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Friday Free-for-all! January 20th 2017

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331 Comments

It’s that time of the week again, time for another Friday Free-for-all!

This is our regular 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:

–Private mortgage insurer matching CMHC hikes
–Housing market pits one generation against another
–optimism in real estate
–Future of BC housing
–Vanguard says BOC will hike rates this year
–The good, bad and ugly in the market

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

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Kim

So my cousin, early 30s and her husband bought a townhome in Burnaby for 550k a couple years ago. She works admin, he works part time. Doesn’t make a lot. Anyway she had an inheritance and used this money for the down payment. My mom tells me they are really struggling and asks me for advice on how to save money. She has a baby coming soon. I gavr her my wife’s cell as my wife does all the coupon clipping but I told her all the coupon clipping in the world wouldn’t save her financial butt and I told her to tell her to sell and rent. My mother got angry at such a suggestion as she trotted out the typical renting is not stable, expensive, etc. Well they’ll be in a world of hurt as trumps policies take… Read more »

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fomostyle

Where does Trump policies fall into that story exactly!!

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Newcomer

Trumponomics will push interest rates up and cause inflation, particularly for food.

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Kim

Trump policies will cause inflation in the US which will cause US to hike rates faster than expected. If Canada doesn’t hike prepare for massive inflation here. If we hike our real estate crashes and those with huge mortgages won’t be able to sell. Unless you think we can find more dumb foreigners to catch a falling knife.

But don’t believe me. I’m just the guy with the million dollar portfolio in my 30s.

One way or the other we are screwed. Pick your poison.

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Newcomer

Even if we don’t hike, Canadian mortgage rates are set by the bond market, the rates of which will go up with US bond rates.

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FOMO

LOL

Nice humblebrag.

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best place on earth

brilliant advise – she has a baby on the way, and you told her to sell her principal residence and rent?

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Kim

Learn some grammar. “Advise” is a verb. “Advice” is the noun. I guess that pot has gotten to you. Loser.

She needs to sell if she is stressed about mortgage payments. She can move back in with mom in the meantime. (Mom is widowed with a 8 bedroom house.)

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Combat roach

For that moron, RE ownership is a top priority all the rest is just a collateral damage along RE appreciation. Retard…

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best place on earth

if you dont wanna be retarded, get out of your mama’s basement.

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best place on earth

oh boy, grammar police in bear blog ! gimme a break! Dr!

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Oracle

Check out this graph!

China’s outflows reversed after 15 months.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-24/china-s-efforts-to-stem-capital-outflows-are-starting-to-pay-off

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Just me

Superimpose the transaction volumes for Vancouver RE (with a two months lag) to that graph. You will be surprised.

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Oracle

Abbotsford detached roaring ahead. Prices still rising. Unbelievable.

Now only $125,000 less than Surrey. Used to be $200,000. Check on Realtor.ca

Foreign money flooding the valley now?

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fomostyle

Abottsford is a different sort of money laundering …

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fomostyle

Read this cooment on a LA housing blog…

“I thought that banks had supposedly gotten their acts together after the housing market crash of just a few short years ago. Nope. The people who bought the house across from my parents couldn’t qualify for one loan on their $700k house so some other idiot bank gave them a second mortgage to fill in the gap. Who in the hell does that?

Banks seem to to doing extremely risky things once again. I had never heard of a borrower who couldn’t qualify for one big loan being given a secondary loan from another lender before. That’s insane. It makes me wonder how many risky loans are out there again just waiting to drag the housing market back down.”

Immediately made me think of Christys first time buyer second mortgage.

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Newcomer

This is actually very common, but the second lender is usually a non-bank entity.

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bullwhip29

B.C. foreign buyers tax really did yank down Vancouver home prices: BMO
http://globalnews.ca/news/3201112/bc-foreign-buyers-tax-vancouver-home-prices/

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Newcomer

Ha!

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The Man

Note that the chart in the article shows prices started trailing down a month BEFORE the tax was implemented.

The article also chooses not to mention that sales started drastically falling in April, four months BEFORE the tax.

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bullwhip29

even though the announcement preceded the date tax was implemented by only a week or so, it is widely believed that big RE players like Rennie etc knew this news was coming well in advance. the chart illustrates price only, not sales volume. how does one account for the continued rise in prices in places like victoria, sunshine coast, okanagan and elsewhere in canada (while Vanc prices alone turned lower)? imho this is evidence that foreign money was certainly a huge factor in moving RE prices around in Vanc. and likely one of the main reasons other “tax free” markets are continuing their parabolic run upwards. until such time the tax is applied in other metro areas like Toronto (and home prices there suddenly turn lower overnight), we can just sit here and believe whatever we want

your serve, newcomer…

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The Man

“the chart illustrates price only, not sales volume’

That is my point. The article is not informing readers that sales volumes starting tfalling back in April. The peak of sales happened in February.

Home prices don’t “turn overnight”, they need to be proceeded by falling sales volumes first. That is what happened.

