“My concern about this continuing decrease in the US house market is that it appears to be setting them up for an increase in business. My job here in Canada could very well be done by an American faciliy within our own company, and now the US is releasing information that only seems to confirm that their economy is starting to finally grow again. A high Canadian dollar and an extremely high cost of living (housing) combine to make me less competitive against my counterparts in the US. They can agree to take lower compensation and still have a nicer house (better standard of living) than I… my productivity levels are comparable or better when comparing apples to apples, but I get less bang for my buck. Housing prices must come down to ensure that Canada is still competitive on the international stage.”
– Burbs Boy at VCI 29 Feb 2012 12:34pm
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- Vancouver RE Prices – Where is the Support? - Finance Library on Vancouver RE Prices – Where is the Support?
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- Prediction: Vancouver RE Prices Will Not Crash… Unless They Crash - Finance Library on Prediction: Vancouver RE Prices Will Not Crash… Unless They Crash
- john on “I’m surprised that everyone else is so surprised to hear anyone talk about a housing bubble” – “Canadian RE 2021 worse than U.S. bubble at 2006 peak” – David Rosenburg
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Latest Anecdotes:
- “I’m surprised that everyone else is so surprised to hear anyone talk about a housing bubble” – “Canadian RE 2021 worse than U.S. bubble at 2006 peak” – David Rosenburg
- “Always the Right Time to Buy!” – Cheap Rope For Vancouver RE Buyers
- Mortgage Squeeze Anecdotes – “Two days ago my mortgage holder called and told me that, after 22 years, they would not renew my mortgage.”
- Wow! – CMHC CEO Evan Siddall Points To Unsustainable Debt & Calls For 18% Drop In Housing Prices – [which of course would mean a lot more off]
- Prediction: Vancouver RE Prices Will Not Crash… Unless They Crash
- Pre-Existing Disease – COVID Economic Stress Uncovers Longstanding Vulnerability in Vancouver RE Market
- COVID-19 the Pin for the Highly Debt-Leveraged Vancouver RE Bubble?
- Vancouver Sun Headline – ‘Five more Metro Vancouver homeowners hosed in a falling market’
- Vancouver RE Prices – Where is the Support?
- Money Laundering & Vancouver Home Prices
- “Psychologically, They’re Ill-Prepared” – “Canadian Chaos Looms”
- Keeping Up With Other Bubbles – Australia Suddenly Not Running Out Of Land Anymore – “Aussie House Prices Could Halve”
- Watershed? or Dam-Collapsing? – Mainstream Media Quoting Vancouver RE Bear-Tweets, and Predicting Shrinking Realtor Numbers – “What they’re used to is not what real estate is typically like.”
- “Within artistic communities in Vancouver it’s hard to spend more than 15 minutes at a social gathering without talking about the cost of rent or knowing of someone who is being evicted.”
- Macleans Wakes Up – ‘This is how Canada’s housing correction begins’ – “We’re not ready for what happens next”
- Vancouver Detached – Sales Down, Prices Down
- Bloomberg Calls Vancouver ‘The City That Had Too Much Money’
- “Our family loves Vancouver, but we’re leaving because the struggle to live here is simply too hard”
- Tendency Towards Corruption Is Inevitable – How Do We Minimize Its Existence?
- Hard Earned Home Savings? Hardly.
- “You know your real estate is in bad shape when there is a game app that displays Vancouver’s Science World and teaches you how to be a money hungry real estate developer.”
- “It’s sinking in that Vancouver is sinking” – “Westside prices have fallen 17% from 2016 & 11% this year; sales volumes down by 80%; 3 years worth of >$3 Million inventory”
- The Carrion Have The Carcass – “I’ve lived in Vancouver since 1968; my wife was born here; we are about to leave; this town has priced us out. All that is left are the investors and the very rich visitors.”
- All Time High, And Climbing… $251 Billion Personal Debt Borrowed Against Canadian Homes
- “I asked a group of young people how many of them thought they’d be in Vancouver in two years, and 17 out of 18 said that they would be moving.” – Mayoral Candidate Shauna Sylvester
- Off-The-Charts Unaffordable – Greater Vancouver Price-To-Income Ratio 28 (average home price: $1,071,800, median one-person income: $38,164)
- Conflicts of Interest – BC MLAs Heavily Invested In RE Making Laws About RE
- File Under Tags: ‘Tolerant Vancouver Renter’ and ‘YouGottaBeKiddinMe’
- Vancouver “an international housing-affordability basket case” with “RE bubble risk the worst in the world” – Maclean’s
- Vancouver Economy Over-Dependent On Debt Spending
- Vancouver City Councillors Wake Up To ‘Fierce Speculative Demand’ – “There is significant evidence speculative investment has the biggest impact on housing costs in the city.”
