Saturday, November 23, 2013

BC Foreclosure Update for week ending Nov. 22, 2013



BC Foreclosure Update for week ending Nov. 22, 2013 from Ham Solo over on Vancouver Condo Info.

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Friday, November 22, 2013

It was 50 years ago today...




This unique clip is from CBS television on November 22, 1963.  At approximately the 10:00 mark, the soap opera "As the World Turns" is interrupted with the famous CBS news bulletin.  After the initial bulletin, coverage continues at about the 13:00 minute mark.

Next is the announcement of Kennedy's death:



And from Oliver Stone's JFK:







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Tuesday, November 19, 2013

The new twist on gullible?



Ad for Trump Tower in Vancouver.  Their slogan: "The new twist on Luxury"

Does this really sell condo's?

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Sunday, November 10, 2013

Remembrance Day 2013



At 11 am on the 11th of November 1918, European hostilities officially paused after the German government accepted the terms of armistice given them by the allied forces.

The following year the cease fire was made permanent with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, but it is the 11th of the 11th that has become the symbolic time of peace.

The 11th of November was originally called Armistice Day, but was changed to Remembrance Day after World War II as a gesture to commemorate all who have given their lives serving our great country.

They shall grow not old as we that are left grow old.
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

Today and tomorrow we pause to remember those Canadians who lost their lives in service to our wonderful country.

This ultimate sacrifice simply cannot be framed in any form that does justice. All we can do is join those today who pause... remember... and say 'thank you'.










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Thursday, November 7, 2013

"If you want affordable housing go to Detroit" - Sauder School of Business


Posts have been few lately due to circumstances beyond our control, but we couldn't let this latest gem go by unreported.


The Sun reports that the simple numbers on housing affordability in Metro Vancouver are unequivocally alarming: It costs just over 8½ times the median after-tax household income of $61,975 to buy a home for the median price of $517,677.34.

Compared to the norm in banking circles just a generation or two ago when low-equity borrowers were likely to be denied a mortgage if the cost of the house they wanted was more than three times what they earned in a year, this seems insane.

But the article argues that if you look at the issue more closely, the message is nuanced and somewhat mixed.
Today's 8.5-to-one ratio is, to be sure, quite a bit worse than 20 years ago when it was 6.6 to one, and even worse still than the 5.9 to one figure in 2003. But ...

These historical ratios, though lower than today's, were still very high by any conventional measure, and they never once dipped to a low or even "normal" level during the entire duration of the last two decades. Yet Vancouverites still coped, and the population still grew by well over 500,000 in that 20-year period...

Half the reason for a high priceto-income ratio is not the cost of a home, but rather the lacklustre growth of personal incomes in Metro Vancouver over recent years to the point where we trail most major cities in Canada. If this turns around - and, once again, there are no guarantees - the affordability squeeze will ease.
The central message?
Robert Helsley, dean of the Sauder School of Business, added an additional perspective when he spoke last week at a UBC-sponsored symposium on affordability. He suggested Vancouver's high home prices are "the price of admission" to this amenity-rich little corner of the world.

Similarly highly priced real estate is found in other places where people really want to live - Hong Kong, San Francisco, London and New York, to name a few.

"If you want affordable housing," Helsley said, "go to Detroit."
Instead of calls to halt the easy credit and low interest rates that fuelled and created the unaffordability to begin with, we get sermons to 'let them eat cake'.

Marvellous.

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Friday, November 1, 2013

BC Foreclosure Update


Over on Vancouver Condo Info, Ham Solo shares the data from BC Foreclosure filings for Oct. 31, 2013 and month to date totals. From Ham:
At the end of the first month of daily data. Vancouver stayed running at a fairly steady pace of six filings per working day. So big picture, what is going on with British Columbia foreclosures? First, I think one needs to understand the data. Courts aren’t located in every municipality, so “New Westminster” foreclosures probably include Port Moody or Coquitlam, while “Nanaimo” might include Qualicum Beach etc. That being said we can get a pretty good look at what is going on regionally.

The basic situation is that the periphery is doing worse than the big city. If I annualize the data by population, the Lower Mainland as a whole is running at about 0.7 annual foreclosures per 1000 population. That compares to Vancouver Island with a run-rate of 1.3 foreclosures/1000 pop; Okanagan at 1.8 foreclosures/1000 pop; and Kootenays and North maybe running 2-3 foreclosures/1000 pop with those last two regions most susceptible to problems in counting and defining the right regional population number.

Turning to lenders, I think the basic model of all the banks, roughly in proportion to retail market share, is to write any old mortgage at any old level to someone that can be covered by CMHC/Genworth wrappers. There is no bank that seems to be extra careful … Royal’s share this month is a bit lower than I would have expected, CIBC’s a little higher. The specialty mortgage co’s are active across the province and must be punching much higher than their weight in terms of foreclosure volumes to mortgage assets. Credit unions, whom I thought might be the loosest lenders of the bunch, seem to be there in about expected market share.

We clearly are not in a meltdown. I’d be interested if other readers have the data on what the foreclosure numbers per 1000 pop got to in various US states. However, we have a good sense of the base. This data series will probably spike at some point, maybe beginning next month, maybe beginning in 3 years, I can’t say. Like others, I’ve been surprised at how well prices have held up and how few foreclosures have occurred to this point. However, I suspect that 20-40% of current “homeowners” would be in serious trouble at either in a 5% interest rate environment or in a material recession regardless of the rate picture.

As there is a little repetition in the daily numbers, going forward I will share the data weekly.
A big thanks to Ham for his efforts.

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