“Detached homes made up 30 per cent of all sales in September and represented 62 per cent [5,869] of all the homes listed for sale on the MLS® [9,466]. This dynamic has slowed the pace of upward pressure that we’ve seen on detached home prices in our market over the last few years.”
The sales-to-active listings ratio for September 2017 for detached homes is 14.6 per cent …
The benchmark price for detached properties is $1,617,300. This represents a 2.9 per cent increase from September 2016.
– from the REBGV Sept 2017 stats package
“Average prices in British Columbia are forecast to grow 2.2 per cent this year and remain unchanged in 2018, CREA said.”
– from ‘CREA cuts 2017/2018 outlook for home sales in Canada’, G&M, 15 Sep 2017
To reiterate, from our last post:
In a market that has come to expect 7% growth p.a. (with peaks to 25% p.a. being seen as normal) a substantial period of flat price growth will feel odd; almost like a contraction.
The eternal question for Vancouver RE is: “Will people be willing to step up and buy if prices are not rising?”
This is the essence of our longstanding belief that “all buyers are speculators” — we believe that people buy at these price levels not for utility, but largely for anticipated price growth. We believe they certainly would not be buying without anticipated price growth.
So, what will happen to Vancouver RE prices if prices stop rising? What happens if the speculative component of buying disappears?
We believe that this will result in prices dropping to a level that reflects the value of the utility of the property, and that currently such values are far, far below asking prices.
It’s too early to say, but it does seem that prices in some sectors of the market have stagnated.
Talk at the corner of Rumour & Grapevine is of $3M, $4M, $4M+ – ask-price homes getting no interest whatsoever, and being removed from market. Also of condos over $1M getting little interest. If the supply of eager buyers is limitless, why is this happening?
Perhaps that house isn’t ‘worth’ $4.5M if there is no longer a chance of it being ‘worth’ $5.5M next year. Perhaps its actually ‘worth’ closer to $1.5M (a price that would already value it richly for its actual utility), or even (preposterously!) $1M if we consider local incomes and historic norms. [This argument can be scaled for all levels of the market].
– vreaa
Vancouver Real Estate Anecdote Archive 
Prices would revert to the fundamental as you have wanted. On top of your 64.59% crash you calculated back decade ago, let top up another 25%. This case, the NDP would be able to purchase over 114,000 units and hand out freely to anyone who wants one. Further, let make it mandatory that price growth would not exceed 3x median annual income. Blue sky for all!
Markets correct, I am sure detached will correct too. But fundamentals of supply and demand is definitely NOT on detached’s side. If nothing else, you have a dwindling total supply versus a increasing population that needs the underlying asset it has (land, even if you build condos, you still need detached’s land to do it). Good luck trying to drop a commodity like that.
If the fundamentals of supply and demand had absolutely no bearing on the way up, why would they suddenly come into force on the way down?
Nonsense.
Speculative frenzy is speculative frenzy. If you concede that price support is going away due to the evaporation of speculative demand, then you concede that actual fundamentals have nothing to do with the price of tea in China.
Supply and demand had no relevance on the way up? What planet are you on? Ley’s research showed we let in 200K millionaires from asia over the last 30 years. How many detached homes do we have to sell to them exactly? That’s right, total of 100K in vancouver, burnaby, richmond, and west Van. That’s not total on market, that is total supply. Which means for every two millionaires we let in, there was only one detached that we possibly could supply them.
Right, so supply and demand had no relevance on the way up.
Correlation does not imply causation. Grade 9 statistics.
Or can you show me the graph of “millionaires admitted” tracing the graph of home prices?
No you can’t because that data has never been published.
You are speculating on speculation. which is very meta.
So based on the limited amount of data that you do have, can you explain to me why our most expensive neighbourhoods report the least income? So is this a case where you are missing data or that the data you do have tell the entire picture.
“So based on the limited amount of data that you do have, can you explain to me why our most expensive neighbourhoods report the least income? ”
Can you explain to me why any increase in ice cream sales is followed almost immediately by a spike in violent crime?
