The PROVINCE has turned on us!

If you live in Vancouver then you know about the Province newspaper. Thats the handy small tabloid-sized daily paper with headlines like 'DEADLY KILLER KILLS MAN DEAD' and 'WET T-SHIRT CONTEST ENDS BADLY' as opposed to the other local canwest paper (the Vancouver Sun) that uses more multi-sylabic words, i.e. 'CATASTROPHE SEEN AS DISASTER LOOMS'.

Anyways, my point is that the Province has always been there for us simple folk. It was the paper to turn to when you wanted to find out what Jessica Simpson is wearing and whats on tv tonight. You could also often find heart-warming stories about 23 year old real-estate investors and which new condo developement they are lining up to buy in.

The one thing you would never find in the Province newspaper was articles like this:

Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. recently announced moves that critics say will drive many homebuyers to the poor house, as it were, and could leave Canadian taxpayers on the hook.

CMHC is offering mortgage insurance for interest-only loans and on amortizations of up to 35 years, while also scrapping the typical $165 application fee on high-ratio loan products for people with a down payment of less than 25 per cent.

With an interest-only loan, a borrower can pay interest only for the first 10 years, then pay both interest and principal.

Payments are initially low, but since the loan must still be paid off within the original amortization period, payments balloon as the principal starts being paid down, even more if interest rates rise.

That's right, ladies and gentlemen - I am very sad to report that the Province newspaper has joined the dark side of real-estate negativity, and it gets worse. Much worse:

If a person spends 10 years paying down only interest, he or she saves nothing if the value of the house doesn't appreciate during that period.

In fact, many people are now buying at the top of a housing boom, particularly in Western Canada, and face the likelihood of selling after the market has cooled off.

Said the Edmonton firm Hendrickson Financial in a recent commentary: "When home prices begin declining, homeowners who have recently purchased with 100-per-cent financing will have to come to terms with owing more than their home is worth."

That's when you get people walking away from their homes -- when they have no equity to lose and can start all over with a cheaper house that will require smaller payments.

Can you BELIEVE it?!? The TOP of a housing boom?!? Walking away from their homes?!? What is with these people?!? What makes them so cranky that they feel the need to ruin our party? Is it jealousy? Some sort of new-found intellectual ellitism?

I don't know about you, but I intend to write a strongly worded letter of complaint to the editor. It will be brief. It will contain my own 'facts' and 'figures', but one thing that it will NOT have is words with more than two syllables.

Vancouver's Real Estate Market: learning to read the signs.

A lot of people want to know whats going to happen with Vancouvers red-hot real estate market. Will it keep going up, up and away? Will it level off? Or will demand dry up sending prices plummeting?

Well, before you pick up that phone to dial the psychic friends hotline, you may want to save your $3.95 per minute and just read the signs.

The signs I'm starting to see around vancouver say 'price reduced'.

And I just have to ask.. WHAT ARE THEY THINKING?!? Has no one told these people that this is a red-hot market? There is no need for 'price reduced' signs. If you are having a problem attracting buyers you need to RAISE your asking price not lower it! This is basic psychology. Higher priced things are more VALUABLE than lower priced things. And besides, how else are we supposed to convince someone that they need to BUY NOW or be forever PRICED OUT of the market?

US home prices in peril

House prices seem to be 'in trouble' in the good ol' USA. If they only had the foresight to host the winter olympics maybe the US housing market could be saved eh? Today's story in the financial post:

The United States could be heading for its first outright decline in national house prices on record, according to several analysts watching the rapid deterioration in housing statistics south of the border.

Further weakness in the housing sector could stunt construction activity and slam consumer spending, leading to slower growth in both the United States and Canada, analysts said.

"The slowdown in house price inflation has been extraordinarily rapid," Gabrielle Stein, chief international economist at Lombard Street Research said in a report this week.

Those of us living in Vancouver should perhaps take a moment to be thankful for our rock-solid housing market, and the fact that due to beefed-up border security we are completely and utterly protected up here from whats happening in the US. It's almost as if we are in a protective bubble!

Price Waterhouse Cooper: The sky might fall.

Aaaagh!
No! Say it isn't so!

I go out innocently looking for news of a bright and shiny future in the vancouver condo market and instead I am most rudely confronted with this:

The Greater Vancouver condominium market may be at an inflection point in the real estate cycle. One result could be an over-supply and/or over-priced product in many markets. There appears to be a very real risk of over supply beyond the forecast demand given the escalating market prices in some new condo submarkets in Greater Vancouver.

