Bears = Don’t buy RE, offload/sell as soon as possible.
Bulls = Good buying opportunity now, better get in the market before it starts going up again.

This is producing some odd behaviour in my neighbourhood. Homes that differ in size, that should have a big difference in price, are both priced the same. Its like they are competing for the same purchasers at some new credit ceiling.

Yeah I made a lot in real estate in Vancouver. Offloaded everything before the market crashed. Betterdwelling, greaterfool, talking to insiders, analyzing the stats, and even following people on Twitter helped me understand when the music was going to stop.

FYI, a really good indicator for when to ditch your spec real estate is when the established local developers stop buying land. They know the most about where the market is going. If you are buying when most of them are not, you probably aren’t going to make any gains on your purchase. If they are selling their sites, then you better list whatever you have for sale the next day.

I think most developers nowadays are net sellers – flogging their exposure through presales.. I wouldn’t touch any presale contracts with a ten foot pole right now

I think that you have the same problem as Australia: http://www.rbcgam.com/investment-insights/research-publications/_assets-custom/pdf/rbcgam-economic-compass-canadas-debt-threat-201107.pdf. There is one thing for sure if you don’t talk about the problem and solutions you will finish up with the same problem as the UK: https://www.moneyadviceservice.org.uk/en/articles/negative-equity-what-it-means-and-what-you-can-do-about-it. Agree?

This comment by Blue seems to be right on the money John. What do you think?

Once again, the brilliant arguments of the bulls shine through. The main line goes like this:
“I made money in Canadian real estate during the greatest run up in Canadian real estate history, therefore Canadian RE isn’t overvalued and is a great investment.”

The smugness of the extremely limited thinkers is truly remarkable. Hyuk hyuk! I bought house and made money! I so smart! I buy more house. Make more money. More smart.

HI Bluetheimpala. Not my website! If you think Andy Haldane, The Chief Economist at the Bank of England is wrong and we should not be discussing this Infotech issue in the Innovation Community that is okay with me, but for readers it is mistake. Best.

Fuck off john. Go get traffic off some other site. BD4L.

The funny thing about people that are scared of the stock market is they usually have no idea how to properly account for an investment. The gains you made on any real estate in Canada were dwarfed by the gains made in US equities. In fact, the gains on Toronto real estate can be mostly matched over the past years by just holding US dollars. Not any sort of equity strategy. Literally not holding Canadian dollars nearly matched the gains.

Yes, my house is worth more than it was a few years ago. It’s also less than 10% of my net worth, whereas people that are still real estate bulls (AFTER A 30 POINT RISE on an inflation sensitive asset) are about 70-80% real estate. Not one family office would recommend more than 20% in real estate, but that’s because people with real amounts of money know that real estate has only produced value in Canada over the past 5 years.

Anything before that and the cost of borrowing was high enough that it would have wiped out any gains. More important: Bears at the circus die by old age. Bulls at the rodeo get fat, chase a drunken cowboy, and are slaughtered when the cowboy is done.