Fri Post #2: Housing Bubble or Housing Zeppelin? - Updated

Great opinion piece in the Coquitlam Now newspaper on page 9 by Gord Goble today titled A Real Estate Implosion is on the Horizon: ‘Behind the propaganda and the mania is but a single house. A house of cards. And it’s teetering':

Is there a housing bubble in the lower mainland? Housing zeppelin is more like it. Bubbles, after all, are soft and cute and harmless. Zeppelins, conversely, hurtle into the ground, spewing flaming wreckage in all directions. And that’s precisely what we’re about to witness in the GVRD.

Consider the factors that have pushed our prices so absurdly high that the average family now spends 70% of pretax income to buy and own a home. Consider that we’ve already rocketed past the danger zone of most cities in the disastrous American run-up. Consider all that’s conspired to morph our region into the top two overpriced real estate markets in the world.

It starts at the top, with the federal government and the Bank of Canada. Despite doling out repeated warnings over our addiction to credit and our per capita debt, which now stands at a deeply troubling $1.50-plus per $1.00 of disposable income, those in charge have continued to facilitate easy mortgage borrowing and a credit culture. Why? For one, housing-related industries account for a quarter of our GDP. We’d look far less impressive globally were we not buying and selling obscenely expensive homes to one another.

And it filters down from there. The media, supported so heavily by real estate industry advertising (“This segment brought to you by Re/Max”), plays up self-serving industry propaganda and consistently portrays deceptive PR stunts as “news,” while blissfully ignoring realities such as plummeting sales and mushrooming inventory in former hot spots such as Richmond and Vancouver West, and an already tanking market in key neighbouring zones such as the Okanagan and the eastern Fraser Valley.

Our banks and lenders, meanwhile, squash accusations of subprime lending (loaning to high-risk borrowers – the same practice that helped crush millions of American families) while actively participating in it. Land developers literally work overtime to catch the end of the mania and the correspondingly sky-high valuations. Realtors pump the “Buy now or be priced out forever” mantra and work to falsely convince us offshore Chinese are grabbing everything in sight. Ultimately, locals are inundated from all sides with stories of unicorns and pots of gold and wrongly believe the pyramid scheme of the past decade will somehow, illogically, continue forever.

But, like The Matrix, not all is as it seems.

When the smoke clears, when developers have glutted the entire region with product (they’re almost there – just look around your neighbourhood), when realtors – mere salespeople – are no longer rock stars and pseudo-financial advisors, when the CMHC stops backing every high-risk borrower that comes calling (the corporation, run by a board with blatant ties to the real estate industry, will soon sport a much shorter leash), when newly introduced mortgage restrictions have sliced and diced the number of potential buyers, when interest rates have jumped from their emergency lows, when local TV producers stop airing dubious realtor PR stunts (helicopters purportedly loaded with offshore realtors, trumped-up condo lineups, marketers posing as investors) as hard news, when the market is flooded with the homes of bailing baby-boomers seeking to fund their retirements, when the imaginary tidal wave of incoming Chinese is revealed as the mere speculative ripple it has been, when fatigued owners realize killer home payments devastate every other aspect of their family’s lives, and most importantly, when the mania dies (manias always die) and when real estate ownership is no longer the Holy Grail, there will be nothing left but you and decades of onerous payments on a crashing asset.

You will wonder what could have possessed you to overpay by fifty or a hundred percent for a creaking “old timer” in a lousy neighbourhood or a “new” slapped-up-in-a-month-by-handymen townhouse in a future ghetto, and you will curse the day you saw the pretty ad that compelled you to do so. Your realtor will not be there to console you, your lender will not hand you free money to extricate yourself. Worse still, there will be no respite to those who, for reasons beyond their control, need to sell. They will do so at a grievous loss.

So…what do you do? If you bought near the peak (roughly mid-2011), and particularly if you’re feeling the strain already, contemplate selling – before the downward spiral picks up steam. If you’ve so far resisted the siren song, continue to resist. Instead, rent.

Renting gets a bad name in a transitory environment where even pizza delivery guys contemplate $300,000 condos, but remember: Renters are immune to exploding zeppelins. Renters are free to invest the money they saved by not buying. Renters do not surrender thousands per annum on property taxes, repairs, renovations, city utility bills, and burdensome monthly maintenance fees. And renters can move without enduring the cost and hardship of selling. Your realtor will tell you “Renting is throwing your money away.” You can tell him he’s a liar.

Buying and owning a principal residence can be a smart move. But not here, not now. Not when mania is at the helm, not while deception remains healthy, and not when the long slide they don’t tell you about has already begun. Many will lose. Heavily. Don’t be a loser.

For more discussion on the realities of the local housing market, check out two of Greater Vancouver’s busiest housing blogs: Vancouver Real Estate Anecdote Archive (http://vreaa.wordpress.com/) and Vancouver Condo Info (http://vancouvercondo.info/).

Meanwhile, we often talk about how our hamlet here on the wet coast is influenced by outside money, particularly HAM (Hot Asian Money).

There is no doubt that the downturn in the Asian markets is having an impact here.

This blog often ponders at what point world wide conditions will trigger HAM to sell their assets here to cover margin calls elsewhere. Obviously this requires global macro conditions such as external real estate markets, stock markets, foreign government policy, etc. to play a large factor int those decisions.

With that in mind, let's cast our eyes to a website called Global Property Guide which has some interesting data on the world wide housing market.

They are reporting that in fiscal quarter 1 of 2012, the global house price downturn has been accelerating as evident from their latest house price indices survey.  Here is what they have to say...

Global house price downturn accelerates: Q1 2012

House prices fell in 24 countries, of the 36 countries for which quarterly house price statistics are available, and rose in only 12 countries (click on image to enlarge):

During the latest quarter the downturn appears to have accelerated, with house price falls in 26 countries, and house price gains in only 10.

In nominal terms only 16 countries experienced house price falls during the year, while 20 countries recorded house price rises. But the Global Property Guide's statistical presentation uses price changes after inflation, giving a more realistic picture than the more upbeat nominal figures usually preferred by real estate agents.