Does that prove conclusively that ice cream causes violent crime? Or that violent crime causes ice cream?
This is the example given in grade 9 statistics.
To adapt that example to your thesis, do high home prices cause people to report low incomes? Does the reporting of low incomes cause home prices to rise?
See how silly that sounds when you even say it out loud?
Are you seriously arguing that wealth of newcomers to a community has no correlation to house prices? So, if I fill a community up with 200K millionaires it is not decisive that it would cause prices to go up than if I took in 200K bums. Does this sound right to you?
Regardless of what your statistics say. Having 200K millionaires are newcomers to a place with only 100K detached is not conducive to its prices.
No, I am arguing that your hypothesis is not based on data so it is meaningless.
IF 200,000 millionaires showed up in Vancouver and IF each one of them had bought houses “at any price” as is happening in your fairytale world, I could see that affecting prices.
But the fact remains that there is no data whatsoever to support this, making it as meaningless as if you claimed “a wizard did it”.
wishful thinking + confirmation bias != science
So you are saying if 200000 rats showed up at my house and I see chewing holes in my wall I shouldn’t guess that there is a correlation? Is this the kind of science you preach?
Btw, there is research in this, read David Ley’s book Millionaire Migrants.
Yes, I don’t get why bears can’t see that the total supply of SFH is at best FIXED, realistically dwindling. It is pretty much as inelastic as something can get. Thus any upward pressure in demand will cause extremely large upward pressure in price. That’s before all the other factors like interest rates, etc.
But I guess if we go by VCI bears logic, we just need to deport all the dirty scummy mainlanders, eventually followed by Taiwanese, HKers, 2nd/3rd/etc generation born Chinese, and everything will go back to Pollyanna 1980 Vancouver paradise where west side SFH goes for $400K or under?
Denial man. It runs DEEP.
Homeowners will sit on their highly-leveraged, rapidly depreciating assets for years or decades, repeating slogans to each other about “value investing” and “ignoring froth and concentrating on the long”.
But in the end, reality will come crashing down in a two-act nightmare:
1) Marginal transactions revalue asset classes because they do. One divorce, one retirement, one estate sale, one baby boomer liquidating because his financial plan includes the word “equity”, (reminder that they *all* do,) and the surrounding neighbourhood hemmorhages hundreds of millions of dollars in paper value just as quickly as it miraculously gained it last year.
2) Mortgages renew and most of it is mortgaged. Consider what “V” stands for in “LTV”. Enough said.
That’s what’s coming and it’s going to be as pleasant as watching colon surgery for anyone and everyone. Yes that includes bulls and bears, owners and renters, politicians and pundits, and you the reader.
Because regardless of your position or strategy, everyone you know and everyone you work with and everyone in your Canadian family and everyone who owns bank stocks and everyone who depends on tax revenue and everyone who depends on the economy is going to get flipped over and done dry by what happens next.
Right hot shot, why don’t you tell me, give me a concrete figure on when you expect this to happen? The last guy who did that left this board before he can be laughed at for predicting a 50 to 75 percent crash in 2 to 3 years off of 2015 prices. Still waiting, and market has gone up since then… So let’s hear yours. This is all talk until we put down some real numbers. Cause we can’t invest based on theoretical.
Nobody knows when it will happen; least of all me.
What we do know is that manias end.
Ask an economist. Ask a social historian. Ask a person with google access. Manias end.
Dude, this “mania” has been going on longer than the latest bull run on the S&P, is this still a mania or really, our fundamentals are shifting to what a city comprised of a large asian population (you can look up numbers that tell you what price to income in those cities are, hong kong, singapore, beijing, shanghai, taipei) will be.
“Dude, this “mania” has been going on longer than the latest bull run on the S&P, is this still a mania or really, our fundamentals are shifting to what a city comprised of a large asian population (you can look up numbers that tell you what price to income in those cities are, hong kong, singapore, beijing, shanghai, taipei) will be.”
You believe that race is an economic fundamental?
Try again there Herman.
