Canada Housing/Debt: Trust me, I'm a landlord.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Canada Housing/Debt: Trust me, I'm a landlord.

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

EoRaptor posted:

The most straightforward way to accomplishing this is to ban the sale of any residential zoned property that isn't fit for residence. Either the property can be renovated pre-sale (and must be inspected), in which the seller will do a minimum job. OR the property can be demolished and we essentially start from nothing.

That's absolutely crazy, though. There are any number of plausible cases where a property may need renovation but the owner(s) would be unwilling or financially unable to do or commission any of the necessary work themselves. The problem isn't renovators doing houses up to hit the highest price the market will bear, it's that the bearable price is too drat high in the first place. You need to address the problem, not play whack-a-mole with its symptoms.

# ? Apr 21, 2014 19:16

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# ? May 12, 2024 21:35

Baronjutter: Dec 31, 2007; "Tiny Trains"

The way I see it, there's two main causes for the bubble:
-Realtor and financial propaganda that a house/condo is an amazing investment and you're pretty much guaranteed to make money selling it, so no matter how much it costs, you'll get more back later so buy buy buy.
-Way too much credit available and risk backed by the government.

Take these two things together and you get a ridiculous bubble. So what if I only make 60k a year combined, the banks and government say I can get a 500k mortgage and that house will be worth 700k by the time I pay it off so why not??? Kill easy access to insane levels of debt and get the government the gently caress out of insuring it plus hold REALTORS to the same standards regarding promised gains and performance as the financial sector so they can't just say prices are going to double again in 10 years.

# ? Apr 21, 2014 20:35

Wasting: Apr 25, 2013; The next to go

Anyone else have to sit through a "get in now or you'll never be able to" real estate pitch from family over Easter dinner?

Things I learned:

- Now is the best time to buy, because
- you'll never be able to earn as fast as real estate values go up, and
- prices will go up, forever.

A well-meaning uncle was trying to talk me into buying a $350k condo (1 bedroom, tiny shitboxes) before I was priced out of the area, which, given the demographics, is absurd. It was really hard to stay diplomatic on this one, but I managed and said some non-committal things. He told me I'd be sorry in a few years if I didn't, because they'd be worth half a million.

This was followed by a brief conversation about how much money everyone had made on their (unsold) houses, until finally the topic changed and I didn't have to fight the urge to start screaming incoherently and pulling my hair out.

Wasting fucked around with this message at 21:56 on Apr 21, 2014

# ? Apr 21, 2014 21:53

ocrumsprug: Sep 23, 2010; by LITERALLY AN ADMIN

Wasting posted:

Anyone else have to sit through a "get in now or you'll never be able to" real estate pitch from family over Easter dinner?

Things I learned:

- Now is the best time to buy, because
- you'll never be able to earn as fast as real estate values go up, and
- prices will go up, forever.

A well-meaning uncle was trying to talk me into buying a $350k condo (1 bedroom, tiny shitboxes) before I was priced out of the area, which, given the demographics, is absurd. It was really hard to stay diplomatic on this one, but I managed and said some non-committal things. He told me I'd be sorry in a few years if I didn't, because they'd be worth half a million.

This was followed by a brief conversation about how much money everyone had made on their (unsold) houses, until finally the topic changed and I didn't have to fight the urge to start screaming incoherently and pulling my hair out.

The worst part of that is people that attribute their unrealized gains on their houses to what the condo market is doing. Anyone that thinks condos are appreciating such that you cannot afford them later, really isn't paying much attention (probably since they're for proles, not ubermensch like homeowners) to the condo market.

# ? Apr 21, 2014 22:11

Wasting: Apr 25, 2013; The next to go

It's demonstrative of how people tend to only see what they want to see. I'd love an American's take on our disaster-in-waiting.

