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Latest Anecdotes:
- Chat Thread
- 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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I vote Hockey Stick Boy as Most Likely to be Arrested on Circumstantial Evidence for 2011.
I doubt it, Hockey Stick Boy’s dad owns too many condos. We wouldn’t want to scare them all away now, would we?
As a side note, I hope Gregor Robertson sets aside his rose colored glasses once and for all. Although I commend him for believing we live in a perfect, non violent utopian society, a little common sense would have prevented much of what occurred last night. Why the riot cops weren’t setup ready for battle after the second period is beyond me. You have to wonder if they even saw this coming. Anyway, none of this matters anymore, the party is over for Vancouver.
Hockey Stick Boy, aka Jason Li, was arrested this morning. He was an Lt Air Cadet:
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=710181751
“Vancouver is a world class city…” – Mayor Gregor Robertson in a hastily issued statement [G&M]
Thanks, Nem.
The quote was remarkable, so much so we’ll give it more prominence, somewhere.
see what i was saying about this place???
Didn’t any of these selfish louts care what offshore investors would think of all this?
It was the last thing on their booze-soaked minds, but you make a valid point.
This event will certainly give Chinese investors pause. They may have had an unrealistic picture of Vancouver as a tranquil and socially harmonious city, and will now be left blinking in surprise.
In China, social tensions occasionally boil over into rioting, with a degree of resentment against the wealthy, who therefore seek to prepare a safe haven overseas for their money and their families just in case things really go sour back home. And they’re quite selective, because overseas Chinese communities have historically been scapegoated in some countries (think Indonesia in the 1960s, and countless other examples).
So even though foreigners were not at all the target here, any sign of a propensity to riot can only be perceived as a very bad thing, overseas. And that will have ominous consequences.
Although foreign investors are only one component of the overall Vancouver real-estate picture, even a small hiccup in demand will be the trigger for a crash in a bubble market poised on the knife-edge between melt-up and melt-down.
NBD. Riots are more common in world-class cities where anarchism has deeper roots.
I would hardly describe Athens as world class.
More world class than Vancouver. At least they have a nice climate and the Acropolis.
The riots will end one day.
What does “world class city” mean, anyway? (I never heard this phrase until I came to Canada.)
Athens isn’t Paris, but it is an ancient capitol.
@Yank, yeah the term “world class” is more of a sardonic joke for me. It is used to allude to Vancouver aspiring to be ranked the “best city in the world”, its high real estate prices and high livability rankings used as evidence it has arrived.
I don’t think any city that actually is world class would ever use the term, or even frame things in those terms. Too intrinsic a quality.
it would be a shame if they burnt the bay building down – but somewhere, an re developer is getting excited
But wait — I thought Vancouver was the Best Place On Earth, there’s so much natural beauty and so much wealth, everyone wants to live there, etc.?
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=a0e_1308204438
lawl
What a bunch of sociopaths the people in this city have become…
What were these street tv organizers thinking? This city has a real problem being honest with itself in regards to it’s many problems. It continues to stick it’s fingers in it ears while repeating the same old “best place on earth” rhetoric. Individuals who you would expect to be rational individuals actually described themselves as being in tears over a frigging GAME.
I got sick of hearing “We won, we won.!!!” , during these games from the usual sport crazed slugs.
“We” didn’t win shit, hope that’s clear enough now.
but our team is so douchey they retired the #7, because the fans are the 7th player on the ice! no kidding and they unretired the dead player’s # to give to messier while stripping linden of the captaincy.
we are class, kudos to the hockey media for the psy-ops PR campaign re: tire pumping.. yeesh
Just saw a video on CBC about the costs of the riots. They mentioned 1.5 million dollars. That’s less than one house on the Westside.
The really strange part is though, the news reporter switched the topic to house prices falling 26% after the 1994 riots. Seems he had a lot more worries on his head than the actual riots themselves.
Here’s the video, Vancouver riot costs. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2011/06/16/bc-riot-thursday.html
looks like facebook might actually be usefull after all
I think there might be a little frustration among the non-homeowner class in Vancouver.
Real Estate is driven by mass pschology. Mass psychology just took a wrong turn.
Before we assume the mainland Chinese will be frightened of our lawlessness,remember they are fleeing their own country, with loot attained by means which run counter to their own laws.
Dan, that is a great way of putting it: less than one house on the Westside. I think people don’t have perspective on the numbers, sometimes.
The fretting about our image is really shocking to me, actually, rather than the human and economic cost – a number of CTV’s interviews with fans leaving, shocked by the riot, and the things people were saying was that this was bad publicity after the uplift of the Olympics and threatened our image. I understand civic embarrassment, and I understand the sadness that this sort of hooliganism is wrecking our core, but how it affects Vancouverites who live and work in that area is of more concern to me.
And yet, in some way the concern IS how it affects Vancouverites, because we have come to believe our worth is in how we appear.
Thanks for comments and discussion all.
Next post is up focussing on the cbc.ca piece that Dan linked above (thanks Dan).
If you like, continue ‘riot related’ discussion there.
I know there was a riot in ’94 and even in ’02 after the GNR noshow. After the success of the Olympics, I was starting to think “it’s different this time”.
Does anyone remember – way back in the day – when the visiting American sportscaster Howard Cosell called Vancouver a “village”? The outrage was stupendous!
Well, it appears that Vancouver is still a village filled with idiots.
I wonder how the Vancouver Tourism is going to spin this one… The spokesperson was almost literally gushing about how “world class” Vancouver was because we hosted the Olympics and the Stanley Cup Finals…
Nice collection of idiots.
Vancouver is a world class village with an inferiority complex
“An estimated 15,000 people of all ages streamed into the heart of Vancouver as early as 5 a.m. to clean up the bloody footprints, scrub the offensive graffiti, to try to make amends for the damage cause by hooligans and looters after Wednesday night’s Stanley Cup loss.
Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/sports/Thousands+stream+into+Vancouver+clean+after+riot/4958518/story.html#ixzz1PVQHV4CF
yes, this city has hiccup too. what do you about it beside the non-stop bitching? let me guess, non of you were one of those 15,000 people.
lol how do you know none of us cleaned up?
how do you know others of us were letting keynesian economics get to work??
15,000 do sanctimonious do-gooders don’t grab headlines like blood and fire.
i will laugh at all the flippers right in their faces.
ok, so my drunken english is on par with the best engrish, sorry.
Here’s a site calling out all the losers that have been identified so far:
http://www.forumvancouver.com/threads/vancouver-riot-downtown-after-canucks-lose-stanley-cup-2011.1305/
Apparently this “repressed soul” who had a water polo scholarship to U of C, and comes from a wealthy Maple Ridge family with a surgeon father has now been expelled, kicked off the team and has lost his scholarship so regardless of whether the 17 year old gets charged, he has ruined his life as from now on whenever he applies for a job and they type Nathan Kotylak into google they will find him lighting a police car on fire…I sense a name change in the future:
http://publicshamingeternus.wordpress.com/2011/06/17/nathan-kotylak-water-polo-all-star-lighting-police-car/