tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-41653566632151171872024-03-14T01:21:43.241-07:00Greater Vancouver Real Estate<center><b>Housing market, the outcome is determined by supply and demand!</b></center>James Wonghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04314746411758953221noreply@blogger.comBlogger35125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4165356663215117187.post-55203027001237912902010-12-06T17:24:00.000-08:002010-12-06T17:42:24.255-08:00Residential investors will find balance in 2011Below is a recent report by FRANK O'BRIEN, Western Investor:<br /><br />When the Onni Group unveiled its Ora condominium tower in Richmond September 29 for local realtors, the entire 68 homes sold out in less than a week at more than $510 per square foot. <p>It was a hopeful harbinger for a Metro Vancouver housing market that is moving cautiously into the second year since a global recession slapped sales down 40 per cent and put a stop to double-digit price increases.</p> <p>As 2010 ended, multiple listing sales through the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver were still down 36 per cent from 2009 and average prices had not moved in nearly six months. Condominium sales, which now dominate the market, were off by 38 per cent and the average price was nearly unchanged from a year earlier.</p> <p>Still, there is now a palatable buzz of optimism in the air, as developers and analysts figure that 2011 will begin the turnaround in B.C.'s housing market, despite the harmonized sales tax, stricter regulations on mortgage lending and buyers still spooked by a sluggish economy.</p><p><a href="http://www.westerninvestor.com/index.php/news/55-features/241-everything-will-be-all-right">Read the full report here</a>.</p><p>The influence of Asian buyers was quoted in the article:</p><blockquote>"Asian buyers are active in Richmond, parts of Coquitlam and on the west side of Vancouver, where Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.(CMHC) estimates that more than 60 per cent of the $1.5 million-plus homes are sold to Chinese buyers".</blockquote>Sales activities for prime building lots are still very high as can be seen in a recent listing at <a href="http://www.realestatesrichmond.com/property_details-V860276.html">#3556 W. 34th Avenue</a> in the Dunbar area of Vancouver west. The listing agent mentioned that he was expecting 7 offers to be presented 4 days after it was posted on the mls system.<br /><br />You can view homes for sale in <a href="http://vancouver-realestates.com/vancouver-west-homes/">Vancouver West using the link here</a>.<br /><br /><a href="http://ebizniz-vancouver-bc.blogspot.com/">Return to homepage</a>.James Wonghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04314746411758953221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4165356663215117187.post-10844281335760755522010-10-26T20:51:00.000-07:002010-10-26T21:06:14.673-07:00The House Party Is Over?Below are passages from The Globe and Mail reported by STEVE LADURANTAYE on Oct 22, 2010.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /><a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/housing/the-long-shadow-over-canadas-housing-market/article1769753/page1/">The long shadow over Canada's housing market </a></span><br /><blockquote>"A a period of stagnation or slowly falling prices, coupled with weak home sales and waning construction activity, would cut off one of the engines that drove impressive economic growth and job creation in the years before the 2008 financial crisis".</blockquote><blockquote>"Market forecasters are near-unanimous in the belief that prices will fall in the coming years, though few foresee the sort of rapid declines that savaged the American market. The stateside disaster was largely fuelled by loans made to people who weren't creditworthy. Canada's problem is different – easy credit is luring people into buying houses they may not be able to afford when rates rise to more historically normal levels. That's why economists and market watchers foresee a drawn-out retraction of the market that will gradually erode prices, rather than a crash".</blockquote><blockquote>"And while supply and demand are keeping prices firm, few expect that to last over the next two years. CIBC World Markets has suggested prices could fall as much as 10 per cent in the next two years, as has TD Bank".</blockquote><a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/housing/the-long-shadow-over-canadas-housing-market/article1769753/page1/">Read the full story here.</a>James Wonghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04314746411758953221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4165356663215117187.post-46577707678091598672010-10-03T15:07:00.000-07:002010-10-05T17:30:36.914-07:00MLS real estate deal 'may force out agents'<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB4jMxGP3BrbukcwXUzvlXkhyPz-WpmP8zXUqzVBcsH3f6UDEYROJRVINAMUaQ3HLI-zLsOC4Rt3tllD9il5nTzIx6crd1b-7nt70UdZhkifJF2vq8gMJZeMb5d7F397KwdsxyUGKd1-w/s1600/CityHall.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 316px; height: 245px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB4jMxGP3BrbukcwXUzvlXkhyPz-WpmP8zXUqzVBcsH3f6UDEYROJRVINAMUaQ3HLI-zLsOC4Rt3tllD9il5nTzIx6crd1b-7nt70UdZhkifJF2vq8gMJZeMb5d7F397KwdsxyUGKd1-w/s400/CityHall.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5524723468055616098" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Fears for real estate sector already hit by declining sales</span><br /><br />The Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) has reached an agreement in principle with the Commissioner of Competition regarding the application before the Competition Tribunal, subject to the approval of CREA’s member boards at a Special General Meeting in St. John’s, Newfoundland on October 24, 2010.<br /><br />If passed, the 10-year agreement would allow sellers to hire agents to put for-sale properties on the Multiple Listing Service for a fee and if they wish, the sellers could carry out the remainder of the sales process themselves.<br /><p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.realestatesrichmond.com/"><img src="http://media.point2.com/p2a/htmltext/005d/e230/cf21/818aeaa5cae387b13918/original.jpg" style="width: 270px; height: 56px;" alt="BannerFans.com" border="0" /></a></p>Tsur Somerville, associate professor with the University of B.C.'s Centre for Urban Economics and Real Estate, said the agreement would create a legally binding document between the Canadian Real Estate Association and the Competition Bureau.<br /><br />Somerville expects competition to give consumers more choice and, to some extent, more control.<br /><br />Discount commission agents already exist, long before the Competitive Bureau take up the case against the real estate board. The freedom of choice over the level of service and commission are already in place in B.C. for a number of years, the agreement would be unlikely to affect this province's real estate market.<br /><br />Real estate commissions currently ranges from 1% to 4% for the service of a full service agent. There could be new entrants that simply provide the paperwork function of the listing service. Home sellers who opt to pay for the listing service only will not have any agent representation for selling the home.<br /><br />This then means that home buyers will have to pay their own realtor's commission if they want to buy a property that only pays for the listing service only. As a result, most buyers would prefer to look at property being marketed under the traditional model with sellers paying the commission.<br /><br />Mistakes in the real estate business could be "hugely costly". There are many issues when not handled properly, could result in expensive letigation and costs. Beside such services as open houses, websites, checking municipal permits, a full service agent provides professional guidance and representation on proper property disclosure, oil tanks, permits, title searches, negotiating contracts and more.<br /><br />Views about the impact of the Competition Bureau agreement vary. Some industry observers maintain that, because B.C. already permits alternative sales models, it is not going to have as dramatic an impact as many consumer advocates would have liked.<br /><p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.realestatesrichmond.com/"><img src="http://media.point2.com/p2a/htmltext/005d/e230/cf21/818aeaa5cae387b13918/original.jpg" style="width: 270px; height: 56px;" alt="BannerFans.com" border="0" /></a></p>James Wonghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04314746411758953221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4165356663215117187.post-59508739602073161962010-08-22T20:57:00.000-07:002010-08-22T21:38:24.034-07:00Vancouver High Prices: Too Many People On Too Little Land!Below is a Vancouver Sun's article by Don Cayo, published on August 21, 2010:<br /><br />What drives Vancouver’s house prices so relentlessly to levels four times higher than Winnipeg’s, and more than half again what Torontonians pay?<br /><br />It’s simple, says Tsur Somerville of UBC Centre for Urban Economics and Real Estate.<br /><br />“If you want Winnipeg-level house prices here, all you have to do is tear down the mountains and fill in the ocean.”<br /><br />Well, that puts slow or stop to the steady influx of people — though the massive loss of amenities if our landscape were to be suddenly levelled might do that automatically.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.vancouversun.com/business/real-estate/There+million+reasons+high+prices+Vancouver/3425136/story.html#ixzz0xOjlhlh9">Read more > </a><br /><br />When homes can be purchased freely by those who have the money to spend, home prices are affected more by supply and demand, and less by affordability and average household income. <br /><br />Below you can view <a href="http://www.chpc.biz/Major_Cities_Chart.htm">"Canada's 6 Cities Housing Price Charts"</a> by Brian Ripley. A market slow down will result in a correction* to current home prices, but a collapse in home prices is less likely to happen.<br /><br />* A correction is a short term price decline of 5% to 20% or so.James Wonghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04314746411758953221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4165356663215117187.post-4144358259013637812010-07-15T19:44:00.000-07:002010-07-15T19:44:17.703-07:00B.C. real estate a buyer’s market, as sales fall in June<a href="http://www.vancouversun.com/business/real%20estate%20buyer%20market%20sales%20fall%20June/3282551/story.html">B.C. real estate a buyer’s market, as sales fall in June</a>James Wonghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04314746411758953221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4165356663215117187.post-74969186403171942902010-06-07T17:01:00.000-07:002010-12-09T10:27:37.565-08:00Mainland Chinese buyers led luxury-home market recovery<h2 id="blog_heading">Blog by James Wong</h2><h2 class="post_heading">Mainland Chinese buyers led luxury-home market recovery</h2> <div class="entrytext clearfix"> <b>Canada seen as a safe storehouse for personal wealth</b><br /><br />By Derrick Penner, Vancouver Sun February 6, 2010<br /><br />It took a couple of months, but sales of luxury homes in 2009 caught up to the general real estate market driven largely by buyers from mainland China, one dealer in high-end homes has found.