advice, BC, Canada, data, hype, opinion

Hey Vancouver! Why so unhappy?

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61 Comments

Imagine this:

There’s a city in Canada that has a temperate climate – it’s not frozen half the year. It’s widely acknowledged as a beautiful place with access to nature and people are willing to pay some of the highest prices in the world just to buy a bit of real estate there.

And yet the citizens are some of the most unhappy in the country?

What gives you bunch of ungrateful louts?

According to Statistics Canada the entire province of BC is filled with a bunch of unhappy people. Not a single city in BC even cracks the top ten happiest places in Canada.

And our fair city of Vancouver? Well 33rd place isn’t really that bad is it?

Stop crying and move to Quebec already if you’re so miserable!

 

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[…] -How much is Canada overvalued? -More on debt levels -CMHC rates correction risk low -Raise taxes? -Everyone wants to live in… LA? -Poloz: no risk of bubble -Developer is corruption suspect? -What if you could only get 5 mortgages? -Yellens’ zombie economy – […]

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realist

@ 59 “anyone that truly believes the powers that be will adopt measures to deflate asset bubbles (and start to reward savers) are completely delusional.”

The analysis in your post is correct. “Delusional” might be too extreme a word…misguided? naive?

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bullwhip29

@ #57 we still have a “chance”? that ship sailed a long time ago. think back to sale of expo lands (or earlier). locals earning decent money from legitimate sources dont stand a chance in the long run. other than inheriting properties and other assets from parents/relatives, millenials will be hard pressed to come up with both windfall lump sums to get foot in door and sizeable ongoing paychecks to stay in the game over the long run. this said, poloz and co will continue to do everything in their power to keep the bubble from popping (and those lifetime mortgage pmts for many from escalating). with things apparently softening in the US again (as evidenced by the slide in the USD), expect more stimulative action from the BOC in the coming months/yrs. anyone that truly believes the powers that… Read more »

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say whaaaa?

@57

Ha! Not only has the ship sailed, it’s rounding the cape of good hope.

Welcome to Wengehua, the happiest city in China.

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Polozi Scheme

Vancouver has become a rat race of the global variety with all the usual international speculators and local sell out politicians with none of them willing to take a stand. But we still have a chance to. Soon we may not. Our grandfathers fought for this country. That’s why Vancouver is the unhappiest city in Canada.

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Research

WSR is oriental.

TedEast is getting slammed on cbc comments board for having 2000 similar comments. wow.

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southseacompany

“These Countries Practically Pay You To Own A Home”, Forbes magazine

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2015/04/28/these-countries-practically-pay-you-to-own-a-home/

“Last week I was speaking to a London-based fund manager that handles money for a Dutch pension fund. I asked him what his clients are doing with all this fixed income they have that’s gone negative? He paused. He said they were nervous. He said they were buying up mortgages.”

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southseacompany

And in Europe: “Negative interest rates put world on course for biggest mass default in history”, The Telegraph UK http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/jeremy-warner/11569329/Jeremy-Warner-Negative-interest-rates-put-world-on-course-for-biggest-mass-default-in-history.html “More than €2 trillion-worth of eurozone government bonds trade on a negative interest rate. It’s a bubble that is bound to end badly” “With the advent of European Central Bank quantitative easing, what began four months ago when 10-year Swiss yields turned negative for the first time has snowballed into a veritable avalanche of negative rates across European government bond markets. In the hunt for apparently “safe assets”, investors have thrown caution to the wind, and collectively determined to pay governments for the privilege of lending to them.” “What makes today’s negative interest rate environment so worrying is this; to the extent that demand is growing at all in the world economy, it seems again to be almost entirely dependent… Read more »

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southseacompany

“House of cards: Deconstructing Canada’s housing market valuations”, Globe & Mail http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/housing/house-of-cards-deciphering-canadas-housing-market-numbers/article24152245/ “Is Canada’s housing market in a bubble? The question has lingered for years – ever since national home prices managed to defy a global real-estate correction. Observers, both domestic and foreign, continue to issue dire pronouncements about the health of the Canadian housing market. But those predictions vary wildly, with some saying the market is overvalued by as much as 60 per cent, while others say it could be undervalued by almost 10 per cent.” “DEUTSCHE BANK Analysis: Housing market is overvalued by 60 per cent” “BANK OF CANADA Analysis: Housing market is overvalued by about 20 per cent” “FITCH RATINGS Analysis: Housing market is overvalued by about 26 per cent” “INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND Analysis: Housing market is overvalued by about 11 per cent” “TORONTO-DOMINION BANK Analysis: Housing… Read more »

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paulb

New Listings 335
Price Changes 70
Sold Listings 151
TI:13611

http://www.paulboenisch.com

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Westside Realtor

Demand being driven by millenials not wanting to get priced out of east van shacks for life.