- The Dance Around Foreign Ownership of Vancouver RE
- Information From Outside The Vancouver RE Bubble – U.S. Senator Lives In (don’t laugh) $500K Home
- “The Position Remains Unfilled”
- Jessica Barrett – ‘I Left Vancouver Because Vancouver Left Me’ – “Like Living On An Abandoned Film Set.”
- “I’ve thought since early 2010 that Vancouver housing was in a bubble, and have refused to buy a house for this reason. I’ve felt that the risk of mean-reversion was far higher than the risk of missing the upside.”
- “It is very difficult to live here.”
- “We want young people to buy Real Estate.” – Vancouver’s Mayor
- “Vancouver RE Balloon Pricked; Median Price Detached Home Down >$500,000 to $1.7 million; Prices Need To Be Slashed”
- Detached Price Trend Remains Up, For Now. Speculators Hold Their Breath?
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Vancouver Real Estate Anecdote Archive 
‘”They can agree to take lower compensation and still have a nicer house (better standard of living) than I”
Standard of living extends a long way beyond the house you reside in.
Yes. Most of those other things are also more attractive in most areas of the US.
Standard of living extends a long way beyond the house you reside in.
Which is precisely why someone might opt to relocate for lower cost housing. Same house, less money. Money that is then used to enhance your standard of living in other ways.
In the late 1990s, the “brain drain” was the issue of the day in the Globe and Mail and National Post. Possibly we are on the verge of a revival of that nasty little term. More likely, housing will correct here before that becomes a major issue. Employment is still weak in the US, limiting the opportunities to relocate there. The ones relocating right now are the ones who were smart enough to cash in at the top of the Canadian housing bubble, then go look for greener and cheaper pastures down south. I’m sure we can all agree – that opportunity has a limited shelf life. 🙂
You will find, as a general rule, that the nice places in the world to live in have high real estate prices. Inner city Detroit has some very cheap real estate, by comparison.
Yes. I would certainly agree with those statements. Canada has diverged from its primary trading partner in a way that puts our economy at a real disadvantage. We are now at least 5 years (possibly more) behind the US in the great deleveraging process and coming off one of the biggest credit binges either country ever experienced. It means unemployment could be spiking here even as a recovery takes place there for example. For us it will be more trying. We do not control the worlds reserve currency. Generally, our fixes must be paid out of current revenues and tax flows and budgeted based on the collective national output. It means that we could face some hard medicine in the future as the country grapples with slower growth amidst deep indebtedness.
The deleveraging process itself will drive down our dollar when the Fed bails out the CMHC…affordable housing and a competitive manufacturing centre. Cost to rape our land of resources will also go down. In response, the fed can finally raise rates! I think this will be the first national recession where the best fiscal policy is raising rates!
Agree that the housing bubble deflation will happen in parallel with a weakening loonie.
We don’t have a Fed.
Developers eat your petrodollar macro for breakfast.
Indeed, housing prices must come down or we will lose competitiveness. And so they will as housing prices slowly deflate. But listen up all you aspiring vultures; there may be a ray of hope after the correction, provided that is you have cash and a decent credit rating.
From down USA way we got this little nugget of information today:
In an analysis of the 325 major metropolitan real estate markets across the globe, the U.S. was home to the top 24 most affordable markets, according to Demographia’s 2012 International Housing Affordability Survey……there has never been a better time to buy a house. It is cheaper to own – based on the monthly payments at the current interest rates of under four percent – than it is to rent in just about every market across the United States. In Phoenix, for example, it is 21 percent cheaper to own than it is to rent. In Minneapolis, it is 28 percent.
From the Financial Post: Titled: The Latest in Bulk buying: Houses!
http://business.financialpost.com/2012/03/01/the-latest-in-bulk-buying-houses/
The loonie isn’t “high”. It just didn’t fall like the USD and Euro did. The complaints that the loonie is too high are based on really weak arguments. If anything, our competitiveness is hurting because the C$ was extremely low throughout the 1990s, and our exporters came to depend on that exchange rate. Again, that was more due to an overvalued USD than anything on this side of the 49th.
The economic benefits of a currency devaluation are every bit as fleeting and illusory as the “wealth” increase that results from a housing bubble.
I sold a house in 2000 and bought GOLD and SILVER. Man did I ever make REAL MONEY.
Aren’t gold and silver real money already?
They are a store of value, which is one function of money.
This doesn’t even make sense. There’s obviously a lot of noise in the data but generally speaking Van house prices measured in gold drifted up between 2000 and 2007. The best time to have done a RE:PM swap would have been been the summer of 2007.
makes perfect sense. GOLD has gone up from $250 to $1900. Real estate in Vancouver has gone up from approx. $300k to 900k. HELLO! Do the math..