It’s another Friday in the land of sunshine and roses! let’s do our regular end of the week news round up and open topic discussion thread for the weekend.
It’s Friday Free-for-all time !
Here are a few recent links to kick off the chat:
So what are you seeing out there? post your news links, thoughts and anecdotes in the comments below and have a great weekend!
I am a dyed in the wool bear and have been posting here for years. But I do think, barring a worldwide catastrophe, any dip will be shallow and maybe short lived.
think about it. GV pop is under $3 million, much like San Diego.
China has 44 Cities with more people than Vancouver, and you haven’t even heard of most of them.
3 have a metropolitan pop larger than Canada. Vancouver is their conduit to North America, as well as Toronto and San francisco and Seattle.
So the buying pressure will always be there IMVHO
I’m confused, so the dip will be shallow and short lived due to foreign purchasers who will buy at infinitely-increasing prices? I don’t understand why there would be any dip at all if this is the case.
I think we are in the midst of a dip. AND I would be very happy if it was large after the lunatic run up.
However in each of these Chinese cities there are probably hundreds if not thousands who could still afford to buy here. And when they think of NA cities, Vancouver now has the highest Chinese pop in North America , so it makes sense that they will keep buying here.
Their prop prices are high too BTW
So I think this is the 15% and empty property effect both of which they will find a way round (or you cannot make money in a country of over 1 billion!)
“Vancouver now has the highest Chinese pop in North America”
maybe percent but not total pop – a little googling will correct u.
If there was ever to be a huge impact from overseas investors, it would have begun with the Chinese takeover of Hong Kong back in 1997 and it would have continued on from then on without any “meaningful pause”. But, it didn’t.
The pause WAS NOT that meaningful when you look at where prices have gone since then.
I denied it for years, but have come to realize you, AND Oracle are right! The realturds told me years ago, I didn’t listen, my bad. No problem, world integration means an early retirement for me in a warmer climate. Renting of course!!
The biggest incentive to buy in Vancouver…..complete regulatory indifference to any and all criminal activity…..is now in doubt. It may change back (I’d bet it will), but that is not certain. All money likes certainty.
Who knows how far this correction in SFHs will pay out. There isn’t much of a correction in condos, that’s for sure. What concerns me is that even after the well-paid jobs rout in Alberta, prices didn’t fall that much. Certainly not enough to have made buying there 10 years ago a mistake.
The other major issue is even a 50% drop would still return houses to 2006’ish levels, just when many early-convert bears were saying prices were too high.
If prices fell 50% tomorrow and i bought a house on my street, my payments would still be higher than i pay now, and to me that would be a large sum of money to pay every month. There just isn’t a winning outcome for me living here.
Am a bear but disagree with #1 post.
Could be a shallow dip. Could be an epic one. Time will tell.
Looking for the (thus far absent) rush of listings to the exit. Until listings meaningfully climb the jury is out.
Guess that greed has not yet turned to fear (of any meaningful proportion) as of yet (I fully expect it shall).
Smart $ is getting out imho.
The Oracles of the world will be the last to change their tune.
China is has created a lot of different mega bubbles (such as credit, housing, etc) and they have also printed massive amount of money. A lot of money is trying to escape to a safe heaven before it explode thus driving up bubbles world wide. When China’s bubbles explode, perhaps in 2017, the world will be in a mess for a very long time and cities like Vancouver will be the epicenter.
That is a very real possibility.
I agree. However it is amazing how long these bubbles can go on. I feel like i’ve been reading about Chinese ghost cities, stunning levels of indebtedness, and shadow banking for years now. Each time i think, wow these numbers are stunning and surely cannot go on, and yet, on and on they go.
There just appears to be a million different ways to kick this can down the road.
Mississauga couple who lectured for Trump University fined for fraud
Canadian courses for Trump University were taught by a couple who used aliases, declared multiple bankruptcies, lost a real-estate licence and were sanctioned by securities regulators over a multimillion-dollar swindle…
Trump assured customers registering for his program that he had personally hand-picked only the best people to teach courses that would share lessons for attaining financial success.
This couple who used Aliases… what Secret service org did the work for? Have they committed suicide yet?
Are you still of the opinion that Hillary is a lock to win, like you were a couple of weeks ago?
