Open Topic

I am going on vacation so here is an open topic for discussion.



I have a couple books I am looking forward to reading.


Beyond Greed and Fear: Understanding Behavioral Finance and the Psychology of Investing
by Hersh Shefrin (Author)

Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller
by Jeff Rubin (Author)

I am also looking forward to spending some time canoeing, hiking, and playing with my kids.

Bear Cave - Growl Away

Here is an open thread for the next couple days.

Some questions:
Are the bears in hibernation?
Is the Fraser Valley Real Estate market starting to show signs of turning into a bear market with over 6 months of inventory and one month of price declines?
Is the Greater Vancouver market nearing the same with nearly 5 months of inventory and buyer reaching their exhaustion point?

Be back soon.

September Kickoff

Good morning,

If you are returning from summer vacation today, looking over some of the posts you've missed in the past few weeks and wondering which ones are worth a read you should check out:

Mortgage Fudge
CMHC Housing Data
Long Term House Price Data
Fraser Valley Housing Data Release
And this video of Robert Shiller

We are awaiting the local August Housing Data Release in the next couple days and I will provide analysis once I have the data in hand. I have a hunch we will see higher prices in August but fairly subdued increases compared to the past. Inventory has taken a noticeable slide and it will be interesting to see how this develops in the fall.

Whatcha want?
On another note I wanted to use the beginning of the fall routine to ask you, my readers, what sorts of things you would like to see here in the next few months. Use the comments to tell me what you think. I enjoy doing the charts and data analysis. I also like staying up to date on market developments and looking at things from a historical perspective. What would you like to see?

I have received some generous donations from some of you and I thank you. I intend to use the funds to purchase StatsCan data for further analysis this fall. On my list of things I would like to accomplish is:

1) Long Term Price Earnings Ratio for Greater Vancouver Real Estate which will require long term rent data. This has been extremely difficult to get my hands on but I will persist. Any leads are appreciated.
2) Some more historical / philosophical analysis of markets and market psychology. In particular I am interested in doing some more observation and discussion of past financial manias and the popular psychology surrounding them. There is some fairly interesting literature on the matter that I have read and plan to read.

Friday Humour and Misc. . .

There is clearly more to life than finances and I find humour a great way to escape from the day to day. I don't know if you have a similar sense of humour to me but its my blog and I get to do what I want with it!

Some things I found funny this week:
http://thereisnohousingbubble.blogspot.com/ which reminded me of http://vancouvercondo.info/2006/07/you-can-get-rich-in-real-estate.html

This was kind of funny:
http://househuntvictoria.blogspot.com/2007/07/victoria-mansions-keeping-msm-honest.html

This was serious:
http://calculatedrisk.blogspot.com/2007/07/housing-demand-shifts.html

This was pointless:

Bear Cave - Feel Free to Growl

Good morning,

There are lots of little things going on that are not worthy of their own post so here is a place we can discuss them all.

1. Interest rates went up today. As was widely expected, the Bank of Canada raised the short term rate to 4.5%. They also said that "some modest further increase in the overnight rate may be required to bring inflation back to the target over the medium term.”
2. There is a new blog on the block where we can find daily updates to the local real estate inventory situation - http://vannumbers.wordpress.com/. Welcome REsteven.
3. Canadian Housing Starts are still hot, hot, hot. In the words of Beata Caranci at TD Economics, "Canadians can sleep well under their roofs tonight with the belief that the housing experience on this side of the border looks to be day-and-night versus its U.S. counterpart."

Happy Canada Day! Open Thread and Inventory Update

Hodge Podge for the long weekend.

First a tribute to Canada. Canada, for all its faults, is a pretty darn nice place to live. Its mostly free, mostly clean, mostly peaceful, and delightfully uninteresting in most respects!

Next, a local real estate market inventory update courtesy of realtor Rob Chipman. Inventory is following an almost identical path to last year with the significant difference of being 30% higher! July is the month when we should start to see the beginning of the fall inventory build up and I expect the Chipman area will break 13,000 for the first time ever in July sometime.


Finally, the June Real Estate market information should be out on Tuesday from the REBGV and FVREB. What do you think it will indicate? I expect marginally higher prices from May, higher inventory than last year and lower sales than last year. Months of inventory should continue rising but all in all no big surprises. The real action will probably start in the fall.

Open Thread

Open to your thoughts today. Feel free to talk about anything but here are some questions I would like answers to.

- Why is Seattle real estate half the price of Vancouver real estate?
- Why is real estate cheaper in places with higher average incomes than Vancouver?
- Why don't BC residents save money?

Wednesday Dog's Breakfast

So many things to post about and I don't have time to look at them closely.

1. China's in a huge bubble and the government is trying to stop it.

2. Mortgage rates are going up for the second time in two weeks and Bank of Canada prime rate is likely to rise soon. Watch out variable rate mortgage holders.

3. Median price data has its faults when looking at a falling real estate market

Talk about what you want.

Reality Check- Open Discussion

Have at it. Talk about what you wish today.

Some ideas:
- young irresponsible, overleveraged flippers
- really junky, overpriced houses for sale - send the mls.ca link
- anecdotes of people committing financial suicide

The inventory update will come later today. Have fun.

Free For All

It's a free-for-all kind of day today.

We could discuss:

Inflation - it's up
Federal Budget - spending is up, taxes are down (kinda)
Housing - it's silly - inventory is rising, sales are declining
Markets - ambivalent

You lead the way.

The Bear Cave

Update: I am awaiting the release of the Fraser Valley Real Estate Board and Greater Vancouver Real Estate Board statistics for the month of February and I will post when I get a copy and I am able to do my analysis for month end.



Hey, its time for the bear cave again. In the spirit of all things bearish we could talk about the following:

• How real estate prices must decline 20% - 25% so normal, hard-working people can afford to purchase a home.
• How yesterday's selloff on the market was really no big deal - at least to the bulls - because as all bulls know - all you need is unbridled optimism for the market to continue to rise. Forget about those fundamentals since it's just about the spin.
• How rampant speculation seems to be par for the course these days whether we are talking about real estate, stocks, mortgage backed securities, high-yield debt, etc?
• Whatever else has got your knickers in knot. Just don't ask me to untie them.

The Bear Cave

Here is your chance to discuss anecdotes of silly speculators, flipped out flippers, negative cash-flow ninnies, etc. Please keep it clean and on topic.

I heard a story recently of a real estate agent buying 3 pre-sale condos in the Whalley area of Surrey. No assignments allowed so this agent must take possession. These condos have no chance of positive cash flow given the price and the current rents in the area. What will happen if these condos don't sell? Don't sell above the price paid? What if this agent's income goes down and the mortgages don't get paid?

Seems like really poor diversification as far as an investment strategy goes. Too risky for me. Do you have any stories?