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Anecdotal but I saw a 3 bedroom apartment for sale for $400k here the other day. Haven't seen anything 3 bed under 500k since I moved here 18 months ago. it could also be someone trying to sell a shittier apartment than others!
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Mar 25, 2015 03:44
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Sassafras fucked around with this message at 03:44 on Mar 26, 2015 |
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Mar 25, 2015 04:12
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Throatwarbler posted:If it's like that then the dollar probably will fall until it does make sense to build poo poo here. That's the point of having a freely convertible currency. Look at the resurgence of manufacturing that's happening in Britain with the collapse of the GBP - the UK recently overtook France in terms of total cars made, and soon-to-be resurgence in Germany with the Euro falling. Thats actually rear end backwards. A free floating currency allows the country with the cheapest cost base to attract foreign capital best. Capital is attracted to the cash based rate of return, found in your Sov. interest rates. So if you kill your federal funds rate, which the Bank of Canada pegs every few months to great fanfare, then your dollar depreciates in relation to all currencies; unless the currency is backed by a floor peg or intrinsic valuation (gold standard, nukes.... brony nerd tax revenues ?). The resurgence of the the UK following the exit of the UK from the first EU was due to tax pressures. Their resurgence of manufacturing was more a byproduct of union breaking & the reworking of national corporations/spinoffs from the govt. than any single dollar indexed debasement. While car sales are a great stat for day trading the aggregate volume of car/plane/fixed capital manufactured in the UK as a percentile of all industrial output is loving way down from pre-war 1960 and nowhere even close to 1995. Given the BoE's tight policy compared to China and USA, its a moot point. However it will be nearly impossible for people to return heavy industry and blue collar jobs to Canada. This article sums it up pretty well: http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21646204-asias-dominance-manufacturing-will-endure-will-make-development-harder-others-made If anything, the outlook for Canadian non-energy market is about 2x worse as of Monday than it was at any point post-Chretien, with the main burden resting on the ineffective and horrible Ontario & Quebec job incentives for new economy onshoring. I think Canadian Solar has a huge writeup on this, but its not at my fingertips right now to repost.
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Mar 25, 2015 04:21
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Sassafras posted:You have your choice of several 3br apartments within a couple blocks of Gateway skytrain station in Surrey for between 205 and 275k. How much of a premium does downtown deserve? I live in Whistler
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Mar 25, 2015 04:32
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Hal_2005 posted:The resurgence of the the UK following the exit of the UK from the first EU was due to tax pressures. Their resurgence of manufacturing was more a byproduct of union breaking & the reworking of national corporations/spinoffs from the govt. than any single dollar indexed debasement. At least London is doing well. *burns a car*
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Mar 25, 2015 04:45
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Sassafras fucked around with this message at 03:44 on Mar 26, 2015 |
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Mar 25, 2015 04:53
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Kafka Esq. posted:Also why 9 of the top 10 poverty areas of Northern Europe are in the UK. For once, we can agree on something together. End of times must be happening soon, I'll go buy a goldbar and a bunker tomorrow.
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Mar 25, 2015 05:04
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Baronjutter posted:There's jobs in Victoria, just not jobs that really excuse the home prices here. At one point I wanted to move to the island, and would've had to live in Victoria, however job prospects in the tech sector are what solidified my position it was not feasible. Moving to BC to live in Vancity to work tech? I'd rather tough out the cold of Ontario and (eventually) own a modest house in my lifetime. Just my own anecdotal findings of Victoria. At least its a beautiful city in the summer, but then again the whole island is.
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Mar 25, 2015 06:46
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Just wanted to let you guys know that oil prices are gonna be hilarious if obummer reaches a deal with Iran. gently caress you Alberta
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Mar 25, 2015 15:51
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Cultural Imperial posted:Just wanted to let you guys know that oil prices are gonna be hilarious if obummer reaches a deal with Iran. gently caress you Alberta They may also spike depending on how mad the Saudi's get at Iran for meddling in Yemen. It's a touchy situation right now.
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Mar 25, 2015 16:12
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jm20 posted:They may also spike depending on how mad the Saudi's get at Iran for meddling in Yemen. It's a touchy situation right now. The exogenous risk to oil from an Iranian fracas of some kind are both more likely and more scary than the batch of risks that come from Saudi petulance. Unless the Saudis want to piss directly into America's cornflakes (which is possible, but unlikely), I imagine any dust-up over Yemen would be a blip compared to the relief the world markets would feel over not having to calculate the nonzero percent chance of a full closure of the Straights of Hormuz.