That bit of news from the PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) June 2006 issue of the Greater Vancouver Condominium Market Review release today. The news release is here.

Who are these PricewaterhouseCoopers anyways, and how can they SAY that?! It not supposed to happen here! Vancouver is different!

Rennie, Dengin and Chandler - work continues, but no moving in.

It looks like the lawsuit filed by George Dengin against his business partner Mark Chandler has not stopped construction of H+H at Homer and Helmken downtown or the construction of Garden City in Richmond. It is however stopping people from moving into the recently completed Tribeca condo development. There was a news story on bctv the other night about some of the fun and games going on in Vancouver's condo market.

The seedier underside of Greater Vancouver's housing boom is being exposed Monday night by a series of lawsuits and counter-suites between some of the city's highest rollers. The main combatants, two developers both with checkered backgrounds, and now the battle has drawn in a man who's become known as Vancouver's Condo King (Bob Rennie).

Construction on H+H and the Garden City condo towers continue despite the lawsuit, leans and a stop-sale order from the superintendent of real-estate. Mark Chandler claims to have been paying workers out of his own pocket for the continued construction, up until last wednesday when his lenders started to fund chandler again. Both H&H and GardenCity towers are about 70% sold, but until this lawsuit is resolved buyers may suffer the same fate as buyers at another Chandler property- Tribeca. The condo's and Tribeca are finished and ready for people to move in, but because of the current investigation it remains empty. This means that people who have purchased units in Tribeca and given notice at their current residence will need to find a place to live until this issue is resolved.

George Dengin's lawsuit alleges unusual or apparent dishonest conduct including chandlers alleged failure to put money into trust and selling some units twice. Bob Rennie supports dengins lawsuit - he has provided an affidavit to support Dengins claims and has stopped marketing chandler properties.

Chandlers lawyers have filed a statement of defese and a counter claim naming Bob Rennie and George Dengin and their businesses, with Chandlers defense alleging that it "struck him at a particularly vulnerable time for the purposes of trying to take over ownership of the partnership".

The counterclaim alleges that dengin and rennie have made false allegations of wrongdoing against the Chandler and that they filed their claim "on the basis of false, or exaggerated and unsubstantiated allegations."

In the bctv newscast Mark Chandler was quoted as saying "I feel that he's really trying to take the keys to my company.. I thought he was a friend. I thought he was a trusted friend".

Rennie and Dengin did not reply to that news story directly, other than Bob Rennie making a statement that he is "a marketer not a developer" and that he has "no intention of moving into developement".

Real-estate marketing technique #178 - Fake Families

This link was left in the comments yesterday by 'anonymous' (nice name by the way). The newest twist on house marketing in the U.S.A. is to go beyond 'home staging' and actually hire actors to play the part of a happy family 'living' in the house during a sales presentation. If you like reality tv, maybe you'll like fake reality?

SANTA CLARITA - The scent of baking scones wafts through the house as children's feet pound the floors.

"Dad" rushes to get things ready as "Mom" lounges on the couch.

It's a birthday party for Camille Chen. "Husband" Jaason Simmons has breakfast in the oven and there's about to be a surprise: He and the kids remodeled the den into a game room and won't Mom, a notorious poker fiend, be pleased.

Except Chen and Simmons aren't married, the kids aren't theirs, they don't really live in the house and they're all Centex Homes marketing director Amanda Larson's employees.

They've been hired to lounge around a model home, read magazines and occasionally pretend like they're having breakfast.

Just how effective would this be? Do you think that the emotional connection is strong enough that people pretending to have a wonderful life in a house would increase the money paid for it? And how long till we see this technique put to work in Vancouver? Would you even spot it?

How much will you pay me to look at your condo?

Concord Pacific is having a 'moving sail and sales' promotional event on July 29th with 'bbq, live entertainment, free parking and prizes'. Hmm. I thought this was a super-hot market where you just hang up a shingle and prospective buyers stomp all over each other for a chance to bid on your property. Why are we having to lure people to a condo sales event? Kinda smacks of desperation.

