Canada's 'housing bubble' deemed close to bursting

[logan5]

Originally Posted by lio45

Make sure he knows that if he accepts an offer that lets the Buyer have forever to close, he will not be getting the market value of his property at the time of the closing, he will be getting its market value half a year in the past.

(Seems obvious to me, but apparently it isn't to everyone, so maybe it's worth mentioning.)

And yes, from what I've managed to see of the Van market, you absolutely need to pick a Chinese realtor unless you want to shoot yourself in the foot.

Financial freedom is good to a certain extent, but if financial gain is your prime directive, you're shooting yourself in the foot.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by logan5

Financial freedom is good to a certain extent, but if financial gain is your prime directive, you're shooting yourself in the foot.

LOL, did you really just say that in your opinion, merely taking a very easy step to try and make sure you get full current market value for the house you're getting rid of... is a sign of an unhealthy obsession with financial gain?

Don't be ridiculous.

[whatnext]

20 Year Old 7300 Sq ft Vancouver Mansion being demolished for new home:

...Property records show that the 7,300-square-foot house was last sold in 2013 for just over $6 million — the assessment today is $7.44 million. According to the 2013 listing for the property, it boasted $350,000 in recent renovations including new hardwood floors, a water purification system and windows. The listing sheet shows the two-storey house on a corner lot has 19 rooms including seven bedrooms, a media room, office and 12-foot by Seven-foot walk-in closet off the master suite....
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada...uilt-in-1996-that-just-got-350k-in-renos

Real estate insanity brought to you courtesy of buckets of gray market Mainland Chinese money.

[whatnext]

RBC flags Vancouver market as being in imminent danger of overheating:
http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Van...port/11752947/story.html?__lsa=f2dd-34d3

[TorontoDrew]

Funny RBC is telling us something that has already been a fact for a good 10 years now. Did they not notice it over heated years ago?

[Gresto]

Originally Posted by whatnext

20 Year Old 7300 Sq ft Vancouver Mansion being demolished for new home:

...Property records show that the 7,300-square-foot house was last sold in 2013 for just over $6 million — the assessment today is $7.44 million. According to the 2013 listing for the property, it boasted $350,000 in recent renovations including new hardwood floors, a water purification system and windows. The listing sheet shows the two-storey house on a corner lot has 19 rooms including seven bedrooms, a media room, office and 12-foot by Seven-foot walk-in closet off the master suite....
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada...uilt-in-1996-that-just-got-350k-in-renos

Real estate insanity brought to you courtesy of buckets of gray market Mainland Chinese money.

Disgusting. That kind of solipsistic self-indulgence makes me incredibly angry. Good to hear there are people protesting.

[ssiguy]

Their protests won't make ANY difference in the slightest. Vancouver has no heritage zones only individual properties and the inventory hasn't been updated since the 80s and most of the potential heritage homes are long since destroyed.

Funny thing is that in Vancouver heritage homes are MUCH cheaper than non-heritage homes in the same area. This is because they can't be torn down. No one who buys a house in Vancouver has any intention of living it but rather tearing it down. A lot of real estate ads for SFH no longer even bother with pics of the actual house but rather the land.

Vancouver also has no restrictions on the size of the house that replaces the one torn down. This is why you have tiny post-war homes beside mega mansions that stick out like a sore thumb.

The house will be torn down, an Asian McMansion will replace it and there is not a damn thing anyone can do about it. In Vancouver you can tear down anything you want and replace it with any thing you want. Getting a permit is simply a formality because you really can't be denied one.

As for "shaming" the people who want to destroy that nice house and put up a new one.............chances are there won't even be anyone living in it.

[logan5]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

Vancouver also has no restrictions on the size of the house that replaces the one torn down. This is why you have tiny post-war homes beside mega mansions that stick out like a sore thumb.

The house will be torn down, an Asian McMansion will replace it and there is not a damn thing anyone can do about it. In Vancouver you can tear down anything you want and replace it with any thing you want. Getting a permit is simply a formality because you really can't be denied one.

This...

is crap.