<br /><br />The Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver recorded 30 sales of homes more than $5 million through the Multiple Listing Service compared with 26 for 2008.<br /><br />"But in 2009, all of those were after April," Dan Scarrow, an agent with Macdonald Realty in Vancouver said in an interview. "Nothing sold over $5 million between January and the end of April."<br /><br />Scarrow said the pickup in sales lagged the recovery of sales in the general market, but once sellers at the lower end started moving up, luxury properties started to move as well.<br /><br />"I think there was a delay of probably two or three months between the lowest and highest end starting to sell," Scarrow said.<br /><br />Luxury properties took somewhat of a hit during the world financial crisis of 2008, a year in which high-end sales fell off their previous peak.<br /><br />While 2008 saw Metro Vancouver set a record for top price for a home, at $28.2 million for 3330 Radcliffe Ave. in West Vancouver, overall MLS sales came in at 26 compared with 35 MLS sales in 2007.<br /><br />At the time, agents viewed the situation as affluent buyers delaying decisions while uncertainty reigned in world financial markets.<br /><br />Scarrow added that once Metro Vancouver's market thawed in the spring of 2009, "mainland Chinese buyers started getting on board as well."<br /><br />Scarrow said foreign buyers are coming into Metro Vancouver from Australia, Europe and the United States, but they are being overshadowed by mainland Chinese purchasers who view Canada as a good country to provide a western education for their children and Canadian real estate as a safe storehouse for their wealth.<br /><br />Scarrow added that the trend is similar to what Vancouver experienced with Taiwanese and Hong Kong immigration with the wealthiest business immigrants taking the vanguard and choosing Vancouver as a convenient location that offers them the attributes they are looking for while also being relatively close to their businesses back in Asia.<br /><br />"So there was a wave of Taiwanese buyers that came in and buoyed the market," Scarrow said. "Then Hong Kong buyers came in and now mainland China buyers are coming, but there are 50 times as many of them, potentially, coming to the city."<br /><br /><a title="Vancouver realestates" href="http://vancouver-realestates.com/">Return to homepage</a>. </div>James Wonghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04314746411758953221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4165356663215117187.post-91381238479795799882010-04-18T11:19:00.000-07:002010-12-09T10:23:05.573-08:00Making Sense Of Canadian Real Estate Prices<p><strong>Is there are direct relationship between Canadian real estate prices and money supply?</strong></p> <p><strong>Real estate </strong>is subject to supply and demand like any other goods that are in demand by people. The increase in Canadian home prices when compared to the increase in the prices of crude oil and gold, showed a close relationship with the supply of money (both in Canada and the global supply of money).</p> <p>The table below clearly show the gain in prices for real estate, crude oil and gold are directly related to the supply of money over a 20 years period.<span id="more-590"></span></p> <table> <tbody><tr> <td align="center"><strong>Time Period</strong></td> <td align="center"><strong>Jan/1990</strong></td> <td align="center"><strong>Jan/2000</strong></td> <td align="center"><strong>Inc. 1st 10 Yr</strong></td> <td align="center"><strong>Jan/2010</strong></td> <td align="center"><strong>Inc. 2nd 10 Yr</strong></td> <td align="center"><strong>Inc. 20 Yr</strong></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="center"><strong>Van SFH</strong></td> <td align="center"><strong>$300K</strong></td> <td align="center"><strong>$380K</strong></td> <td align="center"><strong>27%</strong></td> <td align="center"><strong>$950K</strong></td> <td align="center"><strong>150%</strong></td> <td align="center"><strong>216%</strong></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="center"><strong>Van Thse</strong></td> <td align="center"><strong>$190K</strong></td> <td align="center"><strong>$220K</strong></td> <td align="center"><strong>16%</strong></td> <td align="center"><strong>$355K</strong></td> <td align="center"><strong>61%</strong></td> <td align="center"><strong>87%</strong></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="center"><strong>Cdn $ Supply</strong></td> <td align="center"><strong>$18 Billion</strong></td> <td align="center"><strong>$33 Billion</strong></td> <td align="center"><strong>83%</strong></td> <td align="center"><strong>$55 Billion</strong></td> <td align="center"><strong>67%</strong></td> <td align="center"><strong>205%</strong></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="center"><strong>Global $ Supply</strong></td> <td align="center"><strong>US$17 Trillion</strong></td> <td align="center"><strong>US$26 Trillion</strong></td> <td align="center"><strong>52%</strong></td> <td align="center"><strong>US$64 Trillion</strong></td> <td align="center"><strong>146%</strong></td> <td align="center"><strong>276%</strong></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="center"><strong>Crude Oil/barrel</strong></td> <td align="center"><strong>US$20</strong></td> <td align="center"><strong>US$27</strong></td> <td align="center"><strong>35%</strong></td> <td align="center"><strong>US$68</strong></td> <td align="center"><strong>152%</strong></td> <td align="center"><strong>240%</strong></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="center"><strong>Gold/oz</strong></td> <td align="center"><strong>US$380</strong></td> <td align="center"><strong>US$280</strong></td> <td align="center"><strong>-27%</strong></td> <td align="center"><strong>US$1100</strong></td> <td align="center"><strong>293%</strong></td> <td align="center"><strong>189%</strong></td> </tr> </tbody></table> Charts and data source: Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver, DollarDaze.org and Kitco.<br /><br /><a href="http://richmondbcrealestates.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/january2010-copy.jpg" title="january2010-copy.jpg"><img src="http://richmondbcrealestates.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/january2010-copy.thumbnail.jpg" alt="january2010-copy.jpg" align="left" hspace="6" vspace="6" /></a> <p><strong>First 10 years - 1990 to 2000</strong></p> <p>The gain in home prices for single family homes and townhomes in Greater Vancouver were 27% and 16% respectively. The increase in crude oil price and the supply of money were 2 to 3 times more. During this period, there was a rapid gain in home prices from 1990 to 1994, followed by 5 years of price decline when capitals were moved back from Canada to China. Immigrants from Hongkong and Taiwan sold their homes and move money out of Canada after the hand over of Hongkong to China.</p> <p><a href="http://richmondbcrealestates.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/cad.png" title="cad.png"><img src="http://richmondbcrealestates.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/cad.thumbnail.png" alt="cad.png" align="right" hspace="6" vspace="6" /></a></p> <p><strong>Second 10 years period - 2000 to 2010 </strong></p> <p>The rise in Vancouver single family home prices, crude oil and gold followed closely with the global supply of money. Although the Canadian money supply was increasing at half the rate of global money supply, money from around the world and China could have been recycled and invested in Canadian real estates. The rapid expansion in liquidity around the world resulted in real estate prices all over the world, making double digit gains.<strong> </strong></p> <p><a href="http://richmondbcrealestates.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/smallglobalmoneysupply.jpg" title="smallglobalmoneysupply.jpg"><img src="http://richmondbcrealestates.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/smallglobalmoneysupply.thumbnail.jpg" alt="smallglobalmoneysupply.jpg" align="right" hspace="6" vspace="6" /></a><strong>New money fueling home sales </strong></p> <p>The rapid rise in home prices, easy money policy from CMHC and low interest rates all helped to fuel the real estate boom in Canada. Canadian banks were very liberal in granting “home equity lines of credit” to home owners whose homes had doubled in values. Home owners and investors made very handsome gains in their real estate purchases over the past 10 years.</p> <p><a href="http://richmondbcrealestates.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/image002.jpg" title="image002.jpg"><img src="http://richmondbcrealestates.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/image002.thumbnail.jpg" alt="image002.jpg" align="right" hspace="6" vspace="6" /></a><strong>Will real estate prices collapse? </strong></p> <p>After a huge run-up in prices since 2001, many are wondering when they will be a correction in home prices. There were time periods when the market appeared to crack and roll over. But, this has not happened.<br /></p> <p><a href="http://richmondbcrealestates.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/kitco.gif" title="kitco.gif"><img src="http://richmondbcrealestates.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/kitco.thumbnail.gif" alt="kitco.gif" align="right" border="7" vspace="7" /></a>The above data showed that real estate prices seemed to co-relate with the global supply of money. The Chinese economy over the past 10 years had grown at just over 10% a year, and the momentum appears to be able to be sustained for the foreseeable future.<br /></p><p>Money from China has a direct and significant impact on Canadian real estate prices. Canada is a favoured country for immigration by mainland Chinese families and immigrants from around the world. British Columbia will continue to enjoy positive inflow of money and new immigrants. Rich Chinese immigrants are making an impact on home prices in Vancouver Westside. Overall, real estate in BC will benefit from the demand for housing by new immigrants.</p><a href="http://richmondbcrealestates.com/?cat=27">Read other Metro Vancouver real estate news here</a>.James Wonghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04314746411758953221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4165356663215117187.post-83391630898286374822010-03-14T11:43:00.000-07:002010-03-14T11:49:20.095-07:00Foreclosures in US could grow much bigger over the coming yearBelow is an article by Renae Merle, Washington Post Staff Writer - Friday, March 12, 2010<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">New round of foreclosures threatens housing market</span><br /><br />The housing market is facing swelling ranks of homeowners who are seriously delinquent but have yet to lose their homes, and this is threatening a new wave of foreclosures that could hit just as the real estate market has begun to stabilize.