You sounded 100% certain at the time.
The big states with large minority populations (which Trump has gone out of his way to alienate) give Clinton a near certain 270 electoral votes, regardless of how well he does in places like West Virginia.
So you’re still 100% sure.
Awesome.
“So you’re still 100% sure.”
Never said that in the first place. But listen to this guy:
“The story of this election may be the mobilization of the Hispanic vote,” said Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, an anti-Trump Republican who has pleaded with his party to do more to win over Latinos. “So Trump deserves the award for Hispanic turnout. He did more to get them out than any Democrat has ever done… If we don’t come to grips with the demographic challenges we have with Hispanics in presidential politics, we’ll never right the ship.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/06/us/politics/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-campaign.html
So you’re backpedalling.
Excellent.
That’s all I want to know, you can spare me the opinions of the NY times which I do not give a shit about.
Something for Vancouver and Toronto to consider: “(Hong Kong) stamp duty on property transactions for non first-time buyers will be raised to 15 per cent for individuals and corporate buyers”
http://www.scmp.com/property/hong-kong-china/article/2043085/hong-kong-more-doubles-property-stamp-duty-15-cent-cool
Well of course Vancouver has no power to impose such a tax, but Toronto does and its tax (which is in addition to the Ontario PTT) was actually blamed for falling prices in 2008. We all know that since then prices have risen hugely with the tax still in place.
Why does TO have the means to do so but not Vancouver?
Whatever power a municipality has comes from the respective provincial government’s Municipal Act, or in the case of Vancouver, The Vancouver Charter, which is still a provincial statute.
I want to VOTE DaMann UP. Where is the dang button?
Are October Vancouver Detached sales down 54% Y/Y or closer to 70%?
REBGV Vancouver East + West Detached Sales
October 2016: 143
October 2015: 312
Y/Y: -54%
Zolo Vancouver 2016 Detached Sales Sep 30 – Oct 28: 95
Y/Y: -68% (Zolo)
Y/Y: -70% (Compared to REBGV Oct 2015 95/312)
The -70% y/y detached number is consistent with the discussion after the first 3 weeks of October.
GT October 26:
“On the battlefield, sellers are losing badly. In the first three weeks of October sales have collapsed year/year by 72% (almost 760 last year, just 150 now).”
Y/Y will obviously look scary in terms of % due to last years retarded sales #’s – will increase going forward. Sales numbers are just slightly below average over 10 years.
Speaking of retarded, gotta love the Garth Turner reference. Called a top on VCR real estate in 2007, predicts 30-40% drops every few years hoping people will sell and invest in his cheezy etf management company.
He’s called fewer tops than this place.
“This place” is dozens of people.
Garth is one person.
Math is hard…..for some.
Allegedly! Allegedly!
That’s just ignorant!
It’s not math, genius.
It seems to me that detached has more room to fall in the short term despite their severe supply constraints, mainly because prices have become so incredibly high.
Condos, on the other hand, are just not that overpriced given current interest rates. If you compare mortgage costs to renting, they come out about the same when you include equity accumulation in your calculations. At least for a couple of scenarios I’ve run.
Based on that fact I can’t see how condo prices will fall very much at all. What am I missing?
“If you compare mortgage costs to renting, they come out about the same when you include equity accumulation in your calculations. ”
That’s the part you’re missing, there is no equity accumulation if prices are falling.
True, but my point was that I’m trying to assess whether prices will fall or not.
I could just as easily say that buying comes out ahead of renting if prices are rising.
That’s just getting the next owner to assume part of your ownership costs (assuming prices are up when you sell), which is not what I wold call “buying comes out ahead of renting”. The buyers collectively are still coming out behind.
Here is a very good calculator ….. you can play with the anticipated home price growth rate (also allows for negative) and the interest rate ( I suggest you use something realistic). Other inputs as well.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/buy-rent-calculator.html?_r=0
That’s a very scary calculator! I plugged in a few numbers based on a $1.2m house, Appreciation 2%, rent appreciation 3%, investment returns 3%, inflation 2%. I realise interest is deductible in the US but even setting the tax rate to zero still made the final number not more than $1900, so according to the NYT calculator over 20 years I would be better off buying my $1.2m house rather than paying my $2100 rent.