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Mar 25, 2015 16:23
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Cultural Imperial posted:Just wanted to let you guys know that oil prices are gonna be hilarious if obummer reaches a deal with Iran. gently caress you Alberta Yes and no CI. Right now a nice chunk of Iran's production still gets exported, so its already in the world price. But the problem for Iran is that while it has a large amount of shut in production and huge reserves, Iran needs very large amounts of capital to bring it back online and back producing efficiently. By large I mean that Iran needs something in the order of a quarter trillion dollars to bring its full production online again. Iran has been unable to invest in their oilfields and repair and upgrade systems for nearly a decade now. Oil is extremely capital intensive because stuff wears out so fast. They haven't been able to replace it and large chunks of their energy infrastructure is really run down. They can get that money from China when they need it, but they're going to have to get it in either the form of joint project ownership deals with Chinese companies, or by allowing Chinese companies to develop fields directly. That's going to be a hard sell in Iran. They're also probably not going to be able to just borrow the money, China is the only country that has that kind of money to invest and they're going to be worried about loaning Iran money directly, especially when by doing so it will undercut the price of the very commodity that Iran sells to pay back the loan. And finally, a large number of the sanctions that restrict Iranian market access are not related to their nuclear programme, they're related to their sponsorship of Hamas and so forth. They're congressional sanctions that Obama will not be able to lift, no matter what deal he reaches with Iran.
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Mar 25, 2015 16:29
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Cool thanks for the insight gorau
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Mar 25, 2015 17:21
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Financial Post posted:“For our parents, it was normal to take out a $200,000 to $300,000 mortgage, whereas now first-time home-buyers regularly borrow $700,000 to $800,000,” says Brandon Wasser, a 29-year-old agent with Royal LePage in Toronto.  It's like real estate agents live in some horrifying parallel universe.
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Mar 25, 2015 17:21
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What the gently caress no it wasn't. My parents took out a 100k mortgage and back then in the mid 80's that was like huge and insane and all their friends were worried they were going into such extreme house-debt. That was to buy a huge house in one of the most expensive parts of town too. Prices were not much different in Toronto back there.
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Mar 25, 2015 17:24
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Millenials paying 4 to 5000 a month in debt service. Yeah let's normalise that behaviour. Don't rich hate right motherfuckers?
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Mar 25, 2015 17:46
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Cultural Imperial posted:Millenials paying 4 to 5000 a month in debt service. Yeah let's normalise that behaviour. Don't rich hate right motherfuckers? No, that sort of rich hate is justified. But, on the other hand, it's obviously not rich hate, because rich people have money instead of massive piles of debt! I'm okay with hating people who put themselves into huge amounts of debt over non-essential things.
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Mar 25, 2015 19:13
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I think it's clear that the average person can't really understand or handle debt/finances. There should be regulations/limits in place that make it impossible to actually get that much debt.
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Mar 25, 2015 19:31
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quote:Average Vancouver house prices of $2 million foreseen in Vancity report Untenable solutions to housing affordability: higher LTV ratios, eliminating cmhc insurance for housing, increasing the overnight lending rate. Lol leave it to a loving Vancouver bank to tell us that housing affordability can only be solved by supply side economics. Also, 2.1 million dollar homes are the new norm so buy now before being priced out.
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Mar 25, 2015 19:41
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Baronjutter posted:I think it's clear that the average person can't really understand or handle debt/finances. There should be regulations/limits in place that make it impossible to actually get that much debt. Why? If we didn't have poo poo like the CMHC backstopping lovely lending practices, we wouldn't need these regulations in the first place, because banks wouldn't lend to people who can't afford it. More to the point, I've never understood the leftist viewpoint of trying to forbid people from making lovely decisions. Let people be as stupid as they want! The problem is the taxpayer is going to be on the hook via the CMHC for a lot of this, not that a bunch of people are going to be hosed and bankrupt.
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Mar 25, 2015 19:42
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Baronjutter posted:I think it's clear that the average person can't really understand or handle debt/finances. There should be regulations/limits in place that make it impossible to actually get that much debt. Most hilarious financial product innovation spawned by this housing boom: the down payment loan.