Faster-paced deterioration in European housing markets

Ireland's price-declines have been, over the duration of the crisis, catastrophic. It is disheartening to see more agony, yet the picture really is alarming. House prices fell 18.95% year-on-year, contrasting with a decline of 'only' 13.12% during the same period last year. Furthermore, house prices were down 5.19% during the latest quarter. Tough credit conditions, an oversupply of housing, and weak domestic demand have weighed down the Irish residential property market (click on image to enlarge):

There was also an alarming increase in momentum of house-price declines in Athens, Greece (-11.68%); in Warsaw, Poland (-10.94%); in Portugal (-10.45%); in Spain (-9%); in the Netherlands (-6.05%); and in the Slovak Republic (-5.89%). All saw bigger house-price declines this year than the previous year.

Several countries whose housing markets were last year either in recovery or only just in downturn, saw a significant deterioration in their position, with house price falls during the year to end Q1 2012 in Finland (-2.05%), in Turkey (-2.32%), Sweden (-5.34%) and Riga, Latvia (-5.83%).

In other European countries, any positive changes in the momentum of the housing markets were so feeble, that they hardly signal a recovery. These countries include Kiev, Ukraine (-2.51%), Croatia (-2.45%), United Kingdom (-3.14%), Lithuania (-3.87%) and Bulgaria (-6.21%).

Some strong European markets do relieve the gloom. In Estonia house prices surged by 9.13% year-on-year, and in Austria house prices rose by 8.24% year-on-year. In fact the upsurge in these two countries' housing markets was so strong as to propel them into third and fourth place in the worldwide league table.

Other strong housing markets over the past twelve months include Switzerland (+5.49%), Norway (+5.43%), Russia (+3.86%) and Iceland (+2.25%). The 'gainers' seem to be countries whose housing markets either never experienced the recent downturn (Austria, Switzerland, Norway), or are recovering (Estonia, Russia, Iceland).

House prices in India (Delhi) and Brazil (Sao Paulo) surged further, but momentum down during the quarter

Over the year to Q1 2012, Delhi house prices skyrocketed by 24.41%, though during the last quarter, they fell 0.07%. Some other Indian cities like Chennai and Kolkata saw house price falls year-on-year, according to NHB Residex.

In Sao Paulo, house prices climbed by 18.70% in the year to Q1 2012, but the latest quarter saw a price-decline of 2.57%.

Most Asian housing markets slowing

In the Philippines (Makati Central Business District), prime condominium prices rose by 7.34% during the year. But the figures possibly exaggerate the upsurge, because they are for Makati, the heart of the Philippines' business process outsourcing boom. In South Korea house prices were up 2.67% from a year earlier.

Housing markets in the rest of Asia cooled over the year to Q1 2012, due to government measures implemented last year. House prices in Hong Kong were up a mere 0.19% on the year, after a rise of 19.80% the previous year. There were house price falls in Indonesia (-0.13%), Singapore (-1.36%), Tokyo, Japan (-2.64%) and Shanghai, China (-3.68%).

US housing market making progress

US house prices rose modestly to 0.48% year-on-year, with a quarterly rise of 0.55%, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency's (FHFA) seasonally adjusted purchase-only house price index. In inflation-adjusted terms, US house prices were still down 2.27% from a year earlier. But this is a significant improvement from last year's 7.44% decline in house prices.

Increased affordability and a somewhat smaller inventory of homes for sale are positively impacting house prices, says FHFA Principal Economist Andrew Leventis.

Israeli house prices weakening

House prices in Israel were down 4.94% year-on-year to Q1 2012. Prices were hit by worldwide uncertainty, plus measures taken by the Israeli government and the Bank of Israel. The fall comes amid popular protests since last summer over high prices, which have not yet waned.

New Zealand firm, but Australia under pressure

House prices in New Zealand climbed by 0.82% over the year to Q1 2012, after falling 4.79% the previous year. Sales activity has been strong for the last few months, with volumes at the highest levels since 2007.

Australian house prices fell for the fifth straight quarter to -6.04% from a year earlier, the longest downturn for a decade. The central bank has maintained the highest borrowing costs among major developed nations.

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Fri Post #1: Bob Hoye's thoughts on Vancouver Real Estate and investing.

Meet Bob Hoye.

He is Editor and Chief Investment Strategist of Institutional Advisors, an independent financial market forecasting firm, and a frequent guest on a local Vancouver radio investment show 'Money Talks' with Michael Campbell.

Hoye gained some local fame when, in October 2007, he appeared on 'Money Talks' and told listeners that it was time to take advantage of a once in a generation market dislocation. Hoye boldly predicted that "a credit tsunami the likes we haven't seen in generations is about to hit."

A few days ago Hoye was back on 'Money Talks' with some additional advice that included some thoughts on real estate and gold.

Hoye was very clear that he believes we are now at another critical point in the markets and that its now time to either save your capital and get out of the way, or make some money.

Hoye thinks that there is no way that the Federal Reserve or other Central Banks around the world can overcome the Worldwide deflationary pressures we currently face.

His opinion is that there will be no inflation as "the credit contraction is, and will continue to overwhelm interventionist Central Bankers who are not issuing credit that pushes prices up".

Why? Bond vigilantes in a word.

As the Central Banks in Italy and Spain have found out they have to raise interest rates on their bonds to attract investors, and when interest rates rise Governments and businesses alike "cannot service the debt that is out there".

Worse Hoye sees that the the latest recovery from March of 2009 "in North America is rolling over, probably as we speak. Its already dead in Europe where they've had two quarters of negative GDP growth which defines a recession, and also perhaps really slowing down in China which shows up in your basic commodity prices."

With the economy contracting there is "nothing that government economists and Central Bankers can do to issue credit that is going to overwhelm the natural tendency for credit to contract."

What does Hoye think this all mean to today's investors?

1. Real Estate:

In short Hoye thinks that real estate is not going to recover in this post bubble economy. Worse, very high real estate in places Vancouver are going to experience a fall in pricing like US Real Estate. Hoye points out that after the 1980 boom the British Properties in West Vancouver and and high end properties in Toronto fell to 1/3 of their 1980 highs. Hoye cites history to support his post bubble real estate argument by looking back to a farm price index after the 1873 bubble in England. That index of farmland values hit 58 at the height of the bubble in 1873 then fell consistently for the following 20 years down to 38. In other words it was just a long bear market in land values after a typical post bubble economy.

2. Interest Rates:

Hoye thinks interest rates will remain low as long as confidence remains in the North American sovereign debt market."You have this oddity in the US of 10 year notes at less than 2%, and the only way I can explain these low interest rates is that in a post bubble crash the serious money that's still around goes to the most liquid items and that is gold, and it also is treasury bills in the worlds senior currency which is still the US Dollar. So its not the Federal Reserves policy to lower interest rates, its a post bubble condition that short rates fall".

