Former Lancastrian

For those moving to Vancouver you have just missed out on this steal of a deal.

Even the real estate agent responsible for the sale is surprised by how quickly a $1.5-million teardown in Vancouver was snapped up.

https://bc.ctvnews.ca/vancouver-tear...ours-1.5907919

OrangeMango

The thing is overall property prices will fall with utter certainty as interest rates go up. You just have to look at Canadian salaries as well. There are only 24 hours in a day.

However the fall of property prices will only benefit those who are buying with their own funds. Those financing will just have to pay more as interest rates go up, even though the asking / sales price is lower. Thus it might not change much for some, albeit it might turn into a buyer's market.

dbd33

I don't think Canadian salaries are particularly relevant to the price of houses in Toronto and Vancouver. It's not people working locally who set the prices.

CanadaJimmy

More than just housing discussed here, but I quite enjoyed this discussion between Jordan Peterson and Pierre Poilievre on housing and other issues facing Canada and kind of the root causes behind it.

dbd33

Not the most open minded of people. Lemme guess, Peterson blames women and Poilievre blames non-Anglo Saxons.

I think there's a good case that Canada's biggest problems are Peterson and Poilievre.

CanadaJimmy

Actually more pointing the finger at the political class and media bias. I'm not a fan of Peterson and I was pleasantly surprised by the discussion. Of course, keep those critical thinking skills turned on.

bats

i recently learned that Peterson is called Incel Kermit

dbd33

Hadn't heard/seen that but it fits. Poilievre seemed a bit fringe when he was pandering to the truck parade people and touting Bitcoin for personal gain, now he's really dabbling with the weirdos. He'll soon be on a platform with Rand Paul.

JamesM

It'll benefit the populous in time. It won't be a 5 minute decline. In the short term you'll see values come down and then a lengthy period of stagnation while the salaries and inflation increases out perform it. When all is said and done the price line and affordability line will be much closer and then the boom/bust cycle will start again at the first or second decent yearly rise. They managed to drag it out 30 years this time so next time they'll find a way to go a bit longer. Home ownership for individuals who aspire to it who really are self-made will come down purely to a birth date lottery.

dbd33

That and level of commitment. I'm not saying give up avocado toast and it'll all be easy but, at the same time, people do buy houses when the interest rate is 18% and they do it when the rate is 2% and the price higher.

JamesM

A home is a man's castle and all that.

OrangeMango

It's quite possible this will happen, especially if the Bank of Canada would gradually raise interest rates to 5% and more. At least on contrast to the ECB in the Euro-zone they seem at least committed to returning inflation to 2 to 3% in the longer term. One positive about Canada.

The rest of your statement is very much true, regarding a birth date lottery. If you were born at the wrong or the right year, or decade, it decided your choices and options in life.

Considering that we all live in an aging population in most western countries, public debt and future pension payments, the least think we would owe to the younger generation is that they can own their own home, not any home, but something they can be proud owning. Sadly not even that is a given, these days.

dbd33

In terms of the broad sweep of history, sure. If you were born into the plague, you were born to die. If you were born to a sharecropper you were born to be poor. In terms of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century though, it's not true at all.

My parents bought a house, I bought a house (two concurrently even), my daughter bought a house. Arguably the locations represent a progressive decline London=>Toronto=>Vancouver but that's subjective and in the great sweep of things, compared to, say, nomadic tribesmen, it's all the same, Each generation started out with nothing, saved, bought a house. It's true that more effort is required to buy a house now than before but it's still possible regardless of when you were born.

bc2015

There's already been a noticeable slowdown around where I live in Vancouver - in general, houses are taking longer to sell (if at all) and there's some modest (5-10%) price drops. 5 year fixed rates are already at 4.5%+ and BoC is not done with rate increases yet. There will almost certainly be another increase in June and possibly one in July too. So I think the correction is just beginning and prices have a good way to fall yet.

Moses2013

You are probably right there and I suppose most of us only look at the period when everything seemed better. It's a bigger problem for the people who don't want to move away and have a strong connection to their birth place. The world is getting smaller and you now have to compete with people who have 10 x your budget and these buyers don't even have to be on the ground. So even if prices reduce on paper, it's probably still not affordable for these people if they have to compete with other buyers who have 5 x their budget.