We’re a little late and lacking with this posting.
Please cut us some slack, we were replacing our doorknobs with levers and got trapped in the bathroom.
-links will end up here
But what are you seeing out there? Post your news links, thoughts and anecdotes here and have an excellent weekend!
(please limit external links to one per comment to keep your contribution from being held up in moderation)
Have you struggled with doorknobs?
Then you will be delighted with this story.
City Hall is doing away with doorknobs in the building code and starting next march no new building will be permitted to install doorknobs.
But what about freedom we hear you say!
Fear not, you’ll be able to put those knobs back on if you so desire:
Will Johnston, the former Vancouver chief building inspector who wrote the changes in consultation with the building industry, doesn’t see this as the inevitable death of the doorknob because the rules aren’t retroactive. People can also still buy doorknobs and put them back on lever handle-equipped houses.
Read the full article over in the Vancouver Sun.
There’s an article over in the Globe and Mail titled “The Rise of the Miserable Canadian Homeowner”
They talk about some of the complaints people have over the cost of ownership and the recent inability for the Canadian consumer to live within their means.
But if homeowners are dissatisfied about how they’re managing their finances, we must also consider their single largest expense on month-by-month basis. That would be the mortgage payments they’re making on their homes.
The problem with housing is that it’s expensive compared to our incomes. I will document this further in an upcoming column, but for now let’s just say that mortgages plus other basic costs of day-to-day living, such as cars and daycare, may leave us with little money left over. And so we borrow more through credit lines and credit cards. That’s our unofficial second income.
The Manulife survey shows homeowners are not happy about how things are working out, which is noteworthy. We’ve been borrowing madly as a nation for the better part of five years now, and the story has so far been cast as one of imprudent behaviour. Here, we get a sense that there’s a cost in stress and angst.
Read the full article for a run down on the numbers of people happy vs unhappy with their household finances. Basically one in three homeowners are very unhappy with how they are managing their money.
Hey, it’s that time of the week again!
Friday Free-for-all time!
This is when we do 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:
-Canadian house prices flatten
-Is it really non-mortgage debt?
-Surrey discovers murphy beds
-Zero % loans for suckers?
-HPI & Teranet Disconnect?
-Burnaby grows up
-Jim will intervene
-A major correction?
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So what are you seeing out there? Post your news links, thoughts and anecdotes here and have an excellent weekend!
Betamax pointed out this article in the Vancouver Sun.
The average consumer debt load in Vancouver is over $40k, and that’s without mortgages on expensive property.
The average consumer debt in Vancouver, excluding mortgage, is the highest in Canada, according to a new report.
TransUnion’s quarterly analysis of Canadian credit trends, released on Wednesday, found that the average consumer’s total debt in the city in the third quarter of this year was $40,174. The second-highest was Calgary’s debt, at $37,920.
Nationally, the average consumer debt was $27,355.
Read the full article here.
Remember when the area of False Creek that houses the Olympic Village was an semi-industrial wasteland?
Then we all pitched in and built an enormous number of high end condos at taxpayer expense.
Now everything is awesome.
…With the exception of a few problems.
It’s a busy Vancouver neighbourhood, that according to residents is riddled with problems reminiscent of the Downtown Eastside.
Police have been called to one building 215 times since May and that is more than 30 times a month, more than one call every day.
On Friday a cab driver was robbed in broad daylight and threatened with a needle.
The Olympic Village was marketed to families, retirees and young professionals. Some social housing was always on the table but condo owners say they did not bargain for this.
“I’ve seen an unfortunate drop in the cleanliness in the area because of random pets that people have,” says one resident. “There’s definitely a lot of garbage that has been left on the street, and graffiti, some people sleep on the stoops outdoors.”
“It’s become quite strange.”
Read the full article here.
What’s the time?
It’s Free-for-all time!
If this is friday that means it’s time for 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:
-A $29.6 Million price drop?
-Beijing hunts for RE dirty money
-1/2 mil in crack town?
-T dot condo glut
-Financial advice
-Bad financial advice?
-Bad traffic, world class like LA
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So what are you seeing out there? Post your news links, thoughts and anecdotes here and have an excellent weekend!
After last years abysmally low number of home sales, some people will be glad to know that sales have climbed.
Unfortunately that hasn’t done anything for prices.
The REBGV has released their october stats package and the composite benchmark price for all properties has actually dropped slightly from where it was a year ago, dipping a tiny half a percentage point.
The Province see this as a big rebound for the most expensive real estate market in Canada.
George pointed out this this story about a strata council member who bilked condo owners out of $160K.
The moral of the story? Check your strata documents carefully and don’t accept photocopies of photocopy receipts.
In court Monday, Patrick Au was also given two years probation and ordered to pay back the entire $160,000. He pleaded guilty to theft and fraud over $5,000.
Au was a volunteer member of the strata for Gardenia Villa, a 250-unit condo building near Broadway and Nanaimo Street in East Vancouver.
Over a four-year period, starting in 2001, Au slowly took control of the strata’s finances and started siphoning off funds for his personal gain.
If the name Gardenia Villa sounds familiar, it may be because it’s been in the news before as the unfortunate leaky condo where the repair bill was higher than the construction cost.
Read the full article here.
It’s hard to buy your first place.
Thats why more and more parents are chipping in to help junior get their feet in the real estate market.
“The (housing) market would have been much weaker if we didn’t have this phenomenon. There’s no question about that,” says Tal, deputy chief economist of CIBC World Markets.
“I’d say this generation is getting more help than any other generation did, but I’d say they need this help more than any generation, too.”
Interest rates may be keeping monthly payments relatively affordable, but the big issue for young first-time buyers has been coming up with sizable downpayments when the average price of a home in the GTA is now more than $534,000 — more than $850,000 for a detached in the City of Toronto — almost double the $293,000 they averaged just a decade ago.
Saving can be especially tough when many first-time buyers are still paying off student loans and dealing with rents that can run from $1,100 to more than $2,000 a month.
Read the full article in the The Star.
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