No, but cultural absolutely is. Since you are at burnaby, you should go check out some of the open houses in your area and tell me what you see.
Actually, Burnabonian – it’s a money thang… not a race thang. Albeit, it’s a money thang with “Chinese Characteristics”. Of course, sometimes, it’s just a question of linguistics…
If your insane and terrifying thesis were even remotely possible, never mind plausible, houses in China would cost at least a billion dollars would they not?
Instead, we have the reality:
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/economy/article/2112873/chinas-household-debts-soars-it-being-stalked-subprime-spectre
Sound familiar at all?
If it does, even a little bit, Occam’s razor would like a word with you.
Wait are you saying chinese fundamentals are similar to North American ones then? If what you say is true, we should have a pretty standard world wide price to income and price to rent ratios that is dependent on the interest rate of that country. Then how come both parameters in the chinese sense is much worse than north american despite china having a higher interest rate?
“Wait are you saying chinese fundamentals are similar to North American ones then? If what you say is true, we should have a pretty standard world wide price to income and price to rent ratios that is dependent on the interest rate of that country. Then how come both parameters in the chinese sense is much worse than north american despite china having a higher interest rate?”
I literally have no idea what you are talking about.
You construct a whimsical and complex narrative about a magical country in which there are millions of millionaires who flock to Vancouver by the hundreds of thousands to stash cash in multi-million-dollar speculative real estate plays like leprechauns hiding gold in rainbows.
My counterpoint is that if that were true, logic and simple population distribution dictates that there would be more gold in more rainbows in their home country than anywhere else. After all, that’s where most of them are and where these fantastical pots of untraceable riches ostensibly originate.
But this is of course not the case. The rainbows in Leprechaun land are suspiciously devoid of any trace of yellow metal in semi-spherical containers.
Weird that they would somehow be able to buy all the houses in the lower mainland (as you contend) by just backing up dumptrucks full of riches to them, yet in their own country the real estate is mostly bought by overleveraged and overindebted middle class citizens trying to cash in on a speculative mania.
Don’t you think that is weird?
See the issue with you is that you assume that they are speculating. And also people assume Vancouver market is great for speculation. The fundamental bull case is migration of people and assets, not speculation. The idea is that when wealthy people come, fundamentally the market will follow. What we contend is that the average mix of Vancouver residents is far richer than what it was and what the numbers show. That the average vancouver house buyer in real terms has far more income or wealth (from two sources, global undeclared income, and also assets in other countries) than what the CRA numbers show. If the mix of people in Vancouver is far wealthier in global wealth terms, then for sure your housing market will increase. The issue is one that Ninja pointed out, this is known data. We know this has happened already and that is how we got here. What we don’t know is whether this will keep on happening. Well, stats can numbers show the projected mix of residents in this city will shift decisively asian even more than today. If that is the case, we can expect the average global wealth and income of the city’s residents to increase far more than what you are seeing today.
Btw, if you think they are speculating on our real estate good luck. They have far better things to do with their money than do that. They buy because this is their home as much as it is yours.
can anyone estimate how much of that is new construction?
Really good question actually, I was thinking the same thing. If you find any data, let me know. I could just mine this but am a bit lazy at the moment.
Debating speculative manias is not a lot different from debating climate change.
Some people are watching one movie and some people are watching a different movie.
Whatever they see does nothing but reinforce their pre-existing worldview. Confirmation bias writ large.
The bulls just seem to be watching a really scary movie about a world where junior high school mathematics and statistics have been replaced by xenophobia and bigotry.
Except we have no idea who is watching which version. At least one side has been right so far. And 15 years is not a fluke, it’s a trend.
Nobody I know is calling this bubble a ‘fluke’. (It’s a speculative mania, they happen).
Nobody is saying this isn’t a ‘trend’.. see the title of this post. Bubbles trend up until they burst, then they trend down (precipitously).