Here's what I say: BBQ is good, but I think I'd rather have it with friends, thanks.. My time is worth more than free parking and the chance to win a prize, so what else have you got? I'll be happy to come and look at your condo sales pitch, but time is money. So at the very least you should match the common time-share sales pitch you get in Mexico, that is:

1) free car rental for a day
2) free tours of the 'ruins of east hastings'
3) free food and
4) as much free booze as they can try to get into you before they try to get you to sign the paper work.

This is where I'll start to consider coming to your sales pitch, anything less than that and I'm afraid its just not worth my time.

UBC: out with the old, in with the new condos!

Last week saw the destruction of one of the first buildings built at the UBC campus to make way for a new high-end condo development.

The Vancouver School of Theology's Chancellor Building, inspired by English architecture, was built in 1927 and was one of the first major structures to be built at the Point Grey campus.

The chairman of the Theological Neighbourhood Planning Group said it was a "painful decision" to demolish it, but says the school needs the money to renovate its main building.

"We had to make a judgment call between this building and the other building, because one of them had to help pay for the other," said Bud Phillips.

There are no heritage protection guidlines on campus and UBC is not answerable to any municipality. Those clinging to the past should keep in mind that everything new eventually becomes old, and UBC's heritage condo stock will flourish in the far-off future.

article on cbc

Looking for a way to pay the mortgage? Become an MP.

Say you own a condo in Vancouver and a house in Ottawa.. If you're an MP that needs to move back and forth than you might need a little extra help covering those bills right? Well no problem! It turns out that MP's get a $75 per day meal allowance that can be used to pay down the mortgage.

The per diem is in addition to a $25 daily accommodation allowance MPs receive year-round if they own a second house or condominium in the capital, and using it to buy a home is allowed despite a rule forbidding mortgage payments from a separate $24,000 expense allowance.

Combined, the per diem and the accommodation allowance could add up to $17,225 a year for house costs and mortgage payments if an MP spends only four days a week in Ottawa while Parliament is sitting.

The $25 daily accommodation allowance is available without receipts throughout the year as long as the MP does not rent out the residence.

Though the $75 per day comes from a meal allowance, I think it should be noted that eating houses is ill-advised and can lead to indigestion and nausea.

How to keep a global housing market boom booming.

Interesting article in the New York Times about owners refinancing with adjustable rate mortgages. $400 billion worth of this type of mortgage is resetting this year in the U.S., next year it's set to be one trillion dollars worth.

It is the latest twist in the gravity-defying world of the high housing prices and exotic low-rate mortgages: As monthly payments on adjustable-rate mortgages are starting to balloon, many Americans have found a way to put off the day of reckoning.

They are refinancing with new adjustable-rate mortgages that keep monthly payments low — for now, that is, though their payments will likely rise even higher in the future.

I guess it will be easier to pay the full load of debt in the future?

YOU can GET RICH in REAL ESTATE!

Are you ready to become so INCREDIBLY RICH that you no longer have to adhere to the standards and conventions of 'civilized' society? Are you TIRED of eeking out a day-to-day existence while you can smell THE REEK OF WEALTH all around you? Would you like to be able to walk through the mall without any pants and be so EXCESSIVELY WEALTHY that no one can utter a word about your pantless state, lest you unleash your personal squadron of vicious attack lawyers destroying their lives and reputations?

Well NOW you CAN!

Yes! Thanks to the MIRACLE of BOUNDLESS increases in PROPERTY VALUE you can now become a MULTI-MILLIONAIRE by investing in real-estate. And the best thing about it? This process requires NO EXPENSIVE COURSES OR SPECIAL EQUIPMENT. You don't need any special skills or knowledge - In fact, you don't even need a brain! THAT JUST HOW EASY IT IS!

Here's how its done:

1) buy real-estate
2) sell real-estate (for more than you bought it for)
3) repeat and profit!

This SIMPLE MONEY-MAKING PLAN will see you swimming in your own personal GOLDEN BATHTUB filled with 50 dollar bills within a week. Within a month you will have SO MUCH MONEY coming in that you can hire people to MAKE MONEY FOR YOU. Within a year you will be so RICH, so INCREDIBLY WEALTHY that you will be able to buy yourself a SOLID GOLD SPHERE THREE HUNDRED MILES IN DIAMETER!

You will have the power to BUY AND SELL other people for your own amusement. Earth will be your playground and all that hear your name will COWER IN FEAR. So what are you waiting for? GET RICH NOW!