[TorontoDrew]

5 reasons Toronto house prices won't crash in 2016

The naysayers insist the bubble has to burst sometime, but no signs indicate it'll happen this year.
By Mike Crawley, CBC News Posted: Jan 07, 2016 4:18 PM ET| Last Updated: Jan 07, 2016 4:23 PM ET
5-reasons-toronto-house-prices-won-t-crash-in-2016-1

1. Supply and demand

It's the simplest rule of market economics and it applies to Toronto's real-estate market. The population keeps growing, and people have to live somewhere.

There's little room to build more single-family houses to increase the supply. The demand from families who want to live in the city with a patch of grass remains huge. The number of new listings on the market continues to be outstripped by the number of buyers.

House for sale December
Sceptics have been predicting for years that Toronto's real-estate market is on the brink of a crash. Will 2016 finally be the year the bubble bursts? (CBC News)

As for Toronto's condo market, it's a myth that it's oversupplied: the inventory of unsold condos is shrinking, and with first-time buyers nearly priced-out of the house market, the demand for condos remains steady.

"I don't see the market falling at all in 2016," said John Pasalis, president of Realosophy, a Toronto real-estate firm. "We're getting further into this imbalance where demand is exceeding the supply of houses coming on the market."

"Usually when the market's slowing down and prices fall, you can see signs of that well ahead of time," Pasalis said in a phone interview. "When you look at the momentum in Toronto's market, it's not going in that direction."

[ssiguy]

No it's not crap.

As long as you don't change the density you can put up any stylee of house you want as long as it is the required set back from the street. This is why you have tiny post-war homes beside Asian McMansions beside an Eastside Special.

You can't "technically" pull down the trees but that is one paper only. The treese are torn down all the time as many Chinese consider trees bad luck. They are not suppose to and face a fine.............big deal. Someone who launders money and has the money to buy into the most expensive housing market in nearly the whole planet with CASH and then tear it down and put up a Feng Shui mansion doesn't care about a city fine. The fine is probably less than their kid's weekly allowance.

[Wentworth]

Well, I am guessing that shed is actually an apartment under the stairs? It has a mail slot!

The Cupboard Under the Stairs
4 Privet Drive
Little Whinging, East Vancouver
L0L 0L0

https://www.realtor.ca/Residential/Singl...AVENUE-Vancouver-British-Columbia-V5M1L5

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by Wentworth

Well, I am guessing that shed is actually an apartment under the stairs? It has a mail slot!

The Cupboard Under the Stairs
4 Privet Drive
Little Whinging, East Vancouver
L0L 0L0

https://www.realtor.ca/Residential/Singl...AVENUE-Vancouver-British-Columbia-V5M1L5

Too true.

[casper]

Originally Posted by Wentworth

Well, I am guessing that shed is actually an apartment under the stairs? It has a mail slot!

The Cupboard Under the Stairs
4 Privet Drive
Little Whinging, East Vancouver
L0L 0L0

https://www.realtor.ca/Residential/Singl...AVENUE-Vancouver-British-Columbia-V5M1L5

Regardless of all the complaints about houses being bulldozed to make way for McMansion, that photo is typical of the housing stock we are losing on the east side of the city. Houses built in the 1930-1970 that have floor plans that do not reflect the market needs today. These houses are under-sized relative to size of the lot.

What buys want to today are master bedroom suites with fancy showers. They want insulated walls. Perhaps all the bedrooms on the same floor. Maybe a family room in addition to main living room. These are all things that on average are missing.

Very few Vancouver Specials are getting replaced. That is because the Vancouver Specials were built in a time where zoning was less restrictive than today. A new home today can not occupy the same footprint as a Vancouver Special.

[Drybrain]

Originally Posted by casper

Regardless of all the complaints about houses being bulldozed to make way for McMansion, that photo is typical of the housing stock we are losing on the east side of the city. Houses built in the 1930-1970 that have floor plans that do not reflect the market needs today. These houses are under-sized relative to size of the lot.

What buys want to today are master bedroom suites with fancy showers. They want insulated walls. Perhaps all the bedrooms on the same floor. Maybe a family room in addition to main living room. These are all things that on average are missing.

