YES....real estate people are just loving it!

There is no question that the borrow and spend economy is going full speed ahead.

Last of the cheap houses in this town. All things considered.

Doh!!! That should have read in this province. Dancers with sugarplums and assessment notices dancing in my head, I guess.

I say this market here is ridiculous! Great for realtors and sellers but bad for younger families who wish to settle and work here. This is NOT the lowermainland nor is it some lotus land posh area as are places on vancouver island. Part of what made Prince George attractive was reasonable house prices.

I would call the PG market a real estate bubble and urge people NOT to panic and buy into it. Lesser demand will bring prices down.

For instance: take those lots at the end of malaspina: when they first came out: 75,000 was the median selling price. Now the person who developed them ( their names are on the street signs there) has repriced them now for between 110 and 130K. I guess if we wish to break the bank and buy them, well, more power to the developer, but these lots are kinda small and have a lot of dead or dying pine trees on the rear ends of them. This adds up to extra capital expenditure that any buyer has to fork over.
Sure, its okay to make a buck, but I just hate it when developers and/home builders get so GREEDY!!!!
When the bubble bursts again, people will be tossing their house keys to the banks again....... ARGHHHH!

I agree its a huge bubble. All indicators say this should not be happening except maybe interest rates. A lot of people are mortgaging themselves into future slavery IMO.

If you don't need a down payment, can mortgage over 50 years, have historic low interest rates, and all you have to do is pay the interest, then people seem to think its all right to max out the payment on an over valued home with the assumption they can remortgage in a few months to draw on the equity and so on and so on....

More money when you sell yer house. More money when you buy someone else's house. Who wins, anyway? I know. It's not us. It's the real estate people. Percentages are loved by them.

I have to agree with Imorg.IMO,the crash is coming and probably sooner than later.Wait until the run up to the Olympics is over just for starters and then the fallout from the pine beetle epidemic begins to be really felt in the area.
And if interest rates start to climb? Watch what happens.They will be buying like crazy.It's happened before many times, and it WILL happen again.And I have seen several properties lately that they have actually raised the listing price on!
Now that is greed.Go figure human nature.

Municipalties issued $4.9 billion worth of building permits in February, down 22.4 per cent from January and 12 per cent below last years monthly average, Statistics Canada reported Wednesday.

Among the Provinces , Ontario incurred the biggest dollar loss in value of residential permits, posting its lowest total since December 2001 at $ 1Billion.

Significant declines were also recorded in BC, Alberta, and Quebec. As in Ontario, the declines came from retreats in both the single and multi family components.

In the residential sector, total permit values declined 17.8 percent to 3 Billion, the lowest since March 2005.

I was just looking at the stats across the country.And B.C.is starting to decline as mentioned.But hey, no point in even talking about it.
If you caution people about that,you will be called a pesimist or a naysayer preaching doom and gloom.It's not doom and gloom at all.It's called being careful.
It all goes in cycles.Always did,always will.
So why would you buy at the top of the cycle? Would we do that with the stock market? Not a chance. And those cycles are controled by what's happening in the province you live in and the country in general.
Wonder why nobody wants to know?

"And I have seen several properties lately that they have actually raised the listing price on!
Now that is greed"

Not if they turn around and buy another house which has also had the price jacked up. In a market with rapid escalation of anything, buying something that you can resell at a profit, but must buy another one of, simply means that the same as stocks, you must sell high and buy low in order to "play the market".

I am sure that in a market like this, there are people out there who have been eyeing houses for some time that are a 10% to 20% jump up on what they have now, and they know that if they find a gullible buyer who will buy high, and a gullible seller who will sell low, they can make up a good portion of that 10 to 20% spread.

Greed? I suppose in that case it is. However, when it comes to stocks and other investments, it is not greed, it is simply a good investment strategy.

So since everyone is predicting disaster in the forest & real estate industries & almost everything else, is this the right time to dump the house, business & whatever & head south?

I have seen two properties that I know had the listing price changed to a higher one.They had both been listed for quite a while.Neither property sold.
They just went ahead raised the price in the listing.Now what the hell is that all about? What would be the reason for that,besides the obvious? To me,that is called greedI guess that's why realtors are regarded by many as right up there with lawyers,undertakers,and life insurance salesmen. :)

"So since everyone is predicting disaster in the forest & real estate industries & almost everything else, is this the right time to dump the house, business & whatever & head south?"

South??? Why South??? .. There is no oil there. The oil, tar, gas is north.

;-)

hehehehe...good one owl! :-)

So, Andyfreeze? If you were offering your home for sale and you realized the last three homes comparible to yours sold for more than you were asking, would you consider raising the price of your home?