Why am I sharing my MONEY MAKING SECRETS with you? Because I care. I know that you personally have the RIGHT STUFF to dominate the globe and I want you to SUCCEED. And just to show you my generosity, my utter lack of personal greed or selfish motivation, I have just the thing to get you started. It's a small leaky condo on the east side and it can be your stepping stone to UNLIMITED MIND-BOGGLING RICHES.

And because I care about you, I'm starting the bidding at only $600k. You can email offers to me at vancouvercondo.info@gmail.com

Yes, but we have mountains.

They're laughing at us in Saskatchewan. That just isn't right. Don't they know that the ocean and mountains mean that we don't have to focus on mundane issues like 'affordability' or 'soul-crushing debt load'? When every condo in Vancouver has quadrupled in value by 2010, THEN we'll see who's laughing.

Bubble-talk in the Ottawa Citizen

The mainstream media is starting to impinge on the territory of the crazy unwashed blogger.
This article in the Ottawa Citizen seems to be fairly balanced and could be interesting for anyone wondering about the bubblicious state of real-estate around the world, particularly in vancouver. Some interesting numbers at the end as well, I wasn't aware that average prices in Sidney Australia had dropped 16 percent since 2003. Clearly this must be a typo. Everyone knows real-estate never loses value.

Someone needs to remind the mainstream media to stay away from stories like this. This kind of talk should be left to loony bloggers and conspiracy theorists.

Spice up your MLS listing with glowing adjectives!

So it looks like the real-estate market in vancouver is slowing.. Maybe this is just a summer lull, but what if you've got a house, townhome or condo for sale? How can you stand out and get your listing noticed? use THE POWER OF ADJECTIVES!

Adjectives are a powerful sales tool when used properly, magically turning your cramped leaky one bedroom condo into a palace that potential buyers will fight over, poking each other with sticks as they thrust sweaty fistfuls of money at you.

Lets look at an example - lets say the property you have for sale is your typical FTBB (first time buyer bait). Its around six hundred square feet in size and faces a major street. It has granite countertops, an open but small kitchen/dining/living room and a 4x5 storage room. The building had some leak issues in the past, but repairs were done. The suite faces south letting a lot of sun in during the day turning it into a hothouse. A straight forward listing might look like this:

Ground level 600 sq ft. 1 bedroom condo. Loud and hot, but not currently leaky. Open to offers.

Ok. Sure that's straight-forward, but it sure isn't going to move your property right? So lets drop in some of those glowing adjectives. It almost doesnt matter which adjectives you choose, or how accurate they are - they just need to be POSITIVE! and make the condo sound FANTASTIC! Use relative opinion-based terms like GIANT! BRIGHT! and QUIET! No one will sue you for a little creative elaboration. Sure it's hard to sleep with the traffic, but compared to trying to sleep on the tarmac underneath a running 747 its QUIET, and its GIANT if you compare it to a breadbox. It's also good to throw in promises of the purchase bringing the buyer PRIDE and JOY! So lets have another go at that listing shall we?

Be the envy of all your friends! Gorgeous, beautiful home with amenities galore! This HUGE 600 sq ft garden level condo is BRIGHT and QUIET. FANTASTIC central location with easy access to transportation! Gleaming granite countertops and open kitchen PERFECT for entertaining. Extra room could be home-office or 2nd bedroom in this SOLID reliable building. Act fast, this one won't last!

So there you go. Just a few glowing adjectives and a little creative stretching of the truth - this will get them in there to look at the place, now all you've got to do is get all of your personal belongings out of there and rent some tiny furniture to make it look bigger. Hire a proffesional home stager to really do this right. After all you're not selling a condo, you're selling a DREAM!

Lower Mainland Real-estate - Buyer Beware?!

According to this article on CKNW - Vancouver's hot real estate market is creating conditions where the buyer must beware, particularly in the condo market. Really?? You mean prior to this you could blindly stumble into a purchase costing several hundred thousand dollars, not do any research and be just fine?

That from mortgage consultant Peter Kinch after some real estate developers have been told to stop selling condos thanks to allegations of duplicate sales and missing deposits.

Kinch says potential buyers are too often focused on buying quickly instead of doing more research, "There's this pending sense of 'If I don't get in now, prices are going to keep rising and I'd better get in now.' People are hearing stories of all their friends who have made so much money in real estate and they're jumping on the bandwagon and I think these are the individuals that are becoming the most vulnerable."

