Vancouver Real Estate! GET RICH buying and selling leaky condos in Vancouver BC Canada. Super Hot Housing Market can't go wrong! Bubble? What Bubble?
Labels: THE FINAL WORD
the pope at 6:05 PM
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the pope at 1:00 AM
Even banks are admitting that after a decade of unthrottled expansion, Canada’s real estate boom may finally be losing steam.
The average price of a home in Canada recently topped $310,000, a gain of 60% in real terms in just nine years. Canadians haven’t witnessed a boom like this since just after World War II—and it’s clearly not sustainable. If prices continued to rise at their current rate, the average house would fetch $10 million by 2037. Since that doesn’t seem plausible, the big question is not whether the current boom will stop, but when.
the pope at 1:05 PM
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the pope at 10:55 AM
the pope at 11:45 PM
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the pope at 2:47 PM
The single father, 41, bought his two-bedroom, two-bath condo on Everson Drive near Neary Lagoon Park at the beginning of 2006. He paid $575,000.
Because his purchase date came at the height of the market and condos have proved particularly vulnerable to the slip, Muller later realized his home value had fallen.
"I got my property tax bill and felt there was a discrepancy between what I owed and what the market has done," he said.
So in September Muller wrote the county. He claimed his condo, which had a listed value of $586,000 in January, was now worth $568,000.
It turns out, he was right -- and then some. Last week, he got a call from Hazelton's staff saying the new value of his home was $550,000. That will save him $300 to $400 a year in taxes, he figures.
Lose $25,000 in property value and get free money, $300 or $400 dollars for the year is a nice little extra windfall!
the pope at 12:21 PM
Last year, Vancouver recorded more than 1,100 break-ins per 100,000 residents while New York City had just over 300.
The numbers are contained in the annual report by the B.C. Progress Board, which showed Vancouver had the second-highest combined violent and property crime rate among all major cities in Canada and the United States.
Its not all bad news though, we are a very healthy province:
Fewer British Columbians are obese and fewer adults smoke than in any other Canadian province. And B.C. leads the country in life expectancy.
But it's in the area known as 'social condition,' which measures everything from poverty to birth weights, that B.C. falls down with a ninth-place ranking among the 10 provinces.
According to the report, the most troubling social indicator was the 17.5 percent of British Columbians living below the low-income threshold, the second-worst ranking in Canada.
The report also notes the situation has not improved at all during the past decade.
Labels: local
the pope at 10:03 AM
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the pope at 1:04 AM
"..the rate at which people are buying their own property is growing faster than the population.The article goes on to mention some of the interesting ways that buying habits are changing in 'the marketplace today':
However, particularly in B.C.'s high-priced markets, the buyers aren't getting exactly the property they want where they want to live.
Century 21 Canada president Don Lawby, in an interview, said buying habits are changing because "that's just the reality of the marketplace today, for first-time buyers especially."
Kevin Lutz, B.C. mortgage manager for the Royal Bank, said 75 to 80 per cent of his bank's first-time borrowers in B.C. are taking mortgages with 40-year amortizations, and a higher proportion are coming with less than a 25-per-cent down payment.
In Vancouver, Julie Jaggernath, director of education at the Credit Counseling Society, said her office is "a little bit busier than we were last year," with clients including those who have gotten in over their heads buying property or upsizing their homes.
"We're also seeing people spending about 70 per cent of their income on housing and housing-related costs," Jaggernath said. "That's a lot."
40 year terms are the new standard? less than 25% down? 70% of income on housing?
Wow.
the pope at 3:10 PM
the pope at 9:35 AM
Faced with a widening mortgage crisis, the Federal Reserve Tuesday cut a key interest rate for the third time in three months.Story on MSNBC."Incoming information suggests that economic growth is slowing, reflecting the intensification of the housing correction and some softening in business and consumer spending. Moreover, strains in financial markets have increased in recent weeks. Today’s action, combined with the policy actions taken earlier, should help promote moderate growth over time," the central bank said in a statement released with the announcement.
