Are home prices peaking?

This article from the November 2007 issue of MoneySense Magazine looks at prices across Canada and asks the question Are home prices peaking?

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.

friday free for all!

Its Friday in rainytown, lets do the open topic thing:

-Buy only what you can afford
-Emotional rollercoaster of leveraging
-Loonie at five week high
-US home price decline sets record
-UK Mortgage approvals down 44%
-New Home sales at 12 year low
-Tips on surviving a recession

What are you seeing out there? Post your news, links and anecdotes here!

New REBGV stats website.

Paul has given us a gift that keeps on giving with his new web site. If you haven't seen it yet do yourself a favor and check it out - there's an incredible treasure trove of information he's made available including up to date statistics on details like average selling prices and days on market. He's also sharing inventory charts for all sub-areas of Greater Vancouver going back 3 years. This will be an ideal resource for watching the market in detail. Go check it out and say hello on his new blog.

friday free for all!

Its Friday free-for-all time here at Vancouver Condo Info, but this time its only a semi-free-for-all. Let's see if we can stay away from Hitler and religion on this thread and focus on economics and real estate. Here's a few stories I've noticed recently:

- Interest rates going down
- Mortgage rates going up
- Coventree outlook not good
- Inflation lowest in BC
- PM: Economic slowdown likely
- Another day, another $20 billion
- Harper says NO to ABCP bailout
- Subprime infection in the financials
- Calling bottom on the US market

So what are you seeing these days? Post your Hitler-free anecdotes, interesting links and news here!

Overpay for a condo and get a nice suprise at tax time!

Here's a feel-good story for the holiday season. People that bought at the peak of the market in Santa Cruz California are finding that slumping property values have reduced the amount of property tax they pay!

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!

We're number 1! (in property crime)

Lock up your condo and hide your car! Just in case this dark wet winter climate isn't dismal enough, Vancouver is now the property crime capital of North America. According to a recent report break-ins happen here at a per-capita rate FOUR TIMES that of New York City.

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.

friday free for all!

It Friday free-for-all time, Local Edition!

-BC Real Estate Council: complaints surge
-Expectations reduced for BC economy
-New home price inflation slows
-CIBC's secret [insurers] identity?
-Canada's most attractive city: Calgary
-TD: significantly slower economic growth

What are you seeing out there? New 400 year mortgage terms? Condo-mushroom farms? Elegant lifestyle advertising? Post your news, links and anecdotes here!

First time homebuyers dissapointed

From the Vancouver Sun:

"..the rate at which people are buying their own property is growing faster than the population.

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."

The article goes on to mention some of the interesting ways that buying habits are changing in 'the marketplace today':

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 Repo Bus.

Foreclosures are running so thick in Stockton California that a real estate broker has started a tour bus service to bring prospective buyers to view foreclosed homes. If you're interested in touring the foreclosed homes of Stockton you can sign up at RepoHomeTour.com

Rates cut.

As expected the Fed just cut interest rates to try to stem problems in the US housing market:

Faced with a widening mortgage crisis, the Federal Reserve Tuesday cut a key interest rate for the third time in three months.

"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.

Story on MSNBC.

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.

friday free for all!

Here's your open-topic post for Friday Dec. 7th:

-Vancouver residents should brace for major tax increase.
-Whistler proposes 6% tax hike.
-Fraser Valley house prices at 8 month low.
-Erosion risk in BC's economic foundation.
-US foreclosures hit a record high.
-An imperfect solution to prolong the pain.

What are you seeing out there? Post your news, links and anecdotes here!

You will pay more for the Olympics

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 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.

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.

On a related note I found this article on Forbes about the 'winners curse' that many host cities experience - the one exception being the 1984 LA summer games which actually turned a tidy profit since they had most of their infrastructure already in place and didn't require a lot of extra construction:

"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.

Brand new house - 40 percent off.

Who wants a brand new house for 40% less than its book value? Welcome to the slumping American housing market.

Lenar Corp has agreed to shift 11,000 properties to Morgan Stanley for 40% less than book value to get them off their balance sheets:

"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.

Full story at Marketwatch.