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FFFA! Affordability, Rates, Leaks, Income, Condo Battle

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Hey! It’s the end of another work week!

Lets do our regular end of the week news round up and open topic discussion thread for the weekend.

It’s Friday Free-for-all time!

Here are a few recent links to kick off the chat:

–Vancouvers problems start at home
–Condo battle
–Affordable New York
–As long as rates stay low..
–Yellen driving our market?
–Salaries to buy in 25 cities
–

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

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CPG
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“Receiving a credit card bill that totalled $243,476 would no doubt be a shock for most Canadians. But if you add up all the liabilities of every Canadian government – federal, provincial, and local – that is in fact how much each taxpayer would owe of the $4.1 trillion total in direct debt and unfunded liabilities.”

http://beaconnews.ca/calgary/2014/04/canadian-government-debt-hits-4-1-trillion/

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4 years 9 months ago
tedeastside
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vancouver is known as the lowest wage city in Canada, probably North America, vancouver is the butt of many jokes, British Columbia is a laughing stock and career graveyard

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4 years 9 months ago
patriotz
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@1:

“Unfunded liabilities” is a misleading way to refer to future program spending. The government does not owe anyone program spending – it’s something that the government decides to spend and fund on a year by year basis.

Also they are simply wrong on CPP, which is self financing.

That said future spending on Medicare, OAS and GIS are a concern with an aging population. However none of these are carved in stone and we have already seen the government change OAS eligible age.

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4 years 9 months ago
LL
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LL
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Bill C-24 I’m LOVIN’ IT
http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/national/Harper+governments+immigration+bill+goes+second+reading/9884632/story.html

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4 years 9 months ago
Don Lapre
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Don Lapre
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Evidently CMHC is opening up its books in an effort to be more transparent…. time to take a look behind the curtain!

http://business.financialpost.com/2014/05/30/cmhc-agrees-to-make-more-mortgage-information-public/

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4 years 9 months ago
Many Franks
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Many Franks
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Just for funsies, try negating both sides of the equation in this article and see if the logic holds. Housing market can withstand gradual 2% mortgage hike: BMO Canada’s housing market would be more than able to withstand a modest two per cent increase in mortgage rates as long as it’s implemented slowly, over a year or two, BMO economist Robert Kavcic says. … Kavcic says if mortgage rates jumped by two percentage points overnight (say, to an average of around five per cent) the impact on the housing market would be dramatic, as people would suddenly finding themselves paying a dangerously high percentage of their income on housing. “If we were to get that increase overnight, housing valuations … would be stretched to levels that preceded significant corrections in the past,” Kavcic says. His assumptions are based on incomes… Read more »
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4 years 9 months ago
Uncle Tom
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2% is a lot, especially only over a couple years. Most hold households you think will have gotten a lot of their mortgaged paid in those less than five years it takes to renew? I doubt it.

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4 years 9 months ago
Burnabonian
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National debt is not like household debt.

The primary difference being that most people don’t have money printing machines in their basements.

It’s just up to the rest of us to keep up when our debt is necessarily inflated away.

How to keep up with inflation? Highly-leveraged purchases of bubble- and inflation-vulnerable durable goods like…housing.

So as long as you’re not a saver or otherwise conservative and savvy, you’ll be fine. Understand?

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4 years 9 months ago
I don't think so
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I don't think so
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With the latest “success” stealing a few hundred more jobs from Hollywood, I guess BC’s film industry handouts are going up from their current level of about $220,000,000/year. no wonder they can’t afford a raise for teachers!

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4 years 9 months ago
Vanguy
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Surprised nobody has mentioned New Yorker 1 pager just on Vancouver real estate. Mentions zombies!

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2014/05/26/140526ta_talk_surowiecki

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4 years 9 months ago
Many Franks
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Uncle Tom: Yes, 2% is a tremendous amount — when you’ve gotten used to operating near ZIRP with the attendant stretched valuations, which is exactly the point.

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4 years 9 months ago
david
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Quebec’s provincial pension fund has just put up Toronto’s Royal York hotel and the Hotel Vancouver for sale.

I wonder how they might they have picked out those two assets for sale? Astute investors, unloading primo commercial properties in Toronto and Vancouver. Probably nothing…..

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4 years 9 months ago
Joe Mainlander
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@ #10. Mentioned. Debated. Dismissed. Two weeks ago.

http://vancouvercondo.info/2014/05/fffa-looooong-weekend.html#comment-231884

There is no bubble. Vancouver is special. Buy now before you get priced out by HAM. We’ve heard it all before. Always at the start of the spring market. These articles are now predictable.

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4 years 9 months ago
david
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Has there ever been an urban population so completely fixatated on real estate for so long without a significant break?

