Mon Post #2: 100 Anniversary of the US Federal Reserve and Income Tax

(Just a reminder, don't forget to check out: MAC Marketing's version of Where's Waldo")

December 23rd, 1913 is a date which will live in infamy. 

That was the day when the Federal Reserve Act was pushed through Congress. Many members of Congress were absent that day, and the general public was distracted with holiday preparations. 

Now we have reached the 100th anniversary of the Federal Reserve, and most Americans still don't know what it actually is or how it functions. 

But understanding the Federal Reserve is absolutely critical, because the Fed is at the very heart of our economic problems. Since the Federal Reserve was created, there have been 18 recessions or depressions, the value of the U.S. dollar has declined by 98 percent, and the U.S. national debt has gotten more than 5000 times larger. 

This insidious debt-based financial system has literally made debt slaves out of all of us, and it is systematically destroying the bright future that our children and our grandchildren were supposed to have. If nothing is done, we are inevitably heading for a massive amount of economic pain as a nation. 

The following are 100 reasons (courtesy of MND) as to why the Federal Reserve should be shut down forever…

• #1 We like to think that we have a government "of the people, by the people, for the people", but the truth is that an unelected, unaccountable group of central planners has far more power over our economy than anyone else in our society does. 

• #2 The Federal Reserve is actually "independent" of the government. In fact, the Federal Reserve has argued vehemently in federal court that it is "not an agency" of the federal government and therefore not subject to the Freedom of Information Act  

•  #3The Federal Reserve openly admits that the 12 regional Federal Reserve banks are organized "much like private corporations".

• #4 The regional Federal Reserve banks issue shares of stock to the "member banks" that own them.

• #5 100% of the shareholders of the Federal Reserve are private banks. The U.S. government owns zero shares.

• #6 The Federal Reserve is not an agency of the federal government, but it has been given power to regulate our banks and financial institutions. This should not be happening.

• #7 According to Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, the U.S. Congress is the one that is supposed to have the authority to "coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures". So why is the Federal Reserve doing it?

• #8 If you look at a "U.S. dollar", it actually says "Federal Reserve note" at the top. In the financial world, a "note" is an instrument of debt.

• #9 In 1963, President John F. Kennedy issued Executive Order 11110 which authorized the U.S. Treasury to issue "United States notes" which were created by the U.S. government directly and not by the Federal Reserve. He was assassinated shortly thereafter.

• #10 Many of the debt-free United States notes issued under President Kennedy are still in circulation today.

• #11 The Federal Reserve determines what levels some of the most important interest rates in our system are going to be set at. In a free market system, the free market would determine those interest rates.

• #12 The Federal Reserve has become so powerful that it is now known as "the fourth branch of government".

• #13 The greatest period of economic growth in U.S. history was when there was no central bank.

• #14 The Federal Reserve was designed to be a perpetual debt machine. The bankers that designed it intended to trap the U.S. government in a perpetual debt spiral from which it could never possibly escape. Since the Federal Reserve was established 100 years ago, the U.S. national debt has gotten more than 5000 times larger.

• #15 A permanent federal income tax was established the exact same year that the Federal Reserve was created. This was not a coincidence. In order to pay for all of the government debt that the Federal Reserve would create, a federal income tax was necessary. The whole idea was to transfer wealth from our pockets to the federal government and from the federal government to the bankers.

• #16 The period prior to 1913 (when there was no income tax) was the greatest period of economic growth in U.S. history.

• #17 Today, the U.S. tax code is about 13 miles long.

• #18 From the time that the Federal Reserve was created until now, the U.S. dollar has lost 98 percent of its value.

• #19 From the time that President Nixon took us off the gold standard until now, the U.S. dollar has lost 83 percent of its value.

• #20 During the 100 years before the Federal Reserve was created, the U.S. economy rarely had any problems with inflation. But since the Federal Reserve was established, the U.S. economy has experienced constant and never ending inflation.

• #21 In the century before the Federal Reserve was created, the average annual rate of inflation was about half a percent. In the century since the Federal Reserve was created, the average annual rate of inflation has been about 3.5 percent.

• #22 The Federal Reserve has stripped the middle class of trillions of dollars of wealth through the hidden tax of inflation.

• #23 The size of M1 has nearly doubled since 2008 thanks to the reckless money printing that the Federal Reserve has been doing.

• #24 The Federal Reserve has been starting to behave like the Weimar Republic, and we all remember how that ended.

• #25 The Federal Reserve has been consistently lying to us about the level of inflation in our economy. If the inflation rate was still calculated the same way that it was back when Jimmy Carter was president, the official rate of inflation would be somewhere between 8 and 10 percent today.

• #26 Since the Federal Reserve was created, there have been 18 distinct recessions or depressions: 1918, 1920, 1923, 1926, 1929, 1937, 1945, 1949, 1953, 1958, 1960, 1969, 1973, 1980, 1981, 1990, 2001, 2008.

• #27 Within 20 years of the creation of the Federal Reserve, the U.S. economy was plunged into the Great Depression.

• #28 The Federal Reserve created the conditions that caused the stock market crash of 1929, and even Ben Bernanke admits that the response by the Fed to that crisis made the Great Depression even worse than it should have been.

• #29 The "easy money" policies of former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan set the stage for the great financial crisis of 2008.

• #30 Without the Federal Reserve, the "subprime mortgage meltdown" would probably never have happened.

• #31 If you can believe it, there have been 10 different economic recessions since 1950. The Federal Reserve created the "dotcom bubble", the Federal Reserve created the "housing bubble" and now it has created the largest bond bubble in the history of the planet.

• #32 According to an official government report, the Federal Reserve made 16.1 trillion dollars in secret loans to the big banks during the last financial crisis. The following is a list of loan recipients that was taken directly from page 131 of the report...

Citigroup - $2.513 trillion

Morgan Stanley - $2.041 trillion

Merrill Lynch - $1.949 trillion

Bank of America - $1.344 trillion

Barclays PLC - $868 billion

Bear Sterns - $853 billion

Goldman Sachs - $814 billion

Royal Bank of Scotland - $541 billion

JP Morgan Chase - $391 billion

Deutsche Bank - $354 billion

UBS - $287 billion

Credit Suisse - $262 billion

Lehman Brothers - $183 billion

Bank of Scotland - $181 billion

BNP Paribas - $175 billion

Wells Fargo - $159 billion

Dexia - $159 billion

Wachovia - $142 billion

Dresdner Bank - $135 billion

Societe Generale - $124 billion

"All Other Borrowers" - $2.639 trillion

• #33 The Federal Reserve also paid those big banks $659.4 million in "fees" to help "administer" those secret loans.