Now if you add in decreasing prices this all changes dramatically, but for the past 15 years of course this means buying has been a slam dunk if you had the cash flow to withstand the much higher monthly payments.
This is only the first month since the VREB corrected its data errors combined with the seasonal slowdown. If this is the start of a major correction, it only just began.
Chart http://www.chpc.biz/vancouver-housing.html
Maintenance fees and taxes…along with the prospect of higher motgage rates.
In my model I included maintenance fees and taxes. Even with those, buying came out about the same as renting.
I’ll grant you however that higher mortgage rates would definitely skew the numbers in favor of renting. But what happens to rates is anyone’s guess.
Lets see your math. I agree, a couple years ago condos were getting close to being fairly priced (after being flat for 8 yrs while rents were rising), but certainly not now. My Gaston loft I rent for $2150, but would sell for $800k-ish…lets see your math on that…
If your loft were to continue to appreciate at 3-4% annually for the next 20 years then the calculators would appear to make buying a win so long as you can afford the large monthly payments vs rent payments and interest rates don’t rise significantly. Lots of ifs and lots of uncertainty.
Buying had been a good deal in certain markets until quite recently. The morons here always included mortgage principal as an expense and sat on the sidelines as a consequence. They wouldn’t listen because they’d already made their minds up, and would do anything to bend the world to fit that model. The archives make for quite hilarious reading.
“The morons here….”
NOTE: disagreements are fine, but repetitive personal attacks and insults to other posters will get you an IP ban.
http://vancouvercondo.info/2016/10/four-major-changes-to-canadian-housing-rules.html
Insults to other posters….hmmm…ah well, we all know admin won’t back up this threat, otherwise the adorable couple known as space889 and shut it down already would have been banned sometime during the last month.
Nobody calls for IP bans more than you. Ironically, you’re the one who deserves it the most for all the racial slurs. Seriously, you rant like a crazy person on a street corner and then want to run to mummy when you get called out as a racist?
Hey, I didn’t tell admin to issue an idle threat.
But since he’s not going to make good on it then I’m not going to bother holding my tongue any longer while worthless, despicable sacks of shit like you and space do as you please.
In the past, and under a different name, I got SKEWERED by bears when I said that rents and mortgage costs were comparable… and that was two years ago…when they really were comparable.
“I said that rents and mortgage costs were comparable”
FYI there are a lot more expenses to owning than mortgage costs (which I assume means interest and mortgage insurance if applicable). One expense which is often ignored on this forum (not by commercial investors though) is depreciation, which is especially significant for condos.
Traditionally there is a discount to owning in this calculation reflecting a variety of things (primarily the requirement to accumulate and lock up a down payment / equity, but also cost and effort of maintenance, transaction costs (if you need to move in future), etc.)
Still, I agree there’s not a huge gap there. Having said that, if the market tanks, rents could fall as well (for a while), too much of the economy is selling houses to each other with the bank’s money and there is a huge potential for household size compression here. That could make the bottom lower than it might otherwise be.
According to my chart that compares Vancouver and Toronto housing
http://www.chpc.biz/compare-toronto–vancouver.html
…it seems that peer pressure is beginning to relax in Vancouver.
Fundamentals do matter even to those looking to clean their cash in Vancouver real estate.
The sales volumes are so low now that it’s very hard if not impossible to price anything accurately.
“I figure currently he could get $2.0 [million] for his place but he would never accept that UNTIL HE HAS TO!”
Wow, it’s heart-wrenching that these poor greedy SOBs can only get 2 million for their East Van crack shacks instead of 2.6 million like before. Thanks BC and Canadian governments for doing sweet F-ALL the past 15 years while this happened to our society.
Well said. So many people simply don’t understand in what gigantic pile of shit this region run into. Even mentally capable and smart people bought in the entire lunacy where SPJ suddenly became a “credible” milionair by getting indebted and accepted that as a norm. Needless to say that for many the mantra became “In Chinese we Trust” so Thank Good, give us even more of their shit…
I would never sign a contract for an agent to list and sell my house that stated they get full commission on a collapsed deal. No way in hell. The deposit is to protect the SELLER not the damn agent. I would have it written in a way that they get nominal compensation but I get the bulk of the deposit. Bloody unreal what they get away with.