There was no correlation between falling home sales ( and therefor falling home prices) and this new tax.

“Drop in Vancouver-area home sales suggests owners spooked”, Vancouver Sun, MAY 16, 2016

http://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/drop-in-vancouver-area-home-sales-suggests-owners-spooked-by-rocketing-prices-crea

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Newcomer

Once you start believing that Chinese people, en masse, are getting secret messages from Clark, or otherwise have super powers, you are in the same tinfoil-hat group as the people who think Metro Vancouver fakes its stats and I am paid by the Chinese government.

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Just me

Bullwhip29 posted an article documenting disciplinary proceedings against a money laundering Vancouver lawyer. I wonder wheter the multimillion transaction would even show up as non-resident purchases in the statistics cited by DeJong and Christy Snake Clark. Here are some instructive extracts: “In the face of an overheated real estate market and public concerns about foreign capital last year, the society cited West Vancouver lawyer Donald Gurney for professional misconduct over his involvement in four questionable, three-year-old transactions. It alleged he ignored numerous badges of suspicion and misused his trust account by allowing $25,845,489.87 of offshore cash to float through it between May and November 2013. With the veneer of legitimacy the lawyer provided, that money was beyond the usual purview of the authorities and could have been used in crime or even to finance terrorism. But lawyer Paul Jaffe fumed… Read more »

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Just me

Forgot to mention: the issue was identified by chance, through a routine random audit. Otherwise it would have gone undetected.
One has to wonder how many hundreds of millions are laundered in this way in any given year in our fair city.

But it’s money, so our governement looks the other way and pretends all is dandy. We are the best place on earth after all.

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paulb

New
315
Price Change
37
Sold
103

TI:7451

http://www.clivestevepaul.com

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Whistler or Bust?

Buy now or be priced out forever!

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YVR

Buy now and pay $100k more than you would next month.

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fomostyle

In a few ways I think New Zealand has had it tougher than even us.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-23/here-are-worlds-10-least-affordable-cities-2017

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Combat roach

Of course, smaller, closer, less developed hence easier locust’s plunder.

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Best place on meth

29 west side houses listed today, zero sales.

Maybe CNY will be an occasion to sell this year.

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vangrl

I think one sale snuck in at the last minute. $1.8M in Dunbar.

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Oh oh

Address? Or JK

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vangrl

4643 Dunbar

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Oh NO

another cut hand, another lucky seller

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YVR

List price $1,688,000. 2016 assessed $2,087,400. Listed for $400k under assessed.

According to BC assessment no other sales under $2 million for comparables in the last year. The last sale of a similar house 3807 Dunbar Sep 2016 for $2,085,500 (sold over 2016 assessed). Looks like prices are going down about $100k per month for Van SFH.

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Newcomer

That’s in line with Zolo for detached.
https://www.zolo.ca/vancouver-real-estate/trends

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Hyper-mega-Bull

Trump White House vows to stop China taking South China Sea islands

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-southchinasea-idUSKBN1572M4

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Newcomer

That’s very bullish. Without access to those islands, theChinese will probably buy condos in Vancouver and fortify them.

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Best place on meth

“Tillerson’s remarks at his Senate confirmation hearing prompted Chinese state media to say the United States would need to “wage war” to bar China’s access to the islands where it has built military-length air strips and installed weapons systems.”

Chinese scumbags are starting to get the picture here.

Let’s get this massacre underway.

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Whistler or Bust?

Wow things are really going to change.

China has had its way for 20 years running over law, property rights, fishing rights, patents and access to their markets. They have basically done anything they wanted without any thought to others and no one has lifted a finger.

People say they play the “long game” but I doubt in a million years they ever saw DJT coming.

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Best place on meth

Well no wonder these evil dirtbags have done as they pleased, look who the last 3 presidents were.

A wimp, a retard and a rapist. And they almost elected the most corrupt person in US political history.

Nice trifecta, America.

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Shut It Down Already

Are you really this dumb or is just a blog persona for your own entertainment?

How you can think Hillary was corrupt in the slightest, let alone more corrupt than Nixon, is baffling. Oh right, all those incriminating emails that the FBI found….

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Best place on meth

Clinton Foundation, moron.

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Bear Vancouverite

I was against Trump during the elections, however, I am curious what he can do to curb some of China’s unfair practices.

In particular, North American businesses have a really tough time growing their business in China due to their protectionist policies and China basically stacks the deck in order to help their home grown companies, meanwhile Chinese companies steal innovation from Western companies and have unfettered access to our markets. At the very least they need to level the playing field and respect copyright and patent laws.

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Shut It Down Already

You’re totally right – China’s attitude to fishing rights is way worse than the US’ illegal war in Iraq (which cost some half a trillion dollars and tens of thousands of lives). They just do whatever they want!

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Combat roach

Usual Chinophile… Nobody said US is great although numbers of casualties caused by either of regimes are hardly comparable in favor of your team. Hopefully I don’t need to provide proof or links?

