pricedoutfornow at vancouvercondo.info March 23rd, 2011 at 10:56 am- “I wrote my MP and told him a nice story of a guy I know who has a $900k mortgage, thanks to the CMHC and the government of Canada. I pointed out that this guy has to rent out 80% of the property to make the mortgage payments, and still managed to qualify for a loan, despite the fact that he’s never made more than $50k per year in his entire working life. Problem? Nahh….Of course, if this same guy had approached a bank for a business loan in the same amount he’d be shown the door so fast. But because it’s a HOUSE he bought, the bank welcomes him with open arms, since who cares if he defaults? CMHC will take care of it. No problem! Of course no politician wants to admit that this could be a problem. But I’m sure they all see the writing on the wall.”
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- Taking A Break
- “My best guess: this property is now an ‘investment hold’ and will be built ‘when prices recover’. Good luck on that!”
- Man Loses $745,000 Vancouver Condo Deposit
- Graphic – Degrees of Housing Overvaluation in Canada
- The Rare Individual With A Negative Ownership Premium
- Advice Regarding Renting In Vancouver, Please – “Unfortunately, the Vancouver rental stock is absolutely atrocious. It just seems like every landlord is looking for someone to pay 100% of their mortgage on a crappy place through rental income.”
- “I just visited Manhattan for a week, and happened to snap some real estate ads on both the Upper West and Upper East sides of the island. Compare to Vancouver. It simply doesn’t compute.”
- Ben Rabidoux In Vancouver Next Week
- “The mortgage company told me they were calling in my 40-year, 0-down mortgage. I have paid nearly sixty thousand dollars towards it, but, nearly five years in, I have yet to touch the principal.”
- ‘Vancouver City Hall: Housing Report Card 2012′; Plus Revised Version
- “My folks find themselves at 65 still owing half the value of their home and recreation property to the bank. After almost 30 years of ownership in the BPOE and a number of boom markets, they have very little to show for it.”
- “Rent for $2,200 a month or buy and have a mortgage of $4,310 per month. Why would anyone buy?”
- “They were talking about two couples they knew who had recently bought a lot and planned to each build a house on it and live as neighbours.”
- Greater Vancouver Home Builders’ Association Annual First-Time Buyer Seminar Attendance Plummets
- Mom and Pop Get It Wrong In All Markets, Time And Again
- The average British Columbian homeowner is not going to pay off their mortgage by the time they retire.
- “He’s sold all his properties except his current one, which is now for sale. He explained that the market’s currently in crash mode, worst that he’s ever seen.”
- “One of my old high school buddies finally got her mother to sell the family home in Kitsilano – sold for over $1M, monies realized after debt paid off $185K.”
- “I know someone who just declared bankruptcy because her condo was assessed at $150k and she bought it presale north of $250k in 2005 or 2006.”
- Sturdy, With Views – “Calling Froogle Scott!… Is Dr. Scott ‘In The House’?” [Not In This One, Certainly]
- “She said the market was dead in Victoria and that it would remain so for a very long time. I asked how she knew. Her answer was fascinating and should scare the pants off the real estate crowd.”
- Kits Notes – “I’m pretty sure that this is the first 3+ bedroom property of any type that I’ve seen in the 5 years I’ve lived here that is priced below $700K.”
- “A beautiful Belfast home, in the equivalent of 1st Shaughnessy, bought at their RE peak in 2007 for £3.5 million, has now sold for £800K, almost 80%-off. The market didn’t suffer any significant economic shocks. Rates & unemployment didn’t skyrocket. They didn’t build more land. Sentiment just changed and the prices fell and fell.”
- “Two family members of hers are trapped, underwater, in condos on the East Side.”
- “Interprovincial migration is not saying good things about BC’s economy.”
- Vancouver RE: Not As Expensive Provided You Don’t Think – “It’s clear that our perception of affordability has been coloured by living on a continent where housing is unusually inexpensive.”
- More Undisclosed RE Industry Insiders Publicized As Clients – “In 1995, Allan and Karin Hoegg were mortgage-free. But no more. Today their Vancouver home is a valuable source of income as they plan for full retirement.”
- Rumor that some OV units will be reduced by 20%.