3. "The Gold Market is Extremely Oversold"

Hoye is a strong proponent of buying Gold Stocks. "Just looking at the Gold Shares now, we have an index in Gold Shares going back to 1900 and there has been only one other time were it has been this oversold and that was in 1924. So one could say that this is about the most oversold you can get, and our advice on Gold Shares a few weeks ago is that people should be accumulating good quality Gold Shares into weakness. It might take another week to set the low in here, but then the performance out of this oversold should be rather good. I am content buying either good exploration stocks where you know the story, or some of the senior Golds or Gold share ETF's".

The most interesting part of the interview for me was Hoye's comments about real estate.

"very high real estate in places Vancouver are going to experience a fall in pricing like US Real Estate.... after the 1980 boom the British Properties in West Vancouver and and high end properties in Toronto fell to 1/3 of their 1980 highs."

That's a 66% collapse is real estate values.

The bubble we have created this time around has blown far larger than the 1980's version.  If property values could collapse 66% then, why is it so shocking or inconceivable to imagine that they could fall at least 70-75% this time around?

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Greece could trigger a 'severe recession' in Canada - TD

In case you think our focus on the situation in Europe is somewhat disconnected from the real estate situation in Vancouver... think again.

Toronto Dominion Bank has come out with an economics paper today that outlines what a Greek exit from the Euro could mean for the Canadian economy.

And it isn't pretty.

The hilights from TD:

• Our most recent Canadian QEF builds in mild recession in Europe and continued financial market volatility due to European sovereign debt concerns. However, in recent weeks, risks of a disorderly Greek exit from the Euro zone have increased. In this report, we highlight what the worst case sce- nario would look like for the Canadian economy.

• Canada has little direct exposure to Europe and the real economy would be hit more significantly through indirect channels. The event would lead to financial market turmoil and commodity prices would tumble.

• High household debt and an overvaluation in the existing home market leave the economy more vulnerable to a negative external shock than it has been in the past. 

• In a worse case scenario, where there is a systemic crisis in Europe, Canada’s economy would endure a severe recession, with the decline being substantially worse than that experienced during the 2008/2009 recession.

TD focuses on a theme all to familiar to those following the housing bubble and concludes by saying:

What separates Canada from other major advanced economies, however, is its high and rising vulnerability to domestic financial excesses that have formed in recent years. While corporate balance sheets remain strong, household debt has become excessive and the housing market is in our view 10-15% overvalued, leaving households more vulnerable to a negative economic event. A global financial crisis could be a major catalyst for a sharp housing market correction and household deleveraging – albeit to a lesser extent than was evident in the U.S. during the past recession. Moreover, Canadian governments would have less room to stimulate compared to the first crisis in 2008-2009... In a worse case scenario, the Canadian economy would likely endure a severe recession, with the decline being substantially worse than that experienced during the recent recession as both exports and domestic spending contract heavily.

Now if you were a Chinese investor who had parked money in some Canadian real estate... do you consider bailing right about now to protect your financial assets?

Hmmm.

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Tuesday Post #2: Can I get a purchase order # for all the cheese we need?

If you've every worked in a large bureaucratic company, you are familiar with purchase orders.  You need them for everything.

Glancing at the world press today, I wonder if I could get a purchase order for all the cheese we need to procure?

I mean... let's face it... what good is all that whine without lots of cheese?

Tonight we start in China.  As the Vancouver Sun notes, home prices are in decline in a record number of Chinese cities.  The decline is no accident. China is engineering a much needed deflation of their housing bubble.

"Prices fell in a record 46 of 70 cities tracked by the government in April from a year earlier as officials pledged to keep restrictions on property purchases that have sapped buyer demand... The Housing Ministry said China will steadfastly continue curbs on the housing market and won’t flip-flop on its policies. This followed a pledge by the State Council, or Cabinet, last month to stick with existing property controls implemented over the past two years, where the government tightened down payments and mortgages, and imposed restrictions on the number of homes families can buy.

“The general price trend as a result of developers cutting prices and regulatory environment is continuing this month,” Chris Brooke, chief executive officer for Greater China at CBRE Group Inc., said in a Bloomberg Television interview from Beijing. “The objective is to remove the speculative element from the market."

China has been struggling with an all-too-familiar dilemma... how to prick the speculative housing bubble while helping the general economy.  Thus the China government has been implementing (and maintaining) its housing curbs while the central bank lowers the amount of cash that banks must set aside as reserves, a move the PBOC has done three times since November to boost liquidity and spur loan growth.

Of course the government's moves have been met with wide spread howls of complaint.

And attempts by some of the locals to circumvent the federal government's moves have been quashed. Wuhu in Anhui province and Foshan in the south in the past six months have tried to lift local property curbs. Both locales had their efforts halted within a week.

"Prices haven’t fallen low enough for the government to relax the property policies," said Zhang Zhiwei, Hong Kong-based chief China economist at Nomura Holdings Inc.

Whining about government attempts to deflate the housing bubble aren't restricted to China.

On this side of the Pacific, the Government of Canada is also trying to find a way to deflate the Canadian real estate bubble while still assisting lending for the broader economy.

One of the Fed's key strategies in doing so appears to be shaping up in the new regulations being proposed by the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI).

Among the host of proposed changes to the regulations governing Canadian banks are rules that would require that banks recheck areas such as employment status, current income and the current value of the home for mortgage renewals and refinancings.

“This would be a significant, significant change,” Jim Murphy, the head of the Canadian Association of Accredited Mortgage Professionals (CAAMP).

So concerned is CAAMP about the impact of the changes on it's self interest that the professional association has launched it's own organized media whine campaign.

The OSFI unveiled the proposed new rules in March and requested submissions from the real estate industry as part of the government process of consulting with state holders. A significant number of submissions from trade associations, lenders, insurers and the brokers as well as private citizens have been received.

OSFI is still reviewing them and hopes to release final rules by the end of June, along with a summary of the submissions and the reasons for its decisions.

But CAAMP can see the nuances of the political back room process at work. The OFSI proposed changes were released after the Financial Stability Board, a global financial oversight body, called on all regulators to ensure mortgage lenders were adhering to certain underwriting principles.