So, Andy freeze? When you hire a realtor to sell your home, would you expect him or her to fetch you the best price that the current market dictates? One of their responsibilities is to get you the best price for you home, according to the market? So, what is wrong with that? Not everyone can afford the services of a Realtor. But, there are many prosperous and successful people who rely on their realtors for putting the deals together.

Have you ever purchased a property? Have you ever had to go through a divorce? Had an accident and needed a lawyer to defend you? Or, had a lawyer draft your will? Or, draw up a partnership agreement? Or, represent you when someone is trying to sue your butt off? Like it or not, lawyers are a necessary part of our lives.

Do you have life insurance, disability insurance, critical illness insurance, mortgage insurance, property insurance, vehicle insurance, or income replacement insurance? If not, you must be single, no dependants, no property to want to protect and no concern for protecting what you do have. I can understand how you may have no use for insurance providers. But, for most of us who care about others and our prized possessions, insurance is a basic necessity.

I for one don't want to be on the front page of the newspaper pleading for a handout because I didn't have basic property insurance or content insurance for the stuff I owned. Chester

Ps. Try to die and check out without the services of an undertaker or a funeral home. Someone has to pay for you. Who do you think it should be?

IMO the PG realestate market is based more on spill over from Vancouver realestate than anything tangible in the PG present and firm announced future economy.

People from Vancouver made a killing on realestate, heard about cheep penny homes in PG and elsewhere in the interior, then figured they could drive another run up in those parts as long as they were not the last ones to hold the bag. I figure it was done from the bottom up where they came in and bought out all the cheep homes and converted them to absentee landlord status. Once enough cheep homes where in tight hands the gig was on feeding on itself through greed of big returns 'like Vancouver'. For a lot of resident home owners the oportunity was to move from the lower value neighborhoods to a higher end home in a more desirble location with a shot of equity.

I don't think actual average wages support $250,000 dollar basic homes in PG unless the standard of living is sacrificed through more work hours and two income house holds.

Average wages in Vancouver are not double and triple those in PG. The cost of housing ownership is. It all depends on equity. For those who sat in a house for 30 years, it really makes no difference what the price of a house is other than give them more mobility than those in other cities where prices have not escalated to that order of magnitude. Those who inherit the estate will also be especially blessed. Remember, we will be seeing the effect of that as people not only get older but the number dying of old age leaving estates behind will increase proportionately to a significant degree .... as long as the buble does nto burst on the financial side of things.

We have an aging population. The couple who has children that moved out of the house and is in their mid to late forties, who managed their money well, got a house in their early twenties, had two salaries for a good portion of those years, bought a house in the $100,000 to $120,000 range in the mid 1980’s to early 1990’s when house prices were at the bottom and starting to creep up again for a few years, had PIT payments of something like $700 to $800 per month and had their mortgage paid off by just about now, is quite well off. Much better than most people in the GVRD.

They are now in a situation where they can cash in on what will likely be a $200,000 to $250,000 house now and buy a $350,000 house and keep on paying the $850 or so a month in PIT since they are already used to paying that. Or they can buy an additional house, likely of a starter size/quality for an investment and rent it out and pocket $600 or so of the $850 PIT and buy a Hummer, or crewcab with the works, or SUV with the works, or BMW, or whatever their fancy.

Either way, if a crash comes and claws back prices by even as much as 50%, they are still reasonably well protected unless they also loose one of both jobs.

Those who have been stretching their dollars all along and have been borrowing against their equity, are in no such position. They are no different than new home buyers and may be putting themselves into more debt by not only moving up, but also leveraging their mortgage to higher risk ratios of debt versus assets.

It would be interesting to see bank reports on any such trends.

One thing is for sure, we are going to need affordable housing sooner than later if this keeps going. I notice that the initial houses going up in the new subdivision at the end of the Malaspina are smaller than the recent trend here.

Example of what I mean in the above with relative price changes.

House prices in Ottawa in the late 1950’s were in the $15,000 to $17,000 range. Those same houses are now valued in the $300,000 range.

If someone had bought a house then in Vancouver, which were going for about the same, if not less, then that house would now be in the $800,000+ range.

Cash that in, and the old age home lifestyle of the Vancouver couple would be considerably different than the Ottawa couple.

Here is a $300,000 house built in 2003 in Ottawa. That is about the same that a house of that size would cost in PG at this time if one is lucky. http://www.ottawaliving.ca/property.php?property_id=1016

a house built now in pg for under 300,000? Aren't we all dreaming??

Hey owl, yes the houses at malaspina are smaller than usual, but the price tags aren't. And look who's building them: the developer himself and his family.....you get stung twice, once for the overvalued lot and then the small house!