Comments on: Group Anecdote: “How Exposed Are You To The Vancouver Real Estate Market?”

By: Canada's Poorest Postal Code

Canada's Poorest Postal Code — Thu, 07 May 2009 01:31:38 +0000

Whoopsie:

Guy I know paid the same amount of money for his 1 bedroom, 675 sq. ft. condo in Dec. 2008 as for his house in Jan. 2005 – $335,000. Yikes.

This person is far from stupid and makes an excellent salary. Greed can make anyone do crazy things.

By: Canada's Poorest Postal Code

Canada's Poorest Postal Code — Thu, 07 May 2009 01:25:22 +0000

I’m another zero – sorry to further skew your survey results.

I think the reason you might not be getting more results is that anyone who is invested in RE is feeling a little a burned these days. Even if someone’s property is 100% paid off and generating revenue, it’s worth less than it was a year ago. Not seeing gains from quarter to quarter or year to year is depressing. The only thing going up these days is property tax.

You would have had to sort through many more responses when the boom times were rolling a year ago. One year ago, a guy I know could have written in with these facts:

May 1, 2008: SFH in Vancouver – 5 beds, 4 baths, 2 kitchens, over 3000 sq. ft – bought in
Jan. 2005 for $335,000. Excellent revenue. Worth at least double the purchase price in three short years. Yee-haw!

May 1, 2009: SFH in Vancouver 85% paid off, but just had to buy 10-yr.-old condo in West End last December after prices had gone down (temporarily) an incredible 10%!!. No money down, will try to re-fi to pay off the other 15% left on SFH mortgage. Oh, guess that didn’t work. RE worth as of today – negative. But not selling the condo – oh, no! It’s going up, up, up.

You could see why this guy wouldn’t be rushing to fill in the blanks on this survey, or the many others like him/her.

When my student loan is paid off at last, I will become a true zero, or neutral. That doesn’t seem so lowly when so many of yesterday’s “haves” are now “have nots”.

By: vreaa

vreaa — Fri, 01 May 2009 14:28:32 +0000

Jim -
Thanks for being the only person bold enough to reply here.
Extrapolating from your single data point, nobody in Vancouver has any equity in Real Estate!
Just joking, of course – What it probably shows (here and on RE Talks) is that people with RE positions are reluctant to share that information with others (and perhaps even reluctant to see the numbers in black and white for themselves?).

By: Jim DeLaHunt

Jim DeLaHunt — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 10:57:25 +0000

I’ll start.

For me, x = 0, y = 0. 0% of net worth in real estate (except that some of my other assets, e.g. stocks, are based on real estate). Leverage ratio = 0/0.

I’m just about to finish a one-year lease on a nice condo in Yaletown. I’m wondering if I can persuade my landlord to drop my rent, or if I can move to a similar apartment with lower rent.