$100,000 family income with a $900,000 mortgage.

Good luck.

WSR

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Yunak

@48

Somehow Japanese or Korean experience going through the similar process didn’t seem to be awkward. Maybe it has something to do with execution and cultural background as well as ability to adopt other’s values and norms.

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Joe Mainlander

Re: # 28

Wow, was I worried;

I thought that home prices had risen dramatically because of consumer demand spurred by historically low interest rates – rates that were cut by the central bank in order to keep consumer demand buoyant to support Canada’s economy during the Great Recession.

Now Poloz says, don’t worry;

All that’s happened is that home prices have risen dramatically because of consumer demand spurred by historically low interest rates – rates that were cut by the central bank in order to keep consumer demand buoyant to support Canada’s economy during the Great Recession.

Now I’m relieved.

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space889

– So basically if the Chinese worship Westerners, kiss the ground Westerners walk on, try to be like them – you call them pathetic, losers, etc

If the Chinese shuns Westerners and their practices, keep to themselves, then you call them elitist, not contributing to community, not assimilating & embracing Canadian culture, not having Canadians values, scums, locusts.

So basically whatever they do, they get denigrated and scolded by you. There is just no pleasing you is there?

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Bull! Bull! Bull!

>If that’s not a clear signal to go ahead and just buy the any and every large cap on the TSE (Tokyo, not Toronto!) then I don’t know what is.

you should do this.

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space889

– I don’t think the crime stats bear that out.

Oh wait, you are talking about alleged specific type of crimes committed in a specific country among a specifc group of people. Well yeah duh…off course.

But then you can make that kind of argument about any race of people by using narrow enough definition. And then off course, you can logically extrapolate such finds to the general population that’s probably 1 million+ times of that small group of criminals.

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Yunak

@26 ‘Rent-a-Foreigner in China’

Right their obsession with westerners is comic if not pathetic and when they come over they try to act as even bigger “westerners” than locals, it is like endless soap opera.

Just check these “white” mentors/consultants working with Chinese elite:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EaDlvibc4w&list=PL0hKMB1-xkc_4yBJgmqnU2U0mBaZPZOO1&index=1

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space889

@Corrupt in Canada – Well, there are precedence of Asian central banks buying equities to prevent market collapse so I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of the people expects their central banks to bail them out in a market crash. Heck, BoJ is doing it right now and on such a large scale that they are running out of ETFs to buy and have to resort to buying actual individual equities. If that’s not a clear signal to go ahead and just buy the any and every large cap on the TSE (Tokyo, not Toronto!) then I don’t know what is. In fact, ZeroHedge did a piece a while ago where they found that BoJ was buying on any day where the TSE market was dropping. That’s is monetary QE on super steroids and fun for the equity holders… Read more »

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realist

@ 39 “This is not a race issue this is a class issue”.

Quite so. And the classes are: the criminal class and the other class. It is unfortunate that the criminal class du jour happens to be heavily populated by Asians, especially mainland Chinese. Correlation is not causality. In the good old days, the criminals were almost exclusively Caucasian, and so considerations about them were less often derailed by race-baiting, political correctness, etc.

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space889

@Bo Xilai – Ok stand corrected then. I just know that there is still a penny stock exchange in Canada and it is still rife with scams. That bull statue is still on Howe Street so I thought they kept the exchange there, just renamed it.

– Geez…I don’t know what to say…do you have a reading comprehension problem? Are you self employed cuz no one would hire you? I said clearly that I wouldn’t touch at least 90% of the stocks on VSE/TSX Venture. Yet you are taunting me about trading stocks on that exchange.

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space889

@Many Franks – Isn’t VSE the penny stock capital of Canada? And some would say is still penny stock capital of the world?

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Best place on meth

Does anyone know any good VSE stocks to get into right now?

Anything that Murray Pezim is involved in would be preferable.

He’s still promoting stocks, right?

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Corrupt in Canada

You guys have it mistaken. This is not a race issue this is a class issue.

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vangrl

Space.. living in his imaginary West Side house trading stocks on the VSE…

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Yunak

Perhaps some unhappiness (frustration) comes out of situation when a cry for justice is inevitably labeled as racism.

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