<br /><br />About 5 million to 7 million properties are potentially eligible for foreclosure but have not yet been repossessed and put up for sale. Some economists project it could take nearly three years before all these homes have been put on the market and purchased by new owners. And the number of pending foreclosures could grow much bigger over the coming year as more distressed borrowers become delinquent and then, if they can't obtain mortgage relief, wade through the foreclosure process, which often takes more than a year to complete.<br /><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/11/AR2010031104866.html"><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Read the article here></span></a>.James Wonghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04314746411758953221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4165356663215117187.post-11360997094788691902010-02-26T20:07:00.000-08:002010-02-26T20:11:48.362-08:00When It's OK to Walk Away From Your Home<p>below is an article by <span style="font-weight: bold;"></span>By BRETT ARENDS, published on February 26, 2010 in the online.wsj.com.<br /></p><p>Millions of Americans are now deeply underwater on their mortgage. If you're among them, you need to stop living in a dream world and give serious thought to walking away from the debt.</p> <p>No, you shouldn't feel bad about it, and you shouldn't feel guilty. The lenders would do the same to you—in a heartbeat. You need to put yourself and your family's finances first.</p> <p>How widespread is this? More than 11 million families are in "negative equity"—that is, they owe more on their home than it is worth—according to a report out this week by FirstAmerican Core Logic, a real-estate data firm. That's a quarter of all families with mortgages. And for more than five million of those borrowers, the crisis is extreme: They are more than 25% underwater—the equivalent of having a $100,000 loan on a property now worth just $75,000 or less. That's true for a fifth of mortgage holders in California, nearly a third in Florida and an incredible 50% in Nevada.</p><p><a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703795004575087843144657512.html?mod=WSJ_Stocks_MIDDLEROI">Read the blog here</a>.<br /></p>James Wonghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04314746411758953221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4165356663215117187.post-19067506138322097132010-02-02T21:39:00.000-08:002010-02-02T21:46:13.838-08:00No help in sight, more homeowners walk awayBy David Streitfeld, The New York Times<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">About 5.1 million will own a home valued below 75 percent of what is owed</span><br /><br />In 2006, Benjamin Koellmann bought a condominium in Miami Beach. By his calculation, it will be about the year 2025 before he can sell his modest home for what he paid. Or maybe 2040.<p class="textBodyBlack"><span id="byLine"></span>“People like me are beginning to feel like suckers,” Mr. Koellmann said. “Why not let it go in default and rent a better place for less?”</p><p class="textBodyBlack">After three years of plunging real estate values, after the bailouts of the bankers and the revival of their million-dollar bonuses, after the Obama administration’s loan modification plan raised the expectations of many but satisfied only a few, a large group of distressed homeowners is wondering the same thing.</p><p class="textBodyBlack"><a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35210866/ns/business-the_new_york_times/">Read the full article here></a>.<br /></p>James Wonghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04314746411758953221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4165356663215117187.post-51774860971223141012010-02-02T17:26:00.000-08:002010-02-02T17:33:22.892-08:00Awash in a sea of debtBelow is a Jason Kirby article published by Macleans.ca on February 2, 2010.<span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /><br />Oblivious to the risks, Canadians are piling on record debt loads</span><br /><br />Room 32 of the B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver is where dreams of owning a home go to die. It’s the main foreclosure court in the Lower Mainland, where banks and other lenders ultimately turn when homeowners can’t keep up with their mortgage payments. The homes get seized, then sold off. “There are many tears on that carpet,” says Andrew Bury, a partner at Gowlings and the top foreclosure lawyer in the city. But lately the cramped courtroom has come to represent something else entirely—the utter insanity of Canada’s red hot housing market.<br /><br />Last week Bury was in court to seek approval for the sale of a one-storey foreclosed home in central Richmond for $670,000. That was already $40,000 more than the house had been valued at two months earlier. Then, as he always does, Bury asked whether any other bidders were interested in the 2,000-sq.-foot home. Ten hands shot up. What happened next left him stunned. After a secret auction, the winning couple offered a whopping $852,500. “That’s an extreme case, but it’s the kind of thing we’re seeing all the time now,” says Bury. “It’s a feeding frenzy out there.”<br /><br /><a href="http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/02/02/awash-in-a-sea-of-debt/">Read the full article here></a>.James Wonghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04314746411758953221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4165356663215117187.post-24479744752038447922010-01-31T22:05:00.000-08:002010-01-31T23:12:14.465-08:00Real estate sales: the China factor<span style="font-weight: bold;">How important is the China factor in affecting sales of real estate in B.C?</span><br /><p>"Being a small town with an abundance of modern amenities should make <span style="font-weight: bold;">Kelowna </span>a shoe-in for growth coming out of the recession, but not being an immigration hub could be slowing its progress".</p> <p>During an Urban Development Institute meeting yesterday, Neil Chrystal, president of the UDI Pacific Region and CEO of Polygon Homes Ltd. gave his take on the local real estate market, noting he was surprised by some of the incongruencies between this city and Vancouver.</p><ul><li>“Vancouver bounded back and Kelowna got nothing,” said Chrystal, adding he’s wondered what the difference could be and landed on the lack of appeal to the Asian consumer.</li><li>“Vancouver is a great destination for people from mainland China,” said Chrystal, to the roomful of developers and industry experts. “We had that and you didn’t and you couldn’t replace the second home buyer.”</li></ul><a href="http://www.kelowna.com/2010/01/29/lack-of-curb-appeal-to-immigrants-slowing-kelownas-real-estate-bounce-back/">Read the full article here></a>.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">China housing market.</span><br /><br />An article posted on Seeking Alpha "<a href="http://seekingalpha.com/article/185530-4-reference-points-on-china-real-estate?source=email">4 Reference Points on China Real Estate</a>" raised the question whether there’s a housing bubble in China.<br /><br />The influx of money from China is an important factor contributing to the strong run up in home prices in metro Vancouver the past 8 years. A fascinating <a href="http://www.cibmagazine.com.cn/Features/Face_To_Face.asp?id=1190&zhang_xin.html">interview</a> in this month’s (January) issue of <em>China International Business</em> magazine with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhang_Xin_%28businesswoman%29">Zhang Xin</a>, the CEO of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOHO_China">SOHO China</a> revealed her thoughts on the real estate market in China.<br /><br />"She is unambiguous in her belief that her industry is in the midst of a bubble."<br /><br />A downturn in the housing market in China could have a significant impact on the housing market in metro Vancouver.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.realestatesrichmond.com/" title="Richmond homes for sale"><img src="http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/8410/124899591af45f1m3mw8.jpg" alt="BannerFans.com" href="http://vancoight=" 60="" width="300" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.vancouver-realestates.com/" style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">View Vancouver homes for sale here</a>.James Wonghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04314746411758953221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4165356663215117187.post-4128924450249340332010-01-18T17:19:00.000-08:002010-01-21T19:04:19.565-08:00Vancouver housing market: Vancouver is different?<span style="font-weight: bold;">Vancouver property still good buy for post-Olympic era </span><br /><br /><span id="Zoom">Following a Royal LePage's recent forecast that property in western Canada's largest city would rise 7.2 percent this year</span>, Bob Rennie, <span id="Zoom">principle of Rennie Marketing Systems, Canada and USA, told Xinhua in an exclusive interview that Vancouver properties would conservatively rise 4 to 4.5 percent in 2010, which would present an ideal opportunity for investors. </span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;" id="Zoom"><br />"Every market has people who want to jump in and jump out, but there is something unique about Vancouver that once people get their name on title they tend to hold and that's what maintained prices. And a very low vacancy rate has maintained prices on property price</span><span style="font-style: italic;" id="Zoom">s." With Chinese-Canadians about 300,000 of the city's 2.2 million population Rennie said Asian investors were increasingly an important factor to the market, accounting for about 25 percent of the overall sales. </span><p style="font-style: italic;"><span id="Zoom"> "With the amount of money being made in China, and with the acceptance of China to Vancouver, we have to be in the top two places on the planet for China to look at, to move money to. We see it happening right now, it's happening a lot. It used to just happen in the luxury market, now it's happening in all the market."<br /></span></p><p style="font-style: italic;"><span id="Zoom"><a href="http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2010-01/17/content_12822801.htm">Read the report here></a>.</span></p>Will the Vancouver housing market keep up with the steady price gain, or suffer a sudden collapse?<br /><br /><a href="http://www.realestatesrichmond.com/" title="Richmond homes for sale"><img src="http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/8410/124899591af45f1m3mw8.jpg" alt="BannerFans.com" href="http://vancoight=" 60="" width="300" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.vancouver-realestates.com/" style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">View Vancouver homes for sale</a>.James Wonghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04314746411758953221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4165356663215117187.post-36112020350241231912010-01-17T13:48:00.000-08:002010-01-19T18:48:47.620-08:00Greater Vancouver Real Estate - Supply & DemandA few months ago, "<a href="http://housing-analysis.blogspot.com/">Housing Analysis</a>" posted some very interesting data on the supply and demand for homes in Greater Vancouver. The period covered was from January 2005 to October, 2009. <a href="http://housing-analysis.blogspot.com/2009/11/rebgv-october-2009-charts.html">View the link here>.