From Yanak’s (91) link: “You don’t tend to get the rundown, ragged-around-the-edge, abused feel in a building of owners versus a building of tenants or renters.” i.e. Renters are slobs that don’t take care of where they live. That’s nice. Thanks, Phil. We recently left our rental house (asked to leave) and moved to a new rental house. Family and friends were shocked that we didn’t, *finally*, take the chance to buy something. Anything to get into the market. Sympathy and helpful advice all around, and it’s still coming. “They say prices are going up next year” (from the CREA 2014 prediction news release this week). Whatever personal or professional success we achieve is negated by our status as Renters. I’m in my 30s and I have a good job and a professorship at UBC. But hey, if I really… Read more »

I knew it. I knew the Fed would reduce spending sooner rather than never. Half the problem with people is how they react to the news. In the last two years, we’ve had posters on here (bulls) that said the Fed and interest rates would NEVER move. Some said not in our lifetimes. Then, on the other side, there are (bears) predicting skyrocketing rates even hyperinflation!

I’m sticking with Buffet–don’t listen to the news, don’t even think about the macro. Make your financial decisions case by case and purchase misplaced assets. That’s all you can do. Now watch all the buyers freak out if interest rates tick up a teeny tiny and if Flaherty reacts to debt levels. It should be fun. But it will be overdone.

In other news: something to consider during RE purchase:
Kinder Morgan proposes almost entirely new pipeline route through Burnaby
(excuse my type prev post)

re: Poloz saying 1986-89 looked like “the left leg of Eiffel Tower,”
I dare say 2001-2013 looked much more like his Eiffel Tower than ’86-’89, as far as Vancouver RE is concerns.

@RealityCheck I fail to understand your gloating about making money on USD investments (we all did) while your Vancouver RE just depreciated 5% (in USD terms) in the last 3 months. What is it, -$50,000? On separate note, Stephen Poloz is now comparing bubbles to Eiffel Tower (no more spaghetti sauce?) “The household sector did the spending, they did the borrowing. So they did the heavy lifting and that made a milder recession. So usually, a year or two later, you’re done. You don’t get the accumulated side effects. Here, we’re going into our fifth year and the accumulated side effects are starting to get bigger, and that is, gradually, more and more house-buying and indebtedness, and the risk that prices have gone above their fundamentals somehow.” ““But the important point is that that’s a natural consequence; we were aware… Read more »

@George #62

Samji invested in property on the Sunshine Coast – so much for her investing acumen. I mention her in my Aug 26th post, “Life’s a Wakefield Beach” near the bottom of Post #1 and again in Post #3.

http://vancouverpeak.com/showthread.php?tid=4632

Samji bought a townhouse and duplex at Wakefield. The townhouse is still listed and duplex has been removed from MLS and is now an exclusive with an SC Realtor. Samji also went 50/50 on two lots in Trail Bay Estates.

Bankruptcy Trustee, Boale, Wood & Company Ltd, has a website page devoted solely to Samji.

http://www.boalewood.ca/2012/12/05/samji-et-al/

@patriotz – geez…selective changing memory and being lazy…why should I expect anything better… Here you go: http://vancouvercondo.info/2011/07/more-uncertainty-in-millennium-water.html patriotz Says: July 7th, 2011 at 4:39 am 31 @space889: If you can afford to live in a $1 million dollar home then I don’t really think you should get rebates designed for helping the truly poor who have nothing. The problem is that there are a lot more people living in $1 million dollar homes in Vancouver who really do have low incomes than people in such homes who only claim to have low incomes. How do you go after the latter without hitting the former. You have to focus on unreported income, not just what the house would bring in if (repeat if) it were sold. Like or Dislike: 0 0 ————– patriotz Says: July 7th, 2011 at 5:56 am 47… Read more »

CADUSD down to 0.9350 (3 year low),
was 0.943 yesterday
was 0.958 a month ago
was 0.972 2 months ago
approaching 4 year low (0.933)

Haven’t got the numbers yet, but according to Bloomberg a big portion of todays surge in stocks was fueled by money fleeing the bond market.

No surprise that 10 Year treasury yields jumped after the FED tapering announcement. Can’t imagine the private sector snapping up $10 billion worth of bonds (that the FED won’t be buying any more) without demanding substantially higher yields…and that’s only the beginning.

Round 2 of higher mortgage fear is just around the corner. Probably just in time for the spring listing surge.

@VanRant71: ““U.S. Federal Reserve will reduce its $85-billion a month in bond purchases by $10-billion” Part of the reason they are doing this is because mortgage applications have decreased and they were consuming the entire MBS market. In other words they had no market price signal. The other reason they tapered, in some analysts’ view, is that Bernanke wanted to taper under his watch to smooth the transition to Yellen’s chair-ship. Tapering would have either been December or January, but given strong job growth and what they view as transient tempering effects on inflation, they have pretty much hit their stated conditions to begin scaling back LSAP. At current pace they will have stopped LSAP by mid next year. Then the problem is how to convert back to interest-rate monetary policy. We’re into the second innings of a US recovery.… Read more »