Boom goes the dynamite
So question for ya, which bubble has lasted 15 years like this one? Again, say if this goes on for another 15 does it even matter if it bursts or not? Without relevant timelines the bears analysis are useless. This has been debated over and over already. Like I suggested before, people dismiss cultural differences but to most people in asian cultures not buying a house is the same as shorting the market. So if you have been shorting something for 15 years then you probably would have been margin called already. Either that or your family will margin call you.
@vreaa and @burnaborian, did you know that the MSM actually spews more articles on vancouver housing market being in a bubble than the contrarian view? Look at how many articles come out every month about some bank warning that we will crash.
Meaning what.
MSM toed one party line (it is not a bubble because it could never be a bubble) and now they’re toeing a different one (it’s a bubble.)
In other news, water is wet?
“So question for ya, which bubble has lasted 15 years like this one?”
@vreaa, ok, look at this graph and the one that you originally posted in the thread. The entire runup of the japan graph was from 70 to 90 with the hockey stick portion at 5 years from 85 to 90. Look at the original post of this page. Vancouver has been running since the 70s with hockey stick at 02. Let’s say we only take the hockey stick versions. Then even based on the japan graph this bubble should burst in 5 years if there is one. If it goes on for another decade then for sure you have zero prior comparisons. I would argue that even the japan one is quite weak given that based on that bubble we should be long past burst by now.
I have a question for the bears, what is your strategy if this so called bubble never burst? It’s not like the rental market is awesome right now either.
@Burnaborian, my point is that there has been a lot of this so called MSM rage lately. But I would ask the bears which way do they think MSM leans? If anything I would argue that MSM leans towards the bubble side because I have read nothing but when will this bubble burst up till a couple of years ago when the MSM started to ask, crap what if we were wrong for all these years and now you are seeing articles on all the factors that caused this. five years ago the MSM was real sure this was a credit bubble, they aren’t anymore.
Brian struggling to read an elementary-school level graph.
Look at it again, Brian. Look at the line, and then the y-axis, and then back at the line. Do this for all the years. It’s okay, take your time.
When you’re done, please tell us that Vancouver has been in a “run-up since the 1970s”.
You know what’s really telling Ninja. When you said quitting this board was good for your health. But welcome back anyway. Btw, just curious, if you had a chance to buy a etf on the S&P 500 before the great depression, then again before the 1987 crash, would you have? Were we in so called bubble territory then?
Complaining about life in Canada is well, practically a national sport. It’s tough to make a living wage, the taxes are far too high, the government is incompetent, the politicians are venal and corrupt, the pace of business is glacial and who is going to solve our horrendous traffic problem?
I sometimes wonder if the real estate values in our country, and in our city reflect not that life here is eight or nine or ten out of ten, but perhaps we are relatively better than we give ourselves credit for. I for one, would never live in the U.S. I prefer gun control and socialized medicine and work life balance to dog eat dog/crony capitalism on an American scale. Perhaps on a global scale, we are more attractive than we give ourselves credit for. Shots fired! Film at eleven!
The complaints we have about Canada are not exclusive. Perhaps when people look for a better life, we punch well above our weight class, based on the “competition.” I have met people who have moved to Vancouver from literally all over the world. The U.S., Asia, every every country in Europe except the Scandinavian ones. Perhaps we are a world class place to live not so much for what we are, but also for what we are not.
3392 Dieppe: listed almost 200K over lasr assessed. Rodent writes that Hwy 1 is right at your doorstep, but doesn’t mention that Boundary Road is right up your ass – a truly horrendous location – about as bad as it gets.
3049 Renfrew: another garbage location at 400K over assesed that the rodent crows about having “possible assembly later”.
@Burnabonian – Sorry buddy but I really hope you don’t work in any kind of analytical work that requires actual knowledge and UNDERSTANDING of statistics.
I definitely don’t work in the kind of industry where I believe that analysis is valid without supporting data:
I am not a naturopath
I am not a homeopath
I am not an astrologer
I am not an extraterrestrial coverup conspiracy theorist
I am not an alchemist
I am not a racist real estate booster
To be clear, those folks are way smarter than me of course.
