Barb at greaterfool.ca 18 Feb 2011 4:02am and 4:10am- “Today in Vancouver, the radio station “News 1130″ had a doozer of a headline. Bob Rennie is selling a bunch of the Olympic condos at 30% less that original asking. Should the people who paid full price be able to sue?!!! Are you kidding me??? 60% of responders said no. That leaves 40% of people who think that people that were crazy enough to pay ridiculous prices for a little space in Vancouver should be compensated for their stupidity and greed. So, if they happened to have made a ton of money on the investment they could keep it, but losing isn’t allowed???!!!”
“I just looked up the radio announcement [and poll] from news 1130. It was 34% who thought the people who bought the Olympic condos prior to the 30% discount should be able to sue!!! What are they thinking??”
Thank you, Barb; we share your exasperation regarding this issue. 34% of the responders (at the point of posting this) are of the opinion that “people who paid a premium for a condo in the former Olympic Village have grounds to sue”. Methodological issues aside (the actual number could be considerably more, or less), this is amazing, eh? It’s an example of a ‘moral hazard’ mind-set: the tendency to take on inappropriate risk with the expectation of being protected from any future negative free-market forces. This phenomenon will not only manifest at the Olympic Village, it’ll be broad when price drops start in earnest across all properties. We’ll have cries for bail-outs from RE owners. The politics of all that will probably get gruesome, particularly since the politicians, and their families, and their supporters, and the RE industry shoring up their communities’ economies, are all up to the eye-balls in leveraged RE.
(sigh) -vreaa
This is on par with thinking you should be compensated because you failed to purchase a certain stock that was trading at $10.00 and now it’s trading at $20.00. It has to be somebody’s fault you missed out on buying that stock.
If these people are successful at this lawsuit, it is going to open the door up for many, many, many, more lawsuits.
In effect they are saying they are not responsible for their poor decision making. This tactic should not work, because if it does, it will change the face of the real estate industry completely. In fact, it will probably bring it to its knees for a time being, killing the market in the meantime.
“So, if they happened to have made a ton of money on the investment they could keep it, but losing isn’t allowed???!!!”
Hey, it works for US banks.
I think this is just another sign of things unravelling.
There is no way they could sue. It’s sad that such a large proportion of people think they could.
Hey let them sue. The developers and RE people did their best to deceive people into buying into these “dreams”.
If they win then it will open the doors for all the other people who feel screwed over by the RE Mafia and Developers, I got zero problems with that a bit of blood letting in those circles is way overdue.
One worrisome aspect of this litigious immaturity is that the developer (Millenium) walked away from the property after declaring bankruptcy and leaving the City of Vancouver on the hook . So, if these people do sue – which seems preposterous, but this the land of the entitled, you never know – they’ll be making the taxpayer pay, yet again. It’s also due to the absence of developer responsibility that the City is now having buyers of Millenium condos sign a waiver exempting them from any liability from problems with the condo structure and system infrastucture. The condos , remember, incorporated ‘green technology’ for their heating and waste systems and there is potential here for such systems to go sideways. Still, what irks me most about all of this is that a developer such as Millenium just gets to walk and leave everyone else holding the bag.
I thought the City of Vancouver had liens on Millenium’s other properties such as Evelyn in West Vancouver.
If you look at some of the sneaky things lawyers are doing, they’re not suing Millennium because there is no $ in it. They are suing the City for mis-representation or other tort that caused Village values to drop.
Let them sue, but when are people going to realize that it doesn’t matter any more who gets the money. At this point it’s entertainment, like a pack of dogs fighting over a scrap of meat.
CBC Radio interviewed a lawyer from HarperGrey the other evening – he mentioned that every prospective buyer has to sign a waiver releasing the City of Vancouver from any liabilities with regards to the unit, the building or the site. Furthermore, the warranty runs out in September 2011 although the city has (supposedly) said they will backstop structural deficiencies for another 8 years (not in writing so far). The entity that “owns” the Olympic Village is a shell company with no assets so good luck attempting to get any problems resolved in the future.
Whatever happened to buyer beware?
It was replaced with $$$$$ glasses.
Par for the course. If a lawyer can create enough of a stink to give the developer bad press, there’s money to be made. It’s happened before, most notably at the end of 2008 and early 2009 when nothing was moving and developers were offering deep discounts on properties. They often ended up compensating existing owners for the discounts to keep the bad press to a minimum.