Wasting fucked around with this message at 23:19 on Apr 21, 2014

# ? Apr 21, 2014 22:30

Professor Shark: May 22, 2012

Soon no one will be able to afford condos :shepspends:

# ? Apr 21, 2014 23:12

Tarandis: Jun 16, 2012

Wasting posted:

It's demonstrative of how people tend to only see what they want to see. I'd love an American's take on our disaster-in-waiting.

As an American living in Canada, my plan is to get a yurt.

# ? Apr 21, 2014 23:29

jot: Jul 5, 2003; Some parts of history were never meant to be uncovered.

Wasting posted:

It's demonstrative of how people tend to only see what they want to see. I'd love an American's take on our disaster-in-waiting.

I've had several homeowners try to tell me that the condo market is absolutely a bubble and will pop. The market on houses? Oh no, that's here to stay! In fact, it's only going up, up and up! It takes some serious mental gymnastics to justify their lovely purchases.

# ? Apr 21, 2014 23:31

2 + 2 = 5: Apr 11, 2003; I find it decidedly INCONVENIENT that the gun was never found.

Professor Shark posted:

Soon no one will be able to afford condos

That means now is the ideal time to buy, since prices always go up. When prices are even more unaffordable, selling the condo for a profit will be a piece of cake because there will be lots of people that can afford it waiting to buy.

# ? Apr 22, 2014 00:19

Baronjutter: Dec 31, 2007; "Tiny Trains"

When people say "no one will be able to afford X" they always mean "regular people like us". There's always a bottomless bag of rich albertans/ontarians and CHINESE INVESTORS lining up.

# ? Apr 22, 2014 00:35

Lt. Shiny-sides: Dec 24, 2008

Wasting posted:

It's demonstrative of how people tend to only see what they want to see. I'd love an American's take on our disaster-in-waiting.

As an American who married into not one, but two mortgage clusterfucks, all I can say is that the market is only going to go up, up, up!!!

PS - Anyone want to buy a ~~shack~~ fixer upper in Prince Rupert?

# ? Apr 22, 2014 00:52

Wasting: Apr 25, 2013; The next to go

Lt. Shiny-sides posted:

As an American who married into not one, but two mortgage clusterfucks, all I can say is that the market is only going to go up, up, up!!!

PS - Anyone want to buy a ~~shack~~ fixer upper in Prince Rupert?

Is there any different feeling to this Canadian brand of stupid? Our government seems to be tacitly supporting it through our CMHC.

Another aspect is our realtor cartel and their "home price index," which is hard to defend as anything other than an attempt to obfuscate market data.

If anyone is knowledgeable about the home price index (HPI), or has a head for math and wants to take a look at their method for calculating it, it would be interesting to learn more about. Googling "MLS HPI user guide" returns, as the first result, a pdf with their methodology and the equations used.

I recall reading that MLS has been caught revising year to year data to inflate sales data further.

Wasting fucked around with this message at 01:53 on Apr 22, 2014

# ? Apr 22, 2014 01:42

namaste friends: Sep 18, 2004; by Smythe

Lt. Shiny-sides posted:

As an American who married into not one, but two mortgage clusterfucks, all I can say is that the market is only going to go up, up, up!!!

PS - Anyone want to buy a ~~shack~~ fixer upper in Prince Rupert?

I would have expected Prince Rupert to bubble up since Kitimat isn't too far away.

:lol:

# ? Apr 22, 2014 01:59

Throatwarbler: Nov 17, 2008; by vyelkin

Baronjutter posted:

rich ontarians

I guess it's because I'm from Alberta and all I see everywhere are Ontarian migrant workers but "rich Ontarians" just sounds so bizzare to me. What the gently caress does anyone even do in Ontario, other than shoddily assembling Dodge Caravans? Surely not much since it seems like half of them are in Alberta anyway.

# ? Apr 22, 2014 02:09

apatheticman: May 13, 2003; Wedge Regret

Throatwarbler posted:

I guess it's because I'm from Alberta and all I see everywhere are Ontarian migrant workers but "rich Ontarians" just sounds so bizzare to me. What the gently caress does anyone even do in Ontario, other than shoddily assembling Dodge Caravans? Surely not much since it seems like half of them are in Alberta anyway.

