Vancouver Condo Info

Those heretics over at Canadian Business magazine have a cover article this month called Why Buying a House is a Bad Investment.

The euphoria around home ownership crowds out some of the unpleasant truths about real estate: mainly, that long-term returns are often modest at best. Some studies have found that stock indexes actually outperform housing. More worrying is that real estate prices can and do fall — and they can take a long time to recover. Canada has not been immune to severe price corrections in the past, and we could be on the verge of another one now. With interest rates set to rise and curb affordability, and with economists speculating about a bubble, staking one’s entire financial future on a home is not necessarily a wise bet. In fact, a house just might be one of the most overrated investments around.

..and it goes on and on.

“There’s a unique confluence of factors that has driven house valuations up this sharply,” says Derek Holt, vice-president of economics at Scotia Capital. “They’re all temporary, and that’s a house price bubble that could be pricked as we go off into the next year.” The rate of growth in home prices for the past 10 years has in fact been out of line with prior decades, pointing to lofty valuations today, according to Holt. Prominent Canadians such as money manager Stephen Jarislowsky and former Bank of Canada governor David Dodge have also sounded the alarm recently on today’s unusually rich home prices.

You can read the full article at the Canadian Business website, but these people clearly don’t know what they’re talking about.  After all, real estate prices never go down, everybody knows that.

The latest issue of Business BC is all about the property market rebound and they focus on 5 ‘hot pockets‘ to watch for and invest in for 2010.

What goes down in B.C. real estate must, apparently, come up. And quickly: by the end of 2009, the average home price in the province had risen to $463,000, back to where it was in 2007. Interest rates are, at least for now, at record lows, and increasing consumer confidence has spurred the market’s recovery beyond expectations. Barring the usual unforeseeable mayhem, things are looking good.

Just for fun, let’s see if we can predict which of those five markets will do best by January 2011.  Below are the BC markets they focus on, vote for the one you think will have the best percentage return by the end of 2010.  In the event of a housing market crash, best performance would be the market that lost the least amount of value.

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The REBGV benchmark house price reached $800,796 in February.  The rise in listings puts us into a ‘balanced’ market condition according to the Real Estate board.  Will we be able to maintain this ‘balance’?  I suppose it depends on how much our market is driven by CMHC support and how new rules and higher interest rates affect those margins.  Here’s some interesting math courtesy of reader bestplaceonmeth:

Based on $58,000 median household income in Vancouver using ING’s “how much can I borrow?” for 35 years (yes, 35 years – it’s what all the cool kids are doing nowadays).  Also assuming no other debts (ha ha) and a conservative $250 a month for property taxes or condo fees or both.

Prior to April 19, qualifying at 1.95% variable rate:

YOU QUALIFY FOR A MORTGAGE OF $415,270 WITH 5% DOWN!

After April 19, now having to qualify at 3.89% fixed rate:

YOU QUALIFY FOR A MORTGAGE OF $313,880 WITH 5% DOWN!

Holy foreclosure, Batman! That’s a 25% haircut off current prices!

Now let’s fast forward to the end of 2010, 4 successive 1/2 point interest rate hikes and you now need to qualify at a rate of 5.89%.

YOU QUALIFY FOR A MORTGAGE OF $244,287 WITH 5% DOWN!

That’s 41% less than 10 months ago, and we’re just getting started.

See, I told you math was fun.

Now, who wants to go out and get into a bidding war?

UPDATE: It’s been pointed out that CMHC currently requires the 3 year rate to be used, so the difference is not as extreme as the above example. DoDo1975 clarifies with this math:

A quick calculation shows that a family with absolutely zero debt making $90k a year could borrow $533,721.32 over 35 years today. All else being equal, after April that number will be $456,311.49 or approximately 14.5% less. This 14.5% is constant across all income levels.

If interest rates on the 5 year prevailing rate also go up 1.5% in the future, this translates into a 28% decrease in the amount someone can borrow compared to today.

The BOC is holding interest rates at a record low .25% for now, but hinting that may change soon.  BC is doing some belt tightening now that the games are over, but in the rest of Canada the economy is growing surprisingly fast.  So when do rates start going back up, and how fast should they be raised to reign in inflation?

The C.D. Howe institute is recommending that they be raised sharply for every rate announcement for the year after their conditional July commitment.  This would mean the overnight rate would move from its current .25% to 2.0% at the end of 2011.

Well that was fun.  The games have wrapped up, but we’re not completely done yet – the Paralympics are up next, so still a chance to partake in some Olympic fun before 2012.  Hopefully everyone out there had a good couple of weeks, whether you stayed in town or skipped out to some holiday destination.

Despite a bad start to the games, we had some unseasonably beautiful weather and wrapped up with a nice amount of Gold for Canada. Overall a positive experience with an upbeat ending.

So now what? We’ll find out what bills are due soon, but what will be the long term economic result of hosting the games? Are there people out there that have just discovered Vancouver and now must move here and buy at any price?

A recent UBC study found that host cities see no measurable boom or bust in real estate values due to the Olympics, but maybe it’s different here.  Do you think the next few years will see an economic boom or bust in BC?

Don sent in the link to this commentary on the mortgage market in the US and [the economy in] Canada.  Dave Rosenberg points out that there are some strange things happening in the spread between treasury bond yields and mortgage rates.

Once again, this Houdini recovery has involved a situation where mortgage rates have plunged and yet Treasury bond yields have been rising — 30-year fixed rate mortgages have fallen to 4.93% and are sitting are record-tight spreads over long Treasury bonds (see Chart 7). Historically, the average spread is 150bps and this differential is now 20bps. This is remarkable and our concern is that investors who may be exposed to mortgages are at serious risk because there is a considerable chance that these rates will be moving higher over the intermediate term — notwithstanding continued support from Uncle Sam’s pocketbook.

