Is debt slavery an option for people who can’t pay their bills?

@ #137: “I have to agree with a previous poster that its a bit of a strange choice, to say the least, for someone with a child to buy a smallish apartment in a trendy area instead of buying a larger more affordable home in another part of town.” It’s unfair to label a choice strange without knowing more about the individual’s motivations and desires. Maybe the mother would rather her child grow up on the West Side, with all of its attendant advantages (whether real or perceived), and be willing to sacrifice a bedroom of her own rather than have her own bedroom and live somewhere that is less ideal from her perspective. Moreover, maybe she has family and/or friends in the area who can help with childcare, etc. And what about her job situation? What if she works… Read more »

RentersRant, if nobody signs a lease then the landlord will be forced to lower the rent anyway. Rents are always set by the market, and are a product of supply and demand – not the weather.

I was googling Vancouver condos and came across this site. What a loud of bs all of u are. Maybe you haven’t noticed but we live in the best city in the world. You can ski and go to the beach on the same day and everyone wants to live here.

Ive people like all of you in real life. You are bitter angry people. Often racist. You blame others for you lack of success. The worst part is that you drag down impressionable people down with you.

All of you have a mental illness.

A property may be listed with an agency, however for various reasons, it may or may not be advertised on the MLS system. The reasons vary from privacy for the seller to a lower commission rate, to the seller or realtor seeing no advantage to the MLS system for that property. In other words, you may see a sign, there may be a realtor involved, but they kept it off the MLS. If you were interested in the property to view, you would contact the realtor directly. Many of these properties will have “in house” advertising on the realtor’s site. Realtor involvement does not necessarily mean MLS.

“While the _ratio_ stats should not be significantly affected by non-MLS listings and sales, as those should mirror, roughly proportionally, the MLS ones,it does distort absolute numbers, especially in distressed market conditions. In the US there has been a significant uptick in FSBOs, as sellers can clearly see vast majority of realtors are not able to improve their property’s chances of selling. You can see the same in the Okanagan region, just take a drive around the lake in the spring and see for yourself the non-trivial number of ‘for sale’ signs that are not MLS represented.”

Maybe I am still being misunderstood. There IS a realtor handling it. It is NOT a For Sale By Owner. That is why I assumed it would be listed under MLS.

Appreciate some clarification on this for my sake!

@patriotz – True, asset and price inflation are different, and to be clear, I was mostly referring to asset inflation (as Troll pointed out). Still, just because they’re different things doesn’t mean they’re unrelated. In the long term, higher asset prices tend to go along with higher consumer prices and vice-versa. The main difference between the two is variance, with assets undergoing much larger and more rapid price swings than consumables. If you look at Japan, for example, their stock market is down about 75% in the past 20 years and consumer prices are basically unchanged. In the US, stock markets are up about 400% in that time and consumer prices are up around 50%. So clearly the two are related in the long term. They just have vastly different volatility profiles. And since the central banks target CPI rather… Read more »

@patriotz

You have to distinguish between consumer price and asset price inflation.

No he doesn’t, because he’s defining inflation as monetary inflation, not price inflation. This should be obvious from the content of his post. Monetary inflation is far more useful to understand since it’s the weather while price inflation is only the thermometer and prone to confusion (asset price deflation vs. consumer price inflation). I agree with Yalie on this one, I side with the deflationists, since it seems that credit is being destroyed faster then Central Banks can ‘print’. They’re trying desperately and the tricky part will be to withdraw this stimulus once credit destruction begins to reverse.

@ 125 Yalie:

I completely agree with you on this one, Yalie. I’ve followed the inflation/deflation argument closely over the last few years, have also analyzed the arguments of all those you mention in your post, and it seems to me as if the deflationists have the better of the argument. Just think of the purchasing power that will be lost when housing prices decrease by 40%. That’s also why I think that rates will not rise dramatically over the next few years.

I have to agree that the MO of the Bank of Canada is to merely follow the FED.
Carney has had the easiest job in the world, but he will finally have to work for a living in the UK.

I think the demise of Japan was caused more by the emergence of China which was able to replace Japans manufacturing dominance with cheaper labour. North America has a much more diverse ecinomy than Japan.

Re: #77 Tax Cheats

This is why I am a believer in consumption tax vs income tax. This especially applies to a country like Canada in which:
a) we have a fairly large number of immigrants that may be earning income overseas, and
b) these same immigrants are claiming very little income here yet digging into the social services.

Would also help shake some money out of those making their livings in the illegal drug trade in BC. No income tax paid there…