CDN pricing ????

If you are all for profit, buy a house in West Vancouver, Granville, or Point Grey. I never heard people don't make money doing so. Now in Granville area, government starts to give new permit for multi homes on busy street like Granville, W41st, King Edward, etc. In less than 20 years, the whole area will be given multi homes permit, and land price will sky rocket because people will live in apartment, not house on big lot anymore, just like cities in Asia.

 

I think this well put quote applies here:

Fast forward 30 years from now I don't think many millennials will care about manual cars. Of course, there will always be the enthusiasts, but not on the scale we are seeing now. I wonder how much of a premium manual cars will have if tech has reached a point where flying cars are possible.

 

There were 2 Barchettas for sale in Calgary recently. The toys are the first to go.

 

Maybe it's the "what era is the US in" thread in Silver that has me thinking this way, but when I think of manual cars I think of an era where supercars were loud, unrestricted, and unsafe. Driving fast required a fast driver and big cajones, rather than a warm body who could push a button and go just as fast as Senna.

A lot of us grew up with poster's of Countach's and Testarossa's on our wall, our high school lockers etc. I don't see that anymore... it's all phones and internet. The golden age of ICE cars is over IMO.

Today's millennial turned tomorrow's collector is probably not going to care about whether his Aventador is manual or not. He's grown up in an age of technology and to him the car/purchase needs to remind him of that time he saw his first brand-spanking-new Lamborghini fly by his window. He most likely did not grow up learning to or teaching his first girlfriend how to drive stick in an empty parking lot, so I doubt he would have the same affinity as today's buyers who seem to be lusting after the idea of a "manual" car.

IMHO

 

Toys and vacation houses/condos. I just did an MLS search on Kelowna, considering its close to Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton. The results loads of listings.

Vancouver real estate wise is at the top. Immigration is now a trickle. Foreigners are turned off Canada, the dollar slide killed them.

Sure we know have more people around the world. Most though are in poverty or below. And even when they do have money, most in China don't drive at all. In general when they come here and buy an exotic, its an automatic. Or we'd see more manuals in Vancouver. If they bought 80's or even 90's exotics, all our dealers would have more in their inventory.

 

Agreed.

Canada stopped making things quite a while ago. (much of that was due to Walmartification of the supply chain to China) That is why the precipitous drop in CAD exchange when Canada's resources get discounted due to a glut in the world market. Canada is a drawer of oil, miner of potash and cutter of trees.

It does not help that you have an intellectual trustfund midget running the place as well. Turdeau's assention alone caused a nickle drop in the rate.

 

True, but euro immigrants are more likely to be familiar with std transmissions than auto.

 

Oooooohh, low blow. But there is some merit to that comment !

 

Very true. Under the previous liberals and with the foolish Americans we bring Mexico into free trade. Now we have everything manufacturing going to Mexico. Before Mexico was in the trade deal we had nice joint auto manufacturing with the U.S. There was lots of small to medium sized businesses making a decent living selling their products into the American market, everything from bed mattresses to kitchen cabinet makers. The conservatives did a good job unhooking the cart from the U.S. during the downturn, and letting resources take over during the downturn. From 07 up till around 2010 Canada was the strongest country in the G20. But that drove our dollar too strong and it killed all the small and medium sized business that thrived on a weaker dollar. With the oil price collapse, they killed the dollar but its too late to jump start our bread and butter.

Now not only did we kill our small to medium sized business, we have a drama teacher that believes small business is a passive income tool for the rich. He wants to tax medium and small businesses more!

Yes, I'm a negative downer. But its the reality. Reality is Canadian pricing should always be a discount to the American market. The appeal for Americans was high quality products at a 30% to 40% discount. Most car dealers in Toronto and even more so in Quebec, in a lot of cases are asking for USD outright or asking American prices and converting it into U.S. They are pricing out both Americans and Canadians with their greed. Not a good recipe when the drama teacher is leading the country into its worse recession in history!

Sure we have more millionaires today. But we must keep in mind a million doesn't have the same purchasing power it did in the 1980's either. Now the only places in the lower mainland of Vancouver under a million are in the bad areas of North Delta and Surrey. All the nice areas are over a million. Are banks going to lend people a million for a house and then turn around and give them a $200k car loan? No.

 

You might get a loan especially if you have a rental suite attached to the house. That's how most common working Vancouverites are doing it these days.

A $200k car loan is another question.. Common BC working folk can barely afford the ski lift tickets and coffee anymore !

 

Sure as it got more expensive. Now we are seeing all the surrounding areas of the lower mainland at $1million. Talking, Richmond, South and North Delta, New Westminster, etc. Sure there is a few under one million, but very crappy house in a bad area. Unaffordable is not sustainable. Banks wont take on the risk. Foreign investors want a ROI. In all those areas the average ask is just over $1.2million now. Fork out $1.2million for an average house that rents for $1400 per month is a bad investment. If you deposit $100k or more at any of the big Canadian banks, you earn 1.8% interest. Are you going to risk the money for little return or park the cash in safety. And that's the cash buyer foreign investor. What about the one that borrows. Are they going to borrow a million and give it away for free?

