Great full page ad in the Vancouver Sun yesterday for the The Village on False Creek. "2 bedrooms from $539,900"…"Take Everything on this page home"..when you move in today…a kayak, one year of skytrain travel, a bicycle, a gourmet cookware set, one year of travel on aquabus, modo car share membership for your day trip to Seattle, a patio barbie, coffee for a year, one year's worth of groceries and flowers, a pair of trainers to jog the seawall…limited time offer….take the package or $5000 (if only you will pay a few hundred thousand more than any of these units is worth!). Rennie is pushing hard to sell these lousy deals before this market heads over the falls without a barrel (is that a crashing sound I hear?)– poor us, the taxpayers, saddled with this loser. I'm beginning to wonder… Read more »

Here's a downtown realtor with not much to do because of the "summer doldrums", but everything is fine and there's nothing to be alarmed about, it's a normal thing.

Things will surely pick up in the fall and lets just remind everyone again of those offshore buyers, particularly the ones from China. They're surely still lurking, waiting to snap up many, many properties.

"Lots of units for sale, please make an offer. Please call us. Lots to choose from. Call. Please."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEFWP0TJXSY

Five Rules to Remember When Dealing with Real Estate Agents

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2011/0…

Michael Pettis: China growth to slow rapidly to about 3% in the coming decade Why do I say we will be talking about 3% growth soon? Two reasons. First, I am impressed by the bleakness of historical precedents. Every single case in history that I have been able to find of countries undergoing a decade or more of “miracle” levels of growth driven by investment (and there are many) has ended with long periods of extremely low or even negative growth – often referred to as “lost decades” – which turned out to be far worse than even the most pessimistic forecasts of the few skeptics that existed during the boom period. I see no reason why China, having pursued the most extreme version of this growth model, would somehow find itself immune from the consequences that have afflicted every… Read more »

@fixie guy: "that does raise the question of how we would know who to tax making over $200K/yr"

Quite. According to Bush2, you can never adequately tax the rich because they're smart enough to avoid them, so why bother. Ask your high income neighbours about the miracle of the "sole proprietorship".

@fixie guy:

Easy, nail them at the gate when they first arrive under the Immigrant Investor Program.

$25 million payable upon entry, non-refundable. Or if you want to cut them a break then make it $20 million.

165 jesse Says: "…if the rumours are true and nobody is declaring all their foreign-derived income, a significant increase in income taxes for those making above $200K/year would be rather popular."

Of course, that does raise the question of how we would know who to tax making over $200K/yr if they're not declaring income. =D

@fixie guy: "it’s one in which others pay for the services they receive."

Well if the rumours are true and nobody is declaring all their foreign-derived income, a significant increase in income taxes for those making above $200K/year would be rather popular.

@Anonymous: 157 therein is my biggest rub with the no campaign. The argument that HST is a net positive doesn't explain the new expense item on the income statements for many people. Selling it as anything other than a tax rise makes people scratch their heads.

@Anonymous: 161: Sorry it has to be said that you are delusional. There will be unintended consequences of this vote but that does not mean the Libs secretly wanted yes. I don't need a degree to understand that.

Your resorting to intellectual elitism is a weak argument. Maybe it shows that public education funding needs to increase substantially. But if your argument is true that BC is 55% full of idiots I'd say we're in a "stupidity trap" and making "good" policy decisions like the HST paradoxically makes the province stupider.

154 jesse Says: "What tax system would be popular with the Chinese voters then?"

The arguments posted here suggest it's one in which others pay for the services they receive.

Gordholio 61:

Only a few, but some pretty acerbic comments on the Vancouver Sun editorial!

And justifiably so. The editorial included on the The Editorial Page for Friday Aug 26, represents the Newspaper's view.

"The EDITORIALS that appear in this space represent the opinion of the Vancouver Sun newspaper…The positions taken in the editorials are arrived at through discussion among the members of the newspaper's editorial board, which operates independently from the news departments of the paper."

In short, it appears that the editorial board felt compelled to increase revenues for the paper by kowtowing to one of their largest ad contributers.

I'm surprise they haven't filtered out the feedback!