Vancouver Condo Info » affordability

Martin Armstrong lists Canada under “RE markets to avoid”

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 08:10:44 +0000

While some Canadian cities offer reasonable affordability compared to household incomes, Vancouver’s housing is, by any measure, highly overvalued and vulnerable to a sharp correction. Prices have risen 55% from their 2009 trough to a level 29% above their prior peak. The average home price reached nearly C$800,000 (according to CMHC).

Full article

This post was submitted by Mansur al-Hallaj.

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Racist marketing and fact-free media

RTYT — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 08:34:17 +0000

Look at this garbage. It’s an article submitted by “The BC Real Estate Convention” and printed as if it’s actually news in the Vancouver Sun. First off, the writing is atrocious. Don’t they even have an editor read these advertorials before they’re printed? Second, there are lots of statements presented as fact that have absolutely nothing to back them up:

Experts claim that the Chinese Mainland buyers and investors will continue to seek for overseas investment opportunities, in Vancouver.

Which ‘experts’ are these? Oh never mind, we’ll just take your word for it then.

As it is more cost efficient to purchase a property rather than renting, and considering the long term returns of the investment, purchasing properties in Vancouver become high on demand.

Yeah, somebody is ‘high on demand’ if they really believe that current prices in Vancouver make buying ‘more cost efficient’ than renting. There are many many markets around the world where buying is ‘more cost efficient’ than renting, Vancouver ain’t one of them.

However, as much as Feng shui is a well respected practice by many Chinese immigrants and potential home buyers and investors, there are always those “intelligent” ones that seek to obtain the optimal economic value from their investment in Vancouver’s real estate.

Wow. I don’t even know how to respond to that.

If you go to the The BC Real Estate Convention web site you’ll see that this trade show is sponsored by The Vancouver Sun and Province.

Then there’s this piece over at 24 hours:

Metro Vancouver will receive an influx of businessmen from mainland Chinese this week, intent on spending their two-week Lunar New Year holiday with family, as well as scooping up significant amounts of real estate.

Julia Rowell, sales manager at downtown Vancouver’s Maddox development, said this phenomenon has been going on for over 25 years, but 2012 looks to be especially busy.

Yeah? I think TPFKAA says it best:

HAHAHAHAHA! That’s absolutely hilarious!!

So in 1987, (a full five years before Deng Xiaoping’s reforms that enabled creation of individual fortunes) HAM from mainland China was increasing sales just after CNY.

/facepalm.

The hype seems to be working on the listings side. This year started off with the second highest number of listings in the last ten years and has grown at a faster rate than any of those years, especially on the west side:

I’m sure those sellers are hoping this hype pays off, and maybe it will, but then again maybe our market isn’t driven solely by wealthy offshore buyers. Most local first time buyers aren’t in the market for multimillion dollar homes anyways, so how would this even affect them?

Blaming ‘Chinese buyers’ for out of control prices is simplistic and racist. This city is nearly half asian so of course ‘Chinese buyers’ have an impact, but what about easy credit, low rates, CMHC pumping and local speculators?

Just for comparison, the city of Monterey Park in California has the highest percentage population of Chinese Americans of any US municipality. Here’s what home values there look like over the last few years:

This post was submitted by RTYT.

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Carney cries wolf again.. will it come?

wreckonomics — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 08:45:44 +0000

Mark Carney is making new remarks about some Canadian real estate markets being “probably overvalued“.

It was the second time in recent days that Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney voiced concern about property prices, which surged after the financial crisis as borrowing costs tumbled.
“We see that in a number of real estate markets in Canada, valuations are at a minimum, firm; in others, they’re probably overvalued. So there are risks there. We’re watching it closely. We’re working with our partners, the federal government, the superintendent of financial institutions,” he said in an interview on “Question Period” on CTV.

“Measures have been taken. They’ve been effective. We’ll keep up that vigilance. If more needs to be done, I’m sure the appropriate authorities will take those measures.”
The federal government has tightened mortgage regulations several times in a bid to prevent a property bubble from forming. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said on January 17 that the government is watching the housing market closely and is ready to intervene if needed, but is not about to do so now.

Yes, the federal government has tightened mortgage regulations “several times”.. Here’s a timeline of those changes courtesy of Burbs Boy:

Jan 2006 – Minority Conservative Government elected
Feb 2006 – 25 year increase to 30 year on test basis
Jul 2006 – 30 year test affirmed and also increased to 35 year
Jul 2007 – 35 year increase to 40 year
Oct 2008 – 40 year decrease to 35 year
Mar 2010 – 35 year decrease to current 30 year

This post was submitted by wreckonomics.

