Blindsided?

Sigh.

Everywhere you look these days, it seems the media is screaming about the housing bubble.

The latest is CBC who tell us the Canadian housing market is overpriced and bubbly in many areas.

Meanwhile real setae sales data from Vancouver is just plain ugly.

Listings are shooting upward and sales are slowing dramatically. Sales for April 2012 are down 13.2% from April 2011. They dropped 2.6% from the March 2012 total, a month which was down 29.6% from March 2011.

Detached home sales are down 19.7% and the average single family house price has plummeted by $100,000 so far this year.  The surprising gain of last month has been quickly and suddenly wiped out as you can see in realtor Larry Yatkowsky's graph (click on image to enlarge):

The always strong 'Spring Market' is a complete no show.

Garth Turner reports that in the Vancouver suburb of Richmond over 75% of property deals are now going for less than the assessed value. Says Turner:

Forget bidding wars. This is becoming a realtor graveyard. Suddenly owners are doing what always happens in a market dive – realizing their paper profits will turn vaporous if they don’t cash out. Listings rise, sales don’t and prices fade – the classic vicious cycle.

But despite all the media hype, the average joe on the street is still oblivious to what is going on.

In the US, when the real estate bubble burst, many real estate investors found themselves blindsided. When everything fell apart, they never saw it coming.

Chatting with a few people today... despite all the media attention, so many are going to get blindsided by what's coming.

No one wants to see it.

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