DarkHorse posted:

Have these people not seen The Big Short? We know how this ends, and it isn't pretty

Though I fully expect the bubble to keep floating upwards purely on hopes and dreams for a few months after it pops, much like the US one did; maybe it's guys like that who keep it going.

Breetai posted:

"Hurf durf rent money is dead money."

*Buys a house where the mortgage payments equal their current rent payments, at historically low interest rate levels, jerking off while screaming "I'm building equity!"*

*Eats chicken ramen for every meal once the realization that home maintenance and council rates exist sets in*

*Rack up 1-100k in credit card debt, because the good times are never going to end!*

*Loses home the instant interest rates go up by a percent*

Sic Semper Goon posted:

Breetai posted:

I was discussing the above points with someone, who agreed that there was going to be a market correction, but who then advised "You should still buy right away; if the market crashes, banks are going to be less comfortable lending out money and you'll not be able to get a loan. GET ON THE LADDER."

EAT FASTER!!!!!! posted:

Love It or List It is filmed in Canada and so you'll watch it and there are these absolutely INSANE home prices and you just think, "thank God I live in a depressed real estate market."

monster on a stick posted:

It does mean that. There are also some other minor side effects like rising unemployment and bankruptcy rates, you might want to look at other countries where the real estate bubble burst to see the effects usually aren't just "hey cheap houses"

Breetai posted:

That said, it's amazing exactly how many people are holding on for grim life to the prospect that you still need to buy, buy, buy. I was discussing the above points with someone, who agreed that there was going to be a market correction, but who then advised "You should still buy right away; if the market crashes, banks are going to be less comfortable lending out money and you'll not be able to get a loan. GET ON THE LADDER."

quote:

Hairdressers and makeup artists in NV, performed services for destination wedding in Jamaica. We're not paid in full, bride is overwhelmed with whole wedding cost and is refusing full payment.

The original contract was a day rate for $1,000 / stylist a day, for 2 days of work. With sketchy organization the contract was never signed, but was agreed upon through corresponding texts.

It was a destination wedding, the bride paid for all of the stylists travel and board. She gave us each a $400 deposit, before the wedding, and was to pay us the full amount within the next 4 weeks. December 31st being the last day for us to receive payment. Leading up to the 31st her email started to become worrisome where tons of excuses and saying she had to sell her expensive belongings on eBay just to give us partial payment.

In a nutshell, the 31st is coming gone, she tried wiring $2,600 to be split between five stylists. And that we are to take her word that the rest will be come in whenever it becomes available. Or not willing to accept partial payment, we want our full payment for services rendered.

Hoping someone here could tell me what our appropriate action should be for the next step. We were thinking of giving her an extra four weeks if she agrees to pay it in full, and we will get it in writing.

Should we do that? Or should we start with legal action? Thanks to anyone who reads this.

Breetai posted:

*Loses home the instant interest rates go up by a percent*

LLCoolJD posted:

I couldn't imagine getting an adjustible-rate mortgage.

FrozenVent posted:

Five stylists for two days at 1,000 a day plus room and board and travel?

drat, I'm in the wrong line of work.

quote:

The reason this is so ridiculous is because she's expecting us to feel bad for her situation. She initially thought her wedding was going to cost 200k, but ended up costing close to 400k. Her family is living on "bread" at the moment, and she's going to try to sell her Gucci bag on eBay so she's able to maybe throw us $800 more. Cry me a river, I took a week off from my own business and have a family to feed.

monster on a stick posted:

It does mean that. There are also some other minor side effects like rising unemployment and bankruptcy rates, you might want to look at other countries where the real estate bubble burst to see the effects usually aren't just "hey cheap houses"

melon cat posted:

"You should take out a loan while the banks are stupid and greedy enough to give you one!"

It really is insane. I was talking to our real estate agent the other day, and she told us that Toronto's real estate listings usually involve about 15 bidders, and the winning bid always ends up being someone who pays $150K+ above asking with no conditions. In many cases, it's a foreign buyer with deep pockets who may, or may not, occupy the residence. Offers with home inspection conditions are completely ignored due to the sheer chaos of the bubble, and in most cases the houses are sold before they show up on the official MLS listing site.

olylifter posted:

They've been predicting the bubble was gonna burst for at least 5 years, but every year, nay, every month there's new records being set for the average home price in the GTA.

melon cat posted:

"You should take out a loan while the banks are stupid and greedy enough to give you one!"

