This beauty on 6000 sqft lot in a very simple neighborhood sold for 2.3 million dollars. With multiple offers. http://i52.tinypic.com/2i7pkxl.jpg
Close proximity to China, lots of rich people from Hong Kong and the mainland (and their children) and their unyielding supply of US money that just need to be parked somewhere -- all this keeps the bubble alive and kicking with no end in sight. Trying to understand why they don't go after prime real-estate in Calgary or Phoenix or Miami is a favourite past time on local real-estate forums. Nobody knows, but the bus-fuls of Chinese "investors" keep touring all open houses every weekend and buying stuff left and right.
Just FYI if Winter Olympics planted any stupid ideas in your head :)
All of Canada is in a bubble, not just Vancouver. Thus it's not the Chinese. Things will burst here too, for Canada is not different and is not immune to the simple mathematics of economics.
Vancouver is in a bubble of its own. Where else 2M would buy you a 70 year old teardown on 1/6 acre lot in EastVan-like neighborhood? Just talk to realtors, and they will furnish a metric ton of evidence that it's the Chinese who are driving the speculation here. Houses sitting on a market for few months and then suddenly getting sold over asking in a bid war between 3 Chinese gentlemen... yeah, it's not Chinese :)
The Y/Y inflation-adjusted increase in housing prices in Canada excluding Greater Vancouver is 2.5%. The Y/Y inflation-adjusted increase in housing prices in Greater Vancouver is 12%.
If inflation plus 2.5% is a bubble, it's a very very minor one. Inflation plus 12%, on the other hand, is definitely in bubble territory.
The situation is much worse in India especially in the western and southern states. I know friends whoose land prices appreciated 100 times in 5 years...The general buyer expectation now is they expect the price to atleast double in 3-4 years. By that rate a apartment in chennai would cost more than a manhattan apartment in 10 years!
Well, C-S Index was begun in 1890 where it was given a value of 100. Notes from the chart:
"The 1890 benchmark is 100 on the chart. If a standard house sold for $100,000 (inflation-adjusted to today's dollars), an equivalent standard house would have sold for $66,000 in 1920 (66 on the index scale) and $199,000 in 2006 (199 on the index scale, or 99% higher than in 1890)."
It's only from Jan 1987, and they've set Jan 2000 as 100. I accidentally flipped colors in one - the smaller values are from composite 20, the larger ones from composite 10.