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Best place on meth

“China’s attitude to fishing rights is way worse than the US’ illegal war in Iraq”

Oh god, what a stupid thing to say.

As if anyone is defending the US in that case.

Have you taken over from space when it comes to moronic attempts at deflection?

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YVR

Good point. We should ignore all wrong doing in the world due to the Iraq war.

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Bag it and tag it

Maybe US should build an island right beside them, then send over some fresh baked muffins as a greeting to their new neighbours…that would really piss them off.

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No Money Down

Just Listed
2724 26th Avenue E Vancouver $999k. 20% below assessed value ($1.26M)
https://www.zolo.ca/vancouver-real-estate/2724-e-26th-avenue

Comparable sale.
2765 E27th Vancouver. Sold Jun 2016 for $1.4M

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YVR

What’s $400k when you have had ownership braggings rights for past 7 months? Those houses would make any owner proud.

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Buynow or Getlaidnever

2765 E 27th Ave in Vancouver, BC – Advanced Janitorial Services has 3 employees working at this location.

http://www.profilecanada.com/companydetail.cfm?company=2228811_Advanced_Janitorial_Services_Vancouver_BC

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Newcomer

Looks like 2765 E27th fetched more than three times its assessed value in 2006.

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Chinabuyeverything

It’s worth $400k

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Best place on meth

They might get their asking price because some tool thinks 999K is now a bargain.

Stlll though, down 400K in 6 months…..hilarious.

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Newcomer

Nobody gets their asking price anymore. Everyone knows that the asking price is where you start.

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No Money Down

That’s how it was 12 months ago. Except the asking price was the initial offer and it went up from there.

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Shut It Down Already

You have stats for that of course, Newcomer?

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Hyper-mega-Bull

China does not want world leadership but could be forced to assume that role if others step back from that position, a senior Chinese diplomat said on Monday, after U.S. President Donald Trump pledged to put “America first” in his first speech.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-china-usa-politics-idUKKBN1570YW

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Best place on meth

Nobody want’s china leading them.

N OBODY.

They are universally despised.

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bullwhip29

Law society confronts alleged money laundering, dodgy foreign investments
http://www.timescolonist.com/news/b-c/law-society-confronts-alleged-money-laundering-dodgy-foreign-investments-1.8445073#sthash.9wCwqesb.dpuf

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bullwhip29

Lunar New Year bright for metals, oil, BC Liberals in Canada
http://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article/2064552/lunar-new-year-bright-metals-oil-bc-liberals-canada

“Planets and stars are aligning for a resources boom and a dip in real estate prices, particularly in Metro Vancouver, Canada, Richmond-based fortune-teller and astrologer Sherman Tai told Business in Vancouver.”

“Tai thinks Vancouver real estate prices could retreat up to 10%, in part because the city is in the southwest corner of Canada. The stars say that this is a bad location for real estate…”

“Tai holds out more hope for the BC Liberals than the New Democratic Party (NDP) because of the astrological signs of the parties’ leaders. Liberal leader Christy Clark was born in a Year of the Snake…”

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Newcomer

That’s funny!

I can’t say I’m surprised about Clark.

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southseacompany

“Damaging low interest rates and QE must end now, think thank warns”, The Telegraph

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/01/23/damaging-low-interest-rates-qe-must-end-now-think-thank-warns/

“Access to cheap money has propped up ‘zombie’ companies that should have collapsed and hit pension funds, because the policy has forced them to invest in low-yielding government bonds, exposing them to significant risk should interest rates rise sharply.”

“It has also boosted the prices of equities and property, thereby rewarding those who are already wealthy, while punishing savers and people on lower income and encouraging consumers to take on debt. As a result, the strategy has contributed to the widespread sense of unfairness and inequality in many of today’s western economies”

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southseacompany

“Vancouver ranked third most unaffordable housing market in the world”, Global News

http://globalnews.ca/news/3198292/vancouver-ranked-third-most-unaffordable-housing-market-in-the-world/

“Vancouver has been once again ranked one of the least affordable housing markets in the world, according to an annual survey from Demographia.”

“It was the only Canadian city to crack the top 10 list, coming in third behind Hong Kong and Sydney, Australia out of 406 markets in the world.”

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Newcomer

We had this. Again, the big news in that article is that the population of Vancouver shrunk in 2016.

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The Man

It did not say that Vancouver’s population has shrunk. It said that Vancouver has experienced modest ‘net domestic out-migration’.

That is ‘domestic’ migration, which means migration within Canada. More people left Vancouver for other parts of Canada than moved to Vancouver from other parts of Canada.

There’s are still births, deaths, and out of country in and out migration that needs to be counted.

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Newcomer

True enough, but it goes on to say, “… meaning more people left the city than moved in.” That definitely doesn’t account for birth and deaths, but saying more people left than moved in does seem to imply overall numbers. BC has a fertility rate of 1.4 which would result in a negative natural growth rate (2.1 is zero growth). Vancouver’s domestic migration has been negative for a very long time. In any case, I can’t find any stats for 2016 yet, so there is no way of knowing. I certainly do not give much credence to reporters retyping press releases.