</a><br /><br />The average monthly sales for 2005, 2006 and 2007 was around 3,500 units, with seasonal higher sales from April to July and the lowest level of sales around December and January. The average listings was around 10,000 to 12,500 homes. The MOI chart showed that during the above 3-year period, the inventory was fluctuating around 4 to 5 months of suplly.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Months of inventory</span><br /><br />A balance market is generally when there are around 6 months supply of homes. When the "months of inventory" (MOI) is above 6, home prices tend to fall. When the MOI is below 6, the market is bullish and home prices tend to go up. From May 2008 to March 2009, the MOI exceeded 6, and home prices fell. When the MOI fell below 6 in April 2009, home prices rebounded.<br /><br />The Greater Vancouver real estate price chart below is seen to confirm the strength or weakness in the housing market.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzKKn3TwDXZKdmwE9FXVfO2TQr7KQmtwzw0ZzJGYYQRNI41swIE5u7e7RiBM-bi_HMIqdaEF51BnXnqWa_A9xdeq_nbwGal_bM-BUtlnVKanzfY0LMVwulCdDAWrYTeDPniTrA1G-RSAk/s1600-h/Dec09+copy.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 309px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzKKn3TwDXZKdmwE9FXVfO2TQr7KQmtwzw0ZzJGYYQRNI41swIE5u7e7RiBM-bi_HMIqdaEF51BnXnqWa_A9xdeq_nbwGal_bM-BUtlnVKanzfY0LMVwulCdDAWrYTeDPniTrA1G-RSAk/s400/Dec09+copy.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5427911347808203970" border="0" /></a><br /><a href="http://www.realestatesrichmond.com/" title="Richmond homes for sale"><img src="http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/8410/124899591af45f1m3mw8.jpg" alt="BannerFans.com" href="http://vancoight=" 60="" width="300" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.vancouver-realestates.com/" style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">View Vancouver homes for sale</a>.James Wonghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04314746411758953221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4165356663215117187.post-63050348730727198062010-01-15T14:49:00.000-08:002010-01-19T18:48:32.451-08:00Historical listing data for Greater Vancouver<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEii7vod-02eRDZ-_7m1OWrWVBMd-pDyNupK7OSVQK2FRDs0GjNxUN2z336Fb2bnwAneSIJHYn7WhKK1qheOTkVl2i0PIt2xPROOtO3AOodtN8C44_AZ9qOgpx6hgJHrW3G34RsVhtfa_xc/s1600-h/Dec+copy.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 242px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEii7vod-02eRDZ-_7m1OWrWVBMd-pDyNupK7OSVQK2FRDs0GjNxUN2z336Fb2bnwAneSIJHYn7WhKK1qheOTkVl2i0PIt2xPROOtO3AOodtN8C44_AZ9qOgpx6hgJHrW3G34RsVhtfa_xc/s400/Dec+copy.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5427103054987232402" border="0" /></a><br />Home prices are affected greatly by the supply and demand for homes by home buyers and sellers. The chart above from the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver showed a steady drop in listings (reported for the month of December) of 1997 to 2003.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLLqreZ-7VsssBQPsS88UyoBH5eh86ZVQvfM3g9QPM1cpkqX6R1OMlcYH3AlvhPkDtHnIdv-WpUIrHXm5l4Ueh7pJw8GnVk6EYXxfuKkkiL-5cSSOd26hLsmdLM1zqqEWgSVN8TMN2A24/s1600-h/2009-11chart.gif"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 326px; height: 245px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLLqreZ-7VsssBQPsS88UyoBH5eh86ZVQvfM3g9QPM1cpkqX6R1OMlcYH3AlvhPkDtHnIdv-WpUIrHXm5l4Ueh7pJw8GnVk6EYXxfuKkkiL-5cSSOd26hLsmdLM1zqqEWgSVN8TMN2A24/s400/2009-11chart.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5427185709342014242" border="0" /></a>The supply & demand chart to the left showed that the housing market suffered an overload of supply when sales dropped sharply between April 2008 to March 2009 as a result of the credit crunch.<br /><br /><a href="http://activerain.com/blogsview/1400469/greater-vancouver-housing-market-outlook-for-2010">Home prices dropped by 15% or more </a>in less than a year. However, by May 2009, home buyers returned in large drove, bidding up prices as there were more buyers than sellers.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Buyer vs Seller market</span><br /><br />The balance of power between buyers and sellers can be tracked by following the list/sale ratio graph below:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpaj5HEFQWzGs97i4WzqzM6R96i4cX2zpIkfXMP00Oip4rdnMOax-QJTv_LAfalcZRSSO6WV0OmADQCBDdOVjsoqC4-iGfJIvs4aHghD6Sgq90d4tpOky3iFGyP9VJPF4ltA3I-z_tyrA/s1600-h/Doc1+copy.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 374px; height: 255px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpaj5HEFQWzGs97i4WzqzM6R96i4cX2zpIkfXMP00Oip4rdnMOax-QJTv_LAfalcZRSSO6WV0OmADQCBDdOVjsoqC4-iGfJIvs4aHghD6Sgq90d4tpOky3iFGyP9VJPF4ltA3I-z_tyrA/s400/Doc1+copy.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5427184860575556434" border="0" /></a>The running 3-month list and sale ratios as shown on the chart to the left for 2008 and 2009 showed that there was more up-ward pricing pressure since July 2009 when the list to sale ratios was less than 3.<br /><br />The market can only re-balance when more supply is coming into the market, or the sale pace slow down. It will appear that this may not happen until after the second half of 2010.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The housing market after the winter Olympics</span><br /><br />While the public are inclined to speculate that the market will slow down after the winter Olympics, there are others who are cautiously optimistic that that housing market may be able to sustain at current level of activities. If a stable supply and demand for homes can be maintained, CMHC and others maintained that a moderate price gained for 2010 can be expected.<br /><br />The next few months list sale ratios will be able to tell us more about the future direction for metro Vancouver's housing market.<br /><a href="http://www.realestatesrichmond.com/" title="Richmond homes for sale"><img src="http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/8410/124899591af45f1m3mw8.jpg" alt="BannerFans.com" href="http://vancoight=" 60="" width="300" border="0" /></a><br /><a href="http://www.vancouver-realestates.com/" style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">View Vancouver homes for sale</a>.James Wonghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04314746411758953221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4165356663215117187.post-2818338288234691862010-01-14T16:53:00.000-08:002010-01-19T18:48:15.642-08:00BC November Residential Sales<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgogWiBfc2fk0uiH8MYV-hPE2Z97i_rayMSXY6iiC51iQFueuAnEwUHa4mqXC08NyLJkeS9iPNCSGy-zem4dliurBLzq8X0vHjgKk6jDZNHzFXxUkRQ2Lxz6TS3rQ1y-a_SO4MwuRSS95Q/s1600-h/2009-11chart.gif"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: center; cursor: pointer; width: 391px; height: 294px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgogWiBfc2fk0uiH8MYV-hPE2Z97i_rayMSXY6iiC51iQFueuAnEwUHa4mqXC08NyLJkeS9iPNCSGy-zem4dliurBLzq8X0vHjgKk6jDZNHzFXxUkRQ2Lxz6TS3rQ1y-a_SO4MwuRSS95Q/s400/2009-11chart.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5426773011011309410" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">November Home Sales Continue at Torrid Pace</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Vancouver, BC – December 9, 2009.<span style="font-weight: bold;"></span></span> The British Columbia Real Estate Association (BCREA) reports that Multiple Listing Service® (MLS®) residential sales in the province climbed 165 per cent to 7,182 units in November compared to the same month last year. Last month posted the highest number of MLS® residential sales for the month of November since 2005, when 7,721 units changed hands. Triple-digit gains in province-wide unit sales reflect a low number of unit sales in November 2008.<br /><br />“BC home sales remained at an elevated level in November,” said Cameron Muir, BCREA Chief Economist. “Low mortgage interest rates, pent-up demand and strong consumer confidence continue to be key drivers in the market.”<br /><br />The torrid pace of home sales in the Fraser Valley, Vancouver and Victoria has propelled the provincial total to near record levels. However, consumer demand in these markets is expected to moderate in the new year as pent-up demand is largely expended and higher home prices erode affordability.<br /><br />Year-to-date, MLS® residential sales dollar volume increased 21 per cent to $36.8 billion over the same period last year. A total of 79,325 units were sold in the first eleven months of 2009, up 19 per cent from 2008, while the average MLS® price increased 2 per cent to $463,555.<br /><a href="http://www.realestatesrichmond.com/" title="Richmond homes for sale"><img src="http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/8410/124899591af45f1m3mw8.jpg" alt="BannerFans.com" href="http://vancoight=" 60="" width="300" border="0" /></a><br /><a href="http://www.vancouver-realestates.com/" style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">View Vancouver homes for sale</a>.James Wonghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04314746411758953221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4165356663215117187.post-84736374297625978092010-01-12T13:23:00.000-08:002010-01-19T18:47:57.010-08:00Metro Vancouver Housing Trend<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1Qa-3i9Mbd2MSCVsTL0SAue-R2TcTky1bJsIsIINOuk6GDpBubwDz-eIAbjqqvhah3W3S_ucmRfRdKPz3zGvoOd1f4DNYEEcSgwZfVQ2SD3vexl1KXkbR41eJPi_AqmTDWuKkH-bSu2s/s1600-h/Dec09+copy.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 424px; height: 327px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1Qa-3i9Mbd2MSCVsTL0SAue-R2TcTky1bJsIsIINOuk6GDpBubwDz-eIAbjqqvhah3W3S_ucmRfRdKPz3zGvoOd1f4DNYEEcSgwZfVQ2SD3vexl1KXkbR41eJPi_AqmTDWuKkH-bSu2s/s320/Dec09+copy.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5425993897532135058" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />Housing trend since 1977</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">From 1997 to 2001</span><br /><br />Greater Vancouver's last bull market started towards the end of 1984. and lasted until the end of 1994. Home sales dropped yearly, along with home prices and reached a bottom around 1998. View the price chart here.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />From 2001 to 2007</span><br /><br />When buying interest returned to the market in 2001, you will notice that there was not enough supply of homes to keep pace with demand. New home construction was pushed to the limit, as strong demand for housing continued un-abetted until the end of 2007. From 2001 to 2007, home prices more than double in values.