In today’s market – I would demand a 15% deposit – too much risk of not closing. Also – I did know that the realtor gets paid even if deal collapses. They did what they were required to do and now your problem is with the buyer directly. You could not get a contract which means that the realtor does not get paid on a collapsed deal.
“In today’s market – I would demand a 15% deposit – too much risk of not closing. ”
Very few buyers have that kind of cash, and if they did and had any sense, they would make a conditional offer that would allow them to back out. So you would also have to demand an unconditional offer.
In today’s market, that’s essentially restricting the buyer pool down to a few well off bargain hunters who want to extreme lowball. We’ve already had a lesson from Christy on how the goalposts can move overnight.
House speculator call out. No one sell k? Stick together… If we dont feed em, they get hungry and pay more.
LOL
Or go broke trying.
Government response to petition e-281 (Foreign ownership)
https://petitions.parl.gc.ca/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-281
http://www.parl.gc.ca/Content/HOC/ePetitions/Responses/421/e-281/421-00576_FIN_E.pdf
“Federal policies and tools apply at the national level, which limits their ability to address issues in specific markets. By contrast, provincial and municipal governments have policy tools that can better respond to concerns in local markets. ”
Told ya. By the way, although this petition was sponsored by an NDP MP, it is not the policy of the Federal NDP to restrict foreign ownership. They are leaving this issue to the provinces, just like the Federal Liberals (and the Conservatives).
Parliament has tabled a response to the petition initiated by Raymond Wong re: foreign ownership.
https://petitions.parl.gc.ca/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-281
The Government of Canada is committed to supporting a healthy, competitive and stable housing and mortgage market
for all Canadians.
Data
In order to better understand and address certain regional vulnerabilities, Budget 2016 committed $500,000 to develop
methods for gathering data on purchases of Canadian housing by foreign homebuyers.
Policies and Tools
The Government recently took a series of prudent actions to protect the financial security of borrowers and help ensure
a more stable housing sector and economy, including measures to help ensure new homeowners can afford their
mortgages, even when interest rates begin to rise.
The Government also announced measures to improve tax fairness and the integrity of the tax system, by ensuring that
the principal residence exemption is available only in appropriate cases, and in a manner consistent with the Canadian
resident and one-property-per-family limits.
Oracle for Finance Minister!!!!
He could be a better match for the role of Minister of Citizenship and Immigration?
Oracle for Minister of Spam, Lies & Bullshit!
So what does Chipman say?
Chimpman always said the cure for high prices is high prices.
What a fucking fool, it turns out the cure is a 15% chinaman tax.
Boom! Market killed.
Prices no where near 2015 levels.
Where is this “killed” market?
Where is this killed market?
Lack of chinamen.
Duh.
really?
So the 500,000 already here have no ties back to the mainland? Lol
Boom! Pig farted.
Who cares? Cannot stand that guy.
Don’t “we” dislike him because he’s been right for a long, long while.
He was wrong.
High prices didn’t cure high prices, they just kept going higher.
Government action is the only way to deal with the flood of stolen money from chinese scumbags.
Not sure if still could work but some time ago the opening of Rolex Boutique in downtown Vancouver would probably cause RE marketing machine to start pumping that RE prices in the neighborhood will significantly go up due to shopping aspirations of Chinese investor and their targeted proximity to a supplier of the luxury watches. Sort of they buy Rolexes like regular people coffee. Yet another example of a screw-up we live in…
http://vancouversun.com/life/fashion-beauty/style-qa-rolex-opens-boutique-in-vancouver
some people still buy watches?
6 months moi based on today’s numbers with some shadow inventory out there too i suspect. spring will be the tell
Why will spring be the tell? Because you “think” the psychology is going to change?? You guys still don’t get it.
What’s happening right now is money is coming in from China. It is being imported by permanent residents/citizens who are already here.
They continue to buy “deals” because they know T2 is going to make Vancouver the 2nd Hong Kong. Prices will go up medium term.
FYI: In the 3 month since the tax, About 10,000 foreign students have become PR. About half in YVR and most rich.
This is spam.