Bay street?

# ? Apr 22, 2014 02:21

Paper Mac: Mar 2, 2007; lives in a paper shack

Throatwarbler posted:

What the gently caress does anyone even do in Ontario, other than shoddily assembling Dodge Caravans?

Everything? Ontario is 40% of the country's GDP, its economy is more than twice the size of Alberta's and far more diversified.

# ? Apr 22, 2014 02:26

Baronjutter: Dec 31, 2007; "Tiny Trains"

Yeah, in my parents neighbourhood all the $800k+ houses have been bought by retired or semi-retired rich people from Ontario, or more specifically, Toronto. They're all senior financial workers or doctors or lawyers.

The rich albertans rarely seem to buy in the city, they want a huge McMansion out in langford which is where all the albertan "ex pats" hang out because the horrific sprawl and big box stores reminds them of home or something.

# ? Apr 22, 2014 02:30

ocrumsprug: Sep 23, 2010; by LITERALLY AN ADMIN

Wasting posted:

If anyone is knowledgeable about the home price index (HPI), or has a head for math and wants to take a look at their method for calculating it, it would be interesting to learn more about. Googling "MLS HPI user guide" returns, as the first result, a pdf with their methodology and the equations used.

I recall reading that MLS has been caught revising year to year data to inflate sales data further.

I think there was a poster familiar with it, earlier in the thread, that indicated the methodology of the HPI filled 21 pages or so, though I don't think he had a link.

Phone posting, so I don't have a link handy, but one of the many Vancouver bear blogs was trying to reverse engineer the number, and iirc found that it seemed to track an aggregated 6 month moving average.

# ? Apr 22, 2014 02:43

Lt. Shiny-sides: Dec 24, 2008

Wasting posted:

Is there any different feeling to this Canadian brand of stupid?

From what I have experienced there is a whole lot more arrogance coming from Canadians than I saw in the States or am seeing in New Zealand (they are in the same boat as Canada right now). Far too much, "We aren't dumb Americans, that won't happen here". It is really frustrating. It seemed to me folks in the States just bought into the ad hype (and didn't question at all), and Kiwis for the most part are ignorant to what occurred in 2008. Canadians I have spoke with just feel that they are special and it won't happen to them. Not to knock canucks, I like you guys so much I married one of you.

# ? Apr 22, 2014 05:47

Rime: Nov 2, 2011; by Games Forum

Cultural Imperial posted:

I would have expected Prince Rupert to bubble up since Kitimat isn't too far away.

It did, I've seen shacks jump from $30k-$50k to $100k+ in the past 18 months or so while watching MLS.

# ? Apr 22, 2014 06:38

namaste friends: Sep 18, 2004; by Smythe

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/give-yourself-a-real-estate-reality-check/article18083289/

quote:

A question for everyone who thinks houses are an investment: How much would a market decline hurt you?

Help yourself be a smarter homeowner by using The Globe and Mail’s Housing Price Correction Calculator to find out. Housing bulls, don’t self-combust. Our calculator shows the result of both price gains and losses over the next five years. Just plug in the current value of your house price – c’mon, you know you know it – and select from among our preset levels of price gains or declines.

Houses are a financial asset that can rise and fall in price, just like stocks, bonds and gold. It’s important to remind ourselves of this after a 25-per-cent price gain between 2008 and 2013 on a national basis and a doubling of prices in Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto over the past 10 to 12 or so years.

In fact, there are already signs of market softness in some parts of the country. “The markets that are strong in Canada are very strong,” housing analyst Ben Rabidoux said. “And the ones that are weak are showing weakness that we haven’t seen since the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Ottawa home prices are down 2.5 per cent on a year-to-date basis, according to the Teranet – National Bank National Composite House Price Index. Montreal is off 1.0 per cent, Quebec 1.2 per cent and Halifax 2.6 per cent. “The next markets that will crack are the Prairies outside of Alberta,” said Mr. Rabidoux, president of market research firm North Cove Advisors Inc.