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The correction in 2008</span><br /><br />The credit crunch in 2007 and early 2008 caused a major pull back in buying interest, resulting in home prices declining 15%. The panic of 2008 was quickly replaced by market optimism, when interest rates were slashed from 4.5% in Nov, 2007 all the way to 0.25% in Apr 2009.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Will home prices collapse? </span><br /><br />There are great concerns in the market place that home prices are too high. There are major concerns on higher interest rates, pending HST which will affect the housing market and the weak Canadian economy in the midst of a world wide recession.<br /><br />The metro Vancouver housing may be at the cross road. Market confidence is the key. Home prices are hinging on what happens after the winter Olympics, interest rates, HST implementation and the economy.<br /><a href="http://www.realestatesrichmond.com/" title="Richmond homes for sale"><img src="http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/8410/124899591af45f1m3mw8.jpg" alt="BannerFans.com" href="http://vancoight=" 60="" width="300" border="0" /></a><br /><a href="http://www.vancouver-realestates.com/" style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">View Vancouver homes for sale</a>.James Wonghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04314746411758953221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4165356663215117187.post-86997152632298879552008-07-23T17:39:00.000-07:002010-01-19T18:47:33.559-08:00The Canadian Real Estate Debate Goes On<p>Canadian Columnists Linda Leatherdale on 2008-05-04 posted on Canoe Money a timely article on the Canadian Housing Market - <strong>"Opening door on market"</strong></p> <p style="padding-left: 30px;"><br />"Some feverishly argue there's no way Canada's real estate market will crash and burn like the U.S. market, where one prominent analyst warns that the meltdown is more fast and furious than during the Great Depression".<br /><br />"Others say, get real: Canada's largest trading partner is the United States, and if this one-time economic superstar is in a recession, we're going down, too".<br /><br /><a linkindex="15" href="http://money.canoe.ca/Columnists/Leatherdale/2008/05/04/5473316-sun.html" target="_blank">Read the full article here</a>.</p> <p>The Royal Bank of Scotland recently released an advisory to its clients to braise for a "<a linkindex="16" href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/06/18/cnrbs118.xml" target="_blank">global stock and credit crash</a>" over the next 3 months. The UK housing market <a set="yes" linkindex="17" href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/06/28/cnhousing128.xml" target="_blank">may not recover until 2015</a>. The <a linkindex="18" href="http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2008/06/deflationary-hurricanes-to-hit-us-and.html" target="_blank">housing </a><a linkindex="19" href="http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2008/06/deflationary-hurricanes-to-hit-us-and.html" target="_blank">market and debts problems in the US and UK</a>, record high energy and food prices could eventually drag Canada into a housing down turn as we experienced in 1995 to 2001. Except, this time the problem could be very much worse than what we experienced previously.<br /><br /><strong>Greater Vancouver Housing Market</strong><br /><br />The Saunder School of Business's housing chart for Greater Vancouver below shown that it took 8 years for the housing market to recover to it's 1981 peak at around $240,000. The housing downturn from 1995's peak at $420,000 took almost 9 years to recover. Using the charts presented here up to 2007, and plotting<span style="text-decoration: underline;"> the trend lines for nominal and real prices, $540,000 seemed to be about the "right" price level where the Vancouver housing price should be</span>. This represents a <strong>30% to 35% price differential</strong> below the current Vancouver nominal and real housing prices.</p><p><a href="http://activerain.com/blogsview/573085/The-Canadian-Real-Estate">Click here to read the blog</a>.<br /></p><br /><a href="http://www.realestatesrichmond.com/" title="Richmond homes for sale"><img src="http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/8410/124899591af45f1m3mw8.jpg" alt="BannerFans.com" href="http://vancoight=" 60="" width="300" border="0" /></a><br /><a href="http://www.vancouver-realestates.com/" style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">View Vancouver homes for sale</a>.James Wonghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04314746411758953221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4165356663215117187.post-5774317040097819472008-01-26T10:47:00.000-08:002008-07-13T09:51:02.134-07:00World financial order 'has no clothes'<div class="story-content" style="font-size:12px;"><p class="author"><strong><span style="font-weight: normal;">An article collection by James Wong at The Mortgage Group:</span><br /></strong></p><p class="author"><strong>James W. Dean, Financial Post </strong><span> Published: Tuesday, January 08, 2008</span></p><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(255, 0, 0);" class="ieclear">The rise of sovereign wealth funds in China is a byproduct of the under performance of their overseas investments over the past decade.</span><h2><span style="font-size:85%;">World financial order 'has no clothes'</span></h2><div class="medium"><p class="photo border_btm"><img id="storyphoto" src="http://www.financialpost.com/analysis/223811.bin?size=404x272" alt="The rise of sovereign wealth funds in China is a byproduct of the underperformance of their overseas investments over the past decade." /><span class="right"><br /></span></p><p class="photo border_btm"><span style="font-size:78%;"><span class="right">Liu Jin/AFP</span></span><span class="ieclear"><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span><br /></span></p></div><p>Once again we find ourselves in financial "crises" of potentially global proportions. The first is a credit crunch triggered, superficially at least, by subprime mortgage lending in the United States. The second is the long-expected "collapse" of the U.S. dollar (more prosaically, its relatively rapid decline against the euro). The third is near-panic in some quarters in the United States, and to a lesser extent in Europe and Japan, about potentially dire political consequences of "sovereign wealth funds." SWFs, government-run investment pools, have amassed some US$2-trillion of current-account-surplus assets under the control of a few foreign governments that are not necessarily friends of the West and Japan.</p><p>These three quasi-crises are interrelated byproducts of several pervasive paradoxes of 21st-century global finance. Yesteryear's crises, in particular the international debt crisis of the 1980s and the East Asian exchange-rate crises of 1997-98, were resolved by the International Monetary Fund, with heavy input from the U.S. Treasury. Rescue from the current crises will not come from the IMF, nor from an international financial system ordered and managed by international institutions. Our much-touted "international financial system" is now an emperor with no clothes.</p><p style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">The current financial turmoil is rooted in paradox.</p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">1. No consensus about currency systems.</p><p>Most economists instinctively opt for flexible exchange rates as the default system.</p><p>The IMF for its part has a history since the collapse of the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement of indecision and vacillation, sometimes advocating fixed rates, then reversing itself. A good argument can be made that the global imbalance and U.S. dollar "crises" we now face might have been averted had the IMF been able to enforce a single, internationally-consistent system: a new Bretton Woods with very hard fixes to a common anchor, or even a global currency. Failing that, universal flexibility might have served us better.</p><p>As it is, our system has evolved piecemeal, and is now putting all the pressure for adjustment on just two or three major exchange rates: dollar/euro, dollar/pound and, putatively, dollar/yen. Dollar/yuan, dollar/Hong Kong dollar, dollar/South Korean won and half a dozen dollar/Middle Eastern exchange rates -- those of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates --are all, de facto, almost fixed.</p><p>In practice, almost all the adjustment is occurring in the dollar/euro rate. Paradoxically, Europe and China rather than the United States may bear the brunt of damage to their real economies from an imbalance that is primarily due to America's savings shortfall and its consequent current account sins.</p><p>The United States can issue and sell world-wide massive quantities of low-cost debt denominated in its own currency. Europe's trade balance with China suffers more because the yuan is virtually pegged to the dollar and therefore has depreciated sharply (more than 40% in four years) against the euro. China, in turn, suffers sharp capital losses on its trillion dollars of dollar-denominated reserves in terms of their purchasing power in euros.</p><p>The United States also benefits because oil prices are dollar-denominated. To the extent that the OPEC cartel raises oil prices to capture the falling euro-pur-chasing-power of the dollar (rather than simply because of fundamental excess demand for oil), it imposes costs not only on the United States, but also on Europe. In other words, Europe shares the burden for that part of rising oil prices that results from the falling dollar.</p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">2. Poor countries that lend much more money to rich countries than vice-versa.</p><p>According to conventional wisdom, rich countries are rich because they have high capital/labour ratios and vice versa for poor. Hence the return on capital should be higher in poor countries and hence capital should flow from rich to poor.</p><p>The paradox is partially explained by two facts. First, poor countries like China have underdeveloped internal banking and financial markets; hence they cannot absorb the trade surpluses they generate. Second, for related reasons, foreign direct investment (FDI) pours into China because direct investment is, by definition, already allocated to a productive use: this inflow, in turn, makes the trade surplus even more redundant.</p><p>The phenomenon has been underway for the past decade, but the real puzzle is that China and other trade surplus countries have not lent their money to us in more adventurous ways: about US$1-trillion of China's US$1.3-trillion stock of reserves is invested in low-yielding U.S. Treasury bills. The recent rise of SWFs in China (and in oil-exporting countries) is a belated byproduct of the severe underperformance of their overseas investments over the past decade.</p><p style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">3. U.S. debt service payments that are still positive despite large and growing net liabilities to the rest of the world.