I was wondering why sales were so high. It’s because of all these new PRs. Oh wait, sales are way down, especially in HAM areas. You must be delusional thinking all these PRs will save your sawdust dreams of wealth.
Are you a CAB driver at the airport? How do you know all this shit?
Now whoreacle is going to bitch at you like a…..well….bitch that you’re being racist.
Whaaa! You called me a cab driver!!
Define shadow inventory? There are no banks holding onto properties to keep their books looking balanced?
Bearish but…
Waiting for listings surge to confirm.
Almost 4 months and counting since tax.
So this Magic rise in inventory is going to happen in 4 months ? (8 months after the tax??)
You guys just don’t get get it. The T2 gov has accelerated the formation of PR from foreign students.
Also, foreign money continues to be brought in from China by the PR millionaires already here.
Oh, did I tell you that 10 year visitor visas are being handed out at a rate of 100,000/month?? Parents of foreign students now flooding in. Watch rents.
This is spam.
You want your group think here to go on that’s totally off base?
No, I wan’t you to keep your promise to leave.
A real man keeps his word, what the fuck are you?
A real woman stops whining, what the bi@tch are you.
It’s been three months. You need to go back to grade one for your math lessons. Inventory typically peaks in the summer and goes down. It has remained near summer levels all the way up to this point.
What the hell does that mean? It’s higher now than summer. Weird looking “surge” – lowest inventory ever and dropping.
Oracle go f yourself.
Sincerely.
Can’t handle the truth ? Resorting to internet name calling? Tell me where I am wrong in my analysis.
PS. I won’t call you any names.
Call him Romeo.
Foreign buyers bounce back in Richmond after tax
http://www.richmond-news.com/news/foreign-buyers-bounce-back-in-richmond-after-tax-1.2466051
I wonder how many transactions get around the tax as well. Do you seriously trust the BC liberals to scare off foreign residential investors. Christy does not want that, she said as much.
Christy would sell the whole province if she could
Gordon Campbell started the sell off.
Goes back further. Hint: Faaantasy Garden World!
Faye Leung! Zalm bam thank-you Ma’am!
Yup.
Foreign buyers were 25% of the Richmond market prior to the tax and now they’re at 4%.
A headline doesn’t get more misleading than that.
“Over the past three years, detached home prices in Richmond have risen 80.3 per cent, which is more than any other municipality in the region, according to REBGV. ”
Richmond is BC’s Mosul, and until the locusts stronghold doesn’t get “defeated and liberated” housing issue and overall livability across the region will remain problematic.
Based on the analysis of the ministry of finance publication (which is full of errors – including a headline which refers to September 31), it appears that many of the foreign buyer transactions are actually for completions of new-builds. These are properties where the buyer may be very much in the money – even with the tax – and thus they complete anyway. Somebody does need to check their excel formulas before they publish the stats. . . . .
Notably, across Metro Vancouver, foreigners are now, on average, investing less in each transaction. For instance, in Richmond, prior to the tax, foreign money accounted for 96 per cent of all transactions involving foreigners. Since the tax, foreign money accounted for 59 per cent of all transactions involving foreigners. In other words, foreign money accounts for a smaller share of what may be a joint purchase.
That quote (from the news report) makes a faulty conclusion. What the data says is that foreign buyers now have on average 59% share of ownership as recorded on the transfer. There is no information on where the money came from – the local partner could be getting money from offshore as well as the offshore buyer.
“While Juwai.com’s August 2016 data illustrated an initial shift in interest in Canadian real estate following the implementation of a 15 per cent property transfer tax on foreign buyers of Metro Vancouver real estate, September 2016 data reflected month-over-month gains across Canada’s four largest markets, with buying inquiries up 200 per cent in Vancouver,” stated a Sotheby’s news release that highlighted how the two companies will be working together to match Chinese buyers with luxury properties in Canada.
“The reality is that global exposure is now paramount for Canadian real estate: it is what attracts the most qualified buyers, and the highest price for our clients’ homes. China is an important market for us,” said Sotheby’s president and CEO Brad Henderson.
The question is: is it even possible that prices go down in Vancouvr over the next 20 years? Or have become just another city in the sinosphere, where greedy mainlanders hoarde housing units as safe deposit boxes?