And with Ottawa seeking to prevent a runup in Canadian house prices from leading to a crash, it's clear you can see the hand of the Conservative government behind the proposed OFSI guidelines which go a bit further.

CAAMP has clearly launched it's counter offensive to try and stir up the general public in an attempt to influence pressure on the government to back off.

With the June deadline rapidly approaching, expect the level of whining to increase exponentially.

Cheese anyone?

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Tues Post #1: Did JP Morgan just lose $31 Billion?

Now... faithful readers know my position on precious metals, particularly Silver.

And if you have followed my posts on this, you know the significance of JP Morgan and Silver.

So when a story about JP Morgan suffering massive losses hits the news waves, it tweaks my interest.

The big buzz around JP Morgan lately has been the massive amount JPM lost in the London Whale fiasco, a massive derivatives trading loss.

I'm not going to go into it here. If you aren't aware of the story you can read Time Magazine's coverage of the story to catch up.

For those who have been watching the story, the estimation of the loss sustained by Morgan is growing significantly.  The story is slowly becoming the first possible detonation of the derivatives time bomb many pundits have waiting for.

The big speculation right now revolves around the announced cancellation of JP Morgan's stock buy-back program by JPM president Jamie Dimon.

The story begins when the Federal Reserve Bank of New York announced stress tests on various banks. The sole purpose of these stress tests was to determine under what worst case scenario the Fed was ok with allowing JPM and various other Bank Holding Companies to proceed with dividend raises/stock buybacks.

(In a particularly cheeky move, JPM front ran the full FRBNY stress test release and announced just such a dividend raise and stock buyback plan)

The FRBNY, via it's "Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review 2012" reported the permissive gating conditions, which if met, would still enable JP Morgan to proceed with the then announced buyback. The highlighted section below details the results (click on image to enlarge):

What this chart tells you is the cumulative "realized losses/gains securities (AFS/HTM) and Trading and Counterparty Losses" for JP Morgan amount to $31.5 billion for the pendency of the stress test.

In English it means that $31.5 billion is how much pain JPM is allowed, in the NY Fed's view, to suffer before losses and dividends/buyback programs would jeopardize the capital structure. If this amount of loss is achieved, any buyback process should be halted.

As mentioned above, the big buzz around the financial world is that JP Morgan announced yesterday that their share buyback process has been halted.

As a result speculation is running rampant about just how big the CIO P&L loss JP Morgan has suffered as of the close of business yesterday truly is.

Does this imply that the CIO losses, as conferred by JPM to the Fed in private, have a statutory loss potential of over $31.5 billion through Q4 2013?

Has the Fed now barred JP Morgan from any other future buybacks, i.e., capital outflows, until such time as the trading/realized loss has been offset and the hit to the balance sheet has been undone?

Jamie Dimon originally announced the loss as $2 Billion.

Last night the London newspaper, The Independent, announced that the losses could now be over $7 Billion.

Warrren Buffet once called derivatives, "financial weapons of mass destruction." 

They are complex and difficult to understand. And this is a story that may grow in complexity with each passing day.

How much has JP Morgan actually lost on this derivative deal gone bad?

That is today's $31 Billion dollar question.

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Whistler's Empty Storefronts

It's been over a month since we last cast our eyes northward to Whistler and noted property owners had begun dumping properties to cut losses while they could, and over two since we noted some properties were selling for 50% of their previous values.

The winter ski season is now over and by all accounts it was a highly successful one courtesy of Whistler’s epic snowfall levels.

Several room-night records were broken, and Whistler Blackcomb’s latest quarterly results, released May 9, show increases in both revenue and skier visits. Overall, room nights are expected to be at least 10% higher than last winter.

So businesses should be leaping for joy, right?

Apparently they're celebrating by closing up shop.

One of the local news rags, The Pique, is reporting that Doc Branigan's restaurant is now closed due to the fact that this building has been foreclosed upon by the bank.

Will they locate somewhere else in the Village and re-open?

"Branigan's was working toward changing the liquor license so the restaurant could offer more entertainment varieties in the space but, a spokesman said, (but with this development) the shareholders decided to cut their losses and cease operations."

The Elephant & Castle restaurant in the Delta Whistler Village Suites has also stopped operations.

Property manager Drew Meredith said Calgary-based restaurant chain Original Joe's has purchased the Elephant & Castle brand and the new owners of the chain have no plans to open an Original Joe's outlet in Whistler.

In the village itself, the doors of the Pizza Café are also closed and have been for more than a week.

The European café at the corner of Lorimer Road and Main Street appears to have also closed. The cafe is notable because the owner, Miro Kolvek, was one of the six candidates in the running for the job of mayor in the last municipal election.

The Savage Beagle nightclub also closed last month.

The foot and apparel store Merrill, located in the Village Centre beside Eddie Bauer, is preparing to shut down. Store manager Dave Booth said June 27 will be the final day of operations.

Food Plus in Creekside is also closing, and Loka Yoga is looking for a new location starting June 1 after receiving notice that its rent is being more than doubled.

And it's the last tidbit that has some wondering if it isn't time to reexamine the way the municipality conducts business. The lifeblood of any municipality are it's taxes. Are Whistler's simply too high?

According to Loka Yoga’s owner the rent at the Saint Andrews House location where they had set up shop was set to jump from $2,500 to $6,700 per month!

Why the huge jump? Apparently it costs $12 per square foot each month just to cover property taxes in a Village commercial space. If that figure is accurate, that’s $8,400 per month for a 700 square foot space — just to cover the property taxes.

Whistler is now beginning to face the dreaded deflation scenario. As property values drop, revenue from property taxes falls. Meanwhile businesses, hurting from declining revenues, cannot afford the property taxes currently in place, let alone handle any increase to offset the drop in revenue from property owners.

And any cut in the tax rate can only impact municipal amenities, services which are crucial in a resort destination like Whistler.

The hard times are only just starting for the Sea-to-Sky community and the catch-22 is under way.

(hat tip to Patiently Waiting for the news links)

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HAM exit stage left?

Faithful readers know we have pondered about what might happened when the Hot Asian Money (HAM) that has flowed into Vancouver suddenly needs to depart.

A lot of money has been parked here are as China experiences it's own real estate bubble, a bubble driven by more stimulus money, per capita, being injected into their economy that has been injected in the USA.

But as we discussed on Thursday, a real estate crash is underway in China. 

As margin calls come due for many mainland Chinese who have invested here, the impact of the need for liquidity cannot be underestimated.

