Housing Market 2018

Leveraging, renting vs owning, making an investment or buying a home?
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Flaccidsteele
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Housing Market 2018

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Re: Housing Bust 2018

Post by ig17 »

"Housing Bust 2018" is beyond self-parody at this point.

A friendly suggestion to the Moderator: can we rename this thread "Housing Market 2018"? To express a neutral sentiment. Not a bubble, not a bust.

Good suggestion. Done
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Re: Housing Market 2018

Post by Germack »

These threads show perfectly that trying to time the market just does not work. It does not work for stocks and neither for real estate.
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Re: Housing Market 2018

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To me, this is the first year I believe a correction is even possible, though I doubt it will actually happen this year, it could be the turning point when we look back at history.

The difference?

This is the first year in which interest rates are actually scheduled to occur. How the government handles to return of interest to the market will be the key to if a correction happens or not. Even still, real estate tends not to react quickly, it tends to be a trailing indicator. If interest rates start to rise fairly quickly, the unintended consequences should follow in a couple years.
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Re: Housing Bust 2018

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ig17 wrote: 02 Jan 2018 18:19 "Housing Bust 2018" is beyond self-parody at this point.

A friendly suggestion to the Moderator: can we rename this thread "Housing Market 2018"? To express a neutral sentiment. Not a bubble, not a bust.

Good suggestion. Done
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Pretty sure this is some kind of signal :lol:
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Re: Housing Market 2018

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At least the bases are covered and there will be no hostility one way or the other....for/against RE cheerleaders. :P
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Re: Housing Market 2018

Post by ig17 »

G&M

What Toronto and Vancouver housing data do and don’t tell us

by Josh Gordon, an assistant professor at the Simon Fraser University School of Public Policy.
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Re: Housing Market 2018

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ig17 wrote: 10 Jan 2018 23:44 G&M

What Toronto and Vancouver housing data do and don’t tell us

by Josh Gordon, an assistant professor at the Simon Fraser University School of Public Policy.
"To get a better sense of this dynamic, Statscan and the CMHC should compare income-tax data and ownership titles. This analysis is tricky and time-consuming, but there are various ways to get a good initial picture.

One approach would be to look at the properties bought for more than a million dollars in recent years and calculate the share of those properties that were bought by individuals who had paid less than $50,000 in lifetime Canadian income tax at the time of purchase. A truly "local" income earner able to buy such a property would have paid well more than that amount in taxes. There would be some exceptions, but they would be minor – and offset by omissions in the other direction."

Pretty much what I've said before.
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Re: Housing Market 2018

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https://www.remax.ca/on/toronto-real-es ... 91263-lst/

Beautiful fixer upper! Only 750,000. What a steal!


It could also be used as a filming set for the next murder horror flick! So many opportunities! :rofl:
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Re: Housing Market 2018

Post by kcowan »

Here is a sample of what has been happening in BC:
Attachments
ChineseInfluenceBCProperties.pdf
(174.7 KiB) Downloaded 103 times
For the fun of it...Keith
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Re: Housing Market 2018

Post by ig17 »

kcowan wrote: 17 Jan 2018 15:40 Here is a sample of what has been happening in BC:
Non-PDF link:

Explosive B.C. court case details seven migration scams
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Re: Housing Market 2018

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I thought new BC Attorney General David Eby's speech to UBC law published in The Georgia Straight was equally enlightening:

https://www.straight.com/news/1018756/d ... address-bc
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Re: Housing Market 2018

Post by AltaRed »

Pretty much sums up the Wild West mentality of BC politics in governance. I despise the NDP as a governing party because of their past socialism but it sure would be nice to see them govern for the remainder of their 4 year term to clean up the shop.
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Re: Housing Market 2018

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kcowan wrote: 17 Jan 2018 15:40 Here is a sample of what has been happening in BC:
Interview with Vancouver immigration lawyer Sam Hyman about this court case:

The Jon McComb Show: Immigration Fraud, Tax Avoidance & Real Estate Scheme in Vancouver
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Re: Housing Market 2018

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ig17 wrote: 18 Jan 2018 20:49
kcowan wrote: 17 Jan 2018 15:40 Here is a sample of what has been happening in BC:
Interview with Vancouver immigration lawyer Sam Hyman about this court case:

The Jon McComb Show: Immigration Fraud, Tax Avoidance & Real Estate Scheme in Vancouver
Around 18:00 he quotes this number:

In the Lower Mainland alone, there are over 200,000 households who declare less income on their income tax return than they pay in property taxes.
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Re: Housing Market 2018

