Keeping Up With Other Bubbles – Australia Suddenly Not Running Out Of Land Anymore – “Aussie House Prices Could Halve”

It was supposed to be different there, too

House prices in Sydney and Melbourne could fall by up to 25 per cent this year alone and “there’s a chance they could fall by half” in the coming “property bloodbath”, an economist has warned.
LF Economics founder Lindsay David, who has been warning of the looming property crash for the past five years, said in a report today the recent house price falls were just the beginning.
CoreLogic data for January showed Sydney and Melbourne prices were now 12.3 per cent and 8.7 per cent down from their respective peaks in July and November 2017, with Melbourne falling at “the fastest rate ever seen”.
“We think there’s a chance property prices could fall by half in Sydney and Melbourne over the long run,” David said.
“I wouldn’t be surprised by falls of at least 40 per cent. When all hell breaks loose you’ve only got so many buyers out there.”

His base case of 20 per cent falls in calendar 2019 is significantly more bearish than other experts. AMP Capital is tipping total peak-to-trough falls of 25 per cent in Sydney and Melbourne, while UBS is tipping 25 per cent with a “rising risk of 30 per cent”.
David bases his forecasts largely on the “debt accelerator”, which is strongly correlated with house price growth six months forward. Latest data indicates the debt accelerator is “falling sharply” in Sydney and Melbourne.
If that happens, Sydney and Melbourne “will suffer peak-to-trough falls never experienced before, outside of the 1890s depression and real estate collapse”.

– excerpt and image from ‘Property bloodbath’: Aussie house prices ‘could halve’, Frank Chung, news.com by way of New Zealand Herald, 20 Feb 2019

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.”

“Warning: Some viewers may find the following footage distressing…”

“There’s a cottage industry emerging on Twitter, with various accounts and followers seeming to take delight in the financial woes besetting Metro Vancouver homeowners hoping to sell their homes, or selling their homes at crushing losses. … Here’s a look at five examples highlighted on Twitter of homes in Vancouver and West Vancouver where the owners took a bath, or are at least one foot away from a nasty fiscal scolding…”
– from ‘Five examples of Metro Vancouver homeowners losing big in a plunging market’, David Carrigg, Vancouver Sun, 7 Feb 2019

Now you notice? -ed.

“The softening housing market could lead to tough times for some realtors, especially those who have recently entered the profession, said the president of the Fraser Valley real estate board. “I think it’s going to be tougher for the more-inexperienced realtors, those who are three or four years in,” said John Barbisan. “What they’re used to is not what real estate is typically like.” The 35-year veteran said agents will be forced to be more like “consultants than auctioneers” as they help to connect buyers and sellers. …
According to the council, there were 25,987 licensed real estate professionals in B.C. as of Dec. 31 — a 36-person drop from Sept. 30, although still slightly higher than June 30. The dramatic increase in the number of licensees — from about 21,000 in 2012 to 26,000 in 2018 — seems to be slowing.”
– from ‘Sales slump could signal tough times ahead for B.C. realtors’, Glenda Luymes, Vancouver Sun, 8 Feb 2019

We can recall when BC Realtors crossed the 10,000 mark. Seems a fair bet we’ll go back below that number once all is shaken out. -ed.

“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.”

Ian Wallace, Construction Site (Olympic Village) III, 2011. Photolaminate and acrylic on canvas, 183 x 244 cm.

“When you’re in Vancouver, within artistic communities, 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,” says Am Johal, director of community engagement at Simon Fraser University’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement.

In my day-to-day in Vancouver, I find myself preoccupied with constant reminders of my own impermanence. Exiting my beloved Mount Pleasant rental apartment, I’m hit by a thud of anxiety each time I see a development notice erected in my neighbourhood. I pass by so many of my once-favourite galleries (and former places of employment), now repurposed or left empty. Friends and artists leave. Those of us who remain spend most of our time defending the choice to stay. Our defence often sounds optimistic, perhaps naive: staying here and making art is important, too.

In this five-part series, I intend to think through how the housing crisis is having an impact not only on the production of art in Vancouver, but also on art’s responsive and changing communities. Issues of unaffordability, including high rent and inaccessible housing, go beyond dwindling supplies of accessible gallery, home, institutional and studio spaces. Complicating these issues is that artists and art centres are often themselves gentrifying elements within a city, a phenomenon already long-acknowledged and in-process in Vancouver. If we know well by now that unaffordability generates and exacerbates inequality generally, it feels necessary to emphasize that it also generates and exacerbates inequality, and tension, including class stratification, within artistic communities, too. It can be a contradictory conversation or, at least, a circular one. But if we acknowledge the role of the arts in gentrification, we should be looking deeper at what this disparity of opportunity in culture comprises. If the art community is asked to navigate, evade or compromise an ever-tightening commercial grip, we should really be talking about who in that community is benefiting, and suffering, most from unaffordability.

– image and excerpt from Who Has the Right to Art?, Alison Sinkewicz, Canadian Art, 31 Jan 2019.