“Will Canada join the negative interest rate club?”, Financial Post

http://business.financialpost.com/investing/trading-desk/will-canada-join-the-negative-interest-rate-club?__lsa=5411-11e9

“There are currently five countries or regions in the negative rate club, and Citigroup expects more will join the fray. Perhaps even Canada.”

“Millennials fleeing Vancouver for cities with more affordable housing, threatening city’s tech economy”, Financial Post

http://business.financialpost.com/personal-finance/mortgages-real-estate/millennials-fleeing-vancouver-for-cities-with-more-affordable-housing-threatening-citys-tech-economy

“As housing costs have risen, so have the number of people in their twenties and thirties leaving the city. The net number of people age 18 to 24 added to Vancouver’s population was the lowest ever last year, at 884, and the number of 25-to-44-year-olds decreased by about 1,300, the biggest decline since 2007, according to Statistics Canada.”

Today in SoCal……hows Vancouver
https://c1.staticflickr.com/7/6137/5966472158_0b6d4f0605_b.jpg

“Central banks lurch from topsy-turvy 1970s to helicopter money”, Financial Times

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/e9334e48-e53e-11e5-a09b-1f8b0d268c39.html#axzz42oaDZuNZ

“Consumers and businesses have not responded to (central banks’) policy measure. In fact, some households may be saving more because rock-bottom nominal interest rates make it harder to meet savings targets for pensions and so forth. This is curiously like the topsy-turvy habits of the 1970s when inflation produced very negative real interest rates, yet people saved more to plug the hole that real losses on savings left in their finances”

“The reality is that central banks’ policies are failing. In desperation they will no doubt turn to helicopter money next, which means overt monetary financing of government deficits. It is hard to believe that this will be any more successful. Expect more unintended consequences.”

“Back From the Dead: Interest-Rate Hikes Are on the Radar Again”, Wall Street Journal

http://www.wsj.com/articles/back-from-the-dead-interest-rate-hikes-are-on-the-radar-again-1457894871

“The U.S. bond market is starting to think about something it hasn’t considered for months: rate increases”

“There is little expectation the Fed will raise rates when it announces its next policy decision on Wednesday. But the odds of an increase by June have jumped to 43%, and the odds of one by December are now 75%, based on the price of interest-rate futures on Friday. That is a sharp turnaround from early February, when the market was estimating the chance of a rate increase at either point at zero.”

After ten years renting to us, our landlady has decided to sell this 1.1 M shack (it’s not that’s it’s awful, it’s just that I couldn’t imagine a millionaire wanting to live here). Does anyone have any suggestions about where to look for new digs. Are there some property management companies out there that specialize in larger places (we really need at least three bedrooms).?

New
208
Sold
206

TI:8060

For weekly sales and/or new listings info on a specific neighbourhood/city of your interest, email me and I will customize a weekly update for you. The daily sales numbers only mean so much. Each neighbourhood and market segment can be quite different.
http://www.paulboenisch.com

Kerry Gold goes looking for problems with the housing vacancy report:

Poking holes in Vancouver’s housing vacancy study

There’s an interesting comment from Tom Davidoff buried near the end:

He’s had recent discussions with the province that look promising.

“I am quite optimistic that something will happen,” he says.

I’ll believe it when I see it, but that’s already more than I would have expected.

Surprised this hasn’t been posted yet:

http://www.moneysense.ca/save/debt/canadian-household-debt-rises-to-a-record-high/

Household debt is now at 165.4% in Q4 2015 compared to 164.5 in Q3. This is a disaster waiting to happen. BoC should have raised rates despite anemic economic growth ages ago. Canadian businesses are hoarding cash, so access to cheap credit does almost nothing to stimulate growth anyways.