They can and do make entire careers (and fortunes) by convincing people (“marks” to use the industry term) to spend large amounts of money based only on a whimsical and too-good-to-be-true narrative — notwithstanding there being zero credible supporting evidence.
If that’s the “understanding” of statistics that you’re referring to, I do not have it.
Ok, since you are so good with data. Can you present some data here for us to see relating to the housing market? What are your fundamentals? You say you only use scientific methods. Then present your case. I am all ears.
No I can’t and that’s the point.
You don’t know and I don’t know and nobody knows because the data isn’t there.
Your book suggestion states the following:
“This book provides an examination of the wealthy migrants who left East Asia, notably Hong Kong and Taiwan, and migrated to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, in the 1980s and 1990s.”
It does not purport to provide data on the current frenzy.
I say again: You are just guessing.
What is my strategy?
To not take on too much debt, to treat housing as the expense that it is, to take on only what I can comfortably afford, and to never ever consider my means of shelter to be a financial vehicle.
I will buy, rent, or lease a reasonably priced dwelling, live there happily without worry, and leave it with a toe tag on. The value will never matter to me unless it goes upside down and the bank calls my mortgage, in which case I will have larger worries like how to cook rat meat on a garbage fire and how to avoid War Boys.
Unlike you, I will never pretend that I have access to the needed crystal ball and correct intuition and paranoid delusions that tell me where the market will go next.
Ok, so your point is simple, you don’t know and I don’t know. Sure, that’s fine. I admit that I don’t have a crystal ball. But that isn’t much of a point. You seemed pretty sure this so called bubble would burst as far as I can remember. Which isn’t the same as you don’t know.
About the second point. I don’t think many bulls on this board see it too differently. And I hate to ramble about this because I have typed this before. For many people, the home is their most important asset but not financially, but emotionally. It is simply not acceptable for this asset to be controlled by other people. Housing isn’t just an expense, it is where their life happens. So to say it as if any place would do doesn’t really represent a lot of people. Certainly not in demographic that you have here in this city.
Yes, this doesn’t mean this type will pay any price, but like I said before, anyone who is like this is essentially shorting the market. They will buy at some point, but they can’t wait 20 years for bubbles to burst. Renting in Vancouver means basically you could be renovicted, or sold out under your feet at any point. This frankly sounds like hell. As for the affordable part, I think you would be surprised how many buyers can afford today’s prices. But this is just annecdotal, like you said, I have no crystal ball.
“I don’t know”.
– Brian
#Truth
I can’t tell what your “home is important” point is supposed to mean.
That people will always be trying to buy houses? Give the man a cigar. He’s a genius.
Will they be ABLE to? Well, when a middle class house in a middle class neighbourhood is priced at 100 years’ income, the answer is “not the way they could before”.
What we know for sure is this: Speculators and specuvestors and flippers and ordinary people with waaaaaayyyy too much access to credit have definitely been buying. Some criminals who snuck some sacks of ill-gotten gains out of other home countries have been buying.
We may debate the ratio (I say 99/1 respectively, and you probably think 25/75), but we can agree that those are the players.
We also know that credit is getting expensive, access to credit is being removed, avenues for sneaking ill-gotten gains into Canada are disappearing, and the amount of money crossing the ocean is dropping dramatically.
The bull thesis is (by definition) that current prices will be maintained indefinitely because they are sustainable.
The bear thesis is the opposite — nothing more, nothing less.
Unfortunately for everyone involved, the bulls are wrong. To paraphrase VREAA, all speculative manias end and all of them end badly.
What’s up peeps!
To my haters: sorry to dash your hopes, but I’m just popping in for a quick hello. Leaving this board has been far too healthy for me to make a full-time return. Life is short.
But I can’t resist adding some thoughts on what’s been written in my absence.
White-angelos and Burnabonian have been on a tear, dropping truth bombs on resident dufus, Brian.
“Name me one case where someone has died due to socialism”, asks a bewildered Brian.
How about 100 million deaths in the 20th century alone?
