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Friday Free-for-all!

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254 Comments

It’s the end of another glorious work-week and you know what that means here on VCI?

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:

–another rate cut?
–different here
–frustration over empty luxury
–shield against mortgage meltdown?
–developers aim for senior market
–

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

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[…] –Some bears cash in on HCG drop –BOC has lost its mojo –The future of the CAD? –Realtor vs Realtor: How stupid are you? –Planning to leave? –Will she or won’t she? – […]

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realist

@ 239 Bull! “please tell us Bo Xilai, exactly what has started and when you expect it to be so pronounced that no one can deny it’s happening.”

Subprime mortgage lenders are considered leading/coincident indicators of the housing market. That is why people keep and read data like this:

Mortgage Lender Implod-o-ometer:

http://ml-implode.com/

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crikey

@#247 No need to kick people out. Just get fairness into the system. Well, more than fairness actually. Anyways, the balance should sway in favour of people that have paid income taxes for years, not in the favour of people that just became Canadians and are contributing little or no income taxes. After some fairness, the wealthy people that came here enticed at least in part by the easy freebies won’t stay for long if that’s so important to them — they’ll kick themselves out. I’d be happy with at least starting by having people have to… (1) show proof of income taxes paid for money being brought into the country (any amount). Impose a differential taxation on the that money, so that the money coming in ends up paying the same taxes as would have been paid by a… Read more »

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Yunak

@235


A: [Knock-knock]
B: “Who’s there?”
A: “Wealthy new Canadian who pays no Canadian income taxes and is considered in “poverty” with a multi-million dollar home and luxury car. Now get back to work and pay your taxes, you lazy renter! My welfare checks, medical care, kids’ educations don’t pay for themselves you know!!”
“Wealthy new Canadian who pays no Canadian income taxes and is considered in “poverty” with a multi-million dollar home and luxury car. Now get back to work and pay your taxes, you lazy renter! My welfare checks, medical care, kids’ educations don’t pay for themselves you know!!”

It should be imperative to get those lowlife fuckers out of the country and in the meantime to make their life here miserable.

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patriotz

@243:

He’s talking about the Drummond/Belmont area. The reason the tax per square meter of land is so low is that the floor space area is so low, i.e. the houses don’t cover much of the land. As for the land, buyers are only going to pay so much for a big lot that can’t be subdivided. As he pointed out, condos have the highest tax per square meter of land because their floor space area is the highest.

And so on. Not much more to it than that.

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patriotz

@222: “Because there is a huge wealth disparity between renters and owners in Vancouver.”

And there isn’t in NYC and San Fransisco? Is that supposed to be a joke?

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nestegg

You know things are really bad when some in the real estate industry were going public against a rate cut. Scary indeed….I’m staying 100 miles away from the YVR market.

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DaMann

UBC parcels and the ones near Spanish Banks are most likely leasehold. How that plays out with taxes I’m not sure but I imagine that’s the reason.

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Royce McCutcheon

@237: Renting isn’t cheap, but it’s way cheaper than owning. $4000/month for a detached house near Queen E park is not something most people can afford. A household earning 200k – high earners, for sure – can carry that, but the same place would probably have an assessed value of over $2M. It’s not as dramatic for attached places, but once you factor in fees and taxes, the difference can still be pretty stark.

Today, renting puts upper middle class earners (for lack of a better term) into nice neighborhoods in Vancouver. Putting the same % of their income towards buying a house puts these people in Tsawwassen.

Not cheap. Cheaper.

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VanDweller

A more data centric post. This is a map of all the land lots in Vancouver and their associated property tax bracket for 2015. It was put together by Anthony Smith (UBC Geography graduate). http://healthycitymaps.blogspot.ca/2015/06/2015-property-tax-in-vancouver.html It paints an interesting picture. Some aspects that caught my eye: – Vancouver East average tax is around $5,000 – Vancouver West average tax (SFH) is around $10,000 (maybe a little more). – The city gets most of its money ($/square meter) from condos downtown (duh). – The lots in Shaughnessy pay slightly more tax (per square meter) than the areas in East Van (which means that prices per square meter are the same and that the lots are just larger). – Lots west of Arbutus increase in price per square meter but there’s some cheaper areas to be had. – There’s a suspicious patch… Read more »

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Royce McCutcheon

@234: I’m not sure if you’re agreeing or disagreeing with me – or if you read my other posts.

Plenty of American cities saw owning carrying costs greatly exceed rental costs before the bubble popped.