• #34 During the last financial crisis, big European banks were allowed to borrow an "unlimited" amount of money from the Federal Reserve at ultra-low interest rates.

• #35 The "easy money" policies of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke have created the largest financial bubble this nation has ever seen, and this has set the stage for the great financial crisis that we are rapidly approaching.

• #36 Since late 2008, the size of the Federal Reserve balance sheet has grown from less than a trillion dollars to more than 4 trillion dollars. This is complete and utter insanity.

• #37 During the quantitative easing era, the value of the financial securities that the Fed has accumulated is greater than the total amount of publicly held debt that the U.S. government accumulated from the presidency of George Washington through the end of the presidency of Bill Clinton.

• #38 Overall, the Federal Reserve now holds more than 32 percent of all 10 year equivalents, and that percentage is rising by about 0.3 percent each week.

• #39 Quantitative easing creates financial bubbles, and when quantitative easing ends those bubbles tend to deflate rapidly.

• #40 Most of the new money created by quantitative easing has ended up in the hands of the very wealthy.

• #41 According to a prominent Federal Reserve insider, quantitative easing has been one giant "subsidy" for Wall Street banks.

• #42 As one CNBC article recently stated, we are seeing absolutely rampant inflation in "stocks and bonds and art and Ferraris".

• #43 Donald Trump once made the following statement about quantitative easing: "People like me will benefit from this."

• #44 Most people have never heard about this, but a very interesting study conducted for the Bank of England shows that quantitative easing actually increases the gap between the wealthy and the poor.

• #45 The gap between the top one percent and the rest of the country is now the greatest that it has been since the 1920s.

• #46 The mainstream media has sold quantitative easing to the American public as an "economic stimulus program", but the truth is that the percentage of Americans that have a job has actually gone down since quantitative easing first began.

• #47 The Federal Reserve is supposed to be able to guide the nation toward "full employment", but the reality of the matter is that an all-time record 102 million working age Americans do not have a job right now. That number has risen by about 27 million since the year 2000.

• #48 For years, the projections of economic growth by the Federal Reserve have consistently overstated the strength of the U.S. economy. But every single time, the mainstream media continues to report that these numbers are "reliable" even though all they actually represent is wishful thinking.

• #49 The Federal Reserve system fuels the growth of government, and the growth of government fuels the growth of the Federal Reserve system. Since 1970, federal spending has grown nearly 12 times as rapidly as median household income has.

• #50 The Federal Reserve is supposed to look out for the health of all U.S. banks, but the truth is that they only seem to be concerned about the big ones. In 1985, there were more than 18,000 banks in the United States. Today, there are only 6,891 left.

• #51 The six largest banks in the United States (JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley) have collectively gotten 37 percent larger over the past five years.

• #52 The U.S. banking system has 14.4 trillion dollars in total assets. The six largest banks now account for 67 percent of those assets and all of the other banks account for only 33 percent of those assets.

• #53 The five largest banks now account for 42 percent of all loans in the United States.

• #54 We were told that the purpose of quantitative easing is to help "stimulate the economy", but today the Federal Reserve is actually paying the big banks not to lend out 1.8 trillion dollars in "excess reserves" that they have parked at the Fed.

• #55 The Federal Reserve has allowed an absolutely gigantic derivatives bubble to inflate which could destroy our financial system at any moment. Right now, four of the "too big to fail" banks each have total exposure to derivatives that is well in excess of 40 trillion dollars.

• #56 The total exposure that Goldman Sachs has to derivatives contracts is more than 381 times greater than their total assets.

• #57 Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has a track record of failure that would make the Chicago Cubs look good.

• #58 The secret November 1910 gathering at Jekyll Island, Georgia during which the plan for the Federal Reserve was hatched was attended by U.S. Senator Nelson W. Aldrich, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Department A.P. Andrews and a whole host of representatives from the upper crust of the Wall Street banking establishment.

• #59 The Federal Reserve was created by the big Wall Street banks and for the benefit of the big Wall Street banks.

• #60 In 1913, Congress was promised that if the Federal Reserve Act was passed that it would eliminate the business cycle.

• #61 There has never been a true comprehensive audit of the Federal Reserve since it was created back in 1913.

• #62 The Federal Reserve system has been described as "the biggest Ponzi scheme in the history of the world".

• #63 The following comes directly from the Fed's official mission statement: "To provide the nation with a safer, more flexible, and more stable monetary and financial system." Without a doubt, the Federal Reserve has failed in those tasks dramatically.

• #64 The Fed decides what the target rate of inflation should be, what the target rate of unemployment should be and what the size of the money supply is going to be. This is quite similar to the "central planning" that goes on in communist nations, but very few people in our government seem upset by this.

• #65 A couple of years ago, Federal Reserve officials walked into one bank in Oklahoma and demanded that they take down all the Bible verses and all the Christmas buttons that the bank had been displaying.

• #66 The Federal Reserve has taken some other very frightening steps in recent years. For example, back in 2011 the Federal Reserve announced plans to identify "key bloggers" and to monitor "billions of conversations" about the Fed on Facebook, Twitter, forums and blogs. Someone at the Fed will almost certainly end up reading this article.

• #67 Thanks to this endless debt spiral that we are trapped in, a massive amount of money is transferred out of our pockets and into the pockets of the ultra-wealthy each year. Incredibly, the U.S. government spent more than 415 billion dollars just on interest on the national debt in 2013.

• #68 In September, the average rate of interest on the government’s marketable debt was 1.981 percent. In January 2000, the average rate of interest on the government’s marketable debt was 6.620 percent. If we got back to that level today, we would be paying more than a trillion dollars a year just in interest on the national debt and it would collapse our entire financial system.

• #69 The American people are being killed by compound interest but most of them don't even understand what it is. Albert Einstein once made the following statement about compound interest… "Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it … he who doesn’t … pays it."

• #70 Most Americans have absolutely no idea where money comes from. The truth is that the Federal Reserve just creates it out of thin air. The following is how I have previously described how money is normally created by the Fed in our system… When the U.S. government decides that it wants to spend another billion dollars that it does not have, it does not print up a billion dollars. Rather, the U.S. government creates a bunch of U.S. Treasury bonds (debt) and takes them over to the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve creates a billion dollars out of thin air and exchanges them for the U.S. Treasury bonds.