It should be recalled that Brian hails from China, where collectivist ideologies have taken more lives than in any other country. He now lives in Canada, where socialized medicine creates extended wait-times for basic exams and procedures. We rank near the bottom among the OECD for quality of care.
I won’t get into a debate with Brian on socialism; white_angelos has already made the essential case. I’ll just say that his disregard for history is scary.
Then again, Brian is a classic beta male who has swallowed mainstream narratives hook, line, and sinker (“We’re not in a bubble”, “Trump is evil”, “Islam means peace”, etc.). Blue-pill Brian.
Then there’s Arnie Carnegie, aka Chile-con-Arnie, who Brian defers to as someone with a “deep understanding” of Vancouver RE.
Arnie… a guy who calls East Vancouver “fabulous”. (You just have to sidestep the syringes).
A guy who said recently that you can tell there’s a bog underground when the road “crests in the middle”. Lol. ALL roads crest in the middle, if properly designed. It’s called drainage.
A guy who complains about the rich, while lacking the awareness that he, as a middle-class Canadian, sits comfortably in the global 1%. A man with thousands of times more wealth than the average sub-Saharan African.
Bernie Madoff has more credibility.
As for Space. His views remain as wrong-headed as ever, but at least he showed some humanity when he recently asked if I was okay. That’s something.
I was back in Vancouver this summer. Beautiful surroundings, the city… not so much.
Vancouver sits at the pinnacle of a global asset bubble (including, yes, stocks) driven by central bankers and common greed. Its real estate market is cracking. Burnabonian is spot on. Prices are set at the margin, and this is going to be like colon surgery for everyone, no matter where you’re standing.
Over and out.
Such a tangible example is 2017 Vancouver of the insanity of The Everything Bubble (google it) that people will actually archive the events and anecdotes from the period just so that historians and interested parties can study it later.
Oh wait now I’m being meta.
Hey buddy, missed ya. It’s rare we get crap like this anymore on this board. Will just leave it here. How is that prediction of yours going? Who is the flake now? Love the Trump boasting, speaks volumes of your character buddy.
yes how to liven up a blog … with stuff like how vcr real estate is also not causing climate change
or vcr real estate is correlated to us gun violence rates.
Btw, forgot to ask you. Did they ever clarify if this shooter is related to ISIS from your non-MSM sources? Stephen Paddock sure sounds like a real Arab badass.
Do some research on how ISIS has successfully recruited hundreds of non-muslim westerners to its cause. You’d be surprised. Also, learn the difference between Arab and muslim.
quasi-official narrative is random-ish guy with a lot of guns, acting alone, who just lost it … lot of holes in that right now … hey, just like agw … if organized and with political motive, would be big … bon weekend … http://tinyurl.com/y8zudtnm
Thanks Ninja Einstein. So angelos, what am I supposed to believe? Did this guy do it? Or you are still suggesting this guy could be ISIS.
don’t know yet but certainly never take the corp media narrative at face value … principal design is to deceive … and why my own inclination is to the opposite tack … chomsky 101 – “control of thought is more important for governments that are free and popular than for despotic and military states. the logic is straightforward: a despotic state can control its domestic enemies by force, but as the state loses this weapon, other devices are required to prevent the ignorant masses from interfering with public affairs” … where you are in a hurry to conclude, which, honestly, you appear to be, you are more susceptible to confirmation bias and the tools of thought control
Geeze.. I thought we only had one conspiracy theory wizard on this board, it appears you and arnie are like kindred spirits.
it’s not a theory, just human nature … ppl are rabid pattern rec machines … we like to see patterns in everything, some is real some not … adverts use this all the time to manipulate your spending … once a major narrative is established, you will pick observations to confirm it … we’re all susceptible … on d, science has a nice way of dealing with it though … find one important fact that doesn’t fit and the narrative is in trouble … find another and it’s doa … try it and you might be surprised how much behavioral programming is your own vs another’s
Have not posted here in….3 years? Well its been at least that long. Maybe it’s 4 years but I lost track of time ages ago. And I really CANNOT BELIEVE that this Vancouver housing bubble is STILL going strong.
Totally unreal.