Much larger price declines happened long enough ago that the most recent crop of buyers may not have any recollection of them. In Calgary, troubles in the oil patch caused a house price decline from $107,739 on average in 1981 to $80,462 in 1985, or about 25 per cent. After a few years of rampant speculation in Toronto, the average resale home price fell from $254,197 in 1989 to $195,311 in 1995, or 23 per cent. Vancouver, always a volatile market, plunged more than 25 per cent in a year in the early 1980s and has a couple of times fallen more than 6 per cent in a year.

Want to see what a 25-per-cent decline would look like in today’s market? Our Correction Calculator shows you the numbers for the Canadian market as a whole, as well as the Big Three markets of Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto.

The calculator in no way predicts a downturn in housing prices. It’s only a tool for helping people understand how both declines and increases in house prices might affect them.

Be cautious when viewing how a rising market will increase the value of your home. Interest rates are close to rock bottom levels after a 30-year down cycle and likely to rise in the next couple of years. The impact on affordability will be significant.

“I think it’s going to be a huge shock to the Canadian real estate market,” said Craig Alexander, chief economist at Toronto-Dominion Bank. “I do a lot of real estate presentations from coast to coast and an awful lot of young people think these low interest rates are normal. They don’t see anything abnormal about a 3-per-cent five-year mortgage. I always have to say, can you please have a conversation with the grey-haired gentleman at your table about the normal level of interest rates.”

As you’ll see in a chart included with our correction calculator, five-year mortgage rates reached 18 per cent in the early 1980s. The runaway inflation that drove rates to that height is extinct today, but even a small rise in borrowing costs will have an impact on housing.

Mr. Alexander’s 10-year view is that housing prices will increase by an average rate of inflation plus one to 1.5 percentage points, instead of the real returns of 2 to 3 per cent in the past several years. But he also warns of a “reversion to the mean,” a term that stock market investors should be familiar with.

It means that when a financial asset has a really good run, it’s wise to expect a period of weaker performance that brings the longer-term numbers back to the mean (the midpoint between the high and the low). A period of price stagnation could bring average price gains back to the mean, and so could a price decline.

When you invest in the stock market, you’re supposed to keep your eye on the long term and not worry about upsets along the way. The same applies to housing, although keeping a cool head in a declining market will be hard. A lot of owners have only lived in a world of rising prices.

From Rob Carrick. A guy you shouldn't listen to because he's not rich and successful, as per financial real estate genius Brad Lamb.

# ? Apr 22, 2014 06:38

PT6A: Jan 5, 2006; Public school teachers are callous dictators who won't lift a finger to stop children from peeing in my plane

jot posted:

I've had several homeowners try to tell me that the condo market is absolutely a bubble and will pop. The market on houses? Oh no, that's here to stay! In fact, it's only going up, up and up! It takes some serious mental gymnastics to justify their lovely purchases.

I feel like condos in poo poo locations are much worse off than houses in equivalent locations, but these people are absolutely loving deluded if they think that condos in desirable locations are going to crash before houses.

Idiot:"I have 1600 sq. ft. house out in the middle of buttfuck nowhere!"
Me: "Wonderful. I'm going to walk home now; enjoy your $50 cab ride, because you decided to have more than one drink in a popular, interesting bar!"

# ? Apr 22, 2014 07:20

namaste friends: Sep 18, 2004; by Smythe

https://twitter.com/BenChu_/status/458557053384916993

There seems to be a strong correlation between housing prices and mortgage interest rates in the UK.

# ? Apr 22, 2014 14:16

Lexicon: Jul 29, 2003; I had a beer with Stephen Harper once and now I like him.

