Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Victoria and Psychology of Bears

Here's another attempt at posting. Blogger massacred the first attempt.

Victoria first. Down in Average and Median for SFH YOY, not to mention Townhomes and Condos. Not insignificant drops. From the VREB site:


Tablular representation of sales statistics from the last two months and from last year
Now to psychology. There is some softness in the RE market. It started in the Ok and Whistler and Sunshine Coast and has now arrived in Vancouver with high inventory and a big drop in the averages YOY. However there is skepticism in the ranks of the bears." China will reflate and more hot money will come here..the government will intervene again to save RE...rates need to go up for a drop and they won't" etc etc

This is all good. We need skepticism.

Remember 2008 when RE went 'no bid' up here? The bears were clicking their heels in victory and we know what happened next..a 25% rise in prices s ZIRP, CMHC and HAM pushed us up to another peak. Corrections start with doubt not bravado. We want slow and steady - more of the same please.

7 comments:

  1. "China's central bank cut benchmark interest rates by 25 basis points on Thursday in the first such cut since 2008, bringing the one-year borrowing rate to 6.31 per cent and giving global markets and key commodities an initial boost."

    Closer to home, Fed will continue to sell short-term securities and buy bonds.

    Already smart money are moving to low tax jurisdictions where there are no capital gains tax.

    Amen

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  2. HAM is out there hiding from being hunted down. Once the Bo-xilai's & Zhang-ziyi's sex scandal dies down, may be it will rear its ugly head again.


    http://tinyurl.com/8xxlruo
    Originally published June 6, 2012 at 7:48 PM
    "The People's Bank of China last year inadvertently made public a confidential study stating that 800 billion Chinese yuan ($126 billion at today's exchange rate) had been siphoned overseas by thousands of officials in the government and state-owned companies from the mid-1990s until 2008.

    Another report by the Washington-based watchdog Global Financial Integrity, which tracked illicit outflow of money by all people, not just officials, found China led the world with $2.7 trillion (five times as much as runner-up Mexico) illegally taken out of the country from 2000 to 2009.

    The top destinations for stashing cash were the United States, Europe, Australia, Canada, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. Within the United States, Los Angeles topped the list."

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  3. We are starting to see some high priced court ordered sales. Eg:

    http://www.ecorealtyinc.ca/listing?id=259545929

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    Replies
    1. Interesting. 10 units (out of 71) at Grace for sale on MLS, including #1701 (V955879-foreclosure) & #1702 (V840369).

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  4. Downtown condos will be a disaster. I couldn't even imagine getting into one right now; I think the biggest issue one would have to deal with is the very real risk that a lot of your fellow owners would default, leaving you and the few remaining resident owners with the total cost of managing and maintaining the Strata. There is very little income protection for owners and the interest rate risk is all on the upside.

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  5. HK & Singapore offer very low interest rates for savers, around 0.01% - 0.25%. Bank officials said that their governments want the public to invest and speculate in properties to boost the economies. I'm sure that Helicopter Ben & M$ Carnage have Wall St fundamentals in mind.

    Australia's CD starts @5.85%. UK, China & Norway start @3.5%. If you have a business, check out India, Ghana, S Africa, NZ, S Korea & others. http://www.deposits.org/

    ReplyDelete