Investors must be reminded time and again that mortgages are callable, Treasuries are not; and we are now in a situation where net of fees, which average 70bps, anyone buying mortgage paper today is receiving a rate that is less than what the borrower is paying, How nutty is that?

He also comments specifically on the health of the Canadian housing economy:

All of a sudden, the Canadian economic data are coming a tad below expectations, including the 0.4% MoM advance in December retail sales, which just came up short from recouping the 0.5% decline the month before (revised from down 0.3%). Excluding autos, sales are running at a 2.1 % annual rate over the past three months, which can only be described as tepid in view of all the rampant monetary and fiscal stimulus percolating through the system.

Not only that, but the supply response in the Canadian housing market is beginning to, at the margin, alter the inventory balance. The number of new listings surged 4.0% in January and has risen sharply now in three of the past four months. After outpacing new listings over 90% of the time between January and October of 2009, sales has now lagged in each of the past two months and this has taken the sales-to-listing ratio down to 0.614x from 0.634x in December and the nearby October high of 0.683x (and now stands at its lowest level in eight months). Pricing is sure to follow suit. Better buying opportunities lie ahead for the fence-sitters, in our view.

David Rosenberg is the Chief Economist and Strategist at wealth management firm Gluskin Sheff.  Read the rest at Mish’s Global Economic Analysis.

From the Vancouver Sun:

Although January construction numbers are up to 198,600 jobs, it is below the 202,100 jobs from a year ago, and a far cry from the 220,800 jobs during the boom.

The good news is that new construction is on the rise in the province, with the seasonally adjusted annual rate of housing starts reaching 186,300 units in January, a 5.8-per-cent increase from December.

That’s much better than the 149,081 housing units to begin 2009, but the construction starts have progressed steadily until now, according to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. It’s even better than the figure that economists from financial institutions had been predicting.

The pessimistic CREA throws some cold water on this positive news by predicting that the HST and higher interest rates will push the real estate market down in 2011.

Domus pointed out this article in the Globe and Mail.  Former Bank of Canada governor David Dodge is adding his voice to the opinion that the federal government should act now to cool the Canadian housing market.

“These prices look pretty high by any conventional measure,” he said in an interview, citing measures such as the ratio of house prices to incomes and rents to house prices. “So, the likelihood of house prices falling a bit over the next few years is probably somewhat greater than that they would rise over the next few years.”

“Whether there’s a bubble or not you can only see after the fact,” he added. But it wouldn’t take a bubble bursting to cause consumers pain. If your house price goes down 10 per cent and you’ve borrowed 95 per cent of its value, all of a sudden you’d be in hot water, Mr. Dodge noted.

His comments come as Ottawa weighs action to take a bit of steam out of the housing market. While the government does not believe there is a bubble, it has been evaluating tools it could use to help ensure that more consumers don’t take on mortgages they won’t be able to afford when interest rates rise or if house prices fall.

The worst scenario would be if both of those things occur at once. Consumers would find themselves with higher monthly mortgage payments and less valuable homes.

While it’s virtually assured that interest rates will rise at some point, Mr. Dodge is of the view that it’s also realistic to assume house prices will fall. He notes that mortgage rates are likely to rise, which will put a damper on the market. Secondly, “we’re probably into a fairly long period of relatively slow income growth,” he said, and that too will curtail some housing activity.

Read the rest of Dodges comment in the full article here.

This should come as a surprise to no one, but this province leads the nation when it comes to concern over personal debt according to an RBC report.

RBC chief economist and senior vice-president Craig Wright said much of the debt concern centres around higher real estate costs. “Historically, if you look at the housing market, it’s always highest [in B.C.] in terms of affordability.”

The survey also notes that B.C. residents have the grimmest assessment of the economy in the country (43 per cent characterized it as good, compared to 48 per cent nationally), something Wright found a bit surprising because RBC expects the 2010 Olympics to boost B.C.’s economy into recovery mode. “It may be that [B.C.] is looking backward instead of forward.

“We expect to see B.C.’s economy grow by a solid 3.3 per cent in 2010 before moving higher to 3.4 per cent in 2011.”

Good solid growth, I’m guessing that’s why they’re sponsoring the games.

The Conference Board of Canada is predicting perfect stability in the local real estate market for the year ahead.  They see the Metro Vancouver real estate market as currently hot, but not overheating and predict that it ‘likely won’t overheat as 2010 progresses’.

While Metro Vancouver home sales in December tracked a pace that was nearly three times higher than sales last January, board senior economist Robin Wiebe said new listings also rose keeping the overall market in balance.

“Though [the market] is closing on the top of the balanced range, buyers are provided with a reasonable choice as the go out searching for homes,” Wiebe said in an interview.

However, Wiebe added that “it wouldn’t take much to tip [the market] over into seller’s territory.”

That is one factor that has the Conference Board putting Metro Vancouver on the list of cities it expects will see property prices rise between five and just under seven per cent along with Victoria, the Fraser Valley, Calgary, Regina, Ottawa and Halifax.

Edmonton, Saskatoon and Montreal are among the cities that the Conference Board expects will see price increases over seven per cent, with Winnipeg Toronto and Hamilton among cities that should see price increases between three and five per cent.

The Conference Board is estimating that no Canadian cities will see price decreases in 2010.

The full article can be read in the Vancouver Sun.