Believe it. In the 1982 crash, the West Side held its own.

It would be great to have separate numbers for Vancouver West and the Downtown Peninsula. Paul has them lumped together, there’s reason to believe they’ll behave differently in a slump. I emailed him and suggested this a couple weeks ago, he said he was too busy, etc.

If anyone else thinks this would be a useful differentiation, drop him a line.

Or we could take turns counting them on http://www.realtylink.org — count them every Monday — SFH, Condos, townhomes for Van West and Downtown.

The theory is that if there’s a train wreck, things bust up and go shooting off in different directions. And if you monitor two different train cars bundled together into one number, and one flies off the tracks and the other one stays on, your data will simply say you have a small train wreck.

I’ll take the first Monday of the month, anyone else?

BTW, http://www.realtylink.org shows 7 new listings for Point Grey SFH today, inventory is still at historic lows, but that was a 30% increase in number of listings.

Again,
Whybuywhenucanrent

Canada New-Home Price Index Gains 0.1 Percent, Misses Forecasts:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=email_en&refer=canada&sid=ao9sW_dXtWXk

http://www.news1130.com/news/local/article.jsp?content=20080211_112011_8072

Hourly wages rising but debt climbing faster

Monday, February 11 – 08:15:00 AM

Tamara Slobogean
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Your home may be worth a pretty penny and your hourly wage probably holds more promise than it did a couple of years ago but that’s probably not enough to cancel out a hefty debt.

According to the Vanier Institute’s Current State of Family Finances Report, hourly wages in Canada are rising but debt has climbed seven times faster since the early nineties.

On Vancouver streets, one man says borrowing may bury us. He says if they give money to us, we take it, and that’s just the way it is, and it’s always been like that. He says the more they want to give you, the more you want to take it.

Another man says we’ve lost touch with the value of a dollar. He says if someone paid you in cash every day, you would know the value of that money. He says if you buy a loaf of bread with that money and saw what you had left, it’s real. He says when you use a credit card, which is just plastic, it’s easier to go to a restaurant and spend $300 because it doesn’t seem to have any value.

The report finds the average household debt now rings in at close to $80,000. For some people, it means giving up dreams of home ownership, and for others, it’s living without dental insurance, a car or even summer camp for the kids.

Yep. Lots of areas to live in with your stated income. The question at the back of your head is really: will you be able to afford an even better area if you wait for X years for prices to come back down?

Life’s pretty short though so welcome to the world of tradeoffs! As for the neighborhood you will find variance from street to street. I’d still suggest renting for a time and find a good network of people that can suggest good streets from first-hand experience.

http://tinyurl.com/297ao7

3 pertinent questions:

Three questions are raised: Is a contraction in U.S. consumer spending inevitable? Can interest rate cuts by the U.S. Federal Reserve save the day? And is a significant slowdown in global growth inevitable?

http://tinyurl.com/2czt4q

…ticktockticktocktic……

Maybe, you must realize some of the pros have superior knowledge.
Rennie, Muir, Pastrick , the boys at ReMax and Lepage, are professionals, and they know when the market is about to take a little breather, and therefore the plan is to announce the minor correction expected, on the Bill Good Show.

However it must be understood, that any bean counter can run the numbers through a spread sheet, the real intricacies’ lies in the interpretation on the tea leaves which is more art than science, or a combination thereof, and that’s when the real brain power is called andAaron and Rob take center stage

I think we’re in an inverse Keynes market right now – the opposite of the old “markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent” saw. Currently it’s something like “Vancouver can continue defying logic and fundamentals well past the point where you were certain it could not”. Eventually there will be a snap, but it won’t be according to anyone’s agenda.