Post by patriot1 »

ig17_quoting_someone wrote: 18 Jan 2018 20:56In the Lower Mainland alone, there are over 200,000 households who declare less income on their income tax return than they pay in property taxes.
According to the source below (page 1.4) "23% (218,915) of all households had very low household incomes (below $35,000)." Note those 218,915 households comprise both owners and renters. Average property tax paid for owner dwellings in metro Vancouver is probably around $5K. Clearly this is greatly inconsistent with the 200,000 households claim.

http://www.metrovancouver.org/services/ ... a_Book.pdf
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Re: Housing Market 2018

Post by nisser »

The "~200,000" is a very specific number. Perhaps he mispoke and meant to say that there are 200,000 households who make less than the carrying cost of an average mortgage?
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Re: Housing Market 2018

Post by randomwalker »

What did the neighbours pay? Whitby homebuyers just found out the answer: a lot less
Mattamy Homes says softening market to blame for steep price drop in new Whitby community

By Trevor Dunn, CBC News Posted: Jan 24, 2018

"Call it reverse sticker shock. Planned homes in a new Whitby subdivision are on sale for up to $90,000 less than similar homes in the same development were a year ago."

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/v ... -1.4501010
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Re: Housing Market 2018

Post by fireseeker »

randomwalker wrote: 25 Jan 2018 22:05 "Call it reverse sticker shock. Planned homes in a new Whitby subdivision are on sale for up to $90,000 less than similar homes in the same development were a year ago."
Sounds about right, really. GTA detached prices are down roughly 20% from the peak 10-12 months ago. (After having jumped 20% in the previous six months...) So, if these homes were $500,000 -- oddly, the story doesn't provide sales prices -- that's in line.
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Re: Housing Market 2018

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How to fix Canada’s ‘Ghost Immigrant’ fraud problem
http://www.macleans.ca/opinion/how-to-f ... d-problem/
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Re: Housing Market 2018

Post by randomwalker »

fireseeker wrote: 25 Jan 2018 22:21
randomwalker wrote: 25 Jan 2018 22:05 "Call it reverse sticker shock. Planned homes in a new Whitby subdivision are on sale for up to $90,000 less than similar homes in the same development were a year ago."
Sounds about right, really. GTA detached prices are down roughly 20% from the peak 10-12 months ago. (After having jumped 20% in the previous six months...) So, if these homes were $500,000 -- oddly, the story doesn't provide sales prices -- that's in line.
Queens Common, Mattamy Homes

https://mattamyhomes.com/search/home-se ... 1ea0811aed
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Re: Housing Market 2018

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squid wrote: 18 Jan 2018 20:03 I thought new BC Attorney General David Eby's speech to UBC law published in The Georgia Straight was equally enlightening:

https://www.straight.com/news/1018756/d ... address-bc
Thanks for the link, very enlightening.
I was sat down by members of B.C.’s Gaming Policy Enforcement Branch. One of the members of the public service said, “Get ready. I think we are going to blow your mind.”

He was right. While I cannot share all of the details, I can advise you that the briefing outlined for me allegations of serious, large-scale, transnational laundering of the proceeds of crime in British Columbia casinos.

I’ve tried a couple of times to express to people how surprising it was to see such a frank admission of this problem come from the public service given that I was the critic on this file for a number of years, and had often raised concerns about money laundering given the size and volume of large cash transactions passing through B.C. casinos.

Since these matters have become more public, in part due to the efforts of my office, and in significant part due to the efforts of reporter Sam Cooper of the Vancouver Sun, many people have said to me, “Well, of course you knew that this was going on, you asked the government about it.”

It’s not quite so simple. My many, many queries to the previous government on these cash transactions were met by flat denials of any serious, let alone transnational criminal, issue.

At this briefing, surrounded by members of the public service and a representative of the RCMP, I felt a bit like a UFO-ologist being invited to the Roswell military base and being introduced to an alien.

We knew there was something strange going on, but, my God, we had no idea it was this big.

In response to this briefing, I released a secret report on the issue in full, a report commissioned by the Ministry of Finance under the last government, but never released.

I hired someone who knew more about the field than I did to tell me how we could best clean up this mess. I am grateful to Dr. Peter German for taking on this responsibility, his investigation and review is currently underway and his report to me will be complete by March, 2018.

I have reason to believe that these matters might be linked to other areas of B.C.’s economy, and I have asked Mr. German to examine these connections as well.
Can't wait to read that report.
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Re: Housing Market 2018

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Death, taxes and the terrible injustice of Metro Vancouver's housing crisis
Richard Wozny has produced 1,200 studies for the public and private sectors on more than $100 billion worth of real estate projects.

But the Vancouver-based commercial property analyst became acutely aware of the harsh indirect consequences of Metro Vancouver’s real-estate investment boom while being treated for non-smoking lung cancer at Lions Gate Hospital in North Vancouver.

When the nurses, aides and doctors asked what he did for a living, the president of Strategic Site Economics Ltd. would tell them with a smile: “’My job is to make sure everyone makes the most of their real estate. That means ensuring the top one per cent make ever more money.’”