Cultural Imperial posted:

https://twitter.com/BenChu_/status/458557053384916993

There seems to be a strong correlation between housing prices and mortgage interest rates in the UK.

I'm sure that's true everywhere. Seems entirely uncontroversial.

# ? Apr 22, 2014 14:22

namaste friends: Sep 18, 2004; by Smythe

http://m.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/04/how-did-canadas-middle-class-get-so-rich/361053/

quote:

America's middle class has been richest in the world for decades, but as David Leonhardt and Kevin Quealy write in theTimes' new site The Upshot, we've lost that distinction to our neighbors from the north.

Canada is officially home to the richest middle class on the planet, according to figures crunched from the Luxembourg Income Study Database. Here's the last 30 years of America's dwindling income advantage in a handy chart.

How did we lose the lead? The authors blame three broad factors: (1) Canada's education attainment is outpacing the U.S. and most of the world; (2) American middle-class market wages aren't keeping up with overall economic growth; and (3) Other governments are doing more to redistribute income to poorer families in other countries, particularly in western and northern Europe.

One word that doesn't appear in the article, however, is housing. The U.S. is emerging from a catastrophic collapse of the housing market that obliterated household wealth for millions of middle-class families. Canada, however, is in the midst of a delirious housing boom and apersonal debt craze that reminds some economists of the U.S. market exactly a decade ago (before you-know-what happened).

Here's a look at Canadian home prices from Jason Kirby, a columnist for Toronto'sMaclean's magazine, using data from Robert Shiller through January 2014. (It assumes that Canada's home prices behaved like U.S. home prices before 1990, which is barely plausible, but whatever, just focus on the end of the graph.)

And here's an index of American home prices, using the same Shiller data. Note that the U.S. collapsed just before scratching 200, the red line that Canada is approaching.

One year ago, Matt O'Brien calculated that Canada's price-to-rent ratio was the highest among advanced economies, making it the "biggest housing bubble" in the world. Canada's historic housing boom (and our historic bust) comes at the precise moment in history that they pass us to grab the title of World's Richest Middle Class. Just a coincidence?

Maybe. As the LIS data in the Upshot article shows, Canada's median earner has been gaining on America for decades, powered by a strong service economy, supported by a disproportionately large energy industry. Remarkably, U.S. GDP-per-capita has been more than 15 percent richer than Canada's for the last 25 years (see graph below), even as the median American worker has fallen behind the median Canadian earner. That's a pretty clear indictment of U.S. income inequality.

Still, as many economists like Atif Mian and Amir Sufi have have argued, strong housing markets support middle-class income growth just as housing busts wreck middle-class income growth. The effect can be direct (more houses means more construction jobs*) and indirect (when families feel richer from rising housing prices, they spend more across lots of industries, raising incomes). As Reihan Salam writes, "the central driver of the decline in employment levels between 2007 and 2009 was the drop in demand caused by shocks to household balance sheets."

On a personal note: I'm used to ending articles like this by writing "The upshot is..." This practice seems kind of cheeky when the article I'm writing about comes from a Times mini-site with the same name. So I'll do it just this once: The upshot is that Canada is a modern, energy-rich country (with more open doors to high-skilled immigration) whose riches are better shared between the upper- and middle-classes—and this has been to its credit for decades. But if you're seeking a proximate reason why Canada has passed the U.S. as the world's richest middle classthis year of all years, it seems to me you have to consider the opposite trajectories of our real estate fortunes and household wealth. Canadians are standing on their rooftops screaming for more debt while too many Americans are buried under their houses.

That kind of explains all the bmws and ducatis in my parking garage.

# ? Apr 22, 2014 22:00

EoRaptor: Sep 13, 2003; by Fluffdaddy

LemonDrizzle posted:

That's absolutely crazy, though. There are any number of plausible cases where a property may need renovation but the owner(s) would be unwilling or financially unable to do or commission any of the necessary work themselves. The problem isn't renovators doing houses up to hit the highest price the market will bear, it's that the bearable price is too drat high in the first place. You need to address the problem, not play whack-a-mole with its symptoms.