</p><p>The paradox is in good part due to U.S. ability to borrow in dollars. It is also due to higher returns on U.S. FDI abroad than on foreign FDI in the U.S., arguably a tribute to American management prowess, but greatly augmented by the past four years' rapid rise in the euro against the dollar.</p><p>This phenomenon has arguably contributed to U.S. tardiness in addressing its trade deficit because the current account impact of America's growing and now-massive net liabilities to the rest of the world has been slow to come home to roost.</p><p style="font-weight: bold;">4. Global imbalances in capital flows that cumulate for years rather than gradually adjust via market mechanisms.</p><p>This phenomenon is largely attributable to near-fixes of the Chinese yuan, and the currencies of the six major Middle Eastern oil exporters, to the U.S. dollar.</p><p>Since the mid-1990s, it has also been attributable to favourable U.S. fundamentals: strong sustained productivity growth with expectations for future growth that were capitalized into the U.S. stock market. This, combined with an advanced and stable financial system and a growing labour force, attracted sustained capital inflows to the U.S., not only from poor countries like China (which lacked an advanced financial system), but also from Europe (which until recently lacked as high a productivity growth as the U.S., and which still lacks population growth).</p><p style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">5. Sovereign Wealth Funds</p><p>Of the world's US$5-trillion stock of official foreign exchange reserves, some US$3.5-trillion is held by non-industrialized countries. This share has increased sharply in the last five years, with an additional US$1.5-trillion to US$2.5-trillion held as official holdings of non-reserves: surpluses in stabilization funds, nonrenewable resource funds, and, notably, SWFs.</p><p>SWFs embody at least three paradoxes. One is that governments own and often manage them, in a world that has almost universally embraced the private sector for most productive enterprise. A second: Countries that less than a decade ago were dependent (via the IMF) on the West and Japan for bailouts are now emerging as major saviours of Western rich-country banks. A third: SWFs are part of a much larger trend toward international portfolio diversification, a trend that in and of itself should promote global financial stability and help avert crises. Yet SWFs are viewed apprehensively by many rich-country economists, not to mention politicians, because of their potential to move large blocks of money for non-pecuniary motives. Allegedly, they could monopsonize foreign sources of natural resources like oil or copper, or even dabble in geopower politics.</p><p>Not just rich countries that are worried: recently the World Bank and the African Development Bank have voiced concerns about China's resource-related development lending, fearing that sub-Saharan Africa will once again become "hooked" on unsustainable foreign debt.</p><p>But China's SWF strategy is not just about securing raw materials. More broadly, it is about investing its surpluses more lucratively while at the same time sterilizing domestic monetary growth.</p><p>It's a win-win for monetary management in China.</p><p>The line between foreign exchange reserves and SWFs is blurred. Technically, "reserves" are assets of central banks, which purchase them by creating liabilities in the form of domestic money. Countries can and do move funds from reserves into SWFs. Indeed, this is what China is currently doing, embracing an over-due strategy of investing overseas in assets that are more lucrative than U.S. treasury bonds.</p><p>For a country like China, this would seem to be a win-win strategy compared to accumulating its surpluses as foreign exchange reserves. The first and more obvious "win" is earning a potentially higher rate of return on investment.</p><p>The second "win" is that funds moved out of foreign exchange reserves and invested abroad via SWFs or the like automatically reduce the domestic money supply. As reserves they were an asset of the central bank and were mirrored by domestic-currency liabilities ("high powered money"). Their transfer into SWFs achieves the same effect as would sterilization via sales of government bonds (in China's case such sales have traditionally been made to its largely dysfunctional banks). In other words, SWFs can help solve a pressing problem in China: rising rates of inflation due to the central bank's rapid accumulation of foreign exchange reserves and consequent creation of domestic money. They may also reduce pressure to revalue the yuan, since they ameliorate the need to undertake sterilization, which is fiscally expensive.</p><p><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">6. Asset bubbles</span> (high-tech equities, now real estate) that burst and spread from country to country, despite central banks' remarkable success in stabilizing good and services inflation almost everywhere.</p><p>For a decade now, economists have debated the wisdom of targeting asset inflation rather than just goods inflation, but implementation has proved elusive. At a practical level, the appropriate measure of asset inflation is unclear: Should it be equities? Real estate? Commodities?</p><p>And at a theoretical level, the very definition of "dangerous" asset inflation may be intractable: Asset prices depend on expectations, and expectations are proved unrealistic only after they are unrealized. In other words, it is clear that asset prices were a bubble only after the bubble bursts. It is fashionable now to castigate Alan Greenspan for maintaining interest rates too low for too long, but had he raised them earlier and caused a crash on Wall Street, he would have gone down in infamy.</p><p>The current credit crunch, with the real estate price bubble bursting and parts of the money market starved for liquidity, has forced central banks to face a dilemma. The crunch calls for more liquidity, yet the crunch is the byproduct of too many years of too much liquidity. Moreover, the dollar needs to be bought, but the euro needs to be sold.</p><p>Neither the U.S. dollar's decline nor the junkification of collateralized securities has yet led to recession in the United States, much less the rest of the world. But if these financial "crises" do become both global and real, SWFs will play a role in the rescue. On this page tomorrow, I will explain how.</p><p>--- - This article is based on a paper Dr. Dean prepared for the American Economic Association meeting in New Orleans this past weekend. He is Professor of Economics, Emeritus, Simon Fraser University and G. Robert Ross Distinguished Professor, Western Washington University.</p></div><script type="text/javascript">font_size(0);</script><script type="text/javascript"> tour_comments_off = true; </script> <div class="clear" id="tour-comments"> <div><a name="comment"></a></div></div>James Wonghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04314746411758953221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4165356663215117187.post-35546796289484828962007-12-30T12:48:00.000-08:002007-12-30T12:59:46.873-08:00Pace of decline in home prices sets a record<span class="date_font">An article collection by Vancouver Home Mortgage.<br /><br /></span><span class="date_font">James R. Hagerty and Kelly Evans</span><span class="date_font"> on <span class="date_font">28 Dec 2007 posted in the </span></span><span class="date_font">Wall Street Journal:</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">A deepening slump in the housing market threatens to damp consumer spending.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">"A closely watched gauge of U.S. home prices shows they are falling sharply across most of the nation, as a deepening slump in the housing market threatens to damp consumer spending.</span> <p style="font-style: italic;" class="times">Home prices in 10 major metropolitan areas in October were down 6.7% from a year earlier, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller home-price indexes, released yesterday by credit-rating firm Standard & Poor's. That exceeded the previous record year-to-year decline of 6.3% in April 1991, when the economy was emerging from a recession. (<a class="times" href="http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/CSHomePrice_Release_20071226.pdf"><span style="color: rgb(2, 83, 183);">See a PDF summary of the report</span></a>.)</p> <p class="times"><span style="font-style: italic;">New statistics from the Census Bureau, meanwhile, indicate a slowdown in the number of Americans moving to states that led the housing boom, including Nevada, Florida and Arizona.</span></p><p style="font-style: italic;" class="times">The silver lining behind the latest home-price data is that they signal the market is making what most economists see as a necessary adjustment, dragging home prices back into closer alignment with Americans' ability to pay. The market is working its way "back to reality," says David Seiders, chief economist of the National Association of Home Builders. He thinks house prices will bottom out by early 2009". </p><a href="http://www.moneyweb.co.za/mw/view/mw/en/page94?oid=181082&sn=Detail">Click here to read the full article...</a>James Wonghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04314746411758953221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4165356663215117187.post-29023264463594573122007-12-11T19:08:00.000-08:002007-12-11T19:27:02.099-08:00Straight Talk on the Mortgage Mess from an InsiderAn article collection by Vancouver Home Mortgage:<br /><br />Here is an interesting article by Herb Greenberg posted Dec 06, 2007 on Market Watch from DOWJONES.<br /><div class="entry"><p><span style="font-weight: bold;">Even before this mortgage mess started</span>, one person who kept emailing me over and over saying that this is going to get <em>real</em> bad. He kept saying this was beyond sub-prime, beyond low FICO scores, beyond Alt-A and beyond the imagination of most pundits, politicians and the press. When I asked him why somebody from inside the industry would be so emphatically sounding the siren, he said, “Someobody’s got to warn people.”</p> <p>Since then, I’ve kept up an active dialog with <strong>Mark Hanson</strong>, a 20-year veteran of the mortgage industry, who has spent most of his career in the wholesale and correspondent residential arena — primarily on the West Coast. He lives in the Bay Area. So far he has been pretty much on target as the situation has unfolded. I should point out that, based on his knowledge of the industry, he has been short a number of mortgage-related stocks.