- Downside Weights On The Vancouver RE Market – “One of the older guys (over 60) mention to the guy beside him that he and his wife were thinking about selling their family home, and renting, in order to get some of the money that was locked up in the house.”
- “My buddy was looking to upgrade to a house in the Coquitlam area. With 200k extra for a home, that’s half of lifetime saving between him and his wife.”
- “I was walking in the Fraser neighborhood yesterday, I noticed that the population, on average, seem to be composed of workers. I belong to the top 5 percent in terms of income. Nevertheless, I cannot afford any of the houses for sale in that neighbourhood.”
- “Vancouver is an urban resort whose value mostly resides in its real estate and not much else.”
- “Rogers Communications is expanding into RE; aiming to relaunch website; providing critical data that can help potential buyers assess the value of a property from the comfort of their home computer.”
- I’m only 50 and I can just about retire if I want to, all because of a single simple decision – “When prices rebounded to their former highs, then rocketed another 30% higher to what I considered to be totally unsustainable levels, I decided that only a fool would pass up a second opportunity to harvest such a massive non-taxable capital gain, and in 2011 I sold my place.”
- The Vacant Lot of Versailles, Richmond.
- “I don’t think that most people think things are going to crash, just that there is going to be a slight correction, but it was amazing to me how sentiment has changed, and the fact Vancouver RE is too high was just understood.”
- “The ‘investor’ who purchased our house put it up for sale two months later, in January 1981, but the bubble had burst.”
- For A City To Have That Kind Of Vacancy, It’s Like Cancer – “Downtown, the vacant unit rate is so high that it’s as though there were 35 towers at 20 storeys apiece – all empty.”
- “What’s the worst that can happen? You can’t pay your mortgage, so sell your house! No fear.”
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Writing an MP is pretty much the same as begging. Or worse. The politicians don’t care. Many of them probably have mortgages themselves. Most own homes. High prices and moral hazard are in their interest as well as in the interest of almost all existing debtors. Unless you consider the long term effects… but who cares about long term, right? The party is right now!
I don’t think it matters what party is in power either. They all resort to the same useless (to voters) tactics and instead favor the useful (to politician) tactics. We have a fake democracy in Canada, which doesn’t appear to have a solution to fix.
Thus, the solution is not to vote them in but to vote them OUT before further damage is incurred. See what happened /is still happening to USA after 3 continuous terms of George Bush Jr, and el Grodo.
From a career pol’s perspective, ordinary constituents are as close to the bottom of the political food chain as you can get… Occasionally useful, perhaps, for 6 o’clock optics – but more often than not, a nuisance.
When you’re playing for keeps the ‘name of the game’ is, first and foremost, always ‘TheMoney’. Accordingly, if you want to play – you’ve gotta pay.
For the empiricists among you – a recent, exhaustive/rigorous academic longtitudinal study of American Congressional/Senatorial voting records established clear/causal patterns/linkages to the role of campaign finance in influencing politicians’ voting records/legislative priorities… When I stumble upon it again… I’ll link to it here.
I think a system where central bankers have a lot less power or just plain don’t exist is probably better than what we have right now. I see the problem is the in the very nature of money itself is a cause of the political problems we suffer.
Money itself has no value so going back to gold as a physical money is not a good idea. The purpose of money in my view is simply to gain the co-operation of others and in the process get what you and offer what others need. Perhaps in some future we will have better institutions with better ways of controlling the creation of money and distributing it.
it would help if the board of the BoC wasn’t comprised entirely of the boards of all the big banks, too.
it’s a comfortable kind of hell. i think the truth is that everyone CAN understand the flaws/glaring problems, but there is a severe lack of political will to do so. they’d rather sip a chai latte and leaf through carpet samples than get out in the streets and take some kind of zealous, ethical stance on the complete orgy of greed all around us – that just doesn’t fit the mold of a ‘normal person’ does it?
oooo nachos..
RU, I think you’re underestimating the ability and motive of the Bank of Canada. The mandate of the BoC (and any other central bank) isn’t to make social policy. Its job is to make sure that the economy of Canada isn’t being run into the ground. The tools by which the BoC can use to prevent this sort of shit are rather blunt and come in the form of monetary policy. Once in a while you’ll hear interesting stories like David Dodge summoning the head of the CMHC into his office to ask WTF (I think this happened in 2006 or 2007) but by and large the BoC has bigger problems on its hands like inflation, lending rates to other banks, and other shit related to fractional reserve banking.
