“A colleague dropped by my office the other day to announce that he had recently bought a new home in Calgary with a $400k mortgage. (Better school catchment area) A recent arrival from India, he asked about selling his old place that has a $300k mortgage. He thought he should keep it and rent it for a net monthly loss of $200.
I asked how long it would take him to pay off $700k and he had to think about it for a while, but it worked out to about 30 years or more. He obviously had not considered this and seemed surprised at the result. I launched into a lesson about Calgary’s fortunes being tied to oil prices and told him about 1982, the ’90s, and 2009. He blanched and left my office immediately.”
- armourb at VREAA 22 Jun 2012 8:32am
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- 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.”
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- “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.”
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- “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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Your bad for telling him about reality.
What a monstrosity!!!
“A 30-storey glass arch structure of up to 2,000 residential units will act as a window between BC Place and False Creek, anchoring a massive mixed-use complex that will transform a dead zone into the heart of a vibrant entertainment district, according to a proposal to the city.”
Best comment is by jhane ball:
“Most of us realise that the loose the viaducts plan is really all about freeing up more land for the developers and not the creation of so called human scale parks and neighbourhoods. But seriously if this design is the best Vancouver architects can do and a sample of the shape of things to come, not only visually, but density wise, then g** help us.”
Forgot to post link:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/proposed-complex-would-pump-life-into-dead-zone/article4391250/
And, over at Turner’s blog, a link to a blog post by a realtor who is cashing out… and advises others to do the same:
http://keithroy.com/blog.html/time-to-cash-out–1976393
Rennie won’t be happy…
The same realtor was on CBC and gave the same message. The was also a Burnaby realtor who agreed. This was in sharp contrast to spokesperson fron the real estate board on Simi Sara’s cknw phone in show earlier who argued that the market is stable making it a great time to buy. I guess you have to support your advertisers…..
The success of “cashing out at the peak” relies on the buyers not knowing that prices will be cheaper in a few months. Roy relies on Sara’s listeners to keep the game going.
“cashing out at the peak”
peak was sometime between Feb and May 2011
My contention continues to be that the top was June 15th 2011. That was the date of the Stanley cup Riot. Mark Carney appeared earlier that day before the Vancouver board of Trade and gave one of his most significant addresses on the state of housing in Canada. He had a heap of slides and charts and data and pretty much made most of the realtors skirm in their seats like little children. Later that day the local hoodlums left downtown Vancouver a smoking ruin after the Canucks lost game seven. Nothing has been quite the same since.
Will he be “disowned” by the realtor association?
I think the best term is “maverick”.
Thanks E.G., I will headline this.
It is of particular interest as Keith Roy is the same realtor who was the subject of fairly remarkable National Film Board series in 2009, featured and discussed in a post here 10 Dec 2009.
See:
“I am Realtor. Nothing Realtorian is Alien to Me.”
http://vreaa.wordpress.com/2009/12/10/i-am-realtor-nothing-realtorian-is-alien-to-me/
Another worthwhile read:
http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Vancouver+style+high+rents+drag+national+economy+report/6884931/story.html
No idea if anyone has posted this or not, however, just the pics are interesting if nothing else.
“To give you an idea of what you can buy in each of these cities for around $370,000—the average home resale price in Canada—we’ve included photos and descriptions of recently listed homes.”
“So exactly where is it a good time to buy now? You may be surprised to learn that it’s not the mighty urban centres like Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto.”
http://www.moneysense.ca/2012/05/29/where-to-buy-now/
did a post of mine get lodged in the que?
Here is some tips to stay out of the Mod Que and not get posts hung up.
1) Write quickly. Slow writing, bathroom breaks and going out for a smoke before hitting submit get the hook for some odd reason.
2) Avoid cursing and other profanities. I get the book for that often.
3) Limit your links to other sites. More than two is a guarantee to be sent back for editorial checks.
4) Don’t say you were “bombed” if you meant “drunk” because Homeland Security is watching and their filters can’t figure it out that well so humans need to look it over.
5) Never use racial slang, taunts or similar inflammatory language.
6) Loooonggggg posts almost always get nipped for review.
7) There is more but I can’t think of them now. Too many beer.
kc -> Worse, it got lodged in the ‘spam’ section, but has been retrieved and released to work its magic.
Thanks for the attempted filter analysis, Farmer.
To review the whole mod thang for those who are interested: There is one (only one) poster, named ‘fred’, who posts absolutely senseless trollish drivel (samples upon request), and who necessitated the use of some mod filters (his urls). For some reason, since doing that, the mod threshold has been generally raised and many ordinary comments get held back. I think Farmer accurately identifies some of the criteria the filters use. More often than not, I can’t figure out precisely why a comment gets held back. About 2 comments per day are held back (plus fred’s comments… fred keeps posting, pretty much daily, I’m not sure if he even realizes that his comments aren’t seen by readers.). I always release comments in the mod queue the moment I see them.
Occasionally (as with kc’s comment above) a valid comment will get sent directly to ‘spam’ which raises difficulties, because there are oft times hundreds of spam comments in that filter, and I don’t routinely wade through them to rescue possible gems.
Lastly, if it is any consolation, my own comments occasionally get caught in the mod queue. Figure that one out. Overall, though, it should be said that wordpress is a very good blog platform (no benefit to me for endorsing them!).
I admit I really just dreamed up those reasons. They match my experiences. Long blithering posts with plenty of cursing are almost a guarantee to getting sent to detention. It is really hard to talk about some of the antics and comments of foolish realtors and even more foolish buyers without breaking an artery now and again…….I am a bit surprised by how fast the Vancouver bubble is coming apart, by the way. This one will not end with a whimper.
These videos are infuriating:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2012/07/04/bc-vancouver-real-estate.html?cmp=rss
Volume leads price. The whole thing is unfolding like clockwork. Spring 2013 will see price reductions of at least 25% because of these longs holding out for a stronger market. And then the slow steady grind down in price after that as the bubble deflates.
No more infuriating as CBC’s inability to find an “uber bear” to offer some orthogonal thought. Are their editors averse to using nontraditional sources because it would make them look silly, or are they just lazy?