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Limits to foreign ownership

Spork — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 08:03:04 +0000

Someone over at the Vancouver Courier is of the opinion that foreign buyers have driven up the cost of real estate in Vancouver.

Of course, capitalism requires competition, and free market principles should drive our housing market. But we no longer control that market. And despite growing evidence of market dysfunction, Premier Christy Clark, who could stiffen provincial regulation, and Mayor Gregor Robertson, who could increase taxes on foreign property owners, cede our land to foreign buyers.

Not so in Australia.

In recent years, Australian cities have experienced Vancouver-style real estate booms, with housing prices soaring from Sydney to Melbourne. Like here, buyers from China help drive Australia’s speculative real estate market. Faced with mounting public pressure, in 2010 the Kevin Rudd government introduced strict regulation aimed at foreign ownership. Under the new rules, the Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB) screens foreigners (including temporary residents and students) to determine their land purchase eligibility. Foreigners can’t buy existing properties and must build on vacant land within two years of purchase or face government-ordered sale. Scofflaws face capital gains confiscation. Finally, before foreign homeowners leave Australia, they must sell. No more overseas landlords Down Under.

Full article here. Is it time for BC to start looking at regulating home ownership and foreign buying?

This post was submitted by Spork.

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BC Assessments for 2012

jesse — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 17:23:53 +0000

BC Assessments are available for viewing for a limited time. These are based on sales at and around July 2011. A little bird told me a few people are getting some interesting increases in the mail. Given our collective nous, perhaps we can figure out which property types and neighbourhoods are going to see some marked increases in property tax outlays this year and give some guesses as to how much. Remember that the City of Vancouver uses 3 year averaging and that it’s the assessment value relative to all other properties, not the absolute value, that determines property tax outlay. As well there has been a shift in property taxes from businesses to households, something that is slated to end this year. One might think that a few households are going to be rather upset if redistribution were to continue.

I haven’t looked at the numbers yet but my guess is that detached houses, especially in west side neighbourhoods, are going to see the biggest tax rise this year, with condos seeing the least rise.

© jesse for Vancouver Condo Info, 2012. | Permalink | 54 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: bc, prices, relative valuation, vancouver

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Feeling bearish on Canadian housing?

Karl Marx Carney — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 08:18:52 +0000

Over at the Financial Post there’s an editorial that’s pessimistic about the Canadian real estate market:

The arithmetic is simple, and some of the warning signals look uncomfortably like those of the days before the market implosion that brought the 1980s to a thumping, crashing close.

Start with resale home prices. A “matched sales” approach to measuring prices tracks, over time, multiple sales of the same properties — this reduces the likelihood of measurements getting skewed by cyclical or regional shifts in the price mixes of homes that happen to be selling. Over the past ten years, prices so measured, in Canada’s major markets, have doubled, increasing at more than 7% per year, at a time when consumer price inflation generally had been running at about 2%.

So why is that a problem? Because average wages have not been running much ahead of inflation, and that means that house prices have steadily been bubbling out of reach of workers’ abilities to afford them. The house price-to-income ratio last peaked and then plummeted from 1989 to 1991, and the ratio regained its prior peak in 2004-05. Since then? It has climbed steadily higher yet, the ratio now far outstripping anything seen in the past 20 years.

Eventually that makes housing affordability a problem, and quickly so when interest rates start to rise. Housing looks affordable now, given that mortgages remain on the market at rates near their all-time lows. However, carrying costs relative to income would rocket upward, were rates one or two percentage points higher. Such rate increases are not in the cards in Canada today — but they will arrive all the same, and sooner rather than later if inflation continues to test the upper bound of its target range, as it did through 2011.

Read the full article here.

This post was submitted by Karl Marx Carney.

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Mortgage discounts turn to premiums

Karl Marx Carney — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 08:16:27 +0000

For those that missed it, there’s an interesting article over at Canadian Mortgage Trends – the major banks have done away with their variable rate discount mortgages and are now charging a premium over prime.

Prime + 0.10% (i.e., 3.10%) is an interesting number. A few months ago consumers thought that fat variable-rate discounts were here to stay. Variables above prime will now come as a shock to some people.

The banks are well aware of that. They know that pricing above prime impacts consumer psychology.