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Mar 25, 2015 19:42
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PT6A posted:Why? If we didn't have poo poo like the CMHC backstopping lovely lending practices, we wouldn't need these regulations in the first place, because banks wouldn't lend to people who can't afford it. People aren't islands and we actually live in a society. If a bunch of people in the society I'm part of are in crippling debt it hurts me as a member of that society and hurts the economy I'm part of. The same as if they don't get their education, or healthcare, or there aren't safety regulations protecting them. Each citizen is an investment made by society and that investment needs to be both nurtured and protected. Galt's gultch doesn't work because people can't be perfectly informed, no one has time to personally test every piece of food or medicine or crash test their own car. In the same way most people are not at all informed enough to weigh the risk of extreme debt. Crippling debt should not be available. Obviously people can still have debt, but not insane crippling debt with CMHC blessing. I can't go out and get a dangerous mix of prescription medication, I can't go out and buy a ton of raw milk, I can't design and build my own car and go drive it on public roads without any sort of inspection, there's tons of things I can't do, both for my own good and society's good. I agree about getting rid of the CMHC or vastly reducing its scope though, as it not only hurts society by allowing people to get into unsustainable debt, but it forces the rest of us to pay for it. I love the government subsidizing things, but only things that are proven good investments.
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Mar 25, 2015 20:07
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Baronjutter posted:People aren't islands and we actually live in a society. If a bunch of people in the society I'm part of are in crippling debt it hurts me as a member of that society and hurts the economy I'm part of. The same as if they don't get their education, or healthcare, or there aren't safety regulations protecting them. Each citizen is an investment made by society and that investment needs to be both nurtured and protected. Galt's gultch doesn't work because people can't be perfectly informed, no one has time to personally test every piece of food or medicine or crash test their own car. In the same way most people are not at all informed enough to weigh the risk of extreme debt. Crippling debt should not be available. Obviously people can still have debt, but not insane crippling debt with CMHC blessing. I can't go out and get a dangerous mix of prescription medication, I can't go out and buy a ton of raw milk, I can't design and build my own car and go drive it on public roads without any sort of inspection, there's tons of things I can't do, both for my own good and society's good. Good loving post. Edit: I sure do swear a lot since I started working for a union!
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Mar 25, 2015 20:09
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Baronjutter posted:People aren't islands and we actually live in a society. If a bunch of people in the society I'm part of are in crippling debt it hurts me as a member of that society and hurts the economy I'm part of. The same as if they don't get their education, or healthcare, or there aren't safety regulations protecting them. Each citizen is an investment made by society and that investment needs to be both nurtured and protected. Galt's gultch doesn't work because people can't be perfectly informed, no one has time to personally test every piece of food or medicine or crash test their own car. In the same way most people are not at all informed enough to weigh the risk of extreme debt. Crippling debt should not be available. Obviously people can still have debt, but not insane crippling debt with CMHC blessing. I can't go out and get a dangerous mix of prescription medication, I can't go out and buy a ton of raw milk, I can't design and build my own car and go drive it on public roads without any sort of inspection, there's tons of things I can't do, both for my own good and society's good. That's a nice clear and concise post in response to PT6A's very Libertarian-smelling post 
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Mar 25, 2015 20:18
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Wow never in my life have I been more disgusted to have been raised in Vancouver, and have to identify myself as member of this poo poo house society
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Mar 25, 2015 20:20
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PT6A posted:More to the point, I've never understood the leftist viewpoint of trying to forbid people from making lovely decisions. Let people be as stupid as they want! Juul-Whip fucked around with this message at 20:41 on Mar 25, 2015 |
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Mar 25, 2015 20:36
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Baronjutter posted:What the gently caress no it wasn't. My parents took out a 100k mortgage and back then in the mid 80's that was like huge and insane and all their friends were worried they were going into such extreme house-debt. That was to buy a huge house in one of the most expensive parts of town too. Prices were not much different in Toronto back there. My parents bought a house for $180K in 1991, their mortgage was about three times their annual combined wages, it wasn't considered too risky back then. Or at least, it wasn't considered risky in their circles; they ended up paying it off in about 15 years or so.