The only way the market in Vancouver keeps going, is people suddenly get a giant raise and a loaf of bread is now $20.

 

I look at it from a different view. I think in the near future, there won't be anymore house on big lot. Everybody lives in an apartment, unless government builds infrastructures to connect to Abbotsford, Mission, etc (very very unlikely).
Vancouver's property market is unique. In Burnaby (not a bad area), many apartments offered at $400K, but everybody want to live in Shaughnessy, Point Grey and West Van. And nothing below $2.5 million in these areas, if you want a house (not apartment).

 

I agree with all these comments.... it just goes to show you that land is "king".

As Mike458 said, tons of "affordable" $400k condos available for everyone... but everyone wants the house on a piece of land.

Correct me if I'm off base here, but I believe most Asian investors are coming from living in Condos in large cities, and part of the allure of BC is being able to buy and own a house on land, in a beautiful city such as Vancouver...r. This is almost non existent back in Chinese cities ?

Supply of land in Greater Van city is extremely low, and demand is extremely high. Hence the $2.5 prices

 

True about land, but people often forget the south end of Vancouver has tons of raw land, Dunbar/Southlands area is 10 to 20 acre hobby farm mansions, several hundred acres if you broke them up. UBC also sits on several hundred develop ready property. Then areas like Richmond, Surrey/White Rock and South Delta is mostly unused farm land. Experts say there is enough land in the lower mainland and Fraser Valley to support 100 million people, now its only 2 million. The problem this land is in the farm land reserve and can't be developed. If the province wants to cool the market, this land can be taken out and suddenly we have several thousand acres 20 minutes or less from downtown Vancouver.

 

It's better and easier to change the permit from single to multiple homes rather than farm land to residential. And if you look back at some Asian countries, they made huge mistakes by converting farm land to residential and commercial. What happened was property price keep increasing, some more foods prices sky rocketing.

 

+1 Don't think that will stop the prices from increasing; it's a sellers market.

 

The majority of the farm land was bought by speculators decades ago. Very few farmers left even in the Fraser Valley. Look at the produce labels in the grocery stores, majority is produced in the USA, followed by Mexico. BC already has the third highest grocery costs in North America. Difference between Canada and Asia, most of Canada's population is above poverty. Asia, majority are broke.

Its not a shortage of houses driving the market. Foreign investors are not doing it either. Its cheap money! We borrowed from the American bubble up playbook. How we did that work for Bush?

This is Vancouver's and its lower mainland Bre-X moment. Google it!

 

Local concourse winning bulbs. Red petal from tan bulb tulip in a very desirable year. One of the last manual planted flora.

Priced right at $220,000; trade for 1997 Maranello or Vancouver two-post lean-to.
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Funny.

Fact is everyone here in Canada wants U.S. dollars. Everything is now priced accordingly.

 

I think the older Ferrari classics long past normal depreciation and in good, usable shape will continue to rise as scarcity drives this nostalgia and enthusiast market. But as for the exotics still on their depreciation curve, I have a feeling (anecdotal to be sure) that there is a lot of inventory out there, and once it looks like the prices have peaked, which seems to be the case, the smart sellers will unload quick. Great, potentially epic, bargains I predict around mid summer for late 90's onwards and even quite new exotics, probably a great time to get a cool car to thrash at the track and not worry too much about the wear and tear.

 

So true on all counts.

Condos without down payments could be sold by B.C. developer - British Columbia - CBC News

Combine tactics like the above with foreign buying and with rampant agent flipping/questionable practices and voila, one of the greatest real estate bubbles of any generation.

Also interesting to see that realtor.ca defaults to a 5% down payment but most U.S. sites (now) default to 20%.

Combine with short term mortgage rates (typically locked for 5 years, not 25 years) and you have skewed notions of "affordability" too.

The exotic car market is interesting too, though as others have pointed out, mostly reflects a) long-term competitive dynamics in Canada where exotics are almost always more expensive, even FX adjusted and b) more recently all the inquiries to Canadian dealers by Americans when the FX moved rapidly.

I admit to looking up there every so often online to see if there were / are good deals. But they were getting snapped up quickly by fellow Americans, and that arbitrage is long gone...

 

Wish that were the case but it doesn't appear to be so.

Vancouver-area condo project to waive down payments - The Globe and Mail

Not that there is much difference between 5% and 0% for most practical purposes. Fact is that many buyers are going have a harder time even due to the new rule where on incremental amounts above $500k, they require 10% down. Scary, I know.

Similar to what we saw down here, there are a lot of people buying with pretty much nothing down personally and shadow lenders filling the gaps.

I don't disagree that Canadian banks are on more solid footing than U.S. banks were pre-08/09 but the reasons for that solid footing will be someone else holding the bag. In the end, someone will pay.