Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Is anyone really surprised?

More here, and here. Don't forget to vote below.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

But "THEY" said it wasn't so ! "THEY" said it was different this time ! "THEY" said there was no subprime in Canada, period ! ...it's 1982 all over again folks, I can smell it.

Anonymous said...

When a political party admits that there "may have been some improper activities" or other such evasive verbiage regarding a scandal, you know that the problem is orders of magnitude greater. When REMax says that 30 percent of condo sales are to speculators you KNOW that the number is FAR higher and also includes townhouses, SFH and commercial properties as well.

VicREBear

Anonymous said...

and of course they said there is no sub prime in Canada which is total b.s.

It is just a different name. Salaries have not gone up. This whole housing bubble has been fuled by cheap credit and speculation.

I guess everyone has read the article of the condos in Toronto whereby people were lining up all night and pushing and shoving to buy a unit. The same thing happened 15 years ago. This is surely the beginning of the end.

Anonymous said...

and another thing (I am on a rant here)...

The credit bubble is not just young people starting out or low income people wanting a home. It is baby boomers wanting a 2nd or 3rd home or to buy their spoiled kids a condo. It is Bay Street guys wanting a trophy house. People buying cottages in Muskoka and waterfront in Salt Spring.

This is going to hurt everyone. When we borrowed money from the bank they wanted to give us more and more. We are 40 somethings with 4 kids in private shcool and could not sleep at night with that debt. However it did cross my mind ... a bigger house would be nice - actually really nice but luckily my husband who is very prudent burst my bubble pretty quick. If it were just me I am sure I would have jumped at it.

Hadenough

Anonymous said...

Given the apparent fact that 98 percent of people are imprudent, fiscally irresponsible and uneducated, and deeply motivated by consumeristic peer pressure, no wonder there's been a lot of "jumping at it" going on. People never learn prudence until they get their fingers badly burnt, and our government, CMHC and the BofC keep handing out Nomex gloves...

VicREBear

Tony Danza said...

People never learn prudence until they get their fingers badly burnt...

And based on behaviour that I see with my acquaintances and family they forget the pain very quickly.

Anonymous said...

at least it's all good for a laugh!

Anonymous said...

I was having dinner at the Keg a few nights ago and a chap walks up to the table beside me and starts glad handing "Bob". He asks Bob how things are going and Bob quickly responds that life and business couldn't be better and that he was making money so fast he was having a hard time counting it all.

Chap walks away and Bob's wife looks at him and says "yeah right". Bob points out that anything else and it would be all over town in a day.

That is the problem in Victoria and why you won't see the collapse until it smacks you in the face.

Anonymous said...

The question as to how much speculation is in the Victoria housing market intrigued me.

So, I thought how could one measure the amount of speculation in the condominium market?

The thought crossed my mind that if I looked at two recently completed and sold out downtown high rise complexes and found out if they were owner occupied or not. I looked at the assessment notices (public information)to see where the notices were mailed to.

After tallying up the count, I found that 60 percent of the notices were being sent to other addresses than the complex.

I do not know if this indicates the level of condominium speculation, but I found this tally quite interesting.

Anonymous said...

It has been widely reported in Victoria that most if not all of the downtown condos have extremely low owner occupancy rates. Most sit empty for the majority of the year as owners use them for a few weeks or months and can't be bothered to rent them out.

This is a MAJOR issues for businesses that opened up shops in or near some of these developments only to find out that there were no customers!