</p> <p>His current thoughts, which I urge you to read: </p> <blockquote><p>The Government and the market are trying to boil this down to a ’sub-prime’ thing, especially with all constant talk of ‘resets’. But sub-prime loans were only a small piece of the mortgage mess. And sub-prime loans are not the only ones with resets. What we are experiencing should be called ‘The Mortgage Meltdown’ because many different exotic loan types are imploding currently belonging to what lenders considered ‘qualified’ or ‘prime’ borrowers. This will continue to worsen over the next few of years. When ‘prime’ loans begin to explode to a degree large enough to catch national attention, the ratings agencies will jump on board and we will have ‘Round 2′. It is not that far away. </p> <p>Since 2003, when lending first started becoming extremely lax, a small percentage of the loans were true sub-prime fixed or arms. <strong>But sub-prime is what is being focused upon to draw attention away from the fact the lenders and Wall Street banks made all loans too easy to attain for everyone. </strong>They can explain away the reason sub-prime loans are imploding due to the weakness of the borrower.</p> <p>How will they explain foreclosures in wealthy cities across the nation involving borrowers with 750 scores when their loan adjusts higher or terms change overnight because they reached their maximum negative potential on a neg-am Pay Option ARM for instance?</p> <p><strong>Sub-prime aren’t the only kind of loans imploding.</strong> Second mortgages, hybrid intermediate-term ARMS, and the soon-to-be infamous Pay Option ARM are also feeling substantial pressure. The latter three loan types mostly were considered ‘prime’ so they are being overlooked, but will haunt the financial markets for years to come. Versions of these loans were made available to sub-prime borrowers of course, but the vast majority were considered ‘prime’ or Alt-A. The caveat is that the differentiation between Prime and ALT-A got smaller and smaller over the years until finally in late 2005/2006 there was virtually no difference in program type or rate.</p> <p>The bailout we are hearing about for sub-prime borrowers will be the first of many. Sub-prime only represents about 25% of the problem loans out there. What about the second mortgages sitting behind the sub-prime first, for instance? Most have seconds. Why aren’t they bailing those out too? Those rates have risen dramatically over the past few years as the Prime jumped from 4% to 8.25% recently. seconds are primarily based upon the prime rate. <strong>One can argue that many sub-prime first mortgages on their own were not a problem for the borrowers but the added burden of the second put on the property many times after-the-fact was too much for the borrower.</strong> </p> <p>Most sub-prime loans in existence are refinances not purchase-money loans. This means that more than likely they pulled cash out of their home, bought things and are now going under. Perhaps the loan they hold now is their third or forth in the past couple years. Why are bad borrowers, who cannot stop going to the home-ATM getting bailed out?</p> <p>The Government says they are going to use the credit score as one of the determining factors. <strong>But we have learned over the past year that credit scores are not a good predictor of future ability to repay. This is because over the past five years you could refi your way into a great score.</strong> Every time you were going broke and did not have money to pay bills, you pulled cash out of your home by refinancing your first mortgage or upping your second. You pay all your bills, buy some new clothes, take a vacation and your score goes up! </p> <p>The ’second mortgage implosion’, ‘Pay-Option implosion’ and ‘Hybrid Intermediate-term ARM implosion’ are all happening simultaneously and about to heat up drastically. Second mortgage liens were done by nearly every large bank in the nation and really heated up in 2005, as first mortgage rates started rising and nobody could benefit from refinancing. This was a way to keep the mortgage money flowing. <strong>Second mortgages to 100% of the homes value with no income or asset documentation were among the best sellers at CITI, Wells, WAMU, Chase, National City and Countrywide. </strong>We now know these are worthless especially since values have indeed dropped and those who maxed out their liens with a 100% purchase or refi of a second now owe much more than their property is worth. </p> <p>How are the banks going to get this junk second mortgage paper off their books? Moody’s is expecting a 15% default rate among ‘prime’ second mortgages. Just think the default rate in lower quality such as sub-prime. These assets will need to be sold for pennies on the dollar to free up capacity for new vintage paper or borrowers allowed to pay 50 cents on the dollar, for instance, to buy back their note.</p> <p>The latter is probably where the ’second mortgage implosion’ will end up going. Why sell the loan for 10 cents on the dollar when you can get 25 to 50 cents from the borrower and lower their total outstanding liens on the property at the same time, getting them ‘right’ in the home again? Wells Fargo recently said they owned $84 billion of this worthless paper. That is a lot of seconds at an average of $100,000 a piece. <strong>Already, many lenders are locking up the second lines of credit and not allowing borrowers to pull the remaining open available credit to stop the bleeding.</strong> Second mortgages are defaulting at an amazing pace and it is picking up every month. </p> <p>The ‘Pay-Option ARM implosion’ will carry on for a couple of years. In my opinion, this implosion will dwarf the ’sub-prime implosion’ because it cuts across all borrower types and all home values. <strong>Some of the most affluent areas in California contain the most Option ARMs due to the ability to buy a $1 million home with payments of a few thousand dollars per month.</strong> Wamu, Countrywide, Wachovia, IndyMac, Downey and Bear Stearns were/are among the largest Option ARM lenders. Option ARMs are literally worthless with no bids found for many months for these assets. These assets are almost guaranteed to blow up. 75% of Option ARM borrowers make the minimum monthly payment. Eighty percent-plus are stated income/asset. Average combined loan-to-value are at or above 90%. The majority done in the past few years have second mortgages behind them. </p> <p><strong>The clue to who will blow up first is each lenders ‘max neg potential’ allowance, which differs. </strong>The higher the allowance, the longer until the borrower gets the letter saying ‘you have reached your 110%, 115%, 125% etc maximum negative of your original loans balance so you cannot accrue any more negative and must pay a minimum of the interest only (or fully indexed payment in some cases). This payment rate could be as much as three times greater. They cannot refinance, of course, because the programs do not exist any longer to any great degree, the borrowers cannot qualify for other more conventional financing or values have dropped too much.</p> <p>Also, the vast majority have second mortgages behind them putting them in a seriously upside down position in their home. If the first mortgage is at 115%, the second mortgage in many cases is at 100% at the time of origination — and values have dropped 10%-15% in states like California — many home owners could be upside down 20% minimum. This is a prime example of why these loans remain ‘no bid’ and will never have a bid. These also will require a workout. <strong>The big difference between these and sub-prime loans is at least with sub-prime loans, outstanding principal balances do not grow at a rate of up to 7% per year.</strong> Not considering every Option ARM a sub-prime loan is a mistake. </p> <p>The 3/1, 5/1, 7/1 and 10/1 hybrid interest-only ARMS will reset in droves beginning now. These are loans that are fixed at a low introductory interest only rate for three, five, seven or 10 years — then turn into a fully indexed payment rate that adjusts annually thereafter. They first got really popular in 2003. Wells Fargo led the pack in these but many people have them. The resets first began with the 3/1 last year. </p> <p>The 5/1 was the most popular by far, so those start to reset heavily in 2008. These were considered ‘prime’ but Wells and many others would do 95%-100% to $1 million at a 620 score with nearly as low of a rate as if you had a 750 score. No income or asset versions of this loan were available at a negligible bump in fee. This does not sound too ‘prime’ to me. These loans were mostly Jumbo in higher priced states such as California.</p> <p>Values are down and these are interest only loans, therefore, many are severely underwater even without negative-amortization on this loan type. They were qualified at a 50% debt-to-income ratio, leaving only 50% of a borrower’s income to pay taxes, all other bills and live their lives. <strong>These loans put the borrower in the grave the day they signed their loan docs especially without major appreciation.</strong> These loans will not perform as poorly overall as sub-prime, seconds or Option ARMs but they are a perfect example of what is still considered ‘prime’ that is at risk. Eighty-eight percent of Thornburg’s portfolio is this very loan type for example. </p> <p>One final thought. How can any of this get repaired unless home values stabilize? And how will that happen? In Northern California, a household income of $90,000 per year could legitimately pay the minimum monthly payment on an Option ARM on a million home for the past several years. Most Option ARMs allowed zero to 5% down. Therefore, given the average income of the Bay Area, most families could buy that million dollar home. A home seller had a vast pool of available buyers. </p> <p>Now, with all the exotic programs gone, a household income of $175,000 is needed to buy that same home, which is about 10% of the Bay Area households. And, inventories are up 500%. <strong>So, in a nutshell we have 90% fewer qualified buyers for five-times the number of homes.</strong> To get housing moving again in Northern California, either all the exotic programs must come back, everyone must get a 100% raise or home prices have to fall 50%. None, except the last sound remotely possible.</p> <p>What I am telling you is not speculation. I sold BILLIONs of these very loans over the past five years. I saw the borrowers we considered ‘prime’. I always wondered ‘what WILL happen when these things adjust is values don’t go up 10% per year’.</p></blockquote> <p>Now we’re finding out. If you made it all the way to the bottom, you can see why I decided to run this. Feel free to post thoughts below. Mark will likely be personally responding to any comments.</p> </div> Save & Share: <a title="Share this story via Facebook" href="http://blogs.marketwatch.com/greenberg/2007/12/straight-talk-on-the-mortgage-mess-from-an-insider/#" onclick="window.open('http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u='+encodeURIComponent('http://blogs.marketwatch.com/greenberg/2007/12/straight-talk-on-the-mortgage-mess-from-an-insider/')+'&t=' + encodeURIComponent('Straight Talk on the Mortgage Mess from an Insider'), 'share', 'toolbar=0,status=0,width=770,height=450,resizable=1,scrollbars=1'); return false;" target="_blank">Facebook</a> | <a title="Bookmark this story in Del.icio.us" href="http://blogs.marketwatch.com/greenberg/2007/12/straight-talk-on-the-mortgage-mess-from-an-insider/#" onclick="return dbt_bookmark( 'http://blogs.marketwatch.com/greenberg/2007/12/straight-talk-on-the-mortgage-mess-from-an-insider/', 'Straight Talk on the Mortgage Mess from an Insider');" target="_blank">Del.icio.us</a> | <a title="Submit this story to Digg" href="http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=http://blogs.marketwatch.com/greenberg/2007/12/straight-talk-on-the-mortgage-mess-from-an-insider/&title=Straight%20Talk%20on%20the%20Mortgage%20Mess%20from%20an%20Insider&bodytext=%3Cp%3EEven%20before%20this%20mortgage%20mess%20started,%20one%20person%20who%20kept%20emailing%20me%20over%20and%20over%20saying%20that%20this%20is%20going%20to%20get%20real%20bad.