..ok, fair enough, but who's fault is that? I mean sure, interest only loans and the constant blare of real-estate marketing may help to create conditions where people feel the need to buy something they can't afford to buy before they are unable to afford it, but come on! Just where is the line between someone dumb enough to leap into a deal that they haven't checked out, but smart enough to be able to sign their name?

The challenge of simply living simply

Condos in Vancouver are getting smaller and smaller which brings to mind the question of living efficiently in a small space. If you've got a 500 sq ft. condo, you may find it difficult to find a place for all your things, particularly if you've moved from a larger rented property. So maybe you look around at all your things and think "how much of this stuff do I really need?"

..Which is probably a very good question.

What do you really need to live? A bowl, a spoon, and the clothes on your back.. Perhaps a bag of rice to eat, a pot to cook it in and a library card. Now that's living lean! Living like this could make your 500 feet of floorspace absolutely palatial, and if you ever went bankrupt (god forbid!) you could fit all your stuff into a shopping cart.

But wait.. you're going to need a cloth to clean your dish, and place to put it while you're not using it.. maybe even a second dish for when you have a vistor, and you might as well get a couple of chairs to sit in.. Suddenly you find yourself at Ikea, pressed into a sweaty throng of unhappy shoppers trying to figure out if the billy shelf was supposed to be in aisle 7 or 8.

Oh, right.. and you're going to need a car to get to ikea, and you'll need a place to put the car while your not using it, cause it sure as hell isn't fitting into your apartment. You'll probably also need one of those little pine-tree air fresheners to clear out the smell of particle-board glue after you've driven those Ikea shelves home.

See how this happens? Modern life is a snowball of accumulation, once we have the stuff we need we find things we want and pretty soon you're renting a storage locker in Burnaby to store your overflow.

Anybody else find this to be a problem? How are you dealing with the 'stuff' issue? Do you have too much? Not enough? or juuuuust right?

Salt Lake City BOOMING after the Olympics! *and subsequent bust.

Things are looking up in Salt Lake City - Employment is rising and they're showing a strong retail sector. Vacancy rates are still very high but they're building a new convention center to bring more people into town. This recovery is very good news, because after they hosted the Winter Olympics in 2002 they suffered a big crash.

..when the skiers and skaters went home, Salt Lake City's economy went into a tailspin. The host city was saddled with a glut of offices and hotel rooms while apartments went vacant as demand fell.

Last year, the city's economy rebounded after two years of job losses. But the area's office and apartment markets still struggle, and its promising retail market may be hurt by a stream of new construction.

With rents in SLC going for about 27% less than the national average this recovery is encouraging - even if Vancouver suffers a similar fate after the 2010 winter olympics it just goes to show that the economy can recover after a few years. By the year 2060 most any condo you buy in vancouver will even be cash positive!

Now thats a good investment!

MLS realtor-speak translation service.

Did you know that professional realtors use a super-secret code system to communicate hidden info to other realtors? It's sort of like the way bees dance in elaborate patterns to communicate with other bees.

Do you know what they really mean when they say 'nicely appointed' or 'just paint and profit'?

Imagine the advantage you would have in this hot market if you could decode these messages and reveal the hidden truthiness within.

Well now you can!

vancouvercondo.info proudly presents
The MLS realtor-speak to english translation guide! (episode 1)


When the listing says:

Pride of Ownership!

They Mean:

Current owner may have marked his/her territory by urinating in some corners of the property. Thats what that smell is. Its definately not rodents, so don't worry about that.

When the listing says:

Cute! or Cozy!

They Mean:

Take off your shoes before entering the apartment, because there's not enough room to bend over and undo your laces once inside.

When the listing says:

Just paint and profit!

They Mean:

Unit is unliveable, get in and out of this deal before the market crashes.

When the listing says:

Huge! or Spacious!

They Mean:

You can't touch all the walls at the same time! There will be room for your shoes!

When the listing says:

Nicely appointed!

They Mean:

Condo is decked out with interior finishes that were all-the-rage in 1981. Unit comes with free flock of seagulls album on audio-cassette tape.

When the listing says:

Ground Level or Garden Level

They Mean:

Condo is in the basement. There are spiders. But they dont bite. much.

When the listing says:

Good Investment!

They Mean:

You shouldn't have to subsidize your renter by more than $2000 per month for this apartment. There is no bubble. Negative cashflow investing is where its at! This condo will be worth a staggering 3 MILLION DOLLARS by 2010.