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The Man

“meaning more people left the city than moved in.””

The Global News reporter said that – not the Demographia report. Obviously, the reporter did not understand what domestic net migration means.

Vancouver’s growth rate has been slowing since the 1980’s, but it still not close to negative.

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Newcomer

Fair ball. Actually, looking at the original report, they are just using domestic out-migration as an indicator of poor affordability. The migration rate for metro was about 0.7% in 2015. Has anyone seen figures for 2016?

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Oracle

Admin, Can you ban this “Trump”?

Lies lies lies. And down goes the credibility of this blog. And down goes site visits.

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Newcomer

I know the Pope relies heavily on the income he earns from this blog to cover the monthly losses on his many real estate investments, so he’s sensitive to any comments that might lower the blog’s credibility, on which traffic so closely depends. That is why he has always ruled the comments section with an iron fist.

It was smart of you to notice that and appeal to his business sense.

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Kim

Anecdote: oversized home in east van finally sold after 6 months on the market. Assessed 2.295m, sold for 1.954m 15% off assessed. Original ask was 2.79m I believe.

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Newcomer

I found stats for metro Vancouver showing the steadily declining population growth (it’s less than half of what it was) and, especially with Oracle in mind, they include all the students and non-permanent residents. It only goes to 2015, so I still have not been able to confirm the negative growth rate for 2016, but the downward trend is clear. I wonder what they’ll do with all those condos they built.

http://www.metrovancouver.org/services/regional-planning/PlanningPublications/MigrationComponent.pdf

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Oracle

Sadly for you you have drank the Kool Aid. Maybe spend some time doing critical thinking would help rather than being on your knees constantly for the establishment.

You have to stop snorting stuff and thinking the 300,000 immigrants are vanishing into thin air when they arrive. And the 420,000 foreign students are in LaLa land. And the 600,000 IMP/TFW workers are in Springfield of the Simpsons world.

http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/resources/statistics/menu-fact.asp

Just me: This guy is a paid troll.

Admin: Can you Ban this guy?

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Shut It Down Already

What sort of dipshit thinks people would get paid to post on a blog that has a readership which runs literally into the dozens?

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Best place on meth

Literally into the dozens?

Do you have stats to back that up?

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Bear Vancouverite

This is interesting, although one caveat is that slowing population growth is not the same as population decline, and I wouldn’t rely on the trend and automatically extrapolate that out to a future where negative growth takes place. Having said that, I always look at how the city has changed and I wonder “who the heck is going to live in all these condos?” and “exactly how many people do we need to build for?”. Sadly, too much inventory is created now which is unsuitable for our use. The units are too small, many are single bedroom (when we need a lot more family oriented 2 and 3 bedroom units), and too many are built to target the “luxury” market. I saw the skeleton condos in Spain during their real estate crisis, and it was very scary. According to The… Read more »

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Newcomer

The mention of negative growth for 2016 came from Demographia, and was for population, not migration, but they did not give their exact numbers. I was looking to confirm that when I stumbled across this. So it’s not a case of extrapolation, just some independent data points. When looking at the ratio of starts to migration, keep in mind that the average household size is 2.5, so that would be more like 1:2.5, if we were to assume that the new builds were matched to required sizes. I would guess that the number is higher for one bedrooms (for example 1:3) and lower for two and three bedrooms (maybe 1:2). In any case, in round numbers, new stock is more than twice new residential demand (there is usually lots lot’s of speculation demand though). The situation has been similar for… Read more »

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Bear Vancouverite

I believe there’s a lot of empty housing in Metro, but there’s no way to guess that there’s 100,000 empty units in the city and my thought would be that there must be much less than that. I understand you’re method might be to take housing starts (16k/yr) and then subtract out the 2.6 avg household size from those units to get empty units, but the problem is (and I could be mistaken here) some of the housing starts can also represent net neutral change in actual total housing (eg tear down 1 house to build 1 house, tear down 1 apartment to build a similar apartment) or even negative housing stock change (buy 3 smaller lots to build 1 larger unit). There’s also no stat for stock that becomes unsuitable for housing, taking it out of total available housing.… Read more »

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Newcomer

Fair enough. But supposing the number is half that, we would still have more than 5 years of stock were all building to stop tomorrow. What we can say with certainly is that lack of stock is not an upward price driver in Vancouver.

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Bear Vancouverite

Yeah I have not believed in the “lack of supply” argument, which is why I am supportive of any measures to reduce speculation and especially the unconscionable holding of empty homes.

I think its been mentioned before here how hypocritical it is to aim for green eco measures many of which increase costs when we allow perfectly good homes to sit as empty safety deposit boxes.

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Shut It Down Already

We only allow it if you pay 1% per year.

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Oracle

And you of all people should know that there is no such thing as “emigration” that they can measure. Red Herring.