%20He%20kept%20saying%20this%20was%20beyond%20sub-prime,%20beyond%20low%20FICO%20scores,%20beyond%20Alt-A%20and%20beyond%20the%20imagination%20of%20most%20pundits,%20politicians%20and%20the%20press.%20When%20I%20asked%20him%20why%20somebody%20from%20%5B%E2%80%A6%5D%3C/p%3E" target="_blank">Digg this</a> <br />Trackback URL: <a href="http://blogs.marketwatch.com/greenberg/2007/12/straight-talk-on-the-mortgage-mess-from-an-insider/trackback/">http://blogs.marketwatch.com/greenberg/2007/12/straight-talk-on-the-mortgage-mess-from-an-insider/trackback</a>James Wonghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04314746411758953221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4165356663215117187.post-67974634075734867252007-11-20T17:10:00.000-08:002007-11-20T17:41:01.471-08:00US Credit Crisis - It's A Mess!Here are two interesting articles by Diane Francis in today's (Nov 20, 2007) Financial Post...<br /><br />- <a href="http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/story.html?id=5ccd6db0-ed6d-45e6-af07-bb41a916d1d9">Sub-Prime Scandal: New Catastrophe Around the Corner</a><br /><br />- <a href="http://communities.canada.com/financialpost/blogs/francis/archive/2007/11/16/sub-prime-scandals-cops.aspx">Subprime Mortgage and Debt Fraud: Worse than Enron and Bre-X</a><br /><br />Meanwhile, MSNBC's reported "<a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21773741/">Foreclosures hit some cities harder than others</a>" and expected the coming rise in home foreclosures is expected to drag down property values by some $223 billion.James Wonghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04314746411758953221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4165356663215117187.post-3581477386939761932007-10-14T10:03:00.000-07:002007-10-14T11:07:00.994-07:00August 2007 Housing Index for Greater VancouverAccording to the Greater Vancouver Real Estate Board's August 2007 report on house prices and sale activities, the demand for housing continue to be positive. The average sale prices for apartments, townhouses and detached homes are:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Apartments: $367,944</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Townhouses: $446,577</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Detach homes: $726,067</span><br /><br />With the average Greater Vancouver household income at $63,300, home buyers are squeezed out of the home ownership market. Or, they are forced to buy the most affordable apartments as shelters for their families.<br /><br />While Vancouver house prices are consistent with pricing trends for the above types of dwelling, there is a market disconnect with "affordability" and "average prices" in other major Canadian Cities. If you take a look at the <a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.canadian-housing-price-charts.235.ca/canadian_housing_price_chart.htm">various charts as presented by Brian Ripley here</a>, you'll find that Vancouver home owners are bearing a much heavier cost in home ownership.<br /><br />Our average detached home prices are twice as much as that in Calgary and Edmonton and Toronto detached home prices are only around 40% of that in Vancouver. Ottawa and Montreal prices are at about one-third the price in Vancouver, have the most affordable detached homes in the country.<br /><br />House prices are subjected to the economic law of supply and demand. We have a high housing prices situation in Vancouver for a long time.<br /><br />We must find out why there are such disparity in home prices, and what can be done about it. The provincial Government in BC should be the first to be questioned on their housing policy for limiting the supply of "land" for housing.<br /><br />Is the Agriculture Land Reserve that control vast urban land parcels still relevant in serving the well being of British Colombians? Urban town planners are urging for better utilization of land resources. Farming for agriculture lands bordering the city centers is not the best and highest use of these land parcels.<br /><br />Until there are urgency and agreement by the Governments taking action to ease the land supply problem, the critical housing affordability problem in Vancouver will not be solved.James Wonghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04314746411758953221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4165356663215117187.post-75006601115497830042007-10-02T17:20:00.000-07:002007-10-02T20:41:19.003-07:00ROYAL LEPAGE HOUSING REPORT<pre>Another collection of housing market report by <a href="http://www.vancouver-home-mortgage.com/">Vancouver<br />Home Mortgage:</a><br /><br />Click on this link to read the <a href="http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/September2007/27/c5671.html">full report by Royal Lepage </a><br /><a href="http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/September2007/27/c5671.html">Real Estate Services</a>.<br /><br />Unlike the U.S. housing market, the housing sentiment in<br />Canada is strong and there are no signs of any slowing<br />down in the demand for housing and price gain across the<br />country.</pre>James Wonghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04314746411758953221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4165356663215117187.post-4610679961889889802007-09-09T20:28:00.000-07:002007-09-09T20:30:44.752-07:00Articles submitted - September 09, 2007<p><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Welcome to the September 9, 2007 edition of real estate investment.</span> </p> <!-- Carnival Submission --> <p> <b>Matt Hanson</b> presents <a href="http://www.creditcardarticles.net/2007/08/25/credit-card-fraud-how-to-protect-yourself/">Credit Card Fraud - How to Protect Yourself</a> posted at <a href="http://www.creditcardarticles.net/">The Credit & Credit Card Blog</a>, saying, "As technology has increased, so has credit card fraud. There are some simple steps that you can take to help protect yourself from credit card fraud." </p> <!-- Carnival Submission --> <p> <b>Chris Russell</b> presents <a href="http://www.productivityplanner.com/2007/08/24/working-hard-does-not-produce-success/">Working Hard Does Not Produce Success</a> posted at <a href="http://www.productivityplanner.com/">Productivity Planner</a>, saying, "Yes, we work hard to be successful, but we also have to choose to be successful. It is a decision. It is a conscious effort. It takes mental discipline. It is a deliberate mindset." </p> <h2>Home Financing</h2> <!-- Carnival Submission --> <p> <b>Matthew Paulson</b> presents <a href="http://www.financeispersonal.com/2007/08/7-ways-to-avoid-foreclosure.html">7 Ways to Avoid a Foreclosure</a> posted at <a href="http://www.financeispersonal.com/">Getting Green</a>. </p> <!-- Carnival Submission --> <p> <b>Sagar Satapathy</b> presents <a href="http://www.creditcardlowdown.com/2007/08/the_broke_handymans_box_of_blueprints_100_free_plans_to_build_home_furniture.html">The Broke Handyman’s Box of Blueprints: 100 Free Plans to Build Home Furniture</a> posted at <a href="http://www.creditcardlowdown.com/">Credit Card Lowdown</a>. </p> <!-- Carnival Submission --> <p> <b>Pushpa Sathish</b> presents <a href="http://www.homeownersinsurancelowdown.com/2007/08/top-10-movies-t.html">Top 10 Movies to Watch Before Remodeling Your Home</a> posted at <a href="http://www.homeownersinsurancelowdown.com/">Homeowners Insurance Lowdown</a>. </p> <!-- Carnival Submission --> <p> <b>Ryan Russell</b> presents <a href="http://www.mymoneythinks.com/2007/08/30/finding-a-fix-10-tips-for-resolving-financial-disputes/">Finding A Fix: 10 Tips For Resolving Financial Disputes</a> posted at <a href="http://www.mymoneythinks.com/">My Money Thinks</a>, saying, "Over the past 20 years I have learned a lot about disputing issues with creditors and banks. Learn from my experiences, and start getting what you deserve when financial institutions cross the line." </p> <!-- Carnival Submission --> <p> <b>Steve Faber</b> presents <a href="http://opportunitiesaplenty.com/Debt_Blog/2007/09/_how_to_sell_your_house_fast_and_keep_mo.html">- How to Sell Your House Fast and Keep More Money in Your Pocket</a> posted at <a href="http://opportunitiesaplenty.com/Debt_Blog/">DebtBlog</a>. </p> <!-- Carnival Submission --> <p> <b>Millionaire Mommy Next Door</b> presents <a href="http://millionairemommynextdoor.blogspot.com/2007/09/14-ways-to-improve-your-credit-score.html">14 Ways To Improve Your Credit Score</a> posted at <a href="http://millionairemommynextdoor.blogspot.com/">Millionaire Mommy Next Door</a>, saying, "Over the course of a 30 year mortgage term, I'd pay a whopping $357,873 less than you might, simply because I've established a good credit score." </p> <h2>Investment</h2> <!-- Carnival Submission --> <p> <b>Pam Johnson</b> presents <a href="http://www.roofable.com/2007/09/02/renting-tips/">Renting Tips</a> posted at <a href="http://www.roofable.com/">Roofable</a>, saying, "With the Buyer’s market we’re currently working through, there are many homeowners who can’t sell their houses and for one reason or another are forced to become landlords." </p> <!-- Carnival Submission --> <p> <b>Dax Desai</b> presents <a href="http://www.daxdesai.com/2007/09/05/the-power-of-self-directed-iras/">The Power of Self-Directed IRA’s</a> posted at <a href="http://www.daxdesai.com/">Dax Desai</a>, saying, "Explains the power of self-directed IRA's and how to set one up." </p> <h2>Real estate investment</h2> <!-- Carnival Submission --> <p> <b>Laura</b> presents <a href="http://www.mortgagelowdown.com/2007/08/10_home_selling_alternatives_to_hiring_a_real_estate_agent.html">10 Home Selling Alternatives to Hiring a Real Estate Agent</a> posted at <a href="http://www.mortgagelowdown.com/">Mortgage Lowdown</a>. </p> <!-- EDIT THIS: the conclusion begins with this paragraph: --> <p>That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of <b>real estate investment</b> using our <a target="_blank" title="Submit an entry to “real estate investment”" href="http://blogcarnival.com/bc/submit_1921.html">carnival submission form</a>. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our <a target="_blank" title="Blog Carnival index for “real estate investment”" href="http://blogcarnival.com/bc/cprof_1921.html"> blog carnival index page</a>.</p> <p> Technorati tags: <!-- add your technorati tags here! --> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/real+estate+investment" rel="tag">real estate investment</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/blog+carnival" rel="tag">blog carnival</a>. </p>James Wonghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04314746411758953221noreply@blogger.com0