We were the fools.
By “we” I mean those of us who argued that this thing would break just about any old time now because here we are many years later and its just bigger and more stupendous than ever. And its those of us who refused to buy and participate when there was sooooo much money to be made.
The madness of crowds has no parallel. Had I even suspected that this thing would be so strong for so long I would have loaded the boat even at the crazy prices of 4 years ago!
But I didn’t. And I am sure there are a few others on this site who also did not since we were all quite convinced the minority objectors (us) were correct and that soon enough the fools throwing good money around were going to be punished for their greed.
I could laugh out loud about being so wrong (in fact I just did). The comedy at this point is not about being wrong anymore though. Its that you would have to actually be insane to start chasing the market at this late stage. And the comedy is in realizing that had I chased the market 4 years ago at those previously inflated and equally insane prices that I might have earned a few hundred thousand by now and still had lots of time to get out.
Live and learn I guess.It seems like an adage you can live by. The truth is that most of us will never get another chance to play this kind of a bubble since it is really exceptional in every way and not likely to ever be repeated in our lifetimes.
Maybe “live and regret” is more appropriate by now.
**Posted from my tree fort on squatter land
You sound pathetic. Get a grip.
And you sound angry. So many people to be upset with according to your posts up above. What you need is more acceptance since you were wrong too.
Farmer.. you have to remember, Ninja’s official party line is.. he is never wrong, that would be impossible…. he just hasn’t had enough time to be proven correct.. though he did say back in 2015 that all he needed was 2 to 3 years…. but you know… given the accuracy of information these days, it is actually plus or minus a couple of decades.. basically.. might be till after we are all dead at which point no one would be proven right or wrong any ways, so who cares…
We define “wrong” differently.
Investing is a forward-looking enterprise; what matters is your reasoning. Were you a fool to not buy a lotto ticket, or that hot penny stock, even though both have made others rich? No, you were not.
Vancouver RE was and still is a bubble. The fact that it has persisted doesn’t mean its not a bubble, it means only that… it has persisted. But a bubble it is.
As for my “anger”, apparently you do not appreciate how deep the bulls*t has gotten in your absence.
Watch the blood pressure Ninja. I never understood one thing. Why does this deeply bother you to the point of anger??? It’s just a comment section of a blog. It really shouldn’t affect your health or mentality. We have fun here. It’s a lively chat, apparently bullshit gets thrown around by me according to you. But honestly, welcome back man… I really missed bugging ya. It sounds like you haven’t changed one ounce.
Not angry. Just callin’ out BS. And I’m not “back” — as I said, just dropped by briefly.
It’s called having a life. You might try it.
Sure, keep telling yourself that. Come by see me often, you are always good for a laugh. On that note, happy thanksgiving y’all! I am out for the weekend.
Look on the bright side, at least you didn’t leave written record of predictions like we will crash 50 to 75 percent off of 2015 values. God I wish you shorted this market Ninja, I would have loved to see what your finances look like since you were so sure of that back then. You actually sounded somewhat convincing…
It only counts as getting ahead if it becomes cash in your bank account. Which is to say that you buy as a bull but then convert to being a bear, sell, and take your profits. Pretty unlikely.
Put another way: Had you believed in the market enough to buy in, you would believe in the market enough to never sell! I see this as the Bull’s Paradox.
GROUP A, Bulls, think it’s sustainable.
ACTION = buy as much as possible and hold all your life
REWARD = If you are right, you get to pay $2MM to live in a mouldy bungalow. If you are wrong, financial ruin.
GROUP B, Bears, think it’s not sustainable
ACTION = never buy, or if you own you sell
REWARD = if you are right, you neatly sidestep financial ruin while investing your money in other quality assets that are not overpriced. If you are wrong, well, the tooth fairy rides by topless on a unicorn while Santa Claus fellates your Dad. (i.e. only in poorly-written fantasy novels are bears wrong about speculative bubbles)
So which group do you want to be in?