They could have priced at prime. Spreads are not that horrendous. But pricing above prime makes more of an impact. It makes higher-profit fixed rates more appealing and it mentally prepares consumers for potentially higher VRM premiums down the road.

That said, banks are not just arbitrarily sticking it to borrowers. The main reason variable rates are worsening is that banks’ costs are rising, and they want to recoup those costs.

Read the full article for more on the factors at play in this move.

This post was submitted by Karl Marx Carney.

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Victoria Crashing

teekay — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 09:05:11 +0000

FishyRE points out that the latest housing market numbers out of Victoria look bad. Really bad.

House prices are down YOY for two years now. Condos are down YOY and flat over two. Attached is down 15% over two years. Yikes.

This post was submitted by teekay.

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Mayor announces panel on housing affordability

Jackson — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 04:03:58 +0000

Not just any panel.. a “Blue Ribbon” panel to look at the underlying issues of housing affordability in Vancouver. I hope it’s a Pabst Blue Ribbon panel.

Saying that the high cost of housing is threatening to make Vancouver unlivable, Robertson said he wants the panel to come up with short and long-term solutions, including using more of the city’s own lands.

But he also acknowledged that the seemingly intractable issues around why Vancouver’s housing remains among the most expensive in Canada likely means his Vision Vancouver-led council won’t find solutions quickly, even within their three year term of office.

He said the “task force”, which will be named within weeks, will include advocates, architects, developers, building owners, financiers and citizens.

“They’ll identify ways we can increase Vancouver’s supply of affordable homes — both immediately, for the most urgent needs, and for the long term,” he said.

Why would they include advocates and citizens on this panel? Don’t architects, developers, building owners and financiers have all the knowledge this panel needs.

I’m no expert, but I’m guessing the advice will be something like this: Spend lots of money designing and building low income housing on city land, provide incentives to developers and building owners and encourage a system whereby financiers can skim a little more from the average Vancouverite that feels they just must get into the can’t lose housing market.

Likely not to be addressed: anything that discourages people from buying with as little down payment as possible backed up with CMHC insurance that removes risk from the lender.

This post was submitted by Jackson.

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The move-up buyer is screwed.

John — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 08:10:57 +0000

If you recently bought a condo in Vancouver this probably isn’t what you want to hear, but let’s just think about this situation realistically. Let’s pretend we get the ‘perfect’ scenario of constantly rising house prices. A young couple buys a condo to get on the property ladder and plans on starting a family and moving up to a larger home in a few years. When it’s time to sell, it’s a jackpot! Their condo has increased by $100 grand and they magically find a buyer at that price right away..

but wait. That home they wanted to buy is up $200 grand. Better hope their income has been increasing a lot faster than everyone else.

And that’s in the magic ‘balanced’ scenario where homes and condos increase at roughly the same percentage year over year. For a while here in Vancouver, house prices have lept up while condos have been mostly flat. The hypothetical move-up buyer is even more screwed.

Maybe it’s time to get some smaller furniture and turn the ‘den’ into a babies room, since we don’t seem to build many large family size apartments in Vancouver. It’s either houses or ‘junior’ one bedrooms with little in between.

Constantly increasing house prices means you only win if you sell and get out of town or sell and rent. The move-up buyer is screwed.

This post was submitted by John.

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Love that Canada housing bubble..

The Pope — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 16:38:28 +0000

Interesting article over at the National Post on the ‘different here‘ argument.

If the Canadian housing market were to collapse, Canadian taxpayers would be hit hard. The federal government is fully liable for any losses incurred by the CMHC, which currently backs somewhere in the order of $600-billion worth of mortgages. It has been bailed-out by the government twice in the past.

The government needs to act quickly to remove the factors that are causing the market to expand so rapidly, as well as to disperse the risk across the financial system. The CMHC should be privatized, much like the Australians successfully did in 1997. Banks and insurance companies should be allowed to do what they do best — assess risk, without standards being forced upon them by government bureaucrats. Doing so would not only spread the risk throughout the financial system and protect taxpayers, it would also reduce the likelihood of Canada experiencing a U.S.-style housing crisis.

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Mish facepalms over Vancouver RE yet again

Sun, 20 Nov 2011 09:41:11 +0000

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2011/11/vancouver-real-estate-bubble-in.html

A million dollars can buy you a ‘liveable’ house in deepest east van..

This post was submitted by Mansur al-Hallaj.