• #71 What does the Federal Reserve do with those U.S. Treasury bonds? They end up getting auctioned off to the highest bidder. But this entire process actually creates more debt than it does money… The U.S. Treasury bonds that the Federal Reserve receives in exchange for the money it has created out of nothing are auctioned off through the Federal Reserve system. But wait. There is a problem. Because the U.S. government must pay interest on the Treasury bonds, the amount of debt that has been created by this transaction is greater than the amount of money that has been created. So where will the U.S. government get the money to pay that debt? Well, the theory is that we can get money to circulate through the economy really, really fast and tax it at a high enough rate that the government will be able to collect enough taxes to pay the debt. But that never actually happens, does it? And the creators of the Federal Reserve understood this as well. They understood that the U.S. government would not have enough money to both run the government and service the national debt. They knew that the U.S. government would have to keep borrowing even more money in an attempt to keep up with the game.

• #72 Of course the U.S. government could actually create money and spend it directly into the economy without the Federal Reserve being involved at all. But then we wouldn't be 17 trillion dollars in debt and that wouldn't serve the interests of the bankers at all.

• #73 The following is what Thomas Edison once had to say about our absolutely insane debt-based financial system… That is to say, under the old way any time we wish to add to the national wealth we are compelled to add to the national debt. Now, that is what Henry Ford wants to prevent. He thinks it is stupid, and so do I, that for the loan of $30,000,000 of their own money the people of the United States should be compelled to pay $66,000,000 — that is what it amounts to, with interest. People who will not turn a shovelful of dirt nor contribute a pound of material will collect more money from the United States than will the people who supply the material and do the work. That is the terrible thing about interest. In all our great bond issues the interest is always greater than the principal. All of the great public works cost more than twice the actual cost, on that account. Under the present system of doing business we simply add 120 to 150 per cent, to the stated cost. But here is the point: If our nation can issue a dollar bond, it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good makes the bill good.

• #74 The United States now has the largest national debt in the history of the world, and we are stealing more than 100 million dollars from our children and our grandchildren every single hour of every single day in a desperate attempt to keep the debt spiral going.

• #75 Thomas Jefferson once stated that if he could add just one more amendment to the U.S. Constitution it would be a ban on all government borrowing…. I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government to the genuine principles of its Constitution; I mean an additional article, taking from the federal government the power of borrowing.

• #76 At this moment, the U.S. national debt is sitting at $17,251,528,475,994.19. If we had followed the advice of Thomas Jefferson, it would be sitting at zero.

• #77 When the Federal Reserve was first established, the U.S. national debt was sitting at about 2.9 billion dollars. On average, we have been adding more than that to the national debt every single day since Obama has been in the White House.

• #78 We are on pace to accumulate more new debt under the 8 years of the Obama administration than we did under all of the other presidents in all of U.S. history combined.

• #79 If all of the new debt that has been accumulated since John Boehner became Speaker of the House had been given directly to the American people instead, every household in America would have been able to buy a new truck.

• #80 Between 2008 and 2012, U.S. government debt grew by 60.7 percent, but U.S. GDP only grew by a total of about 8.5 percent during that entire time period.

• #81 Since 2007, the U.S. debt to GDP ratio has increased from 66.6 percent to 101.6 percent.

• #82 According to the U.S. Treasury, foreigners hold approximately 5.6 trillion dollars of our debt.

• #83 The amount of U.S. government debt held by foreigners is about 5 times larger than it was just a decade ago.

• #84 As I have written about previously, if the U.S. national debt was reduced to a stack of one dollar bills it would circle the earth at the equator 45 times.

• #85 If Bill Gates gave every single penny of his entire fortune to the U.S. government, it would only cover the U.S. budget deficit for 15 days.

• #86 Sometimes we forget just how much money a trillion dollars is. If you were alive when Jesus Christ was born and you spent one million dollars every single day since that point, you still would not have spent one trillion dollars by now.

• #87 If right this moment you went out and started spending one dollar every single second, it would take you more than 31,000 years to spend one trillion dollars.

• #88 In addition to all of our debt, the U.S. government has also accumulated more than 200 trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities. So where in the world will all of that money come from?

• #89 The greatest damage that quantitative easing has been causing to our economy is the fact that it is destroying worldwide faith in the U.S. dollar and in U.S. debt. If the rest of the world stops using our dollars and stops buying our debt, we are going to be in a massive amount of trouble.

• #90 Over the past several years, the Federal Reserve has been monetizing a staggering amount of U.S. government debt even though Ben Bernanke once promised that he would never do this.

• #91 China recently announced that they are going to quit stockpiling more U.S. dollars. If the Federal Reserve was not recklessly printing money, this would probably not have happened.

• #92 Most Americans have no idea that one of our most famous presidents was absolutely obsessed with getting rid of central banking in the United States. The following is a February 1834 quote by President Andrew Jackson about the evils of central banking…. I too have been a close observer of the doings of the Bank of the United States. I have had men watching you for a long time, and am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the Bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the Bank and annul its charter I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves. I have determined to rout you out and, by the Eternal, (bringing his fist down on the table) I will rout you out.

• #93 There are plenty of possible alternative financial systems, but at this point all 187 nations that belong to the IMF have a central bank. Are we supposed to believe that this is just some sort of a bizarre coincidence.

• #94 The capstone of the global central banking system is an organization known as the Bank for International Settlements. The following is how I described this organization in a previous article… An immensely powerful international organization that most people have never even heard of secretly controls the money supply of the entire globe. It is called the Bank for International Settlements, and it is the central bank of central banks. It is located in Basel, Switzerland, but it also has branches in Hong Kong and Mexico City. It is essentially an unelected, unaccountable central bank of the world that has complete immunity from taxation and from national laws. Even Wikipedia admits that "it is not accountable to any single national government." The Bank for International Settlements was used to launder money for the Nazis during World War II, but these days the main purpose of the BIS is to guide and direct the centrally-planned global financial system. Today, 58 global central banks belong to the BIS, and it has far more power over how the U.S. economy (or any other economy for that matter) will perform over the course of the next year than any politician does. Every two months, the central bankers of the world gather in Basel for another "Global Economy Meeting". During those meetings, decisions are made which affect every man, woman and child on the planet, and yet none of us have any say in what goes on. The Bank for International Settlements is an organization that was founded by the global elite and it operates for the benefit of the global elite, and it is intended to be one of the key cornerstones of the emerging one world economic system.