Given his open demeanour, hospital staff would soon start telling Wozny about their own housing difficulties — about not being able to live comfortably in Metro Vancouver, regardless of their income. Even relatively well-paid doctors were struggling.

“The middle class, and those who serve in the medical profession, tend to be compassionate, skilled and essential — and it is not logical they can’t afford housing,” Wozny said in a recent interview.

Inspired by the philosophy courses he studied in university, Wozny wants, in the time he has left on the planet, to give something back to health care providers, who to him in turn symbolize Canada’s valuable middle class.

He has started by producing a groundbreaking report for government officials and the public, titled Low Incomes and High House Prices in Metro Vancouver.

Its main finding is that a “large, mysterious, untaxed pool of international capital” is being converted into speculative investment in residential real estate in Metro Vancouver.

And much of that investment capital, Wozny discovered, is being subsidized by tax avoidance and evasion: It gives housing speculators an unfair advantage over average taxpaying citizens.
Richard Wozny's report:

Low Incomes and High House Prices in Metro Vancouver
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Re: Housing Market 2018

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How over 46,000 wealthy immigrants took a back door into Vancouver and Toronto’s housing markets
Over 46,000 wealthy immigrants took a back door into Vancouver and Toronto’s housing markets over the past three decades, according to custom Census data obtained exclusively by Global News.

That back door is the Quebec Immigrant Investor Program (QIIP).

Established in 1986, it offers permanent residency to international business people with net assets of at least $1.6 million, who make an interest-free investment of $800,000 in la belle province — and the government returns their money after five years.

Applicants are supposed to settle in Quebec.

But data shows just how many of them have ended up elsewhere – leaving Quebec with their investments, other provinces with their health care bills, and cities with flows of foreign capital that have been linked to soaring home prices.
The data, which includes both primary and secondary applicants, showed that 57,935 investor immigrants who came through Quebec were living in Canada as of 2016.

Nearly 28,000 of them (48.3 per cent) were living in B.C., while almost 22,000 (37.9 per cent) were in Ontario.

Only 6,050 investor immigrants who came through Quebec (10.4 per cent) were living in the province at that time.

Vancouver was a major recipient of investor immigrants. The data showed 27,080 (46.7 per cent of the total) living in the Vancouver region as of 2016, with 8,590 (14.8 per cent) in the City of Vancouver, 6,835 (11.8 per cent) in Richmond and 3,160 (5.5 per cent) in Burnaby.

Meanwhile, in Ontario, there were 19,265 (33.3 per cent) investor immigrants in the Toronto area. Major destinations within that region included the City of Toronto (8,760), Markham (3,510), Richmond Hill (2,355) and Mississauga (2,060).

By contrast, there were 5,660 investor immigrants in the Montreal region, and very few in any of Quebec’s other Census Metropolitan Areas (CMA).
The numbers didn’t surprise Josh Gordon, an SFU public policy professor who has focused on Toronto and Vancouver’s housing markets.

“There has been kind of insider accounts that suggest this is what’s been going on,” he said of QIIP applicants settling outside Quebec.

Gordon described the QIIP as a “farce,” saying that Quebec benefits from the program while other jurisdictions incur the costs of hosting wealthy immigrants in their provinces.

“The Quebec government receives an interest-free loan, while the house price pressures and the social service costs of supporting investor immigrant families, who have historically paid low amounts of tax, falls on British Columbia and Ontario,” he said.
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Re: Housing Market 2018

Post by gobsmack »

ig17 wrote: 29 Jan 2018 23:23 How over 46,000 wealthy immigrants took a back door into Vancouver and Toronto’s housing markets
Over 46,000 wealthy immigrants took a back door into Vancouver and Toronto’s housing markets over the past three decades, according to custom Census data obtained exclusively by Global News.

That back door is the Quebec Immigrant Investor Program (QIIP).

Established in 1986, it offers permanent residency to international business people with net assets of at least $1.6 million, who make an interest-free investment of $800,000 in la belle province — and the government returns their money after five years.

Applicants are supposed to settle in Quebec.
My understanding is that the number of applications accepted every year is small: http://www.immigration-quebec.gouv.qc.c ... dures.html. If the article claims that 46,000 of them have left QC, a lot these people could have immigrated a long time ago. Perhaps they even became citizens before moving out of Quebec. We cannot deny Canadian citizens the right to move within the country.

In the case of people who are truly wealthy, there is very little reason to break the law. They have so many options to legally immigrate to North America and Europe. I just do not understand why anyone in this position would break the law given that they would be risking a lot for very little reward. Why would they risk their legal status for the privilege of living in Vancouver, for instance? Is Vancouver that much better than Montreal?
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