You get on a plane for overseas…they don’t ask you if you are emigrating. LOL. Made up stats to get the immigrations numbers to look low.

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Newcomer

If you honestly believe that city planners do not know how many people live here and that they would make up numbers to hide the thing that you know in your heart to be true, then you are so far removed from rational thought that there is no point discussing it.

You made dozens, if not hundreds, of claims about massive populaiton growth, and based all of your arguments on that factor. You have now been proved wrong. I would recommend that you go out and do a little more research to confirm it, and then try and work out how you came to be deceived and how you might avoid the same thing in the future.

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Oracle

You haven’t proven yourself right. Where is your data?

Give me data that show how many foreign students, supervise holders, 10 year visa holders, IMP/TFW immigrants came to Canada in 2016 or 2015

Where is the data?

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Bear Vancouverite

Oracle, you know full well the data for 2016 is not available yet. It takes years for the data to materialize. In the meantime, your argument that immigration and hundreds of thousands of 10 year visas, grandparents coming in, and TFW has been ongoing for years, long before 2016. This should mean that you must accept that data up to 2014 does in fact disprove your thesis for the first few years you made this argument. Further, and this is only my personal opinion, while there may be a lot of immigration, not all of those immigrants will have an effect on housing prices, many are too poor to buy in Vancouver and may live further out. My problem is that there was too much of a bias towards wealth immigration. If your argument is that there were too many… Read more »

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Oracle

Lots of big money out there to make the arguments I present look false.

The markets always right. There is a reason that houses cost well over $2 million in vancouver. Who is buying?

Without foreign inflows brought in by local corrupt PR and citizens, the whole market crashes.

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Newcomer

The whole market crashes anyway.

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Newcomer

The data includes students, visa holders, etc. I even mentioned your name when mentioning that the data includes those numbers. It is written in black and white on the same page as the numnbers. It’s even broken out into a separate collumn. What more do you want?

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Hyper-mega-Bull

we have declining population growth because there is no more empty land and any new housing that is created is done through density which is slow and expensive.

you seem to assume it means that people don’t want to live here. which is dead wrong.

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YVR

“you seem to assume it means that people don’t want to live here. which is dead wrong.”

People don’t want (or can’t) pay the price to live here. Same thing. People leave until prices come down.

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Hyper-mega-Bull

i agree there is a huge number of buyers waiting for prices to dip slightly so that they can buy. that’s why the market won’t crash.

currently people can’t live here because they’ve been pushed out by people with more money. that is in no way bearish.

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YVR

“i agree there is a huge number of buyers waiting for prices to dip slightly so that they can buy. that’s why the market won’t crash.”

Nobody is waiting for a “slight” dip. That has already occured and crickets. They are waiting for fair value which only a 60% to 70% crash can bring. When prices are declining those waiting continue to wait.

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Newcomer

Who is going to buy, when the market dips? You have to rule out everyone who already has a place and is looking to sell and move up, because the dip would reduce their purchasing power. So you are left with the 30% of renters who, as you have often pointed out, are destitute losers. Do you think there are enough renters who: a) actually have a lot of money; and b) would spend that money on Vancovuer RE to prevent a crash?

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Bear Vancouverite

This is a bogus argument.

Even with low inventory levels there’s still inventory for anyone who wants to live here and has unlimited means. If there’s not enough properties for people to immigrate to Metro Vancouver you’d see an inventory of 0.

People may want to live here, but they probably can’t afford to, can’t find a good job, or don’t want to live in a 500sq ft apartment.

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Hyper-mega-Bull

and what do you think happens to the person selling the house? they just evaporate?

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YVR

The people who sell and buy again are market neutral. It is the first time buyer, investor and speculator that matters. When prices are falling and forecast to fall further first time buyers and investors sit on the sidlines and speculators sell. For builders what ever is in the pieline gets built and sold for what ever.

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The Man

Stats from Metro Van (2001-2011)
http://www.metrovancouver.org/services/regional-planning/PlanningPublications/2011_CensusBulletin1-Pop_and_Dwell.pdf

Net population growth:
325k persons/ 2.6 average persons per dwelling = 125k households
Net dwelling growth: 163k units.

Dwelling growth has been outpacing household growth for quite some time now.

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Newcomer

Those stats are for the relatively high population growth years (close to 2%) and they show 38 K “empty” units. The next 5 years were at around 1%, so if the building rate was the same, I guess 100K empty units is not far off the mark.

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Bear Vancouverite

Whats interesting about those stats is that the average persons per dwelling across Vancouver is 2.6.

16k average housing stats per year (I don’t have a stat on how many new units created vs rebuilds of existing units) with 18-30k net immigration means we should be building enough units for all the population growth.

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Just me

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-23/china-stock-trading-most-muted-since-1992-as-state-tightens-grip

Chinese stocks haven’t been so subdued since 1992 as government efforts to maintain stability as well as tightening liquidity deter traders.

