Open Topic

Friday Free-for-all!

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215 Comments

Hey everyone, it’s FRIDAY!  Do you know what that means?  That means it’s time for our regular end of the week news round up and open topic discussion thread.  Let’s hop to the links, here are a few recent stories to kick off the chat:

–Immigrants flee cities due to affordability
–Vancouver affordability task force has recommendations
–Vancouver youth exodus
–If you don’t use a REALTOR you might die
–Encouraging a rush to the exits?
–40 min Australian housing bubble documentary (ht DeanBC)
–Canada’s dirty little sub-prime secret
–

So what are you seeing out there?  Post your news links, thoughts and anecdotes and have an excellent weekend!

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Bilbo Bloggins

@Laibach:
Didn’t Concord Pacific try to build something close by?
How did that work out.

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ZRH2YVR

@Eddie I do agree that he will not kill the market and that he is probably quite happy with the slowing it has caused out west. However, the Toronto market seems insane and disconnected. My bet is just to reduce the max amort to 25 years. This is really a non-event. It will take some money out of the system but really very little. What would be better would be to raise the minimum down payment even just a little bit. We really have to prevent the banks from being able to cash bank the down payment. 10% would be too much to fast but 7 or 8 % would be reasonable. CMHC cap? I can’t seem them keeping it fixed but I could see that there will be new restrictions on purchasing from banks such as no conventional mortgages… Read more »

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Eddie

@ZRH2YVR: F doesn’t want to kill the market, just make it look like he is doing the prudent thing. In fact he is probably taking great comfort in the fact that reducing the 35 to 30 didn’t kill the market last year, and hoping for a repeat performance. Taking it to 25 probably won’t make a whole lot of difference at this point, now that things are turning on their own.

Keeping the CMHC cap at 600 billion, now THAT would kill the market!

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Bilbo Bloggins

@VMD:
Totally, it makes all the sense in the world for boomers with lots of equity and kids are grown up and moved out.
Chance to cash out near the top and move into a nice rental condo or townhouse.
No maintenance, no property taxes, and no STAIRS!

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VMD

@ZRH2YVR:
Congrats to your parents and welcome to the Get-Boomer-Parents-To-Cash-Out-And-Rent club : )

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ZRH2YVR

Well – – My boomer parents just sold the family house in Richmond after living there for 33 years. Did OK, but given the current disaster market in Richmond, decided to sell for a bit below previous sales in the area. Traffic was very very slow. In the month on the market, only about 5 showings. All Asians. Sold to an Asian who sold their West Side home for double the value of the Richmond house. I think they will use the money to buy 2 – – why not right? The amazing thing is that, they are ready to rent. Have no need to really but are not about to jump into a big financial buy right now in this frothy and unstable market. They don’t even need the money for retirement so this extra million is a bit… Read more »

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Dropping In

My sister in-law signed up for a 1BR unit at Marine Gateway. $400K for a 500 sq ft on the 26F. My sister-in-law was pressured by her mother. Yes they’re Chinese FWIW. Someone asked about whether assignments were permitted. I read the disclosure documents, and assignments are only permitted if the Developer provides written consent (uh huh) and you must use the Developer’s agent (i.e. Rennie), plus the Developer gets the greater of 1% of the profit or the unit value, whichever is greater. My in-laws are now leaning toward exercising their cooling off option.

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Missed the train

FORECLOSURE ? Why do you ban my post ???
I am only trying to understand the Vancouver RE market and raise concern. Why do you Foreclose my post without any discussion ????????????

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Stupid Canucks

http://vimeo.com/38500767

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Vansanity

@Colt:

Folks shouldn’t expect Christy Clarke to do anything. It’s like the old saying goes… it’s better to remain quiet and let them think you’re stupid than speak and remove all doubt. Christy Clarke definately subscribes to that logic.

She’s a lame duck Premier intentionally by design. Let’s see if it backfires on her.

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Eddie

@patriotz: From that article and the quote of the decade: “Once we were rich, and now we’re poor again”

Get ready Canada, your next.

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Missed the train

@patriotz: That’s right, there is lot of condo in Montreal, that has been the way to cut down prices. Vancouver is becoming more affordable with more condo now. Montreal house are very expensive, as are Vancouver’s ones. So, perhaps to be more clear: high density= less square footage for your bucks. Do I miss something ?

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Anonymous

@Anonymous:
Nope, thanks for pointing it out.

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patriotz

You’ve heard this before, but good writing and photos in this article:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17390729

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Anonymous

@Clockbike:

Did you read the comments under your 2nd link?

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Patiently Waiting

@Clockbike: Thanks for the pics. One of my ancestors designed some of the old mine buildings 🙂

So are there any concerns about the old mine? Is that why that area’s not very inhabitied?

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patriotz

@jumpin in:
“If the overvaluation was fully unwound rapidly, it would be three times the correction in the early 1990s.”

That’s a reference to the Toronto bust of the early 1990s of course. Vancouver went up over the same period.

The message that’s been coming out over the last couple of months is that a major bust in Toronto is now all but inevitable. It’s brown panties time for Jimbo.

In an unintentional irory, the webpage for this article contained an ad from RBC Royal Bank asking me to “Get a low rate mortgage with flexibility”.

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N

@patriotz: “Because businesses and their activities need to be identifiable to the public and to public servants for such things as policing, labour standards, and fire protection. It’s not just about their customers.” If that were the case, people would be required to post standardized signs. Restaurants and retails establishments standardly post signs with no descriptive meaning but which are rather, a single word, or a fanciful combination of words. In fact, in the ordinary way of things, you cannot even get a trademark for a name that is merely descriptive. Public servants routinely gain no information from signs that say things like “Lisa’s,” “Curves,” “The House,” “Panama,” etc. yet no one sees this a problem. In fact, in this free country, you are free to run a business with no sign at all. So why should we react differently… Read more »

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vangrl

“Big news (for VMD) ”

Sweet, congratulations!!

We are all counting on you now:)

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chilled

@VMD:

Did they request your credit card number?

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Spec

@VMD: Congratulations. You’ll do a a fine job. Thank you for your efforts.

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VMD

Big news (for VMD) I was just offered by a Vancouver-based Chinese RE website (catering to mainly recent immigrants) and a Chinese finances newspaper to become their regular columnist. This is an excerpt of the offer: “Dear GF (my alias), we have been following your forum post and blog for many months. In terms of your RE trend analysis and prediction, to be frank, we have yet to find anyone else with comparable quality in Vancouver. We contacted you for two reasons: 1. We would like to set up a special column for you to publish your routine updates and analyses 2. We have special engagement with Dawa (“Great Chinese”) Business Press. We would like you to contribute to their weekly “New RE Trends” special, published in “B” section of the newspaper every Thursday.” I wonder if they’ve considered the… Read more »

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