facebook page – ‘Canada home buyers, boycott now’

Posted on 19 May 2011 | 9 Comments

‘Canada home buyers, boycott now’, a facebook page, was launched 20 April 2011. Noted here, for the record.

This entry was posted in 08. Overextended Buyers, 09. Delaying Buying, 10. Demoralized Renters?, 14. Social Effects of the Boom and tagged , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

9 responses to “facebook page – ‘Canada home buyers, boycott now’”

  1. jesse | 19 May 2011 at 6:33 am | Reply

    I encourage the effort. Though similar efforts were tried in Australia with predictable and depressing results:
    http://housing-analysis.blogspot.com/2011/05/busting-buyers-strike.html

  2. Peter Pan | 19 May 2011 at 8:25 am | Reply

    This effort reminds me of those “don’t buy gas on Thursday” movements… Even if they reduce demand temporarily, they just displace it to another day… As well, there is very little “social cohesion” in today’s society… People will do what they think will benefit themselves over the short term. It’s going to take higher prices, higher interest rates, lower rents, greater inflation and/or lower job stability to prick this bubble.

    • 和谐的房地产泡沫 | 19 May 2011 at 8:58 am | Reply

      aren’t all of these things happening right now?

      don’t we know have our very own George Bush in office right now?

      on a long enough time scale, it’s all in the pipe anyways.

  3. bubbly | 19 May 2011 at 10:15 am | Reply

    Better than begging the government for more regulation.

    This is a good one:

    Let the market be FREE!!, kill CMHC and stop pushing risk onto tax payers!!! Affordability is NOT defined by temporarily low interest rates, it is in the utilmate PRICE. Stop robbing your children of their future and slaving them to excessive debt

    100% agree.

    They should make this message a lot more prominent:

    Canadians against debt

    Don’t become a debt slave. Home prices are in bubble throughout Canada and are way over-priced. Boycott home buying for now and it will bring down the prices.
    Anyway the prices are going to correct, so don’t get caught at the peak. This boycott will make the process much faster and will stop many naive first time buyers from taking the plunge.

    • jesse | 19 May 2011 at 3:40 pm | Reply

      “Better than begging the government for more regulation.”

      I agree, though I would encourage some restrictions on Vancouver for two reasons. First there are likely some capital flows coming into Vancouver and these have been shown to be unhealthy for long-term economic health of a region (examples in Asia from the late ’90s crisis which affected Vancouver real estate in that era too). In principle there should be some acknowledgement these flows need to be monitored, and at times throttled, carefully; the Bank of Canada agrees with this in principle but does not have authority to act on it.

      Second — and this is more “out there” — there is some indication that much of the “momentum” money is very fickle, evidenced by how quickly the sales in Richmond slowed down after an earthquake on another continent, and a slowdown in Australian real estate after foreign ownership (capital) restrictions were imposed. (I am not assigning causality between the Australian law and subsequent slowdown as fact, to be clear.) If the momentum money is fickle, an imposition that would be viewed as capping the ability of prices to grow would change expectations and cause this money to look elsewhere for greener pastures.

      Government intervention is not the ideal situation — savvy earnings-driven consumer behaviour ideally would be — but there are macro realities at play that are the result of government policy that cause asset bubbles and trans-national capital flows; I don’t think it inappropriate to require additional policies to balance the inherent consequences and trade offs of managing fiat money.

      • bubbly | 19 May 2011 at 4:05 pm |

        The issue with additional policies – they are always built on top of other policies. Usually to fix some of their unintended consequences. The new policies then create their own set of unintended consequences, etc.

      • 和谐的房地产泡沫 | 19 May 2011 at 9:30 pm |

  4. Ralph Kramden | 19 May 2011 at 1:25 pm | Reply

    I think this is a noble, but ultimately, fruitless campaign.

    People think Global TV tells the truth, and morons like ex traffic girl (wow -there’ s a solid background for an RE agent!) Sarah Daniels telling everyone that it’s a “great time to buy”.
    Read “Freakonomics” and see the word “incentive” – repeated ad nauseam…and you catch the drift.

    The Agents make MONEY doing NOTHING, and handing you the keys to a life of worry, debt and you wind up working for the lender.

    The Price of food and fuel is going nowhere but straight up – take a look at the collapse in retail – boarded up stores are really getting common here in delusional Vancouver. There are no jobs….there is no industry…except money laundering, gun running, and drugs.

    There will be a lot of Boomers on the street and when they start losing their homes, they and a lot of other people will ‘lose it’ too.

    Take a look at Camden NJ, Detroit and countless California Cities – bust, broke, tapped – and the criminals and miscreants are watching Police stations close, and schools and services, because Cities are BROKE.

    In Canada – we are addicted to gambling profits. Every Province is in the Casino business. Canadians are the 4th most degenerate gamblers in the world – and it is also evident in housing.

    The mess that is upon us is BIBLICAL…and I salute our host for the even handed look at what the ‘lay of the land’ is.

    Much appreciated voice of reason among the Philistines.

    • 和谐的房地产泡沫 | 19 May 2011 at 1:33 pm | Reply

      but it’s not a mess if no one pays any attention to it, is it?

      then it’s just somebody else’s problem

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