It really is insane. I was talking to our real estate agent the other day, and she told us that Toronto's real estate listings usually involve about 15 bidders, and the winning bid always ends up being someone who pays $150K+ above asking with no conditions. In many cases, it's a foreign buyer with deep pockets who may, or may not, occupy the residence. Offers with home inspection conditions are completely ignored due to the sheer chaos of the bubble, and in most cases the houses are sold before they show up on the official MLS listing site.

At this point, the only way to win is not to play. And 2017 will have another round of real estate madness since interest rates are finally going up, and people are trying to "get their foot in the door" and lock into a good rate while they can still qualify for approval. It just boggles me that interest rates are still being kept so artificially-low, despite very clear signs that Canadians are up to their eyeballs in debt. There is literally nothing else that's driving this real estate bubble- incomes have stagnated and the Canadian economy is still in the Dutch Disease gutter. It's entirely driven by "cheap" credit and low housing stock.

Sic Semper Goon posted:

You misunderstood my statement. I don't want to be a renter, I wish to own a house, but due to massive overpricing, am unable to do so.

If the market crashes, this means (to my understanding) that house prices will drop, hopefully to the level of which I am capable of purchasing.

CelestialScribe posted:

If you think there is going to be a massive crash in Australia, you're simply dead wrong. There aren't enough cities and the migration rate is too strong.

I can only speak to Melbourne, but the more realistic scenario is that apartment prices crash because they've built so many of them and they are poo poo. Detached housing won't be affected as much.

Don't get me wrong - the heat will come out of the market as interest rates rise. But if you're expecting a 20% drop I wouldn't hold my breath.

Guest2553 posted:

That line is my favorite, it's the personal finance equivalent of 'some smokers live til' 90'. You can't pinpoint the day a goon will drop dead from a heart attack, but it doesn't mean they should keep stuffing their sedentary asses full of doritos and mountain dew.

e. 'they' have been saying the same thing about vancouver for years and they're starting to go tits up now, something something this time it's different.

BEHOLD: MY CAPE posted:

Buy a house when and where you can afford it, when it makes sense for your lifestyle and time horizon of ownership.

Guest2553 posted:

These rational sort of people don't bid up detached shitboxes to 1kk+ without an inspection because of a fear of missing out while believing real estate can never fail. Elements of 'rates will never rise' or 'this time it's different' may also be present.

King George posted:

Buying a tiny house in Kentucky.

BWM: Setting up a horse ministry
GWM: Deciding to buy a tiny house in order to save money
BWL: The person who owns a 320 sq ft house with only a bucket to poop in (skip to 7:00)

DarkHorse posted:

Before we bought a house, my SO and I watched a bunch of home buying/improvement shows to get an idea of what typically went wrong and what inspections often didn't show - a great strategy it turns out, because (along with a thorough inspector) we dodged a lot of bad houses and ended up with a great house for a good price knowing the things that were wrong with it and budgeted to fix in my internal assessment of the house's price.

So I was always flabbergasted when I saw a show with people putting a bid on a house with an inspection, get rejected, and then decide to raise the price and drop the inspection. Invariably it was always a disaster. Granted this was a tv show so they're going for maximum drama, but still - it seemed like a ton of risk for no reason.

So I guess I kind of understand now with how hosed Toronto has been why someone might do that, but it still seems dumb to me.

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

This is video proof that horse people are the worst. I thought you were exaggerating about trying to make a horse ministry your only source of income, but nope.

NancyPants posted:

All I hear about is how Canada is a socialist hellhole, you mean the government doesn't use your supposed 60% tax rate to force a home inspection and prostate exam upon sale?

Nitrox posted:

Those shows are nearly always not representing the actual reality. The houses are already bought and signed for before cameras were rolling. Sometimes it's actors in rented properties. The "home improvement" shows never give you the full story either and often make poo poo up for the sake of script and drama. The only show that came close, was Holmes On Homes, where competent builder is fixing someone else's fuckups. But they misrepresented the money involved, all the same. I'm a builder, and actually worked with one of those home improvement shows around 2005. It was a terrible experience for everyone involved.

I constantly run into people, raised on those HDTV shows, often trying to replicate the same stupid poo poo in their first house. Yes, that reclaimed wood is free. No, it doesn't magically become a faux beam in your kitchen. Someone need to transport it, mill it, treat it, then actually install the drat thing. Oh, and it's over 600lbs so we need to build a support system underneath it. Please sign this detailed estimate and a waiver before we even touch it.

melon cat posted:

Why force a home inspection and inject some sense of sanity into the Canadian housing market when 50% of the country's GDP "growth" comes from real estate?

