Friday Free-for-all!

It’s the end of another beautiful work-week and that means it’s Friday Free-for-all time!

This is our standard end of the week news round up and open topic discussion thread for the weekend.

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

–Mayors letter to Premier on housing
–Mayor pitches affordable housing idea
–We lack the facts
–Vancouver Realtor Hunger Index 38%
–4 proposals for housing affordability
–New West addresses affordability
–Did it work in Toronto?
–

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

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Shlomo

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Click to flag and open «Comment Reporting» form. You can choose reporting category and send message to website administrator. Admins may or may not choose to remove the comment or block the author. And please don't worry, your report will be anonymous.

All around the world, we see services like Uber and Lyft putting the fear of god into established trades like taxi-driving, because it threatens their very way of life.

Humans need not apply https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU

This is the real deal and is here to stay, it’ll be interesting to see how many first-time buyers, aka plankton, will even be employed in 20 years to support an outdated concept like “homebuying”.

Seriously, none of this is sci-fi, it’s already here. Now we understand better why realtors fear the power of sites like Zillow etc, since they know that all realtor jobs are probably going to be extinct in 20 years.

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patriotz

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Attention RE buyers! You’ve seen the famous Greenwood log house previously listed for over $400K. Now this unique property can be yours for only $175K. Act now on this limited time offer. Everybody wants to live in Greenwood!

http://www.realtor.ca/Residential/Single-Family/14942689/601-Government-Street-North-Greenwood-British-Columbia-V0H1J0

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RFM

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Just so you know, if you live in Greenwood BC, the nearest Costco is the one in Kelowna, 103 km away!

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southseacompany

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“Brian Hutchinson: Vancouver’s living situation is uniquely nuts and its angst is real estate”, Vancouver Sun

http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/brian-hutchinson-vancouvers-living-situation-is-uniquely-nuts-and-its-angst-is-real-estate

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southseacompany

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In the US: “Mortgage rates: ‘Definitely in panic mode'”, CNBC

http://www.cnbc.com/id/102733866

“Mortgage rates, which loosely follow the yield on the U.S. 10-year Treasury, spiked Wednesday, after a brief reprieve last week.”

“The days of 3.5 percent on the popular 30-year fixed mortgage are over.”

“The shock may already be underway. Mortgage applications to refinance, which are the most rate sensitive, plunged last week,”

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southseacompany

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“IMF’s Christine Lagarde to Janet Yellen: Please don’t raise interest rates!”, Fortune magazine

https://fortune.com/2015/06/04/imf-interest-rates/

“December will mark the seventh year in which the Fed has kept interest rates near zero. But if Christine Lagarde and the IMF have their way, zero interest rate policy in America will last at least into year eight.”

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southseacompany

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“If Sydney’s in a housing bubble, brace for a bang”, Australian Business Review

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/opinion/if-sydneys-in-a-housing-bubble-brace-for-a-bang/story-e6frg9qo-1227381833285

“No wonder Tony Abbott declined to echo the comments of his Treasury secretary John Fraser that housing markets across Sydney and large parts of Melbourne are “unequivocally” a bubble”

“Fraser pinned the blame for the boom in Sydney house prices on the Reserve Bank, saying it was ultra-low interest rates that were driving prices higher.”

“The Reserve Bank, it is said, is playing with fire by cutting rates so low. The surge in Sydney prices is dated back to its cash rate cut to 2.5 per cent in August 2013.”

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southseacompany

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“Hamilton housing still ‘one of the tightest markets in Canada'”, CBC News

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/news/hamilton-housing-still-one-of-the-tightest-markets-in-canada-1.3099235

“Not satisfied with the record it set in April, the local housing market had yet another record-setting month in May, with 1,810 properties sold in Hamilton and Burlington, according to the latest stats collected by the realtors’ board.”

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Westside Realtor

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Spring Fever nearing it’s end.

Burst of buying frenzy when box surprised and cut.

Enthusiasm tapering off now.

All downside from here folks.

WSR

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space889

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@Shlomo – geez…you people complain about all the evils of Chinese companies and you can’t see that Uber/Lyft is pretty much doing the same thing?

Off course taxi companies don’t like it when you have a competitor that basically flouts all existing regulations you have to follow while doing the exact same thing you do.

I think the closest analogy might be the travel industry where web has removed a big majority of travel agent jobs, but there are still travel agencies around – eg. Flight Center.