Even the overnight petro-billionaires who built Dubai saw it blow up in their faces in no time. But Vsncouver has managed to nurture a multi-trillion dollar pastime on nothing more than vague hand waving about “Chinese hoards”…funny anecdotes over data, urban legends over hard stats.

AS Greenberg put it: Your self-confidence is truly horrifying.

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4 years 9 months ago
david
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t oadd to my comment #10… But in a world where the L.A. Clippers are worth $2B, all bets are off.

Day-old bran muffins might cost 100 pounds of leopard sweat. Who’s to say?

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4 years 9 months ago
franko
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It sure felt good to see a couple of common sense posts yesterday about the inevitable carnage that higher rates will bring. Loved the one from “Mark to cache”, and it’s always nice to see our “patriotz” taking the odd break from his relentless (con and Crusty) bashing with his link top Yellen in the Drivers Seat.

It’s downright scary how first time buyers have bought into the BS from politicians, mortgage brokers, and realtors that lower rates are here to stay. FTBs would be better off tuning into Bloomberg and BNN to hear the sad truth.

In the meantime, young FTBs with their toddlers in their arms or bellies are swarming to the crappiest shitboxes of the open houses while anything $200K above entry level gets no traffic at all.

This will not end well.

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4 years 9 months ago
patriotz
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@4:

This bill is concerned with those misrepresenting residence in Canada to obtain citizenship, which isn’t a lot of people, and with taking away Canadian citizenship from dual citizens convicted of certain offenses, which applies to next to nobody and may well be found unconstitutional.

This is another “throw them under the bus” move designed to take peoples’ attention away from the immigration elephants in the living room, namely TFW, the huge number of economically unproductive immigrants who are still admitted, and evasion of taxation on offshore income, which not surprisingly isn’t one of the offenses they want to include as grounds for revoking citizenship.

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4 years 9 months ago
patriotz
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@8: “How to keep up with inflation? Highly-leveraged purchases of bubble- and inflation-vulnerable durable goods like…housing.”

You forgot to add, “… with rates locked in at 3% for 25 years”.

Know where I can get that?

Remember what happened to interest rates the last time inflation took off?

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4 years 9 months ago
patriotz
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@15: “But in a world where the L.A. Clippers are worth $2B, all bets are off.”

But Ballmer isn’t buying Vancouver RE. Why should he, when Seattle is half the price?

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4 years 9 months ago
UBC in crisis mode
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UBC in crisis mode
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Someone bought the land for development?

Old info:
Listed Date: Apr 21, 2008
Original Price: $2,293,000

4971 COLLEGE HIGHROAD in Vancouver West Side

Just sold again, listed at $2,788,000

How much money the owner made? Not sure if it has been flipped in the last few years.

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4 years 9 months ago
South for the winter
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South for the winter
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HAM may be moving away from BC, in fact i hear more and more about it here in SoCal

“…Zillow recently announced that its platform will be now available to a select group of brokers working in China, which is ground zero for many of the foreign buyers that are now penetrating luxury, high-end markets with all-cash offers.”

http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2014/05/28/playing-the-surge-in-california-real-estate/

if prices here keep going up as Vancouver experienced over the past 12 years, i’ll be rich!

Oh and when i sell in the US, i expect Vancouver market to be a buyers market so i can get 2 for the price of 1 in SoCal!

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4 years 9 months ago
TLL
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If only we had Zillow here, we would have info (& sale history) on The Hudson since we first discussed it on VHB. Anyways, let’s move out of the dark ages and in to sunny California where 2 houses sold to boomers -investors in 2009 for $788k and $825k are currently Zestimated at $1.2M & $1.5M, and rent around $4,500/month.
http://sf.blockshopper.com/property/049193080/166_barford/
http://sf.blockshopper.com/property/049192030/177_barford/

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4 years 9 months ago
UBC in crisis mode
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UBC in crisis mode
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Zillow provides too much info!
We are Canadian, living in a dark age under RE overlords’ control!

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4 years 9 months ago
Joe Mainlander
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Savills UK releases it’s annual “World Cities” real estate report:

http://pdf.euro.savills.co.uk/global-research/12-cities-h1-2014a.pdf

Vancouver not mentioned! Hey, aren’t we a “World City”?

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4 years 9 months ago
Dunbarian
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Big white tour bus doing the rounds of Dunbar houses that are for sale. Interestingly only about 5 people on the bus!! (yellow helicopter has morphed in to white bus methinks!). I feel like going out and telling them that the ship is currently sinking; but then I think, it’s up to them to do their due diligence.

And Garth Turner says HAM doesn’t exist. Pah!

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4 years 9 months ago