wisdom

How long before the Whitehouse is renamed - Trump house. This is the most critical question.

If you are in the market - sell! LOL No idea.

It reminds me a lot of late 1999 in the stock markets - the euphoria and FOMO is over powering.

A lot of places in Vancouver and around are up 100% in the last 18 months. As Gary stated you are only in the game if you bid just $100,000 over asking if you want a house an hour out of the city i.e. the valley. Closer to the city I am seeing offers anywhere from $200k to $500k over being accepted. This is why the prices have risen $100k to $1mil in the first 3 months of the year so far. It is very cool to watch the frenzy.

Is he the new leader of China. The USA is no longer the most powerful country. If there are no facts to back it up, I can see how Trump could be appealing. It is human nature to believe in stories rather than look for reality. The more grand the fantasy, the easier to believe it. This is also the reason value investors can out perform. So it is to be expected. Though one would hope that the US is a better society than that.

On what basis?

I can not imagine a more dangerous scenario than the most powerful country being run by a person who has visions of grandeur. He is ignorant about policies and the world, offers over simplified solutions and because he is so full of himself thinks he knows it all. At a time when the world is moving to extremes and economic growth is slowing it is human nature for the average person to strike out. This can not be a good combination.

An average house in Canada is $500,000. How long do you think it will take them to get jobs where they can afford to buy a place When our median income is around $50,000 and even lower for immigrants? Yes, in the long term it should be beneficial, but, we took 25,000 refugees compared to our annual immigration of 250,000 plus. So the refuges are only 10% or so.

Sorry, I had an error - 3% vacancy. 5% expenses. After taxes and strata.

http://www.theprovince.com/business/Former+wholesaler+lifts+dark+side+Vancouver+real+estate+market/11771306/story.html This is fairly common practice in Vancouver at this time.

But on residential properties prices in Vancouver are increasing at $100k a month. So it is the best investment in town. Every showing has tons of people and usually around 10 offers. In areas where property prices used to be over a million you need to bid at least $200k to $500k over asking to have a chance. In the suburbs where younger families are moving, you can get away with just $60,000 to $100,000 over asking. Everyone is getting rich and it is wonderful.

Recently I have seen commercial real estate in Vancouver with unlevered yields of sub 3%. Residential is lower - around 2 to low 2's.

I bet US house prices aren't rising by $100k each month unlike Vancouver either. In some cases, this is happening in a day. I love it when people say this is expected.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/top-business-stories/bc-ontario-2-frothy-housing-markets-3-stats/article29070884/ I wonder how much of it is because of speculating and builders building inventory financed by credit. Credit continues to grow faster than GDP even though private debt is now = 100% of GDP for the first time.

http://www.financialpost.com/m/wp/news/blog.html?b=business.financialpost.com/personal-finance/mortgages-real-estate/more-than-one-in-10-vancouver-condos-sit-empty-in-city-desperate-for-affordable-housing&pubdata-ipsquote-timestamp=2016-03-09 Another study saying foreign ownership is not a factor

2 possible outcomes going forward: 1) inflation - Canadian debt levels are the highest on record. 100% of GDP - what would the impact be. 2) deflation - asset prices and jobs decrease. Out of the 3 possible outcomes that I think of you lose in 2 outcomes. The only outcome where you don't lose is if status quo is maintained and people continue to pay up $1 million for houses in suburbs an hour away from downtown in the belief that foreigners will come buy their houses for a higher price.

Geneva, Bern, Zurich rank very high as livable cities. I don't see them rising 30% a year. I have been trying to understand for years how the mountains in Vancouver allow one to afford their mortgage as the median household here earns $72,000.

Was the US attracting thousands of immigrants before 2008? Is HK attracting thousands of immigrants? What about Singapore? I believe Delhi attracts more people than Vancouver, yet the prices there are dropping? To the people moving to Delhi, it is a more attractive option than where they lived prior to moving there? According to the logic that thousands of people moving to a city for a better life - prices should keep going up. Why isn't it working in HK, Singapore or Delhi. Please don't tell me because everyone wants to move to TO or Vancouver. For most of the rich in the world a city like Vancouver doesn't even register. It is great to sit in Canada and imagine that everyone in world wants to live in Canada. The reality is we only take in 250,000 people a year.

Let me try inverting? Vancouver and Toronto are cheap - what reasons could there be?

At least people have stopped including Calgary in the grouping of global cities.

Vancouver home prices are high because it is a global ciy - any evidence to back it up or is it anecdotal. Is that why young families are buying $ 1 mil homes in the burbs. Sounds awfully like peak oil unless there is evidence. Most new immigrants that I have seen buy get 65% financing and are speculating using this leverage. People think that large amounts are tough to qualify for so the new immigrants must be paying cash. Not true - I would love to see numbers suggesting otherwise.

If a run up for 15 years proves there are fundamentals, then what happened to Calgary or any other city in Alberta after a 15 year run. Something to think about? It is human to be irrational and longer than anyone can imagine.

There are restrictions on farmland being rezoned. If I understand human nature -a point is reached where citizens exert pressure on their elected representativeso to release more land/tighten rules, etc. at some point in time. It actually seems to be playing out that way if you see what happened in recent elections and the pressure continues to build. The problem is that the prices are so inflated, that the floor is going to be a long way down once the music stops due to any reason.

That is the hot money that may be coming in and will be first to leave when and if things go south. Just makes for larger swings. The unfortunate thing is that this is real estate that we are talking about that is being used to speculate and tends to have a large impact with each move because more people own homes and leverage. Leverage can be 20x. For perspective - Last year home prices increased 30% in Vancouver on top of a 15 year run up. There are several examples where I know people who are turning around and selling a house the same day for $90k more than the purchase price. Never been easier to get rich.

Land is valuable to developers. I believe that is where most of the inventory is sitting - it takes a while for city approvals, demolishing and building. When this is over and done with - it will be interesting to look at the number of Canadians who became builders.