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Mar 25, 2015 21:54
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3x your yearly income for a house doesn't sound too bad. That means I could get about a 200k mortgage safely, which means a really poo poo low-end condo. Way back when I was doing my potential condo math it came out to about 200k on the super conservative end so that seems reasonable. The problem is that people are getting mortgages for like 5x or higher their yearly income. Single person working a 50k job in Vancouver? Yeah buy that 300k condo. A huge problem is the mindset that the price will go up, they are banking on it, their entire finances depend on the value going up at a rate that they make a good profit. If people weren't so greedy and deluded into thinking buying a condo was an amazing investment we wouldn't see half the idiocy. That's what gets me and brings me back to regulations. If I was buying an actual investment and the INVESTOR(tm) went on and on about how that fund will totally be worth double in a decade and he's so sure he's re-mortgaged his 2nd investment condo to pay for deposit on his downpayment loan for his 3rd condo, he'd actually face some poo poo. Some dude selling 5,000k of lovely mutual funds needs a ton of licenses and oversight, yet someone selling you a 500k "investment" has less oversight or regulations than a lovely used car salesman and can make insane wild promises or "predictions" or outright lie about the market. This is why I don't buy into the whole libertarian "let idiots gently caress them selves not my problem" line of thinking. People don't have access to perfect information, and for poo poo like mortgages it's apparently super easy into misleading people. You have to play on their greed and class-consciousness of course, but you're still basically misleading them and in many cases outright lying to them. I also don't buy into that line of thinking because I live here and I rather have a functioning society and economy than the joy of watching greedy ignorants gently caress them selves and "get theirs". I rather a benevolent state swoop in and save them from them selves. Realtors can totally "get theirs" though.
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Mar 25, 2015 22:54
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Professor Shark posted:That's a nice clear and concise post in response to PT6A's very Libertarian-smelling post I don't see how allowing people to make dumbass decisions is "Libertarian." If we literally allow people to buy enough rope to hang themselves, why not allow it metaphorically? The only issue is that the government, and thus taxpayers, are currently backstopping the debt. If this were not the case, society would function just fine. Some people would go bankrupt, banks would stop making lovely loans, and with a functioning social safety net, the bankrupt people wouldn't be outright destitute anyway. I disagree with allowing payday loans unrestricted because they do prey on the uninformed and desperate. This is emphatically not the case with huge mortgages -- these are people who should know better, and do know better, so I don't really give a gently caress if they lose their rear end. I don't understand why I should have empathy towards people whose willful ignorance leads them into bad situations. I have empathy for people who've been hosed around by circumstances outside of their control, not people who actively hosed themselves.
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Mar 26, 2015 00:08
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The more people borrow for a house now, the cheaper they're going to be when the bubble busts. 
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Mar 26, 2015 00:17
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quote:I don't see how allowing people to make dumbass decisions is "Libertarian." If we literally allow people to buy enough rope to hang themselves, why not allow it metaphorically? Juul-Whip fucked around with this message at 01:45 on Mar 26, 2015 |
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Mar 26, 2015 01:41
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THC posted:Because they are not actually dead, they are just poor and in debt and using food banks and welfare and receiving care for health problems brought on by extreme stress. Maybe they have kids, who now get to grow up in that environment. Who do you think pays for all that? Clearly there's greater utility in not allowing the situation to happen in the first place. Your position is simply social Darwinism justified by your own personal feelings. It's not social Darwinism, because I believe we should maintain a strong social safety net to eliminate the possibility that people are food- or housing-insecure, and I'm in favour of a GMI. Allowing delinquent borrowers to discharge all debts through bankruptcy should teach lenders not to be reckless, and give people who've seriously hosed themselves a way out -- I'm not advocating for some sort of debtor's prison. Further, under a reasonable tax structure, the money that they lose for being retarded as all gently caress with their money gets taxed as someone else's income, so we are directly seeing some of that money being transferred back into public hands. If someone wants to fritter away their money on magic beans, or whatever else, that's their business. We need to address poverty in such a way that no one, regardless of circumstances, suffers food insecurity or housing insecurity. What we certainly do not need is some kind of restrictive system, which is almost certainly going to be imperfect, to keep people from going into debt for non-essential things. If someone wants to spend $500/month carrying credit card debt because they figured they really, really needed that luxury vacation, I don't give a gently caress. I don't think we need to help them, and I don't think we need to stop them.
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Mar 26, 2015 01:53
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PT6A posted:It's not social Darwinism, because I believe we should maintain a strong social safety net to eliminate the possibility that people are food- or housing-insecure, and I'm in favour of a GMI. Allowing delinquent borrowers to discharge all debts through bankruptcy should teach lenders not to be reckless, and give people who've seriously hosed themselves a way out -- I'm not advocating for some sort of debtor's prison. Further, under a reasonable tax structure, the money that they lose for being retarded as all gently caress with their money gets taxed as someone else's income, so we are directly seeing some of that money being transferred back into public hands. that depends, I think, on how many resources we have to expend on both the people in need and the system itself. Provided that that amount is limited - and it almost certainly is - then unless both systems fall under that limit (and given the scope of poverty they almost certainly don't) it's possible that a system of restrictions would, while costing more up front, save more in the long term by reducing poverty overall. Of course that's all hypothetical of me and given the inefficiencies that can crop up in public-sector stuff, it could certainly be cheaper to let the system be and continue treating symptoms rather than causes, but I somehow don't think that's a cure.