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CanNeverThinkOfAGoodName

Apropos of nothing, but still real estate market related, I offer you the following fact, which I had not known before:
~~Financial speculation in 17th-century England was a crime. Speculators were hanged.~~

Could we have investment without speculation? Speculation does seem unethical. Let’s call it “gambling” and restrict it to Casinos with only limited amounts possible to be gambled, and health care workers on hand to help anyone who accidentally overdoses.

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Best place on meth

I would love to execute real estate speculators.

A referendum is in order.

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would-be buyer

This is yuge: https://www.ft.com/content/c9f7d320-dee7-11e6-9d7c-be108f1c1dce

We know, surprisingly, that many houses on the westside owned by foreigners have mortgages. How are they getting money out to pay the CA banks? Especially since the new reporting requirements state that money leaving China cannot be used to purchase real estate. So, how are they making their mortgage payments?

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Newcomer

This was already posted, and I noted that, in keeping with Just Me’s protocol, house prices here should soon go to zero as a result. But people without FT subscriptions cannot read it by following the link. If you google “China clamps down on banks moving currency overseas” and click on the result, it will take you to the article.

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Just me

Not sure what is your beef with me.
I am simply trying to make you see things differently from what you,eould normally do. Sometimes it is helpful to consider other views.
Anyway, the FT articles can be googled,in a myriad ways.

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Newcomer

To be honest, I have no beef with you. I can tell you are a good guy or gal. You stick to your guns and you are not unfair. There is some truth in what you say, to be sure. But I think you have been carried away by an idea that is not borne out by the facts. I keep bugging you because I am hoping that you will actually go and look at the data. If you do, I am pretty sure that you will see that the thing you are fixated on is not enough to explain price appreciation in Vancouver and other Canadian cities. This is important because, in fact, the mistaken belief in rich outsiders buying everything is, indeed, a major driver. If people looked at the facts for this matter alone, it would be… Read more »

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Just me

Again, I would love to be wrong. If only you could give me some evidence based on (credible) data. Not the junk presented by DeJong and Cristy Ckark, that is measuring the wrong variable.

The more I search for evidence that it is all about credit (and trust me, that was my initial null hypothesus) the more I find proof that (in Vancouver, at keast) it us about an enormous flow of illicit finds funneled from Asia.

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Newcomer

If you believe that official data is unreliable, it is unlikely that you will be convinced. Without putting too fine a point on it, you are in the same general group as conspiracy theorists and people who believe in aliens kidnapping people. You reject empirical evidence and so you are immune from all arguments. I don’t have access to data other than that produced by governments, banks, NGOs and private research groups. All of this data points to the ordinary explanations that you have already been given. I get it that your gut feeling outways the available data, and I am sorry that there is nothing I can say to lessen your understandable, but unjustified fears.

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Bear Vancouverite

Newcomer, just to clarify your position with Just Me, it would help if you explain (again) that you do believe foreign investment is a factor, just that you don’t believe it is a big one. The only real official data ever attempted to be collected showed that 11% of Vancouver Real Estate, 18% of Richmond, and 18% of Burnaby were purchased by foreign buyers in the longer period studied by the BC Gov in July 2016. I consider this pretty big participation considering this only measured foreign buyers, not foreign money being used by locals, and it only measured buyers by asking for voluntary disclosure, which may arguably undercount the real numbers by some %. Further, if population growth is indeed slowing through this period, it only makes sense that foreign buyers, foreign money, and the belief in those factors… Read more »

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MarKoz

Foreign. Money. (cf foreign buyers). As stated previously, not always the dominant factor but, since the Cdn dollar tanked and signs pointed to a devalued Yuan (about 2 years ago), the exodus of cash from China has been astronomic. Correlation is not causation but there has been significant academic research (David Ley) into the influence of Chinese money, both psychological and direct. It would be nice to have statistics on the influence of foreign money but no one with the authority to collect the data has the will to do so. There have been half-hearted efforts to track foreign buyers, but, as far as I know, absolutely no effort to track foreign money. I absolutely do not believe that foreign money is the only cause of the ridiculous inflation in house prices but I do believe (and no government body… Read more »

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Newcomer

I think everyone agrees it is significant.

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Just me

I take Stats Canada data seriously.
I also accept central banks’ measures.
I do not believe that the statistics provided by DeJong about foreign buyers are meaningful in any way. They fo us on headcounts rather than quantity of money being deployed. They are in some grey area when it comes to selfrepirting and consequences of it. They have no way to account fir beneficiaries who are mot listed in the titles.

I like data, but I am not naive enough to believe all dara us equally valuable. You should be able to spot the difference.

BV spelled some valid arguments right below, for your consideration. Talke few minutes to consider them before hitting the keyboard,

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Oracle

And even when Vancouver is majority Mandarin speaking and it is taken as the official language, you will be still mistaken Just me. There is no data that foreigners are coming here. LOL

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Shut It Down Already

Please share some of this proof. Many of us would love to see it.

