Fat Lady In Person and on Stage
Posted April 17th, 2008 in Real Estate, Real Estate Stuff | 
Photo Credit: Flickr: FAT LADY SINGING The Rocketeer
Confusing Verse
The Vancouver Real Estate lyrics sound the same but there is a twist. It goes something like this: sales are dropping but prices keep hopping – at least for now.
Globe and Mail says
“Canada’s six-year housing market boom is officially over. Aside from a few choice prairie locales, sales are melting faster than this year’s snowpack,” Douglas Porter, deputy chief economist at BMO Nesbitt Burns.”
“There’s a window of opportunity for the market to cool down and affordability to improve before the next rate tightening cycle, and if that happens … we shouldn’t see a pullback in home prices.” The current slowdown would probably have started 12 months earlier were it not for a wave of buyers entering the market by way of longer amortization mortgages that became available in 2007 says Craig Alexander, deputy chief economist at Toronto-Dominion Bank.
Up and a-Why
Porter and Alexander both
expect moderate home-price gains this year.
Alexander’s rationale is the
environment of low, and falling, interest rates is the major difference between the Canadian economy now compared with past cycles in which residential real estate prices have dropped.
Got a Vancouver Real Estate question? I’ll do my best to answer it. Call or send me an email.
Larry
Seems that inflation has slowed quite a bit. I wonder if we’ll actually see any interest cuts in the near future.
Ahem…La, la, la, la.
Too funny Norm, I can hear you practicing. You are almost in tune
Re: The the interest rates. Good question my suspicion is yes there will be another drop. How much is for the pundits. Looking ahead something that’s a little more tricky is what influence will proposed policies flaunted by the US election contenders have on us in the fall. Will we be the dog or the tail?
BoC posed to slash 1.5% next week? helmut pastrick , chief economist CU of BC says rates to continue to fall this year and next. RESULT: prices up
Hey Maggie,
Thanks for that and your boosterism.
Norm: there’s the scoop on Rates
[...] experienced in the US. One veteran real estate sales official from Vancouver wondered aloud if the “fat lady” is about to sing. Meanwhile, Fraser Beach quotes the Toronto Real Estate Board reporting an improving market [...]
[...] Nationally, the media took a sudden and sharp turn as the Globe and Mail reported that sales had “tumbled in all major cities this winter” and that listings had “surged” in Western Canada. With that, Douglas Porter, deputy chief economist at BMO Nesbitt Burns declared Canada’s housing boom “officially over.” As a follow up, economists argued about whether or not Canadian real estate will suffer a similar fate to what’s being experienced in the US. One veteran real estate sales official from Vancouver wondered aloud if the “fat lady” is about to sing. [...]