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Candidates on Vancouver house prices

Drippytown — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 09:01:13 +0000

One candidate in the upcoming election is focusing on the issue of house prices in Vancouver. Independent Sandy Garossino thinks that Foreign buyers are driving up Vancouver property prices and pushing out young families.

Garossino said that if the average median income in Metro Vancouver is $67,500 and the average price of a house in Vancouver stays at around $800,000, then it’s locals who will be forced out.

Garossino said she knows placing ownership restrictions is not an easy solution and that there are complex and sensitive issues involved. Still, she said, local affordability needs to be addressed.

“This is such a concern to me. Where are families going to raise their children?”

Garossino says other cities facing similar problems have have workable solutions.

“Singapore has zoning requirements that allow certain areas to be freely available to the international investor and other areas are only available to domestic buyers.”

Two Mayoral candidates seem to have noticed that this issue is getting attention and added their own thoughts. Gregor Robertson sort of thinks it might be an issue, but see’s the next couple of years as the time to look at the problem and figure out what to do about it.

Gregor Robertson told CBC News Sunday that the city needs to understand the role foreign ownership is playing before taking any steps to change it.

“I see these next couple years as assessing what the problem is, how significant it is, and what best tools are that might address it,” Robertson said.

Suzanne Anton believes that people shouldn’t have to leave Vancouver to buy a home, but doesn’t think foreign buyers are the problem. ~~Dave~~ Anton says the solution is to cut development costs so that builders can pass on the savings to buyers.

“Market-based solutions to housing supply are the only effective means of creating real affordability,” Anton said.

“Everything else is a gimmick.”

This post was submitted by Drippytown.

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Going down?

wreckonomics — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 16:20:01 +0000

At least one person thinks that Global Recession MkII is about to cause Mr. Carney to slash interest rates in Canada. The prediction is a 75% drop from the rock bottom 1% to a rocker bottomer .25%

This could be really good news for the few people who’ve built up good credit and cash. I can think of at least two cases where debt levels rose so high that property prices were crashing while interest rates were dropping.

There are many places in that big country just to the south of us where you can buy a house for half what it cost a few years ago and you can lock in for ridiculously low mortgage rates. Japan also saw home prices dropping while interest rates fell. Heck it even happened here in Vancouver at the start of the eighties.

Only a moron would think that a housing market crash means no one is buying and everyone loses their job. Someones always buying, they just don’t always pay the same price.

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Ambitious people leaving Vancouver

Jackson — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 04:02:17 +0000

The economy in this city is broken. I can no longer count on two hands the number of friends and coworkers who have left to find better opportunity elsewhere in the last few years. As Vancouver Magazine points out, it’s what young ambitious people are doing right now. Vancouver is squeezing the middle class out.

Around January 2002, the average price of a detached house in Metro Vancouver was $390,000. That has since nearly tripled to $1.1 million. For those who couldn’t or didn’t buy in—who were outbid, came late to the party, or sat it out waiting for a massive market correction—real estate has been a dismal science. This July, the MLS listed only 24 two-bedroom condos for sale under $300,000. That’s the maximum mortgage available to a household earning the median family income; Vancouver proper has about 30,000 renter households in that category. The story of real-estate affordability here can be told in that one stat: in a city of over 600,000 people, two dozen bottom-of-the-barrel starter condos available for sale to the middle class.

This post was submitted by Jackson.

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House of Cards

wreckonomics — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 18:27:35 +0000

How much are home owners betting on the past being repeated into the future?

King says roughly two out of three mortgages underwritten this year have been for a variable rate term, compared to a typical 25 to 30 percent share. She says this is part of a larger trend of homeowners opting for variable rate mortgages.

“Over the past decade or more, rolling a variable rate mortgage from month-to-month has consistently been less expensive than a fixed mortgage rate. In essence, a generation of homeowners has experienced nothing but declining rates and lower monthly interest payments,” she says.

“This expectation will be hard to change.”

As evidence of the damage a low-interest rate policy causes, King says we only need to look at the U.S. real estate bubble.

“The U.S. homeowner was lured down a very similar path by the Federal Reserve at the turn of the century. Indeed, in late 2000 the spread between a 1-year ARM [adjustable rate mortgage] and a 30-year conventional mortgage was as narrow as 30bps…households did not start to sour on ARMs until 2004 when the Fed finally started to raise the funds rate. By that time longer term mortgage rates were also on the rise and moving out of the affordability reach of many U.S. homeowners.”

