20 Replies to “Real Estate Roundup”

  1. Comment from the same twitter thread…

    “ I met with someone yesterday who bought three houses and is now on antidepressants.”

    1. The couple that bought my house own several more in the region. They buy older residences, fix them up and either rent them or put them back on the market.

      That might explain why he wasn’t in a happy mood a few weeks ago.

  2. I live in a hospice economy where retirees dominate this town on Vancouver Island. Boomers selling in the Lower Mainland mostly have driven prices here. I think the market has peaked as there are now a lot more houses on the market and they are staying for sale unlike a few months ago when they were snapped up in under a week.

    1. We sold our vacay RV spot in the winter, riding the wave of new values, as our former slice of heaven was now being dominated by Karens and hall monitors, so, we cashed out at the top of the wave.
      We just saw listings of current sites in the park for sale, mostly retired and elderly folks. Average price is more than we sold for, but they missed the boat. Asking $400k, for a 20+ year old RV, plus use of a site only (no one owns anything there, (no title) but the trailer), and you can’t borrow against it either.
      I hope they feel good with a make believe price on their site, but they’ll be for sale next year, drowning their sorrows away when they realize that their overpriced by $100k right now. Vacay property is the first hit by rate increases, and an investment market that just took a +20% hit.

      1. *
        Buddy of mine out here in the sticks had a patchy wooden frame
        bungalow farmhouse he wanted to sell to move out to PEI. It had
        issues with drainage and electrical, but agent listed it for 349K.

        After a bidding war, he ended up getting 515,000. Now, if there’s
        a crash, he could end up making out at both ends.

        Not so for the fools who bought in at the peak.

        *

      2. Heh.. those spaces will be selling for $40k in a few years.. or going up for auction. Canada’s real estate bubble is the biggest in the world. Imagine a shithole city like Regina being in the same league as New York City or Los Angeles or San Francisco. Pathetic.

        1. I get your point and agree with you, but the 3 US cities you mentioned aren’t that shit hot (pun intended) now either.

  3. I live in a small town in a small old house we fixed up. I paid cash for it. I’m safe. A lot of people arent.

    1. I thought of you a couple of days ago. I remember your comments about how crappy the people in your town are because you’re unjabbed.

      We have beautiful, new neighbors we love and adore. They would argue with store managers about masks with newborn baby in tow. Anyways, my elderly mother and I went to their place and had coffee and snacks outside with them. It was great.

      And I remembered you and wished you had that same thing in your area. Maybe in a couple of years. A bunch of us can claim the houses of the jabbed in your area and live peacefully making sure to stay off VOWG’s lawn.

      1. I’ve scoped out a few houses in this region, areas where I think it’s heavily vaxed while simply waiting it out, it’s a long war, but we’ll win.

        Also, do not approach VOWG’s lawn while out walking your pups for their morning pee …

  4. If only we could get people with trust funds to adopt those who are currently having a hard time of it due to unforeseen circumstances caused by government policies contrived by idiots.

  5. “• my suggestion is to try and finish the basement and collect some rent. they are prisoners in their own home. it’s so tough for a lot of people out there. much of it is compounded by anxiety of multiple rate increases lately.”

    Hrmm, this distressed couple is already underwater on their house, and his “solution” is to create a basement apartment.

    So, are they likely to have, or able to finance:
    1) the building permit
    2) the required engineering drawings
    3) the construction costs, including but not limited to any modifications of landscaping and driveway to insure at least 3 parking spaces, and any required service upgrades these new loads will require.
    4) the cost of finding a good tenant

  6. I know a guy, I’ll call him Noah Guy, who won’t stop talking about his small city housing market in the kinda rebounding margin of the oil patch. He plays wreck hockey with a city councillor who told him a couple of years back that the banks were sitting on 600 repossessed houses — about 6000 total in that city. Every time he checks there are about 300 houses on the market. That number started to go up a couple of weeks ago. Noah suspects the banks are releasing a few houses at a time as another one sells. Trying to keep the market stable but well below the 2014 peak.