The very first signs of this starting to happen are evident in the absence of HAM in the Vancouver spring real estate market. It is, basically, non-existent.

And as the year moves from early Spring to the end of Spring... is the HAM trend ready to move to the next phase?

At the top of this post is the video promo from a realtor for 3243 W. 33rd Avenue. The asking price is $2,480,000 and here is how it is being promoted (click on image to enlarge):

Mackenzie Heights House for Sale! BRAND NEW high-end custom-built house selling now at the well sough after Mackenzie Height area. This is a dream house that comes with high-end Kitchen Aid stainless steel appliances, HRV, air-conditioning, two gas fireplaces, centralvacuum cleaner, crystal chandeliers, electronic door lock, security system with intercom speakers and monitor, jacuzzi tub in master bedroom, granite counter-tops throughout house and granite tiles at the entry foyer. This house comes with just almost everything you need. Possession is AVAILABLE NOW. Open house Saturdays. Will you be this brand new house's FIRST homeowner?

A professional video and coherent write up.

But is there desperation behind the signs by the seller?

A curious craigslist ad has appeared regarding this house - you can click on the image below to enlarge it. (hat tip to Patiently Waiting on Vancouver Condo Info):

It says, in broken english:

"Note: the owner because of a urgent to return China, so the asking price there are a lot of room for negotiation, coupled with the distribution of the total value of 80000 full set of aristocratic furniture, piano, plus on the government’s home purchase cash back, buyers will get a total of nearly 200 000 discounts, which in the vancouver west very expensive premium real estate is very difficult to find such a cheap price, welcome to the OPEN HOUSE to look at the new luxury house just completed! NEAR TO U.B.C!”

Seems odd to have a craigslist posting written like this by a realtor. Is the owner desperate to explore additional advertising options because he is desperate to sell the property?

Let's face it, how many realtors would openly advertise a seller's weak hand and tell you he 'urgently returned to China' and that there is 'lots of room for negotiation?'

Interesting.

It's a good thing a lack of sales and burgeoning inventory doesn't mean housing prices will be coming down, eh?

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Alasdair Macleod: All Roads in Europe Lead to Gold

Chris Martenson, on his website, had a great interview with Alasdair MacLeod on the European debt situation that I thought was a good read and it is reproduced for you here.

From Martenson's interview:

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This week we bring back Alasdair Macleod, publisher of Finance and economics.org, because, as he puts it "every horror that we discussed last time we spoke is coming about". Especially scary since our previous conversation with him was less than three weeks ago...

Today's interview continues building on his excellent synopsis from last month that detailed the origins of the Eurozone crisis. The fundamental shortcomings warned of at the Euro's creation in 1997, combined with the excessive sovereign debts run up since then, have finally expressed themselves at a scale too large to be contained any longer.

Today, Alasdair details in-depth the huge and serious challenges facing Greece and the major Eurozone countries, and the likely impacts of the fast-dwindling options left remaining.

He sees no happy ending to this story, no outcome in which serious pain and permanent behavior change can be avoided. And for those looking for shelter from the unfolding economic storm, he sees few options besides the precious metals (which he believes are severely under priced at the moment):

Greece

The Greek situation is entirely predictable: when you force enormous pressures on an economy and try and raise taxes from the private sector -- a private sector which isn’t used to paying taxes because usually they find away around it -- you start cutting pensions, you start cutting this, cutting that, and the people revolt. They haven’t a clue what they are doing, but we get the revolt nonetheless. It looks like nobody there can form a government; and it looks like there will be another election probably in June. That won’t resolve anything unless by some miracle, some sense gets knocked into people’s heads.

The other thing, which nobody has mentioned, is that there are about 90 billion dollars in derivative contracts involved in the Greek economy. This is not just government, but also local governments and towns and cities and all the rest of it. The counterparties to this $90 billion must be getting a bit worried about that, I would think because that looks as if it will default.

The people who have been most active in getting these derivative contracts going over time have been people like Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs and I suppose JP Morgan -- so you can see the problems aren’t just limited to the government and some unfortunate Greek citizens who are caught in the middle of this.

We are looking at potentially up to ninety billion dollars worth of derivatives which one side of those transactions is going to default. One side: it is not a balanced figure is it? I don’t know that it is necessarily as bad as that, but it is a problem that needs to be dealt with, addressed and contained. I think what they have to do as much as possible, is to try to work for a sensible outcome in this, which probably will involve Greece leaving the Eurozone, but maybe obtaining help from the ECB to set up a currency board. The reason I say that is that I think for Greece to return to the drachma would be complete destruction. You would have a situation where people who owe money in Euros would still owe money in Euros. If the Greek government tried to change that by law, for starts, that could only apply to loans taken out in Euros in Greece; whereas a lot of these have been taken out in Euros elsewhere in the European Union. In any event, I think if they tried to do a law on this, it would be a retroactive, which would be open to legal challenge.

Meanwhile, if you have deposits in a Greek bank, you can be sure the Greek government would say we are going to re-designate those into New Drachmas, which would impoverish the depositors. When it comes to trade, I think everybody would just stay well clear. To go back to a New Drachma, I think is the most destructive path Greece can have. Now, they could do that on the basis that, if the European Union wanted to make an example of Greece, then this is a way in which they could just let them go hang. The importance of that would be that the situation for Greece should be so bad that no other member of the Eurozone would contemplate leaving the Eurozone. That is a possibility. But I think that is less likely than coming to terms in such a way to give Greece an exit. But if they do get an exit, again, they’ve got to have an exit in such a way that it hurts enough and anybody else who wants to take that exit would see, well it is actually probably more painful than staying where we are. It is a very difficult balance to achieve.

The people who will do this, I don’t believe are the politicians. It would have to be the sensible people in the ECB and perhaps some of the more backroom boys who could put together some sort of face-saving mechanism without this becoming too much of a political hot potato. It is very, very tricky, it really is, and quite honestly, the way political governance has been going in Europe, the chances of them getting some sort of orderly withdraw in the interest of continuing relationships, et cetera, I think are actually probably slim. That is what we are up against: this is not easy. There is no precedence for this at all and I know that lots and lots of people are saying it has got to return to the Drachma; I just think that a New Drachma would collapse almost immediately. I think that a currency board in the Euro is actually a more sensible result given where we are.

