough. Buy a place. Rent it out. Get the cash. But despite how easy it sounds not everyone is cut out to be a landlord.

So, how can you tell if property fiefdom is right for you?

Well, you can do it the hard way, like my dear, dear friends. We’ll simply call them Micaela and Don.

…

Pretty soon Micaela and Don had to admit: they hated being house owners—having to deal with maintenance and repairs—and they hated it even more when they were doing these tasks for another person.

Food for thought for pretty much any Vancouver detached home buyer these days.

Regarding the 'Silver bull is selling'.

The title contains precisely 50% of the news, because he sold the paper 'silver' and invested the proceeds into physical (miners, IIRC). This would sound more like 'Silver bull is buying silver' and make one question the value of paper.

@McLovin: "Surging

consumer demand in Metro Vancouver has been driven primarily by immigrant investment"

LOL is it now? Do immigrants "drive" the market? Do locals no longer have any free will? Let's find the survey that outlines how many recent buyers are recent immigrants and how many are more established residents.

They're at it again in the U.S., these people never learn.

http://finance.yahoo.com/real-estate/article/1126…

@space889:

I would think the COV has more money to spend on lawyers than the cash strapped, looking for a way out owners. All the more reason to believe the owners will be stuck.

***NOTICE to users ***: Listen up you VCI users.

If you want to create a custom avatar for VCI account you have to set up an account at gravatar: http://en.gravatar.com/

It takes only a few minutes, is free, and I encourage all of you real men to do so. All the rest of you sweat hogs aren't worth looking at anyway, at least that's what your woman tells me.

Hit the music.

North Okanagan residential sales fell off a cliff:

Sales down 51% YOY

Sales drop 8% MOM, on top of a 33% drop the previous month.

So much for the market turning around this Spring.

From Brazil:

"As its economy grows stronger and attracts more and more investments, it is also attracting more attention from international drug traffickers who launder the profits they make from drugs in Brazil," he said.

One way to hide drug profits is buying up real estate, Maierovitch said, and Brazil has become one of the Western Hemisphere's hottest property markets. Police said that a federal court ordered the seizure of the suspects' assets, which included 31 buildings, 15 luxury vehicles and three boats, with an estimated overall value of $16 million."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110506/ap_on_re_la_a…

@Best place on meth:

Vancouver should now be called Brazil North.

(Hollywood North is so last century.)

@19 Alpha_Bear: The news today was talking about record rain falls last month and the playoffs keeping buyers away.

.

😉