I did say it was brutal. In this case, the person could take a loan against sale price, or just declare bankruptcy and walk away from the property.

The main issue has been the super low interest rates. They don't make products cheaper, they just make debt cheaper. This means people can take on prodigious amounts of debt, and increase their short term buying power. That just leads to price increases, as businesses move to absorb the available cash in the market. Low mortgage rates, by themselves, don't do anything to make housing cheaper, it just makes developers richer. Policy, not price, is a better way to control housing.

EoRaptor fucked around with this message at 19:14 on Apr 23, 2014

# ? Apr 23, 2014 19:11

Peaceful Anarchy: Sep 18, 2005; sXe
I am the math man.

EoRaptor posted:

I did say it was brutal. In this case, the person could take a loan against sale price, or just declare bankruptcy and walk away from the property.

If you want to heavyhandedly prevent people from selling to house flippers why not just ban house flipping by requiring people to own a property for a year or two before selling it. It's still a bad solution to the problem, but at least it actually addresses (part of) the problem. Forcing people to make minimal repairs fucks over everyone since no one wants the bare minimum to pass code on their house and if I were buying a house that needed renovation I'd rather they be the renovations I want as the buyer, not the ones the seller needed to make to legally be able to sell or the ones the flipper decided would maximise their profit.

But yes, the core problem is a society that encourages debt. Housing is just the most obvious side effect of that.

# ? Apr 23, 2014 19:28

namaste friends: Sep 18, 2004; by Smythe

To go one step further up the fractional reserve banking Creek, the bank of Canada responded to the 2008 recession by introducing low interest rates and buying debt instruments off of the retail banks. The stated goal was to generate liquidity.

The banks in turn were supposed to lend money to businesses to get the economy going again. Unfortunately this didn't really happen as banks were reticent to lend to any businesses for fear of default.
So around 2009 of you were the ceo of rbc, Scotia, bmo, Td, you were probably getting sucked off by some intern while wondering what was the best way to start "generating more value for the shareholder". Back then the answer would have been, well lookee here, the government of Canada is going to guarantee any loans we make to dumb Canadians who want to buy a house with little to no downpayment.

You would have to have been brain dead not to seize that opportunity.

So now dumb rear end Canadians are happily "building equity" while their salaries have receded and they're busy spending their helocs and racking up their credit card debt leading to the highest level of household debt in the western world. That's OK though. The NYTimes had annoited the Canadian middle class as the richest in the world.

# ? Apr 23, 2014 19:55

namaste friends: Sep 18, 2004; by Smythe

TD macro strategist: "The longer-term trend in retail volumes [in #Canada] points to the creeping theme of domestic fatigue" #cdnecon

https://twitter.com/dbcurren/status/459065263426908160

# ? Apr 23, 2014 22:08

Professor Shark: May 22, 2012

God it feels good for someone to tell me that, between the two of us, my girlfriend and I are rich

I've finally made it...

# ? Apr 23, 2014 22:47

OhYeah: Jan 20, 2007; 1. Currently the most prevalent form of decision-making in the western world

2. While you are correct in saying that the society owns

3. You have not for a second demonstrated here why

4. I love the way that you equate "state" with "bureaucracy". Is that how you really feel about the state

brucio posted:

Wait, how can you have 48% office and 74% service?

Is it just me or is this perfectly logical? A job in a fast food joint will count as a service sector job, but not as an office job. Because a fast food joint is not an office. Out of the 74% service sector jobs 48% are office jobs and 26% are retail/various customer services etc.

Wasting posted:

Anyone else have to sit through a "get in now or you'll never be able to" real estate pitch from family over Easter dinner?

Things I learned:

- Now is the best time to buy, because
- you'll never be able to earn as fast as real estate values go up, and
- prices will go up, forever.

