HawthorneVillager.com

First you mention Windsor then you mention Montreal? LOL. How about Pembroke, or Wawa, or Cochrane. I bet they have "normal"markets as well.

Pretty much all of Quebec is like living in a different country -- their markets can't be compared to the rest of Canada. Look at the difference between living in Ottawa and living in Gatineau -- 5 minutes apart, Quebec side is WAAAAAAY cheaper - for a reason.

The reality is, there isn't any other Canadian city you can compare Toronto or Vancouver to. They are #1 and #2 in Canada. Vancouver is a mini LA and Toronto is a mini NYC.

New York City has 8.1 million residents and represents about 2% of the population of the United States.

Toronto has 2.5 million residents and represents about 7.5% of the population of Canada.

The GTA is at around 5.5 million residents (last survey) which is almost 17% of the entire population of Canada. 1/5th of the population of the entire country lives in the GTA and you expect to still see house prices at 1990's levels with slow increases? No, you want to be part of the epicenter, you pay -- or you move further away/smaller house/condo.

_________________

Looking for something to do today?
Day Trips Canada - http://www.day-trips.ca

That's right.. because in the US they gave away half million dollar mortgages to McDonalds employees who actually never paid a single mortgage payment while builders kept building.

Again, we went over this before. Canada is Canada. US is US. Different markets, different players, different laws, different rules, different frauds.

In the states they tossed the keys to their house in the banks dropbox, got in their car and went off to work. No biggie, they did 0 down anyways.

In Ontario, you toss your keys, you get a call from a lawyer with two options -- wage garnishment to pay back everything you owe or bankruptcy. Bankruptcy is hardly a "fun" experience. Forget owning a car, getting a good job (they do credit checks), renting any decent property etc.

Trust me, in the US, housing was the first thing people gave up when things went south (which is why they have massive over inventory issues now).

In Ontario, housing will be the very last thing people give up. First will be cell phones, entertainment, college funds, RRSPs, credit card payments, car payments etc. Without hundreds of thousands of homes in foreclosure, Canada isn't the US.

If you were in Florida, and you bought a mansion at 0 down, never paid a mortgage payment for 6 months then were told to get out, what would you care? You had free rent for 6 months with zero impact to you.

Now multiply that by the hundreds of thousands. That's the US.

_________________

Looking for something to do today?
Day Trips Canada - http://www.day-trips.ca

You are comparing states (CA & FL) against cities (Vancouver & Toronto)???

To the contrary, there is much more demand to live in Vancouver than any other city in North America (& if you compare against California it is not even close because you are including junk areas like Sacramento and other smaller cities)

LA of course falls apart because of the huge lower class areas which collapse even during a small recession as live paycheck to paycheck (and as ghetto expands people on outskirts of ghetto will also abandon homes)

Vancouver:
http://www12.statcan.ca/census-recensem ... =1&S=0&O=A

San Francisco, California has the highest per capita concentration of Chinese Americans of any major city in the United States, at an estimated 19.8%, or 157,747 people

Is there anyone here who thinks that of Vancouver's 2 million people they are less than 10% (200,000) Chinese?

What would industry have to do with this? It is predominantly rich upper class Hong Kong that is buying in the north & west area.

Contrast that to San Fransisco that is mainly from Guandong (spelling?) and are working class (SF chinatown looks far more like Spadina area than Markham area because they are totally different people!)

Erm because this entire tangent is discussing why house prices in Vancouver are so ridiculously high compared to other cities in North America (your original comment was that California is more desirable than Vancouver or Toronto and I have been saying for a couple pages now how wrong that is)

How on earth did this reach 94 pages?

Again back to the rich immigrants; it also is the physically closest point in North America (excluding Hawaii) should a person wish to travel back to their home

I agree that investing in BC real estate is foolish (as it is already so incredibly expensive to live) but as demand far outstrips supply I refuse to believe anything short of a depression will ever bring most of that real estate back to earth

It is about time for me to respond after all this nonsense you guys are talking about. 1990 crash and today want-a-be crash just cannot compare.
In the 1990 there were reasons why the market crashed and there was no reason to overinflate the housing market, after 1990 crash everything went back to normal because there was low inflation and gas, cigarettes, coffee, groceries etc... were normal. Today, everything is tripple or quadruple since 1990 and prices of homes are justified. For builders to make any money they have to lift the prices according to gas, materials and labour costs. Those prices benefit us, buyers, sellers and builders. Mattamy is only one company that invests their income in land, that is why Mattamy has the cheapest prices around. Other builders buy from Mattamy or they buy expensive land and their homes are expensive. In my opinion there won't be crash, maybe a price balance 10% down, 5% up. I don't see prices dropping after everything else going up including the most important thing building materials and labour. Just my few cents.

you dont think incomes have risen since 1990?

As an example:

2004 -> 250 Toronto Police officers made over $100,000
2010 -> 1,329 Toronto Police officers made over $100,000
2011 -> 2,159 Toronto Police officers made over $100,000

Yeah, salaries have stayed the same over the last 20 years

As my post said, it's an example of income growth. I used Police officers info because it's a profession I can readily find the stats on the salaries.
No, income growth has not been stagnant and you keep contradicting yourself in the same post. On the one hand you say income has risen, the next breath you say it's stagnant.

I broke my own rule of not commenting on this pointless thread. The thread should be moved to the mortgage and finance section with you talking to yourself like williamb has for 5 years now.

I guess we had a G8/G20 every year from 2004 to 2009, that must explain the 431% increase from 250 to 1329 earning above 100k right?
And no, I am not saying people earning over 100k have increased by 431% for every job role (sigh). This was just an example that salaries have not stayed stagnant in 21 years.

Btw
Those years reflect the previous years earning as I obviously can not yet know the earnings for 2011.

The problem isn't the fact Australia is a large country with lots of land. The problem is people want to live within 30 minutes of Sydney, not in the outback.

There is TONS of land in Canada and HARDLY a problem with affordability of homes. You can get $150-250k beautiful houses with lots of land in 95% of the country. Sometimes even cheaper! The problem is that everyone wants to live in the very same area, the GTA, which is only so big. That is where there is a shortage of development land.

_________________

Looking for something to do today?
Day Trips Canada - http://www.day-trips.ca