Refreshing?

You've read endlessly on this blog about how the members of our little Rainforest Roundtable think there are serious looming hazards involving real estate here on the left coast of Canada.

Incredibly not everyone shares our opinion.

Today... one of those divergent voices.

Michael Levy is the owner of Border Gold, a gold and silver business started in 1968 in Vancouver. Michael is also a financial expert in currencies and commodities and is often called up to act as a business analyst for radio station CKNW/980, the CORUS Radio Network and makes frequent appearances on both CTV and Global TV.

Yesterday he provided an interview on HoweStreet.com, a website compendium of business news and commentary. The interview was titled, "A Great Time To Buy a Home in Vancouver". If you would like to download this audio file of the entire interview, right click this link and select "save", "save as" or "save file as" (depending upon your browser).

The key excerpts are as follows:

• The interviewer asked for Levy's comments on the US Federal Reserve’s decision to keep the central bank rate at zero for the foreseeable future...
  
  Levy: "The American economy is running 100% on stimulus right now. Until you see the private sector get in, then you are not going to see interest rates go up. Right now, interest rates are staying down."
  
  On Real Estate, Levy was asked what he saw coming ahead for Vancouver and the GVRD...
  
  Levy: "Oh... I think it’s gonna be good because there is real demand here. ‘Real’… real demand in real estate and with ‘real’ demand you get prices going up. This is not a bubble here.. but now, you’re going to get prices pulling back, November, you know, the last part of this month, into December, January. But that’s cyclical. But there’s actual demand and if you don’t think or if one doesn’t think that the Olympics are going to put a new face again on Vancouver – then take another look. It might not happen immediately but its also going to be very attractive to people who continue to move here, for businesses who relocate here, for tourists to come here, for conventions to come to our new trade and convention centre, for Whistler on the new sea to sky highway. We’re going to see real estate continue perking. Now that doesn’t mean it’s going to keep going up like it has in the past four or five months. That was a pretty good move back up, but its going to be a healthy market in my mind."
  
  Interviewer: If you were standing in front of the graduating class at BCIT this month and they asked you for a couple of sentences on money advice advice, what would you be telling young people right now?
  
  Levy: "That to pool their resources and go out and buy something in real estate, in other words I don’t think you should be waiting around. If you’ve got a partner or a friend, a husband or a wife and you’re living together and both have jobs and you’ve got very little or no debt then you can get into a condominium at a very reasonable price and because of interest rates where they are, I’d start into the real estate market. In other words I would start to own because you can’t step up until you own and I think you have to bite the bullet and own real estate."
  
  Interviewer: If you could be visual with us here at howestreet.com, Mr. Levy, you would notice that you would be standing on one side of the gunnel here at the ship and you would have quite a few people glaring at you from the other side, but boy it is sure refreshing to hear somebody talking so upbeat.
  

There you have it. Refreshing and upbeat.

What could possibly go wrong?

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