Realtors To Owner - "We're getting A LOT of requests for mid priced listings ($450,000-$550,000). A very large number of those requests are coming from folks south of the border, mostly from California and New York, who see Vancouver as well priced."

American investors buying Vancouver RE in current market conditions are buying high priced RE in a high priced currency, so they absolutely have to be momentum investors, believing that assets which have run up will only run up further. This is the opposite of techniques used by value and contrarian investors, who look to purchase undervalued assets. For momentum investing to work, the investor has to be nimble, and able to sell if the market turns and begins to head down. This is the equivalent of using a ‘trailing stop’. It can work in the stock market, where one can sell within seconds of making a few keystokes. In RE, however, where selling can take days, weeks or even months, and markets can become very illiquid, momentum investors can be left high and dry. This anecdote is also interesting because it comes at the same time as other stories of Canadian investors taking advantage of the US RE pullback and the strong loonie to buy US properties. So these US investors really would be swimming against the stream. -vreaa

raventalk at RE Talks 18 Mar 2010 9:26 am -

“I’ve been deluged in the last two weeks by realtor mail asking me to list my properties. I usually see two or three listing flyers a month – to date this month I’ve received over twenty mailings. Almost all of my properties are on Seymour, so I got to wondering if properties along this corridor are in greater demand than other properties – which I doubted. I was just trying to understand why realtors are so motivated to list new properties at this point, more than any other time I can recall.  So…I spoke to the two realtors I actually hang out with, play rugby with actually, both of them are downtown based, concentrate on lofts. Both of them had basically the same response – We’re getting A LOT of requests for mid priced listings ($450,000-$550,000) and need to build some inventory in that range. A very large number of those requests are coming from folks south of the border, mostly from California and New York, who see Vancouver as well priced. Can’t say I agree (prices seem high to me), but if I’m just one owner receiving these kind of inquiries, could the ongoing increase in listing numbers somehow be related to realtors rush/push for listings?”