France

France is a mess. They have outstanding debt of 1.3 Trillion Euros, something like that. Their debt/GDP is around about 85-90% going on a hundred quite rapidly. That is a very liquid and nasty situation. Unemployment is running close to ten percent.

It is almost impossible to employ anyone in France because the taxes are so high. Do you know the total tax that you pay as an employer, more than doubles the salary that you pay an individual? This is absolute craziness, but it is been like that in France forever and a day. The result is an awful lot of the market is black market.

Spain & Italy

Spain is a worse situation. Government debt alone is just under a trillion. A trillion dollars equivalent, I should say, and that is a lot of money. That is a lot of money. Italy is over two trillion dollars. That really is a very, very big one, so this contagion must not be allowed to happen.

Germany

Their economy is performing reasonably well, but it is not performing well because they are doing well for Europe; they are doing well because they are selling the most cars, machine tools and everything else to China, to Brazil, to Russia. Africa’s a great growth area. Europe, as far as Germany is concerned is dead. Which of course brings us on another question; that is why should Germany continue to support all these bust Europeans? There is a sort of conscience if you like about the last two world wars, but there is going to come a point where that wears pretty thin I would have thought. The trouble is that it is all very well, everyone turning around and saying, Germany has to help. Actually, what they are saying is that Germany’s citizens should give up their savings, their hard won savings to rescue a project, which is obviously dead or deceased. I think Germany really should bust out as soon as possible and I am sure that there are an increasing number of businessmen and bankers in Germany who are beginning to feel that way.

On Gold

People who have gold or silver, I think actually had a very rough ride over the last couple of months. A lot of them are wondering what on Earth is going on because every time you get good news, gold seems to rally along with equities, but every time there’s bad news and gold actually should be giving you some protection, it goes down the swanny.

I think the problem there is that the whole system is run by people who went to college and were taught keynesian economics. In my day, when I first went into the stock market and I enjoyed that first bull market in gold when it went from thirty-five bucks to eight-fifty, the traders and investment managers were all practical people. They all cut their teeth, all learned their trade the hard way. Some of them had degrees in college, but generally it would have been something like classics or history or something like that. If they got a degree in economics, they probably would have left because they never would have understood it in those days. But now it has changed. Everybody who is employed has a degree and if they are anything to do with investment strategy, or the investment business, it is all economics degrees. So they have been brainwashed in the keynesian thing. This sort of neoclassical approach where gold is yesterday’s story, paper money is the future. They really do believe it and it is the opinions of these people who drive the markets in the short term.

The result is that gold and silver have become very, very seriously mispriced. I don’t think I have seen a stretch like this as I can remember; by stretch, the difference between perhaps where it should be. We must be careful not to tell the market what the price should be, but it is so underpriced at a time of enormous systemic stress, that I think when gold and silver snap back into a more sensible, logical valuation relationship with the markets, the move actually could be very, very sharp and quite large. If gold ran up through the $2,000 level very quickly, which I think is a very strong possibility, because it is been held down so much, that could bring other problems. The central banks, who might have sold gold and not told us about it will find that they are embarrassed. I think also the bullion banks in London who operate a fractional reserve system with gold, exactly the same way as to do with any paper currency, will be hurt very, very badly on the run. Any shorts in the futures market equally could be hurt very, very badly. We have a situation, where there is a potential for a huge run in gold and I personally wouldn’t be surprised to see it.

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Bubble? What bubble? - The counter offensive begins

So what if the mainstream media is abuzz with talk of a Canadian Housing bubble.

And yes, articles abound that trouble looms on the horizon.

Sales are tanking.  Listings are soaring. So what's a realtor to do?

Trash all this bubble talk, of course.

Enter Condo King Bob Rennie;

"It’s not a bubble. With the 80% of the [condo] market that traded in [Metro] Vancouver last year, you only needed a household income of $52,800 to purchase. That’s not a bubble story.”

Rennie's comments come courtesy of an interview with the Vancouver Sun following his keynote address to the Urban Development Institute Thursday.

Rennie sees aging baby boomers with billions of dollars in equity becoming a much greater force in the condo market as they increasingly downsize from expensive single-detached homes, and put money aside for their children.

Rather than seeing a market crash as hundreds of thousands of boomers dump bubble inflated single family houses and downsize, Rennie has a different take.

Noting that the number of people between 55 and 64 will increase 38% between 2009 and 2018, those between 65 and 74 will increase 56%, and those between 35 and 54 will only increase by 4.6%, Rennie views this as positive - particularly for his niche focus in condos.

“I believe the leaner, meaner baby boomer is the game changer. Baby boomers are sitting on $88 billion in equity in Greater Vancouver and they’re looking at their retirement years. That equity will be freed up over the next 15 years [and] when they sell their home, they’ll buy down and help their kids.”

Rennie said there were about 19,000 condo sales in Metro Vancouver in 2011, and that while the average price for 80% of those condos was $315,000, the overall average price was $427,000, which required an income of $66,000 to finance.

And, as we noted in our discussion about Marine Gateway, Rennie has a number of big projects coming to market this year... ergo the never-ending sales pitch continues.

Meanwhile our buddy Tsur Somerville, director, centre for urban economics and real estate at UBC's Sauder School of Business, chimes in as well.

He also doesn’t believe there’s a real estate bubble in Metro Vancouver because there’s not an explosion in housing starts.

Somerville says that while the affordability numbers have been skewed by the higher end parts of the market – “there were double-digit increases in Richmond, Vancouver, Burnaby and West Vancouver, with single-digit increases everywhere else” — the region is still very expensive compared to other cities in Canada.

“Compared to other cities, that income [$52,800] gets you a house. Here, it gets you a condo. That means we’re expensive, but that’s the reality of what we are. It’s still an expensive place to live, but it’s not unaffordable. You’ll end up smaller and further away from the core.”

Bubble? What bubble?

That's clearly what's emerging as the counter offensive theme by the industry right now, a theme which continued over on Global TV.

Adding to the 'non-bubble' message is this treatsie... "just because sales are slumping, don't bank on prices doing the same":

Announcer: “Is the Canadian housing market a bubble ready to burst, or is it steady as she goes? Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is warning Canadians against taking too much debt against the value of their homes, but the latest report from the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation is dismissing those fears saying there is no clear evidence of a real estate bubble.”

Tsur Sommerville: “There is clearly a slowing down in the market you see an increase in the number of listings, drop in sales, all things that create less pressure on the market.”

Announcer: “According to the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver home sales were down 19% compared with this time last year.”