• #95 The borrower is the servant of the lender, and the Federal Reserve has turned all of us into debt slaves.

• #96 Debt is a form of social control, and the global elite use all of this debt to dominate all the rest of us. 40 years ago, the total amount of debt in our system (all government debt, all business debt, all consumer debt, etc.) was sitting at about 2 trillion dollars. Today, the grand total exceeds 56 trillion dollars.

• #97 Unless something dramatic is done, our children and our grandchildren will be debt slaves for their entire lives as they service our debts and pay for our mistakes.

• #98 Now that you know this information, you are responsible for doing something about it.

• #99 Congress has the power to shut down the Federal Reserve any time that they would like. But right now most of our politicians fully endorse the current system, and nothing is ever going to happen until the American people start demanding change.

• #100 The design of the Federal Reserve system was flawed from the very beginning. If something is not done very rapidly, it is inevitable that our entire financial system is going to suffer an absolutely nightmarish collapse.

Finally, an animated explanation of the US Federal Reserve and why today's date is significant.

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Mon Post #1: A Festivus for the Restivus

Ahh the rush of the holidays.  A couple of posts for you today, but we start with a whimsical one. Did you know today is Festivus?

Festivus is a well-celebrated Seinfeld parody that has become a secular holiday celebrated on December 23. It serves as an alternative to participating in the pressures and commercialism of the Christmas holiday season.

Originally a family tradition of scriptwriter Dan O'Keefe working on the American sitcom Seinfeld, the holiday entered popular culture after it was made the focus of a 1997 episode of the program.

The holiday's celebration, as it was shown on Seinfeld, includes a Festivus dinner, an unadorned aluminum "Festivus pole," practices such as the "Airing of Grievances" and "Feats of Strength," and the labeling of easily explainable events as "Festivus miracles."

The episode refers to it as "a Festivus for the rest of us", referencing its non-commercial aspect. It has also been described as a "parody holiday festival" and as a form of playful consumer resistance.

Some atheists advocate Festivus because of its lack of religious significance, and have joined other people in erecting "festivus poles" alongside public diys of the crèche of Christmas and the menorah of Hanukkah.

Let the airing of grievances begin.

Happy Festivus everyone!

(Don't forget to check out: MAC Marketing's version of Where's Waldo")

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MAC Marketing's version of 'Where's Waldo'?

Remember the MAC Marketing crossword puzzle? We made a post about it back on June 11th, 2013.

Hilarity ensued over in the comments section of one of Vancouver's leading real estate chat sites when Vancouver Condo Info advised that the infamous MAC Marketing Solutions (you remember them... the condo marketing firm exposed for lying to and deceiving the public on TV) had come out with a Vancouver real estate-themed crossword puzzle contest to celebrate their 50th contributing article to the publication New Condo Guide.

The post generated a slew of responses on VCI, most making suggestions for MAC about potential crossword clues and answers:

One VCI contributor even crafted his own version of the crossword.

Well now MAC Marketing seems to have another game for us to play. MAC's 2013 holiday greeting is out and it not only reminds us of their summer time crossword puzzle, but also of the famous  "Where's Waldo" puzzles. 

Simply add numbers to this gallery of MAC personalities and we can play "where are the 2013 MAC scandal employees." 

(click on image to enlarge):

In case you have forgotten who those employees are, let's recap. First there is the infamous 'Chris Lee'.

Chris is fake name for the MAC Marketing sales assistant who, along with MAC administrative assistant Amanda Lee, presented themselves as house-hunting sisters to CBC-TV and CTV-BC.  Here is a screenshot of 'Chris' from the CBC story:

After the scandal we noted she was still working for MAC. Can you spot her in the MAC holiday greeting?

Next there is Amanda Lee:

Here is a CTV screenshot of Amanda next to one of Amanda Lee's Facebook photos (which initially caused us to question the whole deception): 

'Chris' and Amanda claimed they are primary scouting for a condo in advance of their parents arrival from China for the Lunar New Year.  Supposedly their parents were coming to help them purchase a condo.

Once exposed, CTV pulled no punches in capturing the essence of their story in one shot:

In addition to Chris and Amanda, there was also the older blonde MAC sales rep who quarterbacked the fake condo buying sisters through the Maddox sales centre for the TV deception. Here is a screenshot from the CBC story:

Is she in the MAC holiday greeting?

Let's not forget the MAC sales director who possibly set up the photo shoot, Melanie Briggs. CBC-TV reporter Matthew Black advises Briggs was supposed to be in attendance at the media spot but was a no-show. Was she involved in the pre-planning of this deception?

For bonus points you can hunt for Janet Frost, MAC Marketing's Director of Sales. In an unrelated episode, Frost was suspended for 21 days by the RECBC for misconduct while associated with Maverick Real Estate (see this post and this post).

You could also check to see if Sharon Matsumoto is there. Ms. Matsumoto was the subject of an April 15th, 2013 RECBC disciplinary decision. We posted about the decision and the fact that google showed numerous links between Ms. Matsumoto and MAC Marketing. Presumably she isn't currently with MAC, but who knows for sure?

Last, but not least, there is MAC Marketing President Cameron MacNeill:

In the Vancouver Sun McNeill stated:

“I don’t know all the details about what precisely happened that day. I want to get to the bottom of this. I don’t know if it was an overzealous employee or if this happened in a formalized way.”

All-in-all it looks like great holiday fun as you hunt for these seven leading 2013 MAC Marketing personalities. How many could you 'find'?

Hopefully 2014 will bring some results on the RECBC investigation into the scandal and we can find out answers to the questions McNeill himself asked. Because we're sure if all this happened in a formalized' way, condo buyers would want to know… especially if the employees involved in any 'formalized' deception are still active in selling real estate.

For those who may have missed it, here is the CBC coverage of the scandal:

 

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Bank of Canada Governor Poloz continues to insist housing will have 'soft landing'

A portion of an interview between Bloomberg News and Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz on December 18th, 2013.

Right from the first question about the housing bubble you have to raise your eyebrows as the reporter begins with the premise that Canada is "immune" to a bubble. The hubris is palpable:

Q: Other economies have seen housing crashes. Canada’s home prices seem overvalued. What makes Canada immune to a bubble?