As for Canada, King believes a 2-percent rise in interest rates will push a fixed rate mortgage beyond the reach of the average home owner.

From the article ‘Canada’s House of Cards‘ on BNN.

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Credit and Duration Mortgage Story

jesse — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 17:34:39 +0000

VMD brought this article to our attention from canadianmortgagetrends.com by Rob McLister: The Incredibly Shrinking Variable Discount

Just weeks ago you could find variable-rate mortgages at prime – 0.80% (P-.80%) or better. Consumers thought they were here to stay, but the tables turned…fast.

Economic troubles and lender profit motives have shrunken variable discounts beyond expectations. Banks are now commonly quoting prime rate, for example, with little discounting.

Once the last few holdout lenders with P-.50% disappear, discounted variables could move towards P-.25%…or worse. Some lenders even suggest that prime or prime plus could be the new normal.

Credit risk seems to have increased of late. Some industry operatives provide some thoughts (emphasis mine):

While variables have cost less than 5-year fixed mortgages a majority of the time in the past, favourites don’t win every game.

More importantly, assumptions are key when it comes to rate studies. Two important factors have impacted the research quoted above:

A multi-decade bias towards falling rates

Use of posted rates (instead of discount rates)

“Interest rates have been trending downward for two decades,” BMO Capital Markets Senior Economist Benjamin Reitzes told us in a recent interview. By default, he says, that’s tilted the table more in favour of variables than it otherwise would be.

Looking ahead, rates are no longer able to drop over one percent. The most we can realistically hope for is an extended period of horizontal rate movement. (The BoC can still cut rates slightly, but the European and American crises and sub-2% core inflation won’t delay hikes forever.)

As a result, Reitzes says, “Going forward, borrowers won’t see the same advantage to variable rates as they have in the past 25 years”

The second factor that’s largely ignored when citing rate research is the actual mortgage rates used for backtesting. Each of the three studies above uses posted rates in their historical analysis…

According to [Moshe] Milevsky, “…The historical probability of doing better with the floating rate mortgage…hovered around 70% to 80%” when the borrower used deep discount rates (based on a 1965-2000 study period).

Using today’s discounts, that 70-80% drops to just 53%, based on our findings from 1970 to 2006. (Obviously today’s spreads would not have applied historically but, as Milevsky maintained in his research above, that is beside the point.)

In other words, the fixed/variable decision would have been a coinflip, based on today’s spreads.

Mortgage loan duration decisions is always a hot topic around dinner tables of real estate investors. Given how shallow the long-short mortgage curve is, it’s an even tougher choice now. Still, looking at either 5-year or variable rates, the difference in payments between owning and renting is evidently still tipping some into ownership; October sales in Vancouver are up year-on-year. I get the sad feeling that people are not heeding the Bank of Canada’s reminder about how 30-year-amortized debt remains past a 5-year mortgage term.

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Worst province for families

The Pope — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 16:32:22 +0000

Incomes have fallen while cost of living has risen, leaving young families in BC worse off than any other province.

Since 1976, household incomes for couples aged 25 to 34 in B.C. have dropped by six per cent after adjusting for inflation, said the study by Paul Kershaw of the University of B.C.’s Human Early Learning Partnership.

This is especially significant given that the proportion of young women who contribute to household income increased by 42 per cent over the same time period, while the number of men in the workforce remained relatively constant.

B.C. is the only province in Canada to report a drop in average income for this age group, the study found.

At the same time, housing prices have skyrocketed across Canada, and nowhere more so than in B.C. Real estate prices have risen 149 per cent in this province since 1976, when housing costs accounted for less than three times the average household income for young couples. Today, it is seven times as much.

The bottom line?

“B.C. is now the hardest province in which to raise a family,” study author Kershaw said in an interview. “And that’s because we’re the only jurisdiction in the country where household income for young couples has actually fallen behind where it was a generation ago.”

This reality is setting the stage for “a silent generational crisis occurring in homes across Canada,” he said.

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The Renting Option

wreckonomics — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 07:01:52 +0000

Well Global is certainly getting a lot of attention on this blog with their ‘Generation How’ series. This is an interesting one though, all about the renting choice and how much cheaper it is in Vancouver than buying.

Are young families in Vancouver better off renting?