Helmut Pastrick: “The comparison to last year was heavily influenced by the change in the federal government’s mortgage insurance criteria which pulled forward a large number of sales into early 2011. So we’re comparing that high point to activity so far this year.”

Announcer: “But don’t get too excited, even though sales are down, home price indexes show a 4% increase in the price of a home in greater Vancouver. … The message to buyers, the economy is in reasonable shape, there’s a lot of supplier there, and interest rates are low. So just because sales are slumping don’t bank on prices doing the same.”

Tsur Sommerville: “We don’t have a sort of financial environment where people are looking at major financial corrections, you know, double digit increase in interest rates, or, you know, huge tightening of liquidity, that just doesn’t seem to be on the horizon, you know, to expect across-the-board 10%, 15%, 20% drop in house prices, I think that being rather, er, hopeful, for a buyer to expect that.”

The message is clear. Don't be deceived by slumping sales and burgeoning listings. Prices aren't coming down so stop waiting.

Now is the time to buy. What are you waiting for?

(hat tip to Greenhorn for the video archive and VREAA for the transcript of the Global clip)

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Are the swirling winds of change blowing towards a Nexus point?

HAM... or Hot Asian Money... has been a prominent feature of our real estate bubble.

As China pumped more stimulus money, per capita, than the Americans into their economy a huge bubble has been blowing.

One of the benefits has been China's real estate.

Buoyed by inflated real estate values, wealthy Chinese have extracted equity and utilized equity to leverage real estate purchases overseas. And Vancouver has been a primary beneficiary.

But what happens when the bubble begins to burst?

One of the first consequences is the access to easy money disappears... and with it the free flow of money to locales such as the Village on the Edge of the Rainforest.

HAM is basically AWOL in the Vancouver Spring Real Estate market and all indications are the situation in China is worsening.

Mish Shedlock noted on his blog yesterday that the Real Estate Crash in China is Underway.

Citing an excellent report (China Real Estate Unravels) by Patrick Chovanec, a professor at Tsinghua University's School of Economics and Management in Beijing, Mish notes that Chinese developers, burdened by 70% leverage ratios and loans threatening to come due, rushed to complete projects already in their pipeline, to put those units onto the market and raise cash.

That rush to complete inflated real estate investments, investments that were allegedly up 23.5% in the first quarter.

But other statistics from the report tell the real story.

• Year-on-year sales in Q1, for all real estate, was down 14.6%.
• Residential property sales were down 17.5%
• Office sales were down -10.2%
• Sales in January-February were a disaster, falling 20.9% overall, compared to the first two months of 2011, -24.7% for residential.
• Total amount of floor space “for sale” was up 35.5%, compared to the same date last year
• Floor space of residential units “for sale” grew 47.4%.
• At the end of 2011, total floor space “under construction” was roughly 4.6 times the floor space sold
• A year and a half worth of excess inventory is hidden somewhere in the pipeline
• New starts in April fell 14.6% year-on-year and 27.0% month-on-month, for property as a whole
• Housing starts fell -14.4% year-on-year and -23.4% month-on-month
• Office starts fell -21.0% year-on-year in April, and -45.1% compared to March
• Retail property starts fell -18.7% year-on-year, and -36.8% compared to March
• Land sale revenues in April (RMB 27 billion) were down -54.7% compared to April last year
• Foreign funding for property development was down -91.4% in March and -80.8% in April, compared to the same months last year.

Chovanec notes:

"Clearly a crash is underway and the Chinese soft-landing thesis is collapsing.

The “resilient” growth in real estate investment that seemed to promise a “soft landing” is not very resilient at all. It’s more like the last gasp of a market that’s running out of steam. Once the surge in completions plays out, the declining number of new starts will become the pipeline, and growth in property investment will flatten or go negative.

Property investment accounts for roughly a quarter of gross Fixed Asset Investment (FAI), and net FAI accounts for over half of China’s GDP growth. As I noted in January, in a back-of-the-envelope thought exercise, if property investment plateaus (growth falls to zero), it could shave as much as 2.6 percentage points off of real GDP growth. If it fell 10% (in real, not nominal terms) it could bring GDP growth down to 5.3%.

At the time I first saw this dynamic in the data, when the Q1 numbers came out, I figured it would take several months to begin playing out. But the April numbers suggest it is already happening.

Chovanec notes if real estate investment drops by 10%, GDP will come in at 5.3%. But what if real estate investment falls by 20% or 25%?

Moreover, why shouldn't it?

The real estate crash in China has arrived and is underway.  The GDP crash will follow shortly.

What comes after that?

After that comes the second consequence for the Village on the Edge of the Rainforest... the panic sale of overseas assets to meet financial demands at home.

All of which is shaping up to hit us just as the OFSI rule changes come into effect.

The swirling winds of change are blowing towards a convergence point that can only be described as the perfect storm combining the Boomer Trigger, the China Trigger and the Speculator Trigger with upcoming mortgage rule changes.

People email me and say my prediction of a collapse in real estate values here of 70-85% is completely unrealistic and they just can't see how it could possibly come to pass.

Not only do I think it is very easy to see... I sometimes think my estimate may be underestimating the full extent of what may play out.

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OFSI: "Banks not immune to Housing related failures"

Yesterday we once again brought up the topic of the OSFI – the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions - which is the organization regulating Canadian banks.

In the early part of the year the OFSI released a draft about upcoming changes to banking regulations. Yesterday's post was about how the mainstream media is picking up on those changes and what it could mean from for Canadian Homeowners... specifically that homeowners should 'beware' of the looming changes.

The OSFI theme continues today as Bloomberg reports on information they obtained in freedom on information request.

And it appears there is grave concern by the regulator for the health of Canadian banks in the event of a housing collapse..

Shortly after the OFSI was criticized on March 19th for it's proposed changes via the mortgage-industry website Canadian Mortgage Trends, the OFSI wrote an internal memo reflecting on the Canadian banking system.

The OFSI noted that while Canada’s banks may be ranked the soundest on the planet by the World Economic Forum, they aren’t immune to collapses triggered by falling housing prices.

The documents Bloomberg uncovered were written by Vlasios Melessanakis, manager of policy development at the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions.

Melessanakis said that previous failures of Canadian financial institutions were due to bad real estate lending and sharp falls in housing prices, and these can happen again.