A: “First of all, puffing up the household sector, and therefore housing and cars and stuff, that was exactly one of the consequences of the easy monetary policy.”

“When you had exports actually caved in, and the only way to fill that in was to cut rates and see who would do the spending. The household sector did the spending, they did the borrowing. So they did the heavy lifting and that made a milder recession. So usually, a year or two later, you’re done. You don’t get the accumulated side effects. Here, we’re going into our fifth year and the accumulated side effects are starting to get bigger, and that is, gradually, more and more house-buying and indebtedness, and the risk that prices have gone above their fundamentals somehow. I won’t get into a debate about how much that might be, because there’s a lot of different methods to do that. It’s a very hard thing to do.”

“But the important point is that that’s a natural consequence; we were aware of it all along. And secondly, that it went very gradually. A bubble usually doesn’t look like that. If you look at those charts that people look at, the level sounds like a big number. However, it’s been going up gradually for six years in a row. Usually, when you have a bubble, it looks like the left-hand side of an Eiffel Tower. It goes up really fast, and then you can predict, well, that bubble’s going to break, you’re going to get the right-hand side of the Eiffel Tower. If you go back to 1986, 87, 88, 89, that’s what you saw. So there’s a big difference in level versus the dynamic, I think.”

“So can this thing have a soft landing? Yeah, all it has to do is gradually wind down in the opposite way through judicious monetary policy and continued growth and the fundamentals keep improving.”

Q: Are you talking about house prices or debt levels?

A: “All of those things. Those are the things we look at to ask are the household imbalances becoming too extreme. The house-price chart, relative to rent or relative to income, they’ve just gone up very, very gradually over the last six years. So soft landing is your best bet from that kind of situation. That’s historically the way it looks.”

Q: But the debt-income level is still rising. Doesn’t it need to decline at some point?

A: “Or flatten, would be the more likely scenario. And that could come from increased growth in the economy and therefore incomes. It’s probably the most likely way it would come. It doesn’t need the numerator to do the correcting.”

“We have significant slowing in both the regular credit and overall housing spending until we got late in the summer and people took advantage of low rates and said we better get in there. We believe that’s a pulling-forward, takes two or three months for us to make sure that’s true. The question you raise is a perfectly valid one, but we don’t have enough data today to make a judgment. We just won’t extrapolate it. We look to our structure, and talk to people, and what are banks seeing, etc., and we’re pretty comfortable with our soft-landing belief.”

Q: Will you be the Governor responsible for the longest pause in interest rates since the 1940s?

A: “We had never seen conditions like we faced in 2008-09. We had never seen that before. The bubble-crater story, the closest thing we’ve got to compare is the 1930s. And I’ll argue that policy making was far smarter this time around than they were in the 1930s. Good for all of us. Coordinated, other countries doing it, everybody’s doing it. And so that buffered the downside, and it could have been much worse. People lose sight of that every day. It’s been enough years that people think, why haven’t you done something more? Well, we still have that pull from that crater underneath us. We point to those things where natural growth so far has failed us. Growth is all-induced growth. That’s policy doing that for us. Let’s not forget that. As we see those animal spirits becoming more normalized, then we’ll be able to withdraw that and we’ll be happy again.”

“I can’t make a statement around what you said. It’ll take whatever it takes. We’re not going to do something silly here just because it’s been a long time. We’ve got a job to do. We’re going to do what we can to make sure that inflation gets back to normal, the economy gets back to normal, and young folks get their first jobs, whatever. There are soft spots in the economy, even though we’ve had a better experience than many other countries, it’s not ideal.”

All it (the non-existent bubble) has to do is gradually wind down in the opposite way through judicious monetary policy and continued growth and the fundamentals keep improving.

Easy Peasy, eh?.

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Delta Police officer removes disturbing tweet about rifle training for school liaison duties

Two days ago, on the weekend, we posted about a rather odd twitter exchange with a member of the Delta Police Department.

This past weekend was the one year anniversary of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., a tragedy in which Adam Lanza, 20, shot his way into the school he had once attended and murdered 20 first-graders (all aged six and seven), and six adults.

On the very weekend a continent paused to remember this horrific event, Delta Police School Liaison Cst Mike Atkinson (@CstAtkinson) sent out this tweet:

Atkinson's tweet says, "In an effort to update my skills as a School Liaison Officer I have just completed a 5 day course improving my rifle skills."

Umm…. so just how are marksman 'rifle' skills relevant to being a school liaison? We sought clarification.

We asked if the Cst. was preparing for a Canadian Sandy Hook (in light of the timing of his tweet):

Cst. Atkinson's reply, "we update all of our skills whenever we can. Including ones to protect our schools.":

Now… we aren't anti-gun.  Far from it. Our police should be well trained and well prepared. And responsible citizens should be allowed to own firearms. But even from a pro-gun perspective, you have to raise an eyebrow at the suggestion the Delta Police are training their School Liaison officers with rifles to, in the words of Cst. Atkinson, "protect our schools."

The overwhelming impression was that Delta Police were arming their School Liaison officer's with rifles and promoting this fact on the one year anniversary of the Sandy Hook School massacre.

Since our post, the Delta Police media liaison has reached out to us via twitter and stated, "Understandably, our tweets have caused you concern" and the tweet from Cst. Atkinson has been deleted from his twitter feed.

Was this simply a careless, unthinking comment from a member of the DPD school liaison program?  Or does it belie something more?

Questions, perhaps, for another day.

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WilMar Heritage Proposal falls through

Last week we told you that WilMar mansion, after several years of languishing on the real estate market, had finally sold.

A renovation and redevelopment plan which was to include the construction of five new homes on the extensive property (while seeing the historic Tudor structure preserved) was tabled and it allowed a sale to be brokered.

Or at least, that was the plan.

Tonight we learn that the proposal to rehabilitate the grand old Tudor mansion at 2050 Southwest Marine Dr. and add infill through a heritage revitalization agreement with the City of Vancouver has fallen through. From the Vancouver Courier:

Developer Norm Porter of Beech Developments was behind the proposal to restore the property. He was working on the project with developer James Evans and architect Timothy Ankenman of Ankenman Marchand Architects.

The deal to buy the property was contingent on an agreement with the city and other matters, but Porter is going through with the purchase to try to recoup money that’s been spent on the proposal.

The subjects have been cleared on the purchase and the closing date is early in the new year. Porter told the Courier he’s subdividing the property into two parcels.