Wait wait wait, Burnaborian, I thought you said you don’t have a crystal ball. How do you know we are in a bubble? Or is your “data” telling you that now…
Btw, there is a real consequence if you are wrong:
You can rent, then get renovicted, or sold out under your feet, distablizing your family situation. Or better yet, blow all your money on vacations to the carribean instead of saving it. Or, your wife hates you for the fact that you are constantly moving because your landlord keeps on selling your home and kicking you out… Don’t laugh, I know this happens…
One other thing, how do you know bulls don’t have a parameter on when this market IS actually too expensive? Did you bother asking what that is?
That is an excellent point Burbonian. It only counts when it becomes cash in your bank account. And on that note we really won’t know the true value of Vancouver property until sellers exceed buyers by a margin.
What we do know is that everyone cannot be a winner at the top. This speculative game only works as long as buyers exceed sellers and keep bidding up prices.
The majority of holders from the peak (there will be a final peak one day, right?) will do just as you mentioned since they are truly committed. That is, they will hold all the way back down to the bottom where ever that may lie. And the only real winners will be the minority of folks who sold near the top.
For everyone else, the bubble will have been little more than a memory of paper gains that came and went. And God bless them all if that mythical 9.0 earthquake arrives as has been predicted so many times already.
We are overdue for a shake out.
Well now I have two comments stuck in moderation
@vreaa, dumb suggestion time. Is it possible to turn off moderation cause so far now just about everyone has had one comment or another innocently stuck in moderation.
[VancouverSun] – Douglas Todd: Is China bursting Vancouver’s housing bubble?
…”The author of Millionaire Migrants was one the first to provide evidence that the foreign real-estate dreams of China’s wealthy have arguably had more impact than anything on Metro Vancouver’s housing unaffordability.
UBC geographer David Ley, along with SFU’s Wu Qiyan, told me early this year the city’s real-estate bubble would be punctured when leaders of the People’s Republic of China further restrict money leaving their country.
Now strong signs are appearing that Metro Vancouver’s real-estate balloon has indeed been pricked by China’s heightened capital controls.
Demand for multi-million dollar dwellings in Metro Vancouver is falling. “All the high-end stuff is sluggish,” says Vancouver realtor-analyst Steve Saretsky.
‘Vancouver locals selling $3 million bungalows are going to have trouble finding an alternative to foreign urban land buyers, so prices need to be slashed,’ says Stephen Punwasi.
Sales volumes and prices on detached houses are especially dropping on the west side of Vancouver, in Richmond and in West Vancouver, where Mainland Chinese buyers had been active buying and building mansions.”…
http://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/douglas-todd-is-china-popping-vancouvers-housing-bubble
[G&M] – Topic of housing affordability in B.C. is too important to be buried in unclear rhetoric
…”Making your life more affordable” was the BC NDP mantra during the election campaign and remains an oft-repeated talking-point now that the party has formed the government.
Key to affordability is the cost of housing across the province but especially in the Lower Mainland. The NDP is convinced increasing supply is the best way to make housing more affordable. To that end, it has promised to build 114,000 affordable rental housing units over the next 10 years.
It’s a promise that Housing Minister Selina Robinson says her government “is plugging away at.”
But beyond her rhetoric of “levers,” “partnerships” and “moving forward,” Ms. Robinson has been at a loss to explain how her government will reach that goal or how it will pay for it.”…
https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/topic-of-housing-affordability-in-bc-is-too-important-to-be-buried-in-unclear-rhetoric/article36521268/?ref=http://www.theglobeandmail.com&
[G&M] – Topic of housing affordability in B.C. is too important to be buried in unclear rhetoric
…”Making your life more affordable” was the BC NDP mantra during the election campaign and remains an oft-repeated talking-point now that the party has formed the government…
But beyond her rhetoric of “levers,” “partnerships” and “moving forward,” Ms. Robinson has been at a loss to explain how her government will reach that goal or how it will pay for it.”…
https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/topic-of-housing-affordability-in-bc-is-too-important-to-be-buried-in-unclear-rhetoric/article36521268/?ref=http://www.theglobeandmail.com&