If it makes you feel any better, I endured roughly the same scenario for a few years until it ended in a horrific crash which made a lot of people poor in a very short period of time. I know quite a few very smart people (literally millionaires) who still managed to lose on their real estate investments because the crash simply was too ferocious to contain by anyone.

But of course the same thing might not happen in Canada, and in UK, and in some other countries. Because... well, reasons.

# ? Apr 24, 2014 14:33

Wasting: Apr 25, 2013; The next to go

It's nice to hear that I am not perhaps the insane one, but it doesn't make me feel much better, because the other option is that the people I care about most have lost their minds.

I just wish there were a way to unfuck our economy without hurting a bunch of low-info people who committed the crime of responding in a way the government either predicted and just didn't care much about, or was too incompetent to understand.

# ? Apr 24, 2014 14:48

OhYeah: Jan 20, 2007; 1. Currently the most prevalent form of decision-making in the western world

2. While you are correct in saying that the society owns

3. You have not for a second demonstrated here why

4. I love the way that you equate "state" with "bureaucracy". Is that how you really feel about the state

Wasting posted:

It's nice to hear that I am not perhaps the insane one, but it doesn't make me feel much better, because the other option is that the people I care about most have lost their minds.

I just wish there were a way to unfuck our economy without hurting a bunch of low-info people who committed the crime of responding in a way the government either predicted and just didn't care much about, or was too incompetent to understand.

I share your sense of apprehension because has I have mentioned before in this thread, my sister with her family is living in Canada and they just bought a house there.

# ? Apr 24, 2014 14:55

namaste friends: Sep 18, 2004; by Smythe

Wasting posted:

It's nice to hear that I am not perhaps the insane one, but it doesn't make me feel much better, because the other option is that the people I care about most have lost their minds.

I just wish there were a way to unfuck our economy without hurting a bunch of low-info people who committed the crime of responding in a way the government either predicted and just didn't care much about, or was too incompetent to understand.

Well let's not absolve all these 'equity' builders from their own greed.

# ? Apr 24, 2014 15:23

Wasting: Apr 25, 2013; The next to go

Cultural Imperial posted:

Well let's not absolve all these 'equity' builders from their own greed.

After seeing the firestorm of hubris surrounding that NYT report on the "middle class," I'm feeling less generous.

# ? Apr 24, 2014 22:06

Lexicon: Jul 29, 2003; I had a beer with Stephen Harper once and now I like him.

Wasting posted:

After seeing the firestorm of hubris surrounding that NYT report on the "middle class," I'm feeling less generous.

Man, I know. When I first read the headline, the first thing I thought was "Ughhh - I don't even care about the validity or lack thereof herein - the last thing this country needs is more hubris about how we're all financial geniuses, especially relative to those uncouth Yanks!".

# ? Apr 24, 2014 22:12

Lead out in cuffs: Sep 18, 2012; "That's right. We've evolved."

"I can see that. Cool mutations."

Wasting posted:

After seeing the firestorm of hubris surrounding that NYT report on the "middle class," I'm feeling less generous.

People are responding to that article with hubris? I thought the whole point of the article was to point out the hubris and warn of the house price and debt nemesis.

# ? Apr 24, 2014 22:17

Wasting: Apr 25, 2013; The next to go

Lead out in cuffs posted:

People are responding to that article with hubris? I thought the whole point of the article was to point out the hubris and warn of the house price and debt nemesis.

Check out G&M, Huffpo, National Post if you feel like punishing yourself. I don't see the Star or CBC reporting on it, though.

# ? Apr 24, 2014 22:42

namaste friends: Sep 18, 2004; by Smythe

lol

# ? Apr 25, 2014 02:52

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# ? May 12, 2024 21:35

namaste friends: Sep 18, 2004; by Smythe

why the gently caress would anyone live in hamilton

# ? Apr 25, 2014 02:53

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Canada Housing/Debt: Trust me, I'm a landlord.

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