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Chinabuyeverything

Lol. Get a room you two!

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Just me

Yes, I have also been thinking about the money needed to serve those huge loans to leverage on the west side homes. However I suspect many of those millionaires have contingency funds (they probably expected the chinese government to intervene, that is why they moved their money to Vancouver in the first place). I guess we will have to wait and see.

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Best place on meth

You give them too much credit.

These are dumb-ass thieves, embezzlers, bribe-takers, corrupt officials.

These aren’t criminal masterminds.

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Chinabuyeverything

3rd least affordable in the world. Terrible wages too btw.

http://globalnews.ca/news/3198292/vancouver-ranked-third-most-unaffordable-housing-market-in-the-world/

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Combat roach

Common denominator for the top 3 least affordable markets is Chinese locust, period.

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Shut It Down Already

Oh do be quiet, racist.

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Combat roach

Uhh, your cheap demagogy is rather tasteless. I am surprised you didn’t ask for proof or a “link”.

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Best place on meth

He’s still wired from yesterdays march with the feminazis and other haters.

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CanNeverThinkOfAGoodName

Many people marching yesterday would be far more sympathetic to your views about housing in Vancouver than Shut It Down’s view, I suspect. (p.s. Trump is not your man.)

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Bear Vancouverite

Why do you call the protesters feminazis? Do you consider peaceful protest to be fascist?

Just checking to see if you’re aware one of the first things fascist regimes do is belittle and then making illegal protesting and criticism of the government.

I also recall you cheering during the #donthaveamillion protests.

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Best place on meth

What were they protestesting? They didn’t seem to know themselves why they were angry.

To me, they were protesting the election result and were raging that Hillary isn’t president and Trump is.

If they had a clear message I might understand but this was laughable.

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Best place on meth

Yep. Low interest rates are worldwide but there is something else going on in Sydney, Vancouver and Hong Kong.

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Newcomer

It’s going on in all Commonwealth countries. Those crazy English guys!

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Chinabuyeverything

And Auckland.

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Just me

These are magnet cities for the Chinese diaspora. They provide a baseline population that allows non-english speakers to live comfortably without ever learning the language.

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patriotz

Common denominator for all 3 markets is also an RE sector way out of proportion to the rest of the economy, and governments highly dependent on RE-derived revenue that implement policies which inflate prices.

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Newcomer

Don’t bury the lead!

“Demographia reported Vancouver’s year-over-year price growth was equal to a year of household income in the city. It also mentioned the city experienced a “modest” net domestic out-migration in 2016, meaning more people left the city than moved in.”

I wonder what happened to all those hoards from China who were swamping the city, not to mention the Mexicans living 15 to a room?

BTW, the full report is here: http://www.demographia.com/dhi.pdf but I can’t find the numbers on Vancouver’s mysterious shrinking population.

I hope the local papers let everyone know about this.

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Just me

Displacement. The composition is changing.

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Chinabuyeverything

Agreed. The out migration is local Canadians leaving.

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Newcomer

Soon, Vancouver will be entirely empty except for three Chinese guys, each living in a house worth a trillion dollars.

Everyone knows, as the population goes down, house prices go up.

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Just me

And then you accuse me of hyperbole.
One can’t you just accept that Vancouver has changed beyond what anyone would have predicted 30 or 40 years ago? And that the ongoing change is not necessarily good for long-time residents?

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Newcomer

Your argument, if you remember, was that Chinese immigration is driving up housing costs because it increases demand. Do you not remember arguing, just yesterday, that 400,000 Chinese people (a third of the people on flights) were moving to Vancouver every year?

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Just me

Please go read my reply to this yesterday. I dud nit say such thing, in fact you can see the thread below.
As for the composition changes in population, I believe what I wrote is cirrect. I also believe it has become a taboo topic, partly because people are scared of being accused of racism. This is nit about race, it is about money.

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Newcomer

That’s not really true, though, is it? You said, “Substance is that even if 1/3 sticks around, it is a recipe for disaster.” It’s right there in black and white? Do you remember that, or had you forgotten?

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Just me

Read whole thread. Don’t play silly games.

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Newcomer

Did you write that or not?

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Just me

Of course, and I also qualified what I wrote in full detail. If you were gracious enough to refer to the whole thread, it eould probably make even your criticism more credible.

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MarKoz

Chinese money is driving up housing costs. There are many Canadian citizens who bought their way in (legally) through the Immigrant Investor Programme. They don’t earn their money here.

Chinese money has been a factor (if not THE factor) since the 80’s. The last 2 years has been different.

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Newcomer

So how do you explain the tripling of house prices in Saskatoon in the past ten years? Was that Chinese money?

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Newcomer

Are you suggesting that Chinese people just care more about the whole personal space thing and really hate being squished together, so one Chinese person equals two Canadians in terms of land usage?

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Just me

What are you on about? The total out migration figure is tiny. The composition change is under you eyes, and it ha been for at keast a few years (or decades). Are you just in the business of objecting for its own sake?