“We’re subdividing it into lots, one which will retain the house for now and one that we’re able to get a lot in that’s 102-feet wide — so an estate size lot that fits into the neighbourhood, the character of the neighbourhood as it exists today,” he said.

“For now, the other home will remain. There are no guarantees because I will sell it and hopefully recover the money that I’ve spent so far. So there are no guarantees whether the buyer will restore it or choose to knock it down, but at least the opportunity will be there for someone to buy it and restore it. It’s a great house with really good bones. It’s a solid structure, but it would cost a lot of money to modernize. It hasn’t been maintained.”

Porter praised the Vancouver Foundation for giving them the time to try to make the proposal work. He also said the city’s planning department did its best to lend support and expertise.

“I don’t think there were unwilling partners. The fact is the City of Vancouver doesn’t have the policy tools to make that happen in an economically viable way,” he said.

Kent Munro, the City of Vancouver’s assistant director of planning, said through an HRA the city can offer additional density heritage revitalization agreement up to the point of the cost of preserving the heritage.

“I guess from our point of view, we offered them as much density as we could and then it got to the point where they said ‘well in our view it’s not enough and we didn’t come to an agreement,’” Munro said. “They said that the property is big enough that it can be subdivided and they felt if it was subdivided and sold off to two different people it could generate more than this development idea that they had.”

The fact the proposal hasn’t worked doesn’t mean the house is going to be demolished, Munro added, pointing out the city would be willing to work with a new owner on a proposal that would preserve the historic mansion.

In any case, he said the city often deals with development ideas that for whatever reason fall through.

“It’s a good illustration of how these issues are difficult. I think a lot of people don’t realize that it’s not easy to wave a magic wand and make these things happen. It really does have to be something that works for the city, something that works for the property owner, and something that works for the community. If any of these things aren’t there, then an idea isn’t going to work,” he said.

Porter said he thought the proposal would work out.

"As I said, we spent a lot of money and a lot of time and a lot of effort trying to make this work out and I thought it was going down the right road, but in the end I guess the real estate department at the City of Vancouver didn't really agree with the values, so they made a decision that didn't allow it to work out and there's no method of changing that decision."

Donald Luxton of Heritage Vancouver said he's still optimistic the heritage home will be saved.

"I'm absolutely optimistic. If it's on a fee simple piece of land, then there are several options — someone could buy it and use it as a single-family home, someone could go to the city and negotiate a heritage agreement that could preserve the house but maybe vary the zoning. So, yes, there are certainly options. Absolutely."

So apparently there's still time for the 'WilMar for Whisperer' campaign to work it's magic.

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Are Delta Police preparing for a Sandy Hook style school massacre in Greater Vancouver?

Your dutiful scribes had a very odd twitter exchange on the weekend, so today's post is a departure from our regular fare.

Meet Cst Mike Atkinson of the Delta Police Department.

According to his twitter profile (@CstAtkinson), Cst. Atkinson is a Delta Police School Liaison Officer. The Delta Police website says the Delta Police School Liaison Program "is designed to build a strong relationship between police and youth to influence youth in becoming responsible members of the community."

This past weekend, as people across North America paused to remember the one year anniversary of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn, Cst. Atkinson posted a very odd and disturbing tweet on his twitter account.

Atkinson's tweet says, "In an effort to update my skills as a School Liaison Officer I have just completed a 5 day course improving my rifle skills."

Ummm….

In an effort to upgrade you School Liaison skills you've just completed a 5 day course improving your 'rifle' skills?  Were we reading this correctly?  How are marksman 'rifle' skills relevant to being a school liaison?

Even more disturbing, the message was retweeted by the Delta Police media relations officer (implying support for the tweet).

So we sought clarification.  We asked if the Cst. was preparing for a Canadian Sandy Hook (in light of his not so tactful tweet on this, the one year anniversary of the massacre):

Cst. Atkinson's reply, "we update all of our skills whenever we can. Including ones to protect our schools.":

'Protect our schools'?

We spoke with a number of people about this over the weekend, parents and non-parents alike, and every single one was greatly disturbed by this tweet.

Why did the Delta Police Department sanctioned this tweet on the one year anniversary of this horrible event? Is it because our police believe a similar Sandy Hook style school massacre in the Lower Mainland is an impending threat?

Do the police have information that make marksman rifle skills a necessary component of School Liaison Officer training? Since the rifle training is a part of his School Liaison training is Cst. Atkinson bringing a rifle to school with him?

Surely this demands further scrutiny.

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Wed Post #2: 2013 Person of the Year - Time Magazine caves again

Time magazine's tradition of selecting a "Man of the Year" began in 1927, with Time editors contemplating newsworthy stories possible during a slow news week. The idea was also an attempt to remedy the editorial embarrassment earlier that year of not having aviator Charles Lindbergh on its cover following his historic trans-Atlantic flight. 

By the end of the year, it was decided that a cover story featuring Lindbergh as the Man of the Year would serve both purposes.

The guideline for choosing a person to profile has supposedly been the person (or group) who, for better or worse, had the biggest effect on the news that year.

Since 1927 individual people, classes of people, the computer ("Machine of the Year" in 1982), and "Endangered Earth" ("Planet of the Year" in 1988) have all been selected for the special year-end issue. 

Despite the magazine's frequent statements to the contrary, the designation is often regarded as an honor, and spoken of as an award or prize, simply based on many previous selections of admirable people. However Time magazine points out controversial figures such as Adolf Hitler (1938), Joseph Stalin (1939 and 1942), Nikita Khrushchev (1957) and Ayatollah Khomeini (1979) have also been granted the title for their impacts.

In 1999, the title was changed to Person of the Year. However, the only women to specifically win the renamed recognition have been "The Whistleblowers" (Cynthia Cooper, Coleen Rowley and Sherron Watkins, in 2002) and Melinda Gates (jointly with Bill Gates and Bono, in 2005).  Before that, four women were granted the title as individuals, as "Woman of the Year" – Wallis Simpson (1936), Soong May-ling (1937), Queen Elizabeth II (1952) and Corazon Aquino (1986). 

Time's choice for Person of the Year became highly politicized in 1979. As a result of the public backlash it received from the United States for naming the Ayatollah Khomeini Man of the Year in 1979, Time has shied away from using figures that are controversial in the United States. 

Time's Person of the Year 2001, immediately following the September 11, 2001 attacks, was New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani, although the stated rules of selection, the individual or group of individuals who have had the biggest effect on the year's news, made Osama bin Laden a more likely choice. 