Many analysts believe the current quarter and the early part of next year will represent the period of maximum danger for a possible recession.“I think a full-blown recession can be avoided but just barely,” said David Jones, chief economist at DMJ Advisors. He predicted that the Fed will follow up with three more rate cuts at its first three meetings of 2008.
the pope at 11:36 AM
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the pope at 9:46 AM
Vancouver city council has released a report detailing plans to use the 'Olympic Legacy Reserve Fund' to cover extra costs related to hosting the winter games. Words like 'legacy' are often used to indicate something long-term and 'reserve' sure sounds like it would be something extra set aside for a rainy day.But there we are, all the extra costs from hosting the games are accounted for.. If you happen to believe that, I have a wonderful second-hand bridge that I can sell to you for a tremendous bargain.But opponents say that far from providing long-term legacies, as its name implies, the fund amounts to an Olympic operations budget.
Among the items it covers are a $1.4-million communications campaign, $1 million for the city's host pavilion, $2 million for hosting dignitaries and $2 million for the "look" of the city during the Olympics.
The $20 million is a significant amount in a city budget where $5 million represents a one-per-cent tax increase.
"When multiple cities bid, each has a different view of what the revenues will be, and the one with the brightest economic forecast usually wins," says Evan Osborne, an economist at Wright State University. But often, tourism revenue, job creation and ticket sales don't pan out as expected, leaving local taxpayers with what Osborne calls "The Winner's Curse."
Former Salt Lake City Deputy Mayor Brian Hatch, a key player in securing that city's winning bid for the 2002 Winter Games, recalled showing some Beijing officials around that year to help them prep for their city's hosting role in 2008. They found hotel rooms at nonevent ski resorts easy to come by.
"People tend to avoid Olympic cities the year of the event, thinking it will be too crowded," Hatch says.
the pope at 12:50 PM
"The deal was done on the last day of the company's fiscal year, partially in an effort to generate tax-loss carry backs," said Eric Landry, a Morningstar Inc. analyst. "The fact that it closed so late [9:30 p.m. on the last day] in the year and was priced at only 40% of book value may indicate just how eager Lennar is to slim down its balance sheet -- and the degree to which it will go to do so."While details remained sketchy on Monday, a multimillion-dollar deal to shift 11,000 properties off the books of the nation's largest home builder raised concern among analysts that the mortgage meltdown was continuing to spread.
Labels: USA
the pope at 4:38 PM
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the pope at 1:01 AM
The Eden Group is cancelling two local development projects citing difficulty getting financing and skyrocketing construction costs. The Elyse, a 119-suite condominium complex at 7th and Scotia Street in Vancouver had pre-sold 55 units, but letters are now going out and deposits will be returned."The industry itself — very difficult to get financing," Eden said on Monday. "Basically, it's extremely uncertain whether I can actually complete that building."Eden is also cancelling a $30 million townhouse development, with that site already up for sale. A Third Eden project at 11th and Sophia is currently under construction and will be completed as planned.
the pope at 10:09 AM
The swoon comes as investors were unnerved by another series of announcements that pointed to continuing problems in the credit markets, the result of home loan debt going bad under the weight of a faltering housing market.So where are you putting your money? Stocks? Bonds? Vancouver Real Estate? Beanie Babies? (I hear they're highly collectible). Just how is a fella supposed to get wealthy without any effort these days?
Labels: economy
the pope at 5:55 PM
Some 2 million homeowners hold $600 billion of subprime adjustable-rate mortgage loans, known as ARMs, that are due to reset at higher amounts during the next eight months. Subprime loans are those made to people with poor credit. Not all these mortgages are in trouble, but homeowners who default or fall behind on payments could cause an economic shock of a type never seen before.Some of the nation’s leading economic minds lay out a scenario that is frightening. Not only would the next wave of the mortgage crisis force people out of their homes, it might also spiral throughout the economy.
The already severe housing slump would be exacerbated by even more empty homes on the market, causing prices to plunge by up to 40 percent in once-hot real estate spots such as California, Nevada and Florida. Builders like Chicago’s Neumann Homes, which filed for bankruptcy protection this month, could go under. The top 10 global banks, which repackage loans into exotic securities such as collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs, could suffer far greater write-offs than the $75 billion already taken this year.
the pope at 10:08 AM
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the pope at 1:19 AM
the pope at 9:33 AM