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would-be buyer

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I love how Gregor wants to impose a speculator’s tax, which he knows would be impossible to impose and administer and makes Clarke the bad guy to say no. Clarke’s reasoning that it would hurt current owner’s bottom line is completely short-sighted. Basically, anyone buying a house in Vancouver right now is speculating. There is zero justification for these prices based on fundamentals. Locals are buying in fear of being priced out forever. That is the definition of a bubble and by not acting, the government is adding fuel to this bubble. By failing to at least gather statistics on foreign ownership the government is complicit in inflating this bubble. Local government knows that buyers are scrambling and over-extending themselves to compete with these “foreign buyers”, lest they be priced out forever. Why not collect and provide this information to… Read more »

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southseacompany

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“Who Needs the Fed? The Bond Market Is Already Lifting Rates Far and Wide”, Bloomberg Business (with video) http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-03/who-needs-fed-as-bond-market-already-lifting-rates-far-and-wide “After almost seven years of low borrowing costs engineered by central bankers, consumers and companies are getting a preview of what’s next.” “A global bond selloff is translating into a real world impact, with yields on U.S. mortgage bonds that guide home-loan rates reaching the highest level since October and corporate borrowing costs climbing to the most this year.” “For all the speculation about when the Federal Reserve will raise short-term interest rates, the bond market is the ultimate driver of most borrowing costs.” Housing Impact ““German yields went down so low they dragged us with them, and now that they’ve reversed course, it’s pushing us back up where we should be,” Scott Buchta, the head of fixed-income strategy at Brean… Read more »

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best place on earth

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“All downside from here folks.”

i can see that you are not a very successful realtor with no listings.

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patriotz

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@11: “I love how Gregor wants to impose a speculator’s tax, which he knows would be impossible to impose and administer and makes Clarke the bad guy to say no.”

It would be simple to impose and administer. It would make use of the same data and personnel as the PTT. Germany has one and that’s one major reason why it has no bubble. People on this forum have been advocating it for years.

If you don’t like Gregor that’s fine but don’t use it to disparage an argument that makes perfect sense.

As for Crusty, she has been the cheerleader for the RE industry right from the time she ran for leader and doesn’t need Gregor or anyone else to point it out.

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best place on earth

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Mr. Moonbeam Chickenyard is doing his best, pointing his finger to others. Meanwhile, he enjoyed his profit to the bank of selling his place recently.

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futuri

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Every time the problem is pointed out, the same points to silence the discussion:
– you’re entitled brat, want a house right after graduation, 5 mins from work.
– a waterfront condo is a bargain compared to New York
– you want something for free, I had to work for it

The problem is:
– even with a big down payment and highly paid work, $1+ million house for a family is out of reach
– do we have New York salaries ? do we have something comparable to the finance centers of the world ?
– no one is asking anything for free, but there are no good options. Shoebox condos are overpriced, “affordable” but not livable for families.
– Suburbs are overpriced too. They were affordable 5+ years back but not anymore.

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David Lee

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Christy has data!

“‘With Finance Ministry data suggesting there is little evidence wealthy or foreign investors are driving housing unaffordability, there is little reason to institute a tax on luxury housing’, she said in a letter to the mayor”.

http://www.vancouversun.com/homes/Christy+Clark+says+housing+investors/11110081/story.html

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futuri

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Boomers are smug and are quick to throw younger generations under the bus. You’re all lazy entitle brats.

But what did they really do ? Founders of global industries that employ thousands of Canadians ? Pioneers of new technologies that fuel the world ? Leaders that created wealth by innovation ?

Nope … they bought a regular house and worked regular jobs like everyone else in their generation. Then got lucky. Now they have paper equity and act like they’re geniuses.

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@17

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#17

Watch out for the comments. People catching up.

Vancouver Sun will soon delete all of them. Read them before they’re gone.

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mark

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Australia recently tightened its laws after a brief period of opening up real estate to foreigners during the economic crash. It reintroduced restrictions on ownership in 2010 after a surge in property prices made housing increasingly unaffordable, especially in major cities like Sydney and Melbourne. (In 2010, a survey of housing markets in Australia, the U.S., Canada, the U.K., New Zealand and Ireland ranked Australia’s housing market as the least affordable.) Today, the following restrictions apply to foreigners: Foreigners — regardless of whether they are temporary residents of Australia or live abroad — are prohibited from buying existing housing stock (homes that have been previously owned or occupied for more than 12 months) for investment purposes — i.e. as a rental or vacation property. The exception to the above rule is if a foreigner buys existing housing stock that they… Read more »

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Gnomes of Zurich

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“Australia recently tightened its laws”

While the RBA opened it’s floodgates.

https://www.google.ca/?gws_rd=ssl#tbm=nws&q=rba+australia+interest+rates

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patriotz

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@20: “It reintroduced restrictions on ownership in 2010 after a surge in property prices made housing increasingly unaffordable”

That’s nice. So have RE prices in Oz gone down since 2010?

“The exception to the above rule is if a foreigner buys existing housing stock that they plan to demolish and redevelop.”

Just like in the West Side of Vancouver!

Don’t know if you intended a smiley but these “restrictions” are an obvious joke.

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DaMann

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Crusty and all the idiots are full of shit. If a speculation tax would have no effect on the housing market then why not do it? Does the government not like free money? They are such ridiculous liars. I’m so sick of this Liberal Government. They are foul to the core.