But you hit the nail on the head. Housing policy is political.
Pass the nachos please.
How the world really works… at least, in the HillBillyRiviera…
[PentictonHerald] – Race to replace Day was rigged say some hopefuls
“…a clear abuse of the electoral process.” – former fundraising chair for Stockwell Day Mischa Popoff – “It’s clear Albas had insider knowledge of Stockwell Day’s retirement. So did his two opponents (Neufeld and Ensign) who, like Albas, served for years on Day’s board…”
“Day let all the (sic) three of these insiders know he was retiring and then made his announcement public so late that no one else could get into the race. Many highly qualified candidates were turned away simply because they didn’t get their paperwork in on time, a scheme that was deliberately orchestrated by (Sharpe).”
http://tinyurl.com/6xb4bws
Yeah, we’d agree with sentiment expressed:
-Writing MPs is unlikely to have any effect (unless done with strong evidence that a large and powerful group of voters is behind the sentiment expressed. Not the case in this instance.)
- The policies of the party in power have less effect on economic/market matters than extraneous factors such as economic cycle, market cycle, currency values, commodity prices, etc.
Our system is an oligarchy lightly disguised as a democracy.
Anybody know examples of better existing systems?
So far, this may be about as good as it’s gotten.
the frustrating part is that it’s so ugly when you boil it down like that – then you step outside and the sun is shining and the birds are chirping, everyone is toiling away 9-5 to keep the whole thing running… it’s all so futile – yet if we were better educated, critical thinking people, would things be different?
no one wants to hear it, no one wants to know.
a friend’s mom just posted a ‘rant’ on facebook bitching about people who ‘complain’ that their lives are a disaster, have some personal responsibility you losers, etc. etc. and i can’t help but think.. you’re a florist that has a mortgage – let’s see how this plays out. but reading her sentiment and that of her friends sort of makes me think Steve-O is going to get his majority.
i’ll never forget my personal ‘aha’ moment, sitting on the bus reading ‘manufacturing consent’ – then looking up at all the advertisements for Global News.. it was either that or the zoomers, not sure.
i found a better system:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/reddit/where-white-man-went-wrong
Bingo, RU!!!… I’ll see your, ‘TwoEagles’….
and raise you one, ‘Shaman’…
http://tinyurl.com/4zu7qep
and seven Diné…
http://tinyurl.com/4gwtu67
three Piegan…
http://tinyurl.com/4zhxve8
one Hupa….
http://tinyurl.com/4pcuqed
and, all in, with 3 Noatak….
http://tinyurl.com/4jd363c
Yes, ‘Nemesis’ is a great admirer of ShadowCatcher… and longs to get ‘back on the rez’… MonumentValley
i’ve been familiar with the seminole wars and subsequent displacement to reservations in oklahoma but today i was reading about the ‘trail of tears’ – some of the routes taken are now marked along medians between strip malls, etc. really surreal – reminds me of seeing a passed out aboriginal man with a bottle of booze in his hand lying at the foot of a giant statue of queen elizabeth in brisbane.
i remember a year or two ago there was a big outrage about the video signs along the #1 and #99 put up by the squamish band, and in response to accusations of damaging the landscape, the chief said during the meeting – or something to this effect “i think it’s a little late for that, don’t you?”
we all had a hoot about that.
if i can quote burroughs – ‘i am with the invaders, no doubt about that’ – but in my mind’s eye i can picture this continent pristine and a way of life completely foreign to us now, though far more valid.
i’m rambling – flip that house! wooo let’s all buy X5s
the MP might come back to you and ask if this guy can do it, why can’t you?
Can’t say it better!
metalhead Says:
March 24th, 2011 at 7:39 am
“the CMHC’s board of directors—a board that includes a political consultant, real estate developers, a small-town lawyer and even the owner of a plumbing company—though not one single economist or recognizable financial services professional.”
Good article. I found this little tidbit interesting.
This “board” is the cherry on top of the cow pattie that is the CMHC.