We have reached the twilight zone for housing in our fair city with the average SFH hitting and surpassing a cool Million.
Even Sydney Australia comes no-where near us- they are in at over $600K.
Well what do we make of this? Nothing. Median and average depends on what is being sold. If a jeweller is only selling high end diamonds then his average sales are up, even if his total sales are down.
That's where we are at in Vancouver. Lower sales, but still lots of heavy hitters coming to the bid. However even the rich are bargaining. Two homes sold in West Van tonight. Both sold for $800-900K off original asking which is a 25% drop from list price.
Anyway lets wait for the HPI. My guess is stable SFH and lower Condo.
Stubborn prices in Vancouver, which is a good thing. Once again I do NOT want a crash. Remember what happened with the last crash in 2008:
1) People started losing their jobs quickly
2) Flaherty and Carney pissed their pants and threw everything at housing. Even though they are talking tough now- do not for one minute fool yourselves. If housing took a big dive, the screams to ..'Do something! Anything!' would be deafening.
Just look at how Bob Rennie complained that the HST hurting sales. He certainly didn't pull any punches talking about the Premier:
“He’s the sh*ttiest salesman in the country,” Rennie said bluntly to a roomful of Kelowna developers convened to get tips on how to reposition their projects in a topsy-turvy economy.
“He’s done a horrible job of selling the public on the HST. We’re in sh*t and he’s hurting the economy.”
Multiply that reaction by 1000!
So I am happy we don't have a redux of Summer 2008. However I would like to see some signs that our City's (and Canada's) bubbly house prices are coming off the steam so people can buy with-out risking Their financial future and Our financial future too (thanks to the CMHC and back-stops for the banks)
