Burnaby Developer says R/E Industry Leaders in ‘State of Delusion’

Bill McCarthy, president and CEO of W. P. J. McCarthy & Co. Ltd. - a Burnaby firm specializing in property management and development – has written an article published in the Burnaby Now Newspaper questioning the validity of the advice being offered by Real Estate Industry leaders such as Bob Rennie.

On Jan 23rd, McCarthy attended a sold out meeting at the Urban Development Institute where Real Estate ‘industry leaders’ forecast and projected what they felt was ‘just around the corner’ with regards to our residential real estate markets.

McCarthy’s conclusions?

He found the presentations anecdotal and self-serving using selective statistics to make forecasts that were "just horrible."

"Essentially the panel said everything will be OK, and we really do not have a housing recession,said McCarthy.

And how do they account for the current real estate situation in Vancouver?. It's... wait for it... "a serious loss of consumer confidence”. [Surprise!!!]

Singling out Bob Rennie, McCarthy noted that the Condo King had emerged from a period of silence to state "supply is really going to quickly show that the tap has been turned off - I think we'll come out of this in 2010.”

Dismissing Rennie’s comments, McCarthy challenged people to search out Mr. Rennie's previous predictions and check their accuracy. See if you agree that what we are experiencing is merely 'a market correction' or if Rennie's claims that current "reduced prices really equate to a better affordability index, especially for the first-time homebuyer" hold up to scrutiny.

McCarthy believes you will be hard pressed to agree with anything Rennie has to say as well.

As for the conference itself, McCarthy essentially deemed it to be a waste of time noting that the panel had concluded:

1. everything will be OK,
2. that we really do not have a housing recession, and
3. that what we really have is ‘a serious loss of consumer confidence’

This, McCarthy believes, is really nothing more than an attempt to “offer hope regardless that a reality check [is] in order"

And then Bill McCarthy askes the seminal question that so many of us have asked over and over again. "Why would anyone listen repeatedly to those who are proven time and again to be wrong?”

Why indeed.

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Email: village_whisperer@live.ca