“My conversations with friends who are westside realtors over the past few months (I know a few – hey everyone wanted to be a RE agent for a while, it seems) [reveal that things] are not good (for them). Telling me they are cutting spending budgets and dipping into savings now to keep things going.”
– Girlbear at VCI 11 Feb 2013 2:51pm
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Type of Anecdote
- 01. He Said, She Said (248)
- 02. Profiting from the Boom (446)
- 03. Changed my Life (106)
- 04. Changed my Career (39)
- 05. Where do Buyers get the money? (1,102)
- 06. Held my Nose and Leapt (97)
- 07. Avoiding Vancouver (378)
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- 10. Demoralized Renters? (367)
- 11. Regrets about Investing in RE (417)
- 12. Effects of Development (279)
- 13. 2010 Olympics Related (74)
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- 16. Missed The Boat? (237)
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- 19. BlastRadiusPostCards (17)
- 20. The Limitless Demand Argument For Ongoing Market Strength (70)
- 21. Vancouver RE-Verse [Found Poems] (8)
- 22. RE References In Popular Culture (45)
- 23. Jumping The Shark (1)
- 24. Policies On Housing (11)
- 25. Epigrams For The Bubble (1)
- 26. Premature Calls Of "Bottom" (3)
- 27. Seller Panic (3)
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- 29. Bubblespeak (1)
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Blogroll
- 01 Vancouver Condo Info
- 02 AmericaCanada [retired, no archive]
- 03 Housing Analysis
- 04 RealEstateTalks BC
- 05 Vancouver RE and then some
- 06 Whispers from the Village on the Edge of the Rainforest
- 07 Greater Fool
- 08 Canada Bubble
- 09 Rob Chipman's blog
- 10 YatterMatters
- 11 condohype [retired; archives available]
- 12 vancouver (un)real estate
- 13 Agent Will's Stats [retired]
- 14 Landlord Rescue
- 15 The Economic Analyst
- 16 Canadian Housing Price Charts
- 17 Hoodsurf [retired Jun 2011]
- 18 World Housing Bubble
- 19 Vancouver Price Drop
- 20 North American Economics
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Latest Anecdotes:
- 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?
- “Am I Buying This Home To Use It, Or For Anticipated Price Growth?”
- “I’d been brainwashed by this market into thinking that paying for a million-dollar home means getting a total dump” … “When housing is so unaffordable that you drive out people who hold up the fabric of society, what’s going to happen?”
- Stoking The Housing Boom – “B.C. should close the bare-trust loophole for owning properties. Former Liberal finance minister Mike de Jong promised to get rid of it, but he reneged.”
- Housing accounted for the bulk of Canada’s economic growth last year. Brace for the end of the boom.
- Miloon Kothari, Former UN Investigator, Reviewing Vancouver Housing Crisis – “Hyper-speculation. Casino Capitalism. Gentrification. Collusion. Corruption. Criminal Investigations. A Lottery Which Reduces A Social Resource Like Housing To A Commodity.”
- ‘Flip Vancouver’ Speculator Invite Flyer
- “Local Speculators Are Cashing In While We Blame Foreigners” and Other Truths – Geoff Dembicki, The Tyee
- “Nuthin’ That A Good Ol’ 75%+ Price Crash Won’t Fix…” – BOC Governor Stephen Poloz *
- Reconsidering High-Rises – “These people do not want a neighbourhood. They want a locked gate, a gated community in the sky.”
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Boo hoo…
This is just the tip of the iceberg. The lower mainland economy is so tied in with real estate activity. As the bubble begins to rapidly deflate, realtors, home constructors/renovators, mortgage specialists, and other indirect spin off industries (retail sales, restaurants, etc) will all be impacted. It will be very very interesting to see how fast this unwinds and how people adapt to this new world order.
A lot of realtors hold investment properties. I bet there’s a lot of fraught decisions being made about whether to ride it out or sell now. Wouldn’t it be super to see an index of % listings that are owned by an agent or related party?
I think the smart realtors cashed out about between a year and 6 months ago. I know of one property in Westwind in Richmond owned by a prominent local realtor. He bailed out about 6 months ago.
I mentioned that to “an observer” at that time. It sold for more than $800,000 over assessment. But we concluded, that the assessment value (for some reason) was far too low.
A friend of mine 3 years ago quit a well paying full-time job to dabble in RE. When the slowdown started about a year ago, she was lucky to get her old job back.
There are many realtors who have no experience outside of RE.
I hope they scraped and saved, because many will not live comfortably.
A close friend of our family has been a Westside realtor for nearly 20 years. A few weeks ago, while talking about a completely unrelated matter, he suddenly asked if we knew anyone who might be interested in his $2 million listing. Never before in 20 years has he tried to drum up business from us. We know a total of zero people with a spare $2 million, so this was completely ridiculous and seemed rather telling.
Your friend has made very very good money in the last 5-10 years. If s/he didn’t save for a rainy day then that is a shame. Good mortgage brokers and RE agents make 250k plus/yr
Loyal cadres don’t need post secondary!
Sheesh,
Yeah, the few good ones.
The rest are toiling at the open houses.
Every community has a dominant realtor, whom you can easily spot from by who has the most signs. Big sign with big picture.
You really only have to get caught holding that last bad house (or two, or three) to go from “wealthy” to broke pretty fast.
Like Ben Rabidoux said, if you are a Realtor who has put all your money in Real Estate, you are incredibly un-diversified.
If your source of income is real estate commissions, you should put your savings into ANYTHING IN THE WORLD other than real estate. Do not own even one property; rent. Do not buy bank stocks or developer stocks.
Property-owning realtors have bet both their savings *and* their careers that a single investment will suddenly break out of 100 years of historical performance and perform wildly differently…forever.
And given that such “savvy” real estate speculators are always highly-leveraged, realty is the one profession in which you could go from earning $250,000/year and having $1MM in equity to earning zero/year and having $2MM in DEBT…in 6 months.
What a rush that must be.
Not much different from the financial adviser, who advises you to invest into the hot risky stock that he just bought.
The all are so deep into their own crap……