    They been sitting on a lot of them since 2014 to 2015 and they only started releasing them into the market last year. Prices have come up from the low but not as much as $100 plus per barrel oil should drive. Noah gives his immediate neighbour as an example of a guy who bought at the peak — anybody else would have known it was the peak given what Rotten Rach had started pulling. He put $50K to $100K of stupid upgrades in and then six months later decided he couldn’t handle stairs in a two story. That neighbour was retirement age when he moved in in 2014. Well he added 10% to what he paid and put it back on the market. Had it there with the same realtor for two years — crickets. Maybe one showing. He did every stupid improvement the realtor asked him to. In 2020 he got crazy along with his already crazy wife and started blaming Noah because Noah hadn’t agreed to do some shared fence line improvements the realtor had suggested back in 2015. Later that summer to get him off his back Noah agreed to limited improvements. The crazy neighbour got mad and demanded he enter into a contract to do them. Noah told him he had given him his word and wasn’t going to add legal bills to cost of improvement. The crazy neighbour got even crazier and put his house up for sale again at 10% below what he paid for it in 2014. A comparable in a better neighbourhood sold that week. It was priced 35% below what the neighbour was asking. The neighbour kept his home on the market until this spring reducing the price once by $10 K when the market was more like $80-90K lower. My guess is that Noah’s nutzoid neighbour was chasing his mortgage down — trying to sell just at what he owed on the mortgage. He’s now 5 years past retirement age and still working shiftwork and hating his situation. My guess is his crazyness is making him less stable at work as his company is now giving him worse shifts — 2am to 10 am type shifts.

    Apparently he has given up trying to sell and Noah saw him moving furniture out of the house a few weeks back. Meanwhile the neighbours even crazier daughter is liv ing in the house — rent free I’m guessing. She stopped working after the vaccines started and the ambulance visisted her house a couple of times.

    Just one anecdote but I’m surprised how limited the positive effects of the oil boom have been this time around. Especially in the marginal areas of the patch.

  7. This couple needs to sell and sell fast to recover what capital they have and avoid bankruptcy. It’s life or death and this is a no brainer.

    My fiancé and I are building our own house using family labour and lots of inputs at cost. Ie woodlot lumber from family, concrete from family etc. I’ve become rather good at framing and drywall. Know how to install all the electrical. And good at bossing everyone around!

    We will have enough money left over to buy a rental once the market has thoroughly and properly crashed.

    This is how prairie people used to build their houses and many still do of course.

  8. With the carbon taxes and the ridiculous amounts of money oil companies are forced to spend on categorizing and measuring and auditing every whiff of gas that is vented, burned, or flared, oil and gas prices need to stay high for companies to make similar profits to those from only a few years ago.

    Because of the anti-scientific global warming lie. Through which many Dippers are getting rich by being associated with “green” emissions-related companies that the industry is forced to hire against their will.

    And then there’s the virtual certainty that the vermin who rule us will then raise the price of carbon again. Which leads to great uncertainty and makes companies unlikely to invest in anything long-term.

    When the scum behind the curtain don’t even hide their agenda, what would you expect? Remember, we’re “transitioning” away from oil and gas.

    Into idiocy. With a pale horse not far behind.

    1. There is a solution.
      Just don’t comply.
      If THEY come for you , make them regret it.

  9. Fortunately when it came to buying houses my kids actually listened to me and the advisors I sent them to. Of course floating the down also worked. They now have houses damn near paid for, if they didn’t bump up the mortgage without asking my advise. In that case TFNB.

  11. Most of the most serious damage will be concentrated in southern BC as well as southern Ontario. Queerbec etc I do not know much about. One person I met this winter, she works for Cn and drives a forklift truck at the main Cn rail yard by Toronto. Her house was worth almost 800000 she claimed for a basic 3 bdr with a small yard by Hamilton Ontario. Another was a new Canadian who was going on about his real estate wizardry and had 4 homes bought a couple of years ago. He and I had a good conversation about it but he was blinded by the dollar signs and I just said good luck. I wonder now what they are thinking. Both hard core liberal as well.

    Western Canada might get off fairly easy. Due to price increases being substantial in many markets but how far can a house price fall as people have got to live somewhere.

    I am not seeing people worry yet but the winter heating bills this year are going to hurt.

  12. House is paid for and just sold the truck and 5th wheel that I paid cash for when new. Going to knuckle down and ride this one out. Don’t owe anyone a nickel. First time home buyers, over the past 2 decades (Edmonton market) have gone from a tiny post war fixer-upper, to a single detached with a back yard, to a semi detached to a townhouse, to an apartment style condo, to looking for a cheap place to rent, to not marrying and being a perpetual child in Mom and Pop’s basement. A big part of the problem has been everyone borrowing their maximum gross debt service ratio. Furnace blows up? No problem, plumber takes Visa (then apply for a higher credit rating so they can still go to Cancun in January). Thankfully our sole child is good with money, only owes on his mortgage which he can easily handle and doesn’t have expensive tastes. Will go shopping for recreation toys when the crap hits the fan, probably by this time next year when everyone is unloading their stuff for whatever they can get. Living in Alberta, there has always been a young up and coming generation enjoying the latest boom, having not lived through the last bust cycle. School of hard knocks is tough learnin’ for them.

Proudly powered by WordPress & Skyrocket Themes

MENU

Navigation