Very few Vancouver Specials are getting replaced. That is because the Vancouver Specials were built in a time where zoning was less restrictive than today. A new home today can not occupy the same footprint as a Vancouver Special.

I definitely don't think those houses are particularly special or worth keeping around. They're insufficiently urban and architecturally mediocre. But, I will defend houses that "don't meet today's market needs". I live in a city where the majority of the central housing stock dates from the mid 19th to early 20th century, and while these buildings have undergone a lot of renovation in keeping with changing times, their size and layout dictates that they'll never have master suites and huge walk-in showers and extra living rooms and the like. But no one is demolishing them to build new houses on he same low. People buy them for historical character and put up with (or simply aren't bothered by) the lack of au courant amenities. We can't be ripping out our housing stock every few decades just because people's taste in bathroom size has changed.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Drybrain

We can't be ripping out our housing stock every few decades just because people's taste in bathroom size has changed.

In cities with little to no heritage to begin with, I don't see why not... and it's very possible to recycle a lot of the building materials, so it's not that un-green to do that (plus, it's somewhat countered by the fact the replacement housing is likely always going to be more energy-efficient than the older housing it replaces).

[lio45]

Originally Posted by logan5

This...

is crap.

I'm far from an expert on the City of Vancouver demolition permit process, but based on years of following the situation through this thread, I'm pretty sure he's generally correct and you're generally wrong. It seems extremely easy to get rid of any building.

Another likely problem is that the fines don't seem to scale. In a normal town you illegally cut a tree and you might get fined something that's a few percentage points of the market value of your house. In Vancouver, it seems clear than knocking down any house illegally, on a lot bought for millions and on which you're going to build a multi-million McMansion, is not a problem -- bring the fine, it's going to be peanuts (and even probably considered part of the inevitable Vancouver cost of doing business / cost of doing laundering).

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by casper

Regardless of all the complaints about houses being bulldozed to make way for McMansion, that photo is typical of the housing stock we are losing on the east side of the city. Houses built in the 1930-1970 that have floor plans that do not reflect the market needs today. These houses are under-sized relative to size of the lot.

What buys want to today are master bedroom suites with fancy showers. They want insulated walls. Perhaps all the bedrooms on the same floor. Maybe a family room in addition to main living room. These are all things that on average are missing.

Very few Vancouver Specials are getting replaced. That is because the Vancouver Specials were built in a time where zoning was less restrictive than today. A new home today can not occupy the same footprint as a Vancouver Special.

Those houses you disparage also provided truly affordable rental accommodation, in the form of the cupboard under the stairs shown here. I guess all those pesky lower income people should just piss off to the suburbs so they can spend a bigger share of their meager income on transportation?

[ssiguy]

Originally Posted by whatnext

Those houses you disparage also provided truly affordable rental accommodation, in the form of the cupboard under the stairs shown here. I guess all those pesky lower income people should just piss off to the suburbs so they can spend a bigger share of their meager income on transportation?

That is exactly what the city is hoping for.

[casper]

Originally Posted by whatnext

Those houses you disparage also provided truly affordable rental accommodation, in the form of the cupboard under the stairs shown here. I guess all those pesky lower income people should just piss off to the suburbs so they can spend a bigger share of their meager income on transportation?

That is only positive if the suites are legal and meet all safety standards.

They will likely be replaced by a house that can more easily accommodate a legal basement suite (that the old housing stock) and can accommodate a lane-way house in the backyard.

[logan5]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

Vancouver also has no restrictions on the size of the house that replaces the one torn down. This is why you have tiny post-war homes beside mega mansions that stick out like a sore thumb.

In Vancouver you can tear down anything you want and replace it with any thing you want. Getting a permit is simply a formality because you really can't be denied one.

Originally Posted by lio45

I'm far from an expert on the City of Vancouver demolition permit process, but based on years of following the situation through this thread, I'm pretty sure he's (ssiguy) generally correct and you're generally wrong. It seems extremely easy to get rid of any building.

Despite your expert analysis, it's still crap.