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Newcomer

We were talking about real estate, remember?

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Just me

Yes. And the composition changes are key to make sense of RE patterns.
Try and put a few hundred thousand millionaires in any city, then let me know what happens.

By the way, there is a whole study documenting this is what happened in Vancouver: it was written by this guy (but perhaps not enough hard data for you?)

As I said, dusplacement has been occurring for quite while. Composition does matter.
shall we ignore the truth just because one particular ethnic group is involved? Personally I don’t give a toss whether the millionaires are from China, Germany or the Congo. They have an enormous imact on our luves and we should be able to discuss these issues openly.

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Newcomer

Let me see if I am getting this right. You’ve abandoned all the arguments about asian population growth and you are going all in with idea of a small number of super-rich Chinese people buying up property with a simultaneous reduction in population density as Canadians abandon the city to them. Is that right?

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Just me

Definitely true that we are importing millionaires and rich chinese.
Also true that many other (non millionaire) are leaving due to cost of housing.

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Newcomer

Alright. If you think you can hang on to that position until, say, Friday, that will make it easier for us to debate.

So, starting with your new theory, perhaps you would care to explain why, despite this displacement, household incomes here are a quarter of those in Hong Kong?

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Just me

Who said that these millionaires are declaring their incomes? I am talking about wealth, not incomes.

By the way, what I write is consistently,along the same theme. YOur reading of it, however, wanders in unexplainable ways. I never said that poor chinese were moving here (in my view they would be welcome like any other poor but honest and hardworking immigrants). My problem is with rich, corrupt and tax-avoiding mainlanders, who use homes as safe deposit boxes.

Hope this is clear by now, since it was apparently not clear before.

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Combat roach

All correct!

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Oracle

He’s playing you. Lol. He is a pimp for foreign money. I’m sure you can figure that out. It’s pretty easy to play the PC crowd these days. Just pretend to debate even though the facts are right in front of you.

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Newcomer

Oracle, I am delighted that you made it back just in time to comment on Vancouver’s shrinking population.

As your arguments were all based on population growth, am I right in guessing that you have changed your mind and now no longer believe that prices and rents will increase?

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bestplaceonearth

Bears need to quit living in their fantasy land. Now that they are even more desperate to learn that they are even priced out of condos. I already warned you in late 2014.
Now, it’s time to pull your heads out of your arses, do some thinking instead of whining, find a realtor and a mortgage broker, take advantage of the home buying program. Stats, charts, graphs don’t do you any good shit. Good news is that you have not been priced out in Surrey. There are still condos in Surrey within your price range. Once this gone, you can put your heads back to your arses for the rest of your lives. You have been warned, again!

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Funky monkey

Why do we need to live in the gvrd? why not move far away?

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Combat roach

You should eventually do something useful and go to hang yourself. There will be at least more oxygen and less garbage on the earth.

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Best place on meth

Asshole, you do know that prices are falling, yes?

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Best place on meth

Some up to date stats here:

http://www.vancouvermarketreports.com/

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Just me

I watched the video. Guy seems happy and confident about market recovery.
Not sure why, the numbers look bad. Especially on the west side.

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Newcomer

Vancouver realtors do not sell houses, they sell house price appreciation. This report on the beautiful numbers is equivalent to descriptions of a “step-saver kitchen” or a “handyman’s dream.”

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Just me

On a more worrying note, that report led me to check myrealthycheck.ca to see what is going on with price changes. Maybe it is too early to say, but lately a few properties have seen asking prices jacked up. In fact, some of them have been increased after having been decreased just10 days ago. Either they are getting schizofrenic or they are responding to renewed activity. can’t really tell. Another thing that worried me is that yesterday there were only price increases in Vancouver for the first time in a long time. Admittedly the sample is small, but this had not happened for a while. I would not be surprised if this market defies expectations of a crash again and leaps higher. You also know why i think that might happen, but I have had enough of getting wacked on… Read more »

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Newcomer

Let’s wait and see. Asking prices are just that. They carry very little information.

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fomostyle

Chinese New Years aspirations.

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Best place on meth

Exactly, jacking up prices and getting their 8’s in a row in anticipation a big CNY payoff.

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Bag it and tag it

Dude is grasping. His numbers that he is so excited about look disastrous compared to last year, so he goes all the way back to 2012 to find a comparison that make them look good.

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vangrl

2012 was a weak year. So funny he had to scroll down to that year.

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vangrl

Scroll down and look at his 2 week graph up to Jan 20th

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space889

Power of delusion and stupidity still reigns supreme. Well, next to yellow peril fears and hate spewed from losers.

As always bears are 1 step behind. Foreign buying from China is now on a decline. Net new buyers from China snapping up $3M west side houses is pretty much over. There are still locals trying to cash out the RE bubble in China and move their money here for some easy living. Even if they want to invest in RE, a lot are looking to secondary cities in China.

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Bear Vancouverite

space, does this mean you’re bearish now on Vancouver RE?

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