It boggles my mind hiw the BC libs let this happen.
Stop whining.
Indeed. By far the majority of sales are to greeedy locals.
Who’s you’re new friend?
He comes across as a fucking retard.
Drive him back to the airport ASAP, ok?
“It boggles my mind hiw the BC libs let this happen.”
That should be “made this happen”, not “let this happen”. In any case it’s not particularly mind boggling. Making 70% of voters feel rich is a pretty attractive strategy.
Ozzy Jurock on CKNW today.
In his opinion the average price is the most relevant to what the market is doing today.
October average prices down 5% year over year.
October average prices down 17% since April 2016.
He sees more declines to come and higher rates with the new mortgage rules. This is from a RE pumper!
Lets do the math on renting vs owning a $1 million place over the past 6 months.
Mortgage payment on $900K mortgage = $4000 month
Transaction fees and property taxes = $4000 per month
Capital loss of 17% = $28,333 per month
Opportunity cost on $100K down payment at 2.5% per year = $208 per month
Equivalent rent = $2200 per month
Principal paid = $2200 per month
Net loss for buyer = $32,141 per month or $192,846 in 6 months
Loss if you wanted sell after commission = $37,141 per month or $222,846 total
Who cares? What does the math look like over a year? 5? 10?
Double it. Then multiply by 5 and then 10.
The average being down x% doesn’t imply every property, or one of your choosing, is down by x%. Sales mix is also a factor. You’d also need more than 10% down, but most house buyers aren’t first timers.
“The average being down x% doesn’t imply every property, or one of your choosing, is down by x%. ”
According to Ozzy Jurock year over year 5% down and 17% since April. Sometimes the truth is hard to take.
I wasn’t arguing about the number, but your interpretation of it.
Really? LOL
Pick 2 points in time whenever a correction happens. My gawd. Haha.
Time to leave this IQ deprived blog.
+1 for the leaving part. Oh, yeah…. that too is bullshit. Just shows how much credibility you have LOL.
The penalty for lying a 4th time about leaving the blog should be a firing squad.
Fuck off for real this time.
Cause he doesn’t want any more restrictions brought in. He is playing the dumb bears. I can’t Believe you can’t see they that.
What matters is same repeat house sale prices.
Lol. So the restrictions aren’t doing anything, but he is putting his reputation in the line and lying becuase he doesn’t want more restrictions. Good one Oracle. You’re so funny.
Buddy knows the FVREB president. Indian guy. He said that this was a direction the industry is taking to prevent more changes.
Let me know when rents decrease or prices crash 😉
Then why is RE cartel reporting a 24% year over year benchmark increase?
Dude, I don’t own and am trying to get you guys to see the light.
But for some reason, you refuse to.
Just remember this comment when August rolls around and rents keep rising and prices stay stable until then.
FYI, info is restricted these days in Canada. Did you know a boat carrying 2200 people landed with migrants in Italy today?? Not to be released by media here.
“Did you know a boat carrying 2200 people landed with migrants in Italy today”
False.
Your cousin’s arrived?
Another 15%% by March is very real. .no big deal to average homeowners. .Devastating to anyone who bought last yr or to builder’s.
Do NOT engage Oracle in any debate or reply to her posts. It is the same message over and over (immigrants are taking over and rents are going up) after the 10,000th post this is simple spam and not worth engaging in any conversation. She probably has a mental issue.
EVERYONE hear repeats the same message incessantly, the difference with Oracles is his message doesn’t fit the politically correct social justice warriors mindset, which is Vancouver’s defacto meme. Oracle for Premier!!
“EVERYONE hear (sic) repeats the same message incessantly…” no not EVERYONE. There a several posters here who are stuck on one meme but I personally get much out of most of the posts here. I appreciate the open discourse and with that we have to take to good with the bad.
“A ‘tale of two cities’ as Toronto, Vancouver await fallout from mortgage rules”, CBC News
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/vancouver-toronto-housing-markets-1.3835744
“Over the course of two days, real-estate sales figures for the month of October suggested a continuing boom in Toronto with a correction fully underway in Vancouver. Does the West Coast slowdown suggest a coming correction for Canada’s largest city?”