Here’s something lazy and quick from 2006 in relation to that:
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/perfi/housing/2006-08-09-rent-1a-usat_x.htm

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Bull! Bull! Bull!

@Bo Xilai

please tell us Bo Xilai, exactly what has started and when you expect it to be so pronounced that no one can deny it’s happening.

is it the great real estate crash? is it finally happening??? i’m getting so excited, don’t tease me!!

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space889

Took a look on Craiglist recently? Rent is not cheap in Vancouver. Maybe compared to the 20% down purchase, but relative to income, it is not cheap.

Actually, based on some anecdotal evidence, it looks like a lot of OV/False Creek area, the rent is starting to be pretty close to the cost of buying now.

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Bull! Bull! Bull!

how did people watch the video of shiller saying vancouver is the bubbliest city in the world if youtube was just launched? was reading about it their only option? lol, things were so quaint back then.

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crikey

Richmond and Westside Vancouver area knock-knock jokes
=======================================================

(1)

A: [Knock-knock]
B: “Who’s there?”
A: “您好.我喜欢你的房子。多少钱?”
(Translated: “Hello. I like your house. How much?”)

(2)

A: [Knock-knock]
B: [silence]
A: [Knock-knock]
B: [silence]
A: [Knock-knock]
B: [silence…]
(Well or course nobody is going to answer, because nobody actually lives there! Its one of the overwhelming number of empty overseas investors’ properties in Vancouver)

(3)

A: [Knock-knock]
B: “Who’s there?”
A: “Wealthy new Canadian who pays no Canadian income taxes and is considered in “poverty” with a multi-million dollar home and luxury car. Now get back to work and pay your taxes, you lazy renter! My welfare checks, medical care, kids’ educations don’t pay for themselves you know!!”

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@227

@227 And are we just going to ignore the fact that decoupling of rent and owning costs has been observed in other real estate bubbles in the past?

—

Sorry, but you’re just throwing things out there.

The tired old “It’s always been like this’, or equally lazy ‘it has been like this before’ just doesn’t cut it.

Examples please. REAL examples of when the disconnect between SFH Price / median wage / rent has been like this before.

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crikey

@#229
you make a compelling argument and have me convinced. so, please enlighten all of us and let us know by how much real estate will go up over the next five years.

Along with that, tell us about the purchases in Vancouver real estate that you are making from now on, to prove you are putting your money where your mouth is and not just full of gas.

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Gnomes of Zurich

“5,000 years of dread, charted”

http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2015/06/29/2133245/5000-years-of-dread-charted/

“At a Parliamentary Committee hearing a few years ago I asserted, boldly, that global interest rates were at their lowest-ever levels. A wise colleague challenged me afterwards: “How do you know they weren’t lower in Babylonian times?” Several exhausted research assistants later I can report that, luckily, I was on safe ground. Interest rates appear to be lower than at any time in the past 5000 years…”

“That’s from (the rather dovish) Andy Haldane, the BoE’s chief economist and executive director of monetary analysis and statistics”

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crikey

@228
“when it comes to money emotions don’t matter. bears seem to get reality and desire mixed up.”

Yes because lemmings and ponzi scheme followers are all about reality, and nothing about desire.

See: every other bubble and ponzi scheme in the existence of mankind. Just because one bubble hasn’t popped yet — due to being held up by foreign money — doesn’t mean that you can rewrite reality of what gets people to buy.

The reality is that Vancouver real estate economic fundamentals are out of whack — your desire is that normal economic fundamentals will never return to Vancouver. Good luck with that!

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Gnomes of Zurich

Home ownership rates
Are the highest level
That they’ve been in decades
Thanks to the lowest interest rates
In 5000 years
Not to mention
Easy downs of the CMHC
So, the new slogan should be;
“Priced in… for now”
That is the real reality for tens of thousands.

Remember, we who have chosen
Not to buy.
Are a small minority.

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Bull! Bull! Bull!

@227

you make a compelling argument and have me convinced. so, please enlighten all of us and let us know when the correction is going to happen. Robert Shiller said we were the bubbliest city in the world in 2005. that was 2 popes ago. youtube had just launched. hurricane katrina happened.

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Bull! Bull! Bull!

@226

exactly, the foreign ownership backlash has already died down. vancouverites are either sinophiles, apologists, or can’t separate immigration policy from their ‘progressive’ political identity.

you can feel good or bad about this. but when it comes to money emotions don’t matter. bears seem to get reality and desire mixed up. bearlogic.

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Royce McCutcheon

@222: And are we just going to ignore the fact that decoupling of rent and owning costs has been observed in other real estate bubbles in the past?

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