The issue that declared Giuliani the Person of the Year included an article that mentioned Time's earlier decision to elect the Ayatollah Khomeini.  The article also discussed the 1999 rejection of Hitler as "Person of the Century." In that article Time seemed to imply that Osama bin Laden was a stronger candidate than Giuliani,  just as Adolf Hitler was a stronger candidate than Albert Einstein.

Yet despite logical arguments to the contrary, both Bin Laden Hitler were not selected.

(The December 31, 1999 issue named Albert Einstein the "Person of the Century". Franklin D. Roosevelt and Mahatma Gandhi were chosen as runners-up). 

Regrettably, since the 1979 backlash over choosing Ayatollah Khomeini, Time Magazine appears to regularly cave-in to political pressure when making their 'Person of the Year' selections.

And given the intense US government pressure on both foreign governments and the media about treating Edward Snowden as a criminal and a traitor, it comes as no surprise which way Time has gone for their 2013 selection.

This year Time has chosen Pope Francis.

Just like in 2001, Time has let us down. There is no doubt who really had the biggest effect on the year's news… and that's Edward J. Snowden.

And no amount of whitewashing will change that.

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Wed Post #1: Craigslist ad from Chinese student selling Lamborghini a fake?

About a month ago there was a bit of interest created when this Craigslist ad appeared offering a Lamborghini Murcielago LP670-4 Superveloc for sale for $388,888 (click on image to enlarge).

Said the ad:

“I'm returning to China next year after graduation so I have to sell it. Serious buyers only. Asking $388,888 firm. Will also accept trade + cash to take the car back to China. Value of trade must be $200,000 minimum. Must sell before Lunar New Year.”

To many it was another sign of the Hot Asian Money (HAM) that is credited with massively inflating property values here.  It is almost a Vancouver sport to spot Lamborghini driven by young Asian men sporting the new driver 'N' label which all people must display when the originally obtain a driver's licence.

It is the quintessential emblem that rankles regarding the whole issue of HAM. But is the November 11th Craigslist ad, which has gone somewhat viral since it's posting, legit?

Ian Young, who writes a blog for the South China Morning Post from Vancouver called "The Hongcouver", says evidence now suggests the ad is a fake.

Emails to the two addresses listed with the posting now go unanswered. However, the University of British Columbia’s student newspaper said it received a response from someone who claimed that the ad had been posted by a friend as a prank.

GTSpirit (a sports car website which extensively covered the Craigslist ad) eventually published a retraction of sorts: “We have since found out that the car is not really for sale and was instead posted by a friend of the former owner.”

Ah well. Purple isn't really our colour anyways.

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Is the stage being set for a massive Bitcoin crash?

Last week we talked about Bitcoins and real estate. Bitcoins, it seems, are everywhere in the news.

This week the Los Angeles Times had an article "Cashing in on the bitcoin boom." Over on Bloomberg there's a good clip of an interview titled "12 Days of Bitcoin" series. The New York Times is all over bitcoins, and the Washington Post has been writing about them for years now.

So what the hell is a Bitcoin?

Basically, bitcoins are a type of virtual money. They can be used to purchase goods and services. And they only exist online: when you trade dollars for bitcoins, you don't get a rectangular piece of paper to put in your wallet. Instead, you receive an encoded computer file, which tells the bitcoin computer network how many bitcoins you own.

Looking into the Bitcoin phenomenon, you can't help but cast a suspicious eye.

They've gained significant notoriety for frequently being used to buy illegal goods and services. And the apparent value of a bitcoin seems to be swing very rapidly -- earlier this year, the dollar value of a bitcoin went from $260 to $63 in a flash. Last week it went from $1,160 to $560 in a day. This week Bitcoin values have recovered to the mid $900 level.

They are currently a volatility lover's wet dream. Since October 29th, 2013 they've skyrocketed from $211 to the current $940 with massive swings in between.

So what's going on here? What is it about bitcoins that makes them so useful for buying illegal drugs, and why does it seem like people are making a profit just by owning a few?

As with so many things these days, the story behind bitcoins is all about computers. We need to take a quick detour here, away from transactions, and towards computer networking.

As AL.com explains, it's like Napster

The key concept one needs to understand in order to understand bitcoins is the "peer-to-peer," or "P2P" network.

Peer-to-peer networking first captured the public interest in the 1990s, when college students used Napster to download music from each other. As another example, the file sharing service BitTorrent is powered by a P2P network.

Most internet-based services today rely on the client-server model. When you want to access a  site, your computer (the "client") sends a request to our server for permission to download our content. Millions of clients are able to contact one central server in order to access the site.

The iTunes Store runs on a client-server model: each individual consumer (client) buys music from Apple's central content hub (server). In contrast, Napster let music listeners connect to one another directly, so friends could download each others' music libraries using peer-to-peer network connections.

Likewise, the bitcoin system is powered by a peer-to-peer network. Instead of one central server keeping track of all purchases, buyers and sellers that use bitcoin connect to one another directly.

That makes bitcoin purchases essentially impossible to track -- perfect for consumers looking to buy something anonymously.

Back to money

At the same time, that lack of a central server also contributes to bitcoins' other newsworthy characteristic: huge swings in their value.

The U.S. dollar has a central server -- it's called the Federal Reserve. The Fed has tools it can use to help keep the value of a dollar relatively stable over time: it can either print dollars to prevent prices from falling, or take dollars out of the system to keep prices from rising too quickly.

Bitcoins aren't backed by a central bank. In fact, the global supply of bitcoins is controlled by a computer program. (There are about 12 million bitcoins in existence today.) That leaves their value vulnerable to quick changes in consumer demand. It's how the price of a bitcoin can change from $1,160 to $560 in a day.

So why would anyone buy a bitcoin? Some see actual value in bitcoins as a means for making anonymous purchases online (although unhappy governments will likely continue to challenge such activity). Others, like the Washington Post's Timothy Lee, see the bitcoin's "long-term potential" as a technological opportunity, rather than a new way to pay.

Bitcoin as an investment? Enter at your own risk. Former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan - a polarizing figure to be sure, and a biased contributor in this arena - told Bloomberg,

"You have to really stretch your imagination to infer what the intrinsic value of Bitcoin is. I haven’t been able to do it. Maybe somebody else can."