“Canada is not immune. Just because nothing happened in Canada in 2008 (a U.S.-centered crisis), does not mean that Canada is not vulnerable to a housing correction now.”

Canadian Mortgage Trends had critically asked in it's website posting, “How many new lending ‘guidelines’ can the market bear before it breaks?”

Melessanakis' response?

“The market may break because the fundamentals are not sound (i.e. overvaluation of homes), not because of OSFI guidance. Previous failures of Canadian financial institutions were due to bad real estate lending and sharp falls in housing prices, and these can happen again."

Somehow I get the feeling the battle over these proposed changes is only just getting started.

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Homeowners Beware

Homeowners Beware!

That's the ominous intro to the above newscast story on the upcoming changes to Canadian bank regulations.

We have discussed this topic a couple of times (and it's something I raise with colleagues regularly).

The OSFI – the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions - is the organization which regulates Canadian banks.  In the early part of the year they released an announcement about upcoming changes to banking regulations.  This was followed by a  discussion paper on those changes.

It's the common procedure for changes implemented by the OFSI.  And rarely are the implemented changes all that different from those outlined in the discussion paper.

Hence the news story.  Some of those changes are HUGE.  And they will be implemented by the end of the year. The OFSI wants banks to tighten up when it comes to renewing your mortgage.

• They want verification of a home’s true value (not the bidding-war price).
• They want the elimination of cash-back mortgages.
• They want to make sure that when your mortgage is renewed you would still qualify for that mortgage.
• And most importantly... they want your loan-to-value ratio to still be intact when your mortgage renews.

In a rising real estate market this is never a problem.  But there are markets where values have fallen (hello Okanagan and Vancouver Island).

And in the Lower Mainland, as inventory hits seasonal highs, as the flood of Asian buyers evaporates, as the Spring Market disappears and sales plummet... are price drops all that far off?

Garth Turner provides a striking example of how this could affect everyone:

"If you bought a $400,000 place in 2010 with 5% down, then your mortgage is $380,000 and your LTV is 95%.

If the same place is worth $340,000 in 2015 (after a 15% correction) when the loan renews, then the LTV means the maximum loan is $323,000. If you took a 3% VRM when you bought, with a 30-year amortization and made 5 years worth of payments, then (counting in the mortgage insurance premium), you still owe $349,000 upon renewal. So, you’d have to come up with $26,000 in cash to maintain your home loan – after spending $101,457 on mortgage payments.

Let’s see, that’s a downpayment of $20,000, plus $101,457 in payments, plus a $26,000 mortgage renewal payment – or a total of $147,457 in cash for a home worth $340,000 on which you still owe $323,000.

This is a nice, simple example of why all those horny young virgins with their 5% downpayments are at risk of being wiped out financially."

For years everyone has assumed that the banks will renew your mortgage without question.

It is a topic we have raised numerous times on this blog and anytime we have raised the issue with local banks we have received vague, noncommittal answers.

Well... the OFSI is now making sure we have an answer to that question.

And the mainstream media is starting to spread the message.

Homeowners Beware!

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"The Sizzle is coming off the Vancouver housing market" - BMO

The Bank of Montreal has a chilling report out that should send shivers down the spines of all speculators out there.  BMO is predicting that Vancouver's housing market could face a bumpy landing.

As reported by News1130 radio, BMO says Vancouver's home prices will fall over the next couple of years.

Year-over-year home re-sales are down by more than 13% in April and sales in the first four months of this year compared to last year are down 20%.

"I can best describe it as a softening of a market," says BMO Mortgage Expert Carolyn Heaney. 

BMO Senior Economist Sal Guatieri says the price of homes in Vancouver and uncertainty over long-term mortgage rates are creating a buyer's market. He also says rich foreign investors who have driven up real-estate prices in Vancouver are now looking at cities that are less expensive.

"The sizzle is coming off the Vancouver housing market," Guateri says.

The report also says condos are being overbuilt in Vancouver and that is curbing demand.

Meanwhile, over at Vancouver Condo Info, regular contributor ZRH2YVR shares some additional inventory facts.

The west side of Vancouver exceeded 1,000 available detached listings on Thursday. Sales are off 17% and listings are up 25%.

In addition to single family houses, a serious flood of apartments is going up for sale on the west side – current pace is for 1,230 of attached units (Apartment/townhouse combined).

Meanwhile Richmond will likely have a 'months-of-inventory' total which is over 12 months by the end of May. More significantly the vast majority of transactions are now for less than the tax-assessed value of the properties. Sales are plummeting by 47%.

Interesting times.

Also... don't forget about out 20,000 listings prediction competition. Put in a comment and let us know when you think Vancouver will hit 20,000 available properties for sale.

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The Countdown to 20,000... what's your prediction? - Day 3

When it comes to Real Estate on the Wet Coast right now, the story is all about the burgeoning inventory.

While total inventory has been higher before, never has it been this high this early in the year. More interestingly, there has not been one single day this year where the total number of sales has been higher than the total number of new listings.

However... until prices start to fall noticeably, it isn't a crash or even a severe 'correction'. 

But one thing is for certain - it IS damn interesting.

Thursday we cracked the 18,000 mark and we head into the weekend sitting at 18,176.  All indications are that the Vancouver market is moving resolutely to the psychologically significant 20,000 mark.

So let's have some fun with it.

Each night we post the days total inventory increase/decrease as well as the total market inventory figures. On which night, exactly, will we crack the 20,000 mark?

Between now and Sunday chime in with your prediction in the comments section.

If you don't have a blogger ID and you normally post anonymously, add a pen name with your prediction so we can keep track of who is predicting what.

There's no prize, but let's see who can pick the day closest to the actual day inventory cracks the 20,000 mark (remember... there are not updates on Saturday or Sunday nights)

Below are guesses submitted so far.  Pick the same date as others or choose one that isn't selected. What night will we crack 20,000?

______________________

May 28
Farmer

May 29
RumbleGuts

May 30
Jen

June 1
Sockeye
BoneShaft

June 2
Terminal City Girl

June 3
Nick-Vancouver

June 4
Robert (Maple Ridge)
Ash

June 5
Michael J - Vancouver

June 6
V

June 8
Alpha_Bear

June 12th
Peter

June 15
another value investor

June 20
MolestoTheClown

June 21
Summer Solstice! (buffates)

June 29
anobserver

July 1
Steve

July 11
GG

July 17
A Political Junkie

July 25
Alexander

20,000 won't be achieved
kman

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