During the height of the US bubble, many of the most expensive cities had prices that outran rental values. That trend has flipped now with the correction and it’s cheaper to buy in many US cities. It’s been cheaper to buy in the past here, will Vancouver ever see that again?

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IMF thinks you have too much debt

wreckonomics — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 08:12:05 +0000

Those old fogeys at the International Monetary Fund are raising their eyebrows at consumer debt in Canada again.

“Developments on the housing front require increased vigilance, and consideration may need to be given to additional prudential measures to prevent a further buildup in household debt,” the Washington-based IMF says in its latest economic outlook for the Western Hemisphere.

Clearly they don’t understand that it’s different here. Tell ‘em Mr. Flaherty.

For his part, Mr. Flaherty says he’s satisfied he’s done enough to curb the accumulation of mortgage debt.

The finance minister said in New York on Wednesday that he would need to see “clear evidence of a bubble in the housing market in Canada, which we have not seen,” according to a report by Bloomberg News. Mr. Flaherty defined a bubble as “dramatic surges in prices in some part of the country.” He also said the measures he took in January have led to “some softening in the Canadian housing market.”

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Global with Bearish Story 2.0

jesse — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 18:26:52 +0000

Another news clip from Greenhorn AKA SethM.

May favourite clip at 4:50: a bartender living in a downtown condo bought by her parents. She pays them rent. Horror, you say? Apparently not: “It’s not that simple. They’re pretty strict. They’re just like a bank.” LOL We’ll see!

© jesse for Vancouver Condo Info, 2011. | Permalink | 93 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: affordability, bc, economy, prices, rebgv, vancouver

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Global with Bearish Story

jesse — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 13:53:12 +0000

Greenhorn has recorded this Global piece aired last night on families moving away from BC due to the high price of housing:

Summary: families moving away due to the high cost of housing.

© jesse for Vancouver Condo Info, 2011. | Permalink | 166 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: affordability, bc, economy, immigration, migration, vancouver

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Interest Rates Are Too High!

wreckonomics — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 07:09:37 +0000

Now this is interesting.. More than one third of Canadians between the ages of 30 and 39 think that current interest rates are about average or high.

Seriously.

There are a whole bunch of people out there that think these record low interest rates are normal or better yet, think that they are high.

I think perhaps it’s not the rates that are high.

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Mortgage loan approvals by province

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 07:15:52 +0000

One metric that nicely captures both the credit and mass psychology components of the current Canadian real estate craze is the total dollar amount of mortgage loan approvals as a percentage of GDP.

[...]

The total amount of mortgage debt would be expected to rise, but in a healthy and sustainable real estate market, it would rise in tandem with GDP growth, meaning loan approvals as a percentage of GDP should stay range bound. That they haven’t is but one more indication that this is a market driven by unsustainable dynamics.

http://www.theeconomicanalyst.com/content/mortgage-crazy-look-loan-approvals-province

This post was submitted by Mansur al-Hallaj.

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HST and House Prices

jesse — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 15:58:25 +0000

Poor Helmut Pastrick is at it again, (HT Raize on Realestatetalks) providing insight into how markets will react with BC voters laying the smack down on a harmonized sales tax. So let’s assume for a moment what’s done is done and look again at how the HST affects house prices. According to Pastrick:

According to Pastrick—chief economist for Central 1 Credit Union, the association of credit unions in B.C. and Ontario—some buyers, especially of new homes, may delay purchases and save themselves some extra money.

“Will it hurt?” Pastrick asked in a phone interview with the Georgia Straight. “I think that impact will be temporary. The activity would be made up under the new system shortly, and indeed under the new system, the demand for housing is somewhat improved given the lower costs that will be in effect. So that would provide some lift to the housing market.”

A housing-market analyst with the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation in B.C. before joining Central 1 in 1997, Pastrick said that the changeover period will also likely see postponements in the planned construction of new homes.

“It depends on the transition rules, but in general I would expect to see some delay into the new tax system for some new construction,” he said.

Ah so demand will improve under the new system. Well that’s good news. But let’s remember a few things about the housing market:

Most housing stock is not taxed and often competes directly with new stock.
A large part of total costs are associated with land prices.
Developers want to make money.
Rational investors have other competing investment choices.
It is true that Realtor and other transaction fees will be taxed less under the new regime.

I do not pretend to be a professional economist, but I’m trying real hard to figure out how, as an investor, I would hold off a purchase solely due to the repealing of the HST. After all, I can factor the tax into my ROI calculations. Please help me out, readers!

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