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Mar 26, 2015 02:08
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Another issue is: what limits would you actually impose on how much debt someone can take on, how would you decide those limits, and how could you deal efficiently with changing circumstances? Having $80k of mortgage debt is far different from having the same amount on a car loan, which is different again from having that same amount in credit card debt. Would you then divide this up and have separate caps on each type of debt? Someone with no mortgage debt could reasonably afford to have more consumer debt, though. Would you base it on monthly payments to income? How would you measure income, and how would you account for a person's savings and/or changes in income? A system based on legal restrictions on how much money can be lent to someone seems fraught with problems, whereas the solution of "lenders can go get hosed if they make bad loans and the borrower defaults or declares bankruptcy" is amazing in its simplicity. If banks were fully on the hook for every penny they loaned out, they'd be tighter than a nun's oval office, I promise. On the other hand, you still have the issue of lenders who are out to make money not off interest alone, but off the default (and subsequent seizure of collateral). I don't know how you can deal with that, because it basically comes down to people walking up to lenders with their pants down and asking to be hosed. Financial literacy classes so people can recognize when loans are going to be impossible to pay back? I don't know.
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Mar 26, 2015 02:18
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Just get rid of the CHMC - problem solved. Although the Canadian economy would nose dive without underwritten FIRE as a result.
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Mar 26, 2015 03:42
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PT6A posted:If someone wants to fritter away their money on magic beans, or whatever else, that's their business. I mean yeah utopian communitarianism is a ridiculous concept but I also think a disregard for the well-being of people outside your social circle is something that should be discouraged. If someone wants to fritter away their money on magic beans, someone should have the foresight to sit them down and explain why it's a terrible idea.
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Mar 26, 2015 03:52
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cowofwar posted:Just get rid of the CHMC - problem solved. Although the Canadian economy would nose dive without underwritten FIRE as a result. I'd just progressively lower the maximum insurable amount over a certain number of years to a reasonable amount (probably 200-300k), increase the minimum down payment to 20%, and require that the down payment not be paid by another loan. It wouldn't collapse quickly, at least.
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Mar 26, 2015 03:53
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unlimited shrimp posted:If you wouldn't let your mother fritter away her money on magic beans, why would you let anyone else do it? I would let my mother do that (she wouldn't, because she's not a moron). If I suspected she were planning to do that, I would counsel her against it, as I would counsel any person against taking on large amounts of consumer debt, but in the end it is neither my choice nor the government's choice to make. I'm absolutely in favour of educating people on why they shouldn't carry large amounts of consumer debt, but at a certain point, you have to realize that you just can't fix someone who's dead set on spending money like a drunken sailor. One of my best friends does this, and it's not because he's a moron, or he couldn't afford a comfortable life without going into debt -- it's because he wants more house, nicer wine, better art, more meals at expensive restaurants, longer vacations with nicer hotel rooms, and so forth. Laws can't fix that impulse, and frankly it would be stupid and probably counter-productive to try.
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Mar 26, 2015 03:58
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PT6A posted:I'd just progressively lower the maximum insurable amount over a certain number of years to a reasonable amount (probably 200-300k), increase the minimum down payment to 20%, and require that the down payment not be paid by another loan. It wouldn't collapse quickly, at least. Bullshit. As soon as people realized their magic money printing structures don't actually do that because of these changes, they would see no reason to keep throwing 50%+ of their income in to them and prices would collapse right quickly. Bubbles are a result of herd behavior of a sort and so are collapses.
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Mar 26, 2015 04:04
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PT6A posted:I'd just progressively lower the maximum insurable amount over a certain number of years to a reasonable amount (probably 200-300k), increase the minimum down payment to 20%, and require that the down payment not be paid by another loan. It wouldn't collapse quickly, at least. There's literally never been a case of a "soft landing" (the name of the concept you're describing) in recorded history. Economical bubbles are bubbles specifically because they are driven by everyone joining in on the craze and as such they burst spectacularly.
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Mar 26, 2015 07:06
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