And for what it's worth- I don't think the Canadian real estate market will "crash" in the traditional sense (as much as it really should). There's still a lot of demand for detached housing (if it doesn't come from locals it'll come from wealthy foreign buyers) and the Canadian government seems keen on keeping rates as low as they possibly can, despite all indications that they should've been hiked years ago. Instead of a crash, we'll see home values' growth slow down (or even stagnate), and wake up to a new reality of deeply-indebted Canadian households and mortgages joint among 6-7 people. I'm already seeing it in my childhood neighbourhood- aging, post-WWII housing with at least 4-5 cars in the driveway/street. It wasn't always like this.

What's even nuttier is that owning a downtown condo high-rise unit has somehow become more expensive than buying a detached dwelling in the outer suburbs, here. Monthly fees of $600-$700 are common for a ~700 sq ft condo, especially if your building is more than 25 years old. An extreme example is this one in Etobicoke which has been charging condo owners $2000/month.

King George posted:

Buying a tiny house in Kentucky.

BWM: Setting up a horse ministry
GWM: Deciding to buy a tiny house in order to save money
BWL: The person who owns a 320 sq ft house with only a bucket to poop in (skip to 7:00)

DarkHorse posted:

Holmes on Homes (and whatever the sequel was) were the ones! I'm an engineer by trade so I was able to take sufficient salt with the entertainment to only focus on what types of problems tended to crop up and have a realistic idea of what it took to fix. It's good that you pointed out how unrealistic those shows are, though.

In one case we went to a house we thought might be a good deal, but just pulling up to the property we could see all kinds of garbage "improvements" house flippers typically use, and beyond that I could see whoever built the new deck had no understanding of structures - sure enough it sagged as soon as we stood on it. We were already there so we decided to look through anyway, and it was entertaining (for us) finding all the cheap shortcuts the flippers had taken. Ductwork would terminate randomly and not even be capped off, "reclaimed" aka dumpster cabinetry installed with a hodgepodge of machine screws into drywall already sagging, floor joists painted over by black rattle can and missing a support pillar, an attic "bathroom" that had a door cut to fit the roofline, without venting, and the wrong electrical work, gas lines run through bare holes in the ductwork...

We called it trash house and it's been a source of amusement ever since, though it was sad in a way because it was a neat century house until those people bastardized it with their flipper hands. I can't say those shows taught me anything other people couldn't see (because as far as I know the house still hasn't sold), but I definitely caught more stuff than I would have without it.

Krispy Kareem posted:

I can't remember the name, but I got stuck watching one of those really bad low-rent home flipping shows (not fancy like Property Brothers). The manufactured drama on this episode was the home they were flipping had been flipped by one of their team members just five years before. They even found a time capsule he put in the wall! And it looked horrible. Like there's no way any a recently renovated home should look like this unless you do terrible work.

They really didn't address the home's condition except to make fun of some of his design choices. But it was a pretty good PSA on why you shouldn't buy flipped houses.

quote:

Scammed out of firearm purchase

I bought a Saiga-12 online, and the seller ended up scamming me saying that he tried to ship but the gun was caught in customs, and that there's nothing he can do. He's an American seller, but he imports from overseas, so I guess he was shipping directly from wherever the manufacture was. I'm pissed because I paid a lot of money for this. Is there any legal options for me? The seller said that in purchasing I indirectly agreed to his Terms of Service which was that he wasn't responsible for refunds if the gun doesn't arrive. Who would I report this to in order to get a refund since me and the seller are not in the same states.

quote:

Did you pay with a credit card? If so file a charge back, if not, how did you pay? Your bank or Paypal may have options.

Bitcoins. The site I purchased on has escrow but his listing was for Finalize Early 50% so even though its disputed right now, I'm still out 50% of what I paid

quote:

Kid, you're hosed and the whole issue of where the gun currently is should not be among the top 15 things you're concerned about. You're violating federal law by buying guns online and are paying in a crypto-currency. You're firmly in ATF world. The fact that you were stupid enough to buy guns that were shipped from a country that is constantly targeted for trade bans from a manufacturer that's on the poo poo list of a number of people really exposes you to a high degree of risk. If all you're out here is a gun, consider it a win. You're firmly in felony territory.


Hat is ATF? The last gun shipped before fine however. I didn't buy it from Russia in case you were thinking it was Russia. The seller said he shipped from Europe/Asia. They didn't buy it from the actual Russian manufacturer.

quote:

You know what's in Europe and Asia?

Russia.

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

Nitrox posted:

Usually #1 reason those libertarian types are jizzing over bitcoin is how much "outside of the system" the currency is. So when they start crying after getting swindled, first response should be Nelson's "ha-ha", played on repeat, until they actually understand what it means.