Business Insider's Joe Weisenthal puts it another way. "If I had to guess, I'd still guess that the price of a bitcoin is still much more likely to go to zero than to have any durable value out into the future," he says. "At this point, I have zero idea what a 'fair' price for Bitcoin is."

Which brings us to an interesting article over on Zero hedge and, specifically, this patent application:

JPMorgan has submitted a patent which appears to set the scene for a competing centralized network to Bitcoin. As LetsTalkBitcoin noted first, the "Method and system for processing internet payments using the electronic funds transfer network," states that Chase's technology is a "new paradigm." Moreover that it permits the creation of "virtual cash" (also referred to as "web cash") with a "real-time digital exchange of value."

According to eCredit daily:

Imagine paying for some product in a transaction directly with the seller that doesn’t include a costly third-party fee or the revelation of a personal account number — the current components that comprise credit card and debit card purchases. Imagine this system with a “real-time digital exchange of value.” And imagine that you can archive all the transactions in a personal digital wallet, with its own “Internet Pay Anyone (IPA)” account and inherent safeguards built-in, something that you could call “Virtual Private Lockbox (VPL),” according to JPMorgan’s patent.

If this “web cash” system — as JPMorgan Chase calls it — seems familiar, it should. It smacks of the peer-to-peer transactions of bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies that increasingly are making the world’s biggest banks uneasy about the future of e-commerce.

The patent, first revealed by LetsTalkBitcoin.com, is a fascinating look into JPMorgan’s veiled outlook on the evolving but growing bitcoin universe, and other more widely-accepted payment systems.

JPMorgan’s proposed system offers another eerily familiar component, which seemingly mimics “blockchain,” a publicly available, permanent ledger of bitcoin transactions.

Without naming the virtual currency or any competing payments system by name, the bank takes a swipe at the crytocurrency model.

“None of the emerging efforts to date have gotten more than a toehold in the market place and momentum continues to build in favor of credit cards,” according to Chase’s patent application published by The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). It was filed August 5th, 2013.

JPMorgan Chase sees “a new marketplace” emerging for “low dollar, high volume, real-time payments with payment surety for both consumers and producers.”

As LetsTalkBitcoin.com points out, “Bitcoin has also been ballyhooed for it use with micro-payments and payments under ten dollars due to its zero to negligible fee structure.”

JPMorgan Chase: “The present invention further enables small dollar financial transactions, allows for the creation of ‘web cash’ as well as provides facilities for customer service and record-keeping.”

Let's Talk Bitcoin observes:

…The present invention represents a new paradigm for effectuating electronic payments that leverages existing platforms, conventional payment infrastructures and currently available web-based technology to enable e-commerce in both the virtual and physical marketplace. The concept provides a safe, sound, and secure method that allows users (consumers) to shop on the Internet, pay bills, and pay anyone virtually anywhere, all without the consumer having to share account number information with the payee. Merchants receive immediate payment confirmation through the Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) network so they can ship their product with confidence that the payment has already been received. The present invention further enables small dollar financial transactions, allows for the creation of “web cash” as well as provides facilities for customer service and record-keeping…”

I view this technology and patent application as an overwhelming good thing. Bitcoin is driving Innovation. It has been said that credit cards and the legacy banking system in use today was never meant for use over the internet. Chase’s updated Internet Pay Anyone technology appears to come head to head with Bitcoin.

While it remains to be seen if this technology is a “Bitcoin Killer,” other players such as eBay/PayPal (which have been riding under Bitcoin’s coattails through marketing gimmicks) ought to pay close attention to this emerging technology. If Bitcoin does get a “toehold” in the marketplace, we just might see this technology activated.

And if that patent is brought to life, Bitcoin won't simply lose half it's value in a day.  It will crash from $1,000 to $1 in the blink of an eye.

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Median selling price in Richmond drops below $1 million to $990,000?

Over on Vancouver Condo Info, the comments section draws attention to an article in the current edition of the local newspaper, the Richmond Review.

Apparently on pg. 22 (the article doesn't appear to be online) there is a piece titled "Home sales slow as prices ease".

Contributor 'Son of Ponzi' says the article claimes the median selling price in Richmond has dropped 6.5% in the past month, falling below the $1 million mark to $990,000.

Horrors! Didn't we use to call Richmond 'HAM central'?

If anyone can find the full article, please send it along.

Meanwhile local Richmond real estate agent, James Wong, is out with his December real estate report:

Home sales in Richmond for November, 2013 totaled 288 units were 11% lower than previous month’s sales of 324 homes. With mortgage rates expected to remain stable at current level, home buyers are in no hurry to commit making a buying decision. Total active listings at the end of November were 2,080 which was just 2% lower than the month before. When compared to active listings the same time last year, current active listings were 4% lower.

The supply of homes for sale in Richmond as measured by months of inventory (MOI) at 6.25% remained around the same level compared to the previous 5 months. The MOI for detached homes remained around the same level the month before. At a MOI of 6.72, home sellers are taking the cue from the market, maintaining their asking prices. The MOI for Richmond townhouses improved further for home seller when the MOI edged from 5.32 to 5.01. The MOI for condos deteriorated slightly, changing from 6.73 to 7.39 due to a slight increase in the number of active listings. The number of total active listings in Richmond at the end of November at around 2,045 units were just marginally lower than the active listings count of 2.080 the month before. Other than condos, detached homes and townhouses in Richmond are holding up well. Compared to a year ago, total Richmond home sales in November at 288 units were 39% higher than the 207 units posted a year ago.

Richmond housing market outlook 

The tapering in home sales in Richmond can be expected the next 3 months due to seasonally lower home buying activities. Well priced properties were selling reasonably well. From conversations with other realtors, many sellers were reported to have turned down low-ball offers. 

The current statistics for Richmond detached homes are:

• Single family detached homes listed for sale - 769 homes. 

• 534 (69%) of these homes are over $1,000,000. 

• The average past 3 months sales for homes over $1.0 million was 51 homes 

• MOI for detached homes over $1,000,000 is 10.47 months of supply. 

• Total single family detached homes for sale over $1,500,000 - 320. 

• The average 3 months sales - 21 units with 15.24 months of supply.

Although home sellers of million dollar homes are under pressure to drop their prices, many sellers are holding on to their asking prices hoping to cash out at prices they are expecting. Agents were lamenting that many of their offers were turned down due to sellers not prepared to meet buyers offers.

Once again Mr. Wong offers a more sobering take on conditions than what we have heard from other quarters.

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