Royce McCutcheon: Many good points. I agree that realistically fundamentals have not changed, and it is really just a matter of personal timelines. That’s what’s pressuring me. I’m a youthful, active early 40s and sense that mortgage time is running out for me.

Having just spent 5 weeks in europe i have experienced life in places where buying a home is a normal life event – not a lottery-win dependent occurrence.

The logical solution is to leave the lower mainland and find a desirable place with normally priced housing. It’s just such a pain on the arse to make the upheaval!

@125 (with apologies for the text wall) What a mess, huh? I think you might be quite right regarding savings impacts of renting detached places on those with average incomes (though I would argue that this approach is still better than going massively into hock to buy the same place that and pay much more each month!). And I completely agree that the instability of renting, etc. would prompt many people to pay a premium to own over renting (even if it doesn’t make sense based on economic fundamentals). You ask when someone might admit that the Lower Mainland is an anomaly. If we’d had an uninterrupted price run-up lasting a decade, I might have a different take. But here’s the thing: I don’t see this as a 10-year run-up. What immediately springs to my mind is the behavior of… Read more »

Royce McCutcheon @ 115: I agree with you that the situation is absurd, divorced from fundamentals etc, and our political representatives seem to have sold out future generations to placate the current ownership group. Fundamentally you are of course right. the situation is absurd. But after being wrong for 10+ years, how much longer before we should admit the Lower Mainland is an anomaly? I’m quite serious. If it goes another 10 or 20 years is that the time to capitulate and say it IS different? I don’t know the answer, but I’m wondering what figure bears would accept before they’d say it may be different this time. Has the world changed with the influx of money to the region and the seemingly ever-low rates? Many in 2006 could have bought a SFU but didn’t because of their (logical enough)… Read more »

Possibly relevant to our interests.

A Secretive Agency Hunts for China’s Crooked Officials Worldwide
http://bloom.bg/1hTgRlC

@119 BBB!

“Five Chinese Navy Ships Are Operating in Bering Sea Off Alaska Coast
Chinese naval presence off Alaskan coast appears to be a first”

Another expansionist Asian power, also lacking the ability to otherwise engage Uncle Sam in the lower 48, has previously flexed its muscles in Alaska:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleutian_Islands_Campaign

By the way, like PRC, that country also made many highly destructive “Zeros”, but of metal, not debt!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsubishi_A6M_Zero

Shanghai house prices result of approximately USD $20,000,000,000,000 (count all those zeros! – you wouldn’t want to miss any!) expansion of Chinese debt since 2007. It’s surprising how low they are after that’s been unleashed on them.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/02/11/chinas-increase-in-debt-is-massive-and-unsustainable/

@85 Oracle Says:
“We will become an Asian city.”
Agreed – in many important ways, such as a deepening cesspit of corruption and tax evasion, it already is.

“I’m willing to bet detached prices will be like Shanghais one day.” Do you mean today’s Shanghai prices? or “one day’s” Shanghai prices? Or is that a moot question as Shanghai prices have reached a “permanently high plateau”*, somewhere between moon and the stars?

*Irving Fisher, as quoted by NY Times, October 19, 1929.

@110: When I see that post, I don’t marvel at it’s wrongness so much as I marvel at the magnitude of the folly of the past decade. This region is probably screwed long-term either way. If prices are justified in their rise and will be sustained as decoupled from fundamentals like rent and incomes, it’s going to be a blight long-term. And if it’s not, then it’s a looooooong way down and it will not be fun to be here when that happens. I don’t go that far back, but I’m not new to this issue either. I don’t regret not buying in at the attached level earlier (which is where I would have been able to enter), as that segment didn’t do much in the time after which I would have bought in. With a family now, such a… Read more »

@91: Your most excellent posts have completely changed my views on Vancouver real estate. I am now convinced me that I should buy a house, more than doubling what I pay for shelter each month even before accounting for upkeep or property taxes.

If you would be so kind as to recommend a Realtor, I would sincerely appreciate it. (Feel free to suggest a commission for yourself too, as you’ve been so helpful and convincing.)

Sincerely,

Totally prepared to stop being debt-free, portable, diversified, and not-mortgage-poor

For all you young’uns, here’s a post from July 2006 Vancouver Condo Info. The Pope was mocking the get-rich-quick mentality of Vancouver real estate. 9 years on and of course the irony is poignant: http://wayback.archive.org/web/20060822023210/http://vancouvercondo.info/ WEDNESDAY, JULY 19, 2006 YOU can GET RICH in REAL ESTATE! Are you ready to become so INCREDIBLY RICH that you no longer have to adhere to the standards and conventions of ‘civilized’ society? Are you TIRED of eeking out a day-to-day existence while you can smell THE REEK OF WEALTH all around you? Would you like to be able to walk through the mall without any pants and be so EXCESSIVELY WEALTHY that no one can utter a word about your pantless state, lest you unleash your personal squadron of vicious attack lawyers destroying their lives and reputations? Well NOW you CAN! Yes! Thanks… Read more »

She should have bought Amica..

“The teenage daughter of Chinese corruption suspect Michael Ching Mo Yeung transferred US$1 million (HK$7.75 million) out of Canada and used it to fund the merger of a Nasdaq-listed US firm, an investigation by the South China Morning Post has revealed.

A generically named numbered company set up with student Linda Ching as its sole director made the transfer on April 2 – less than a month before China’s pursuit of her father went public – and the money was invested in Premier Exhibitions, the listed US company that owns the salvage rights to the Titanic and a trove of artifacts from the wreck.”

http://www.scmp.com/news/world/article/1854626/titanic-investment-chinese-corruption-suspects-teenage-daughter-revealed