Feedback
MLXchange is being finicky tonight, so no stats as of yet.
Meanwhile, we’ve been trying some changes and I’d like some feedback – if you have a minute please take a look at this page and let me have your input.
51 comments
MLXchange is being finicky tonight, so no stats as of yet.
Meanwhile, we’ve been trying some changes and I’d like some feedback – if you have a minute please take a look at this page and let me have your input.
51 comments
nice touch with Google maps,
i’ve come to rely on them
I would like to see parallel load of the images while the page is displaying the first image (background load of the images as user observes the first image or looks on the listing details). This would speed up browsing of the images later (which is very slow)
Google maps is good but bing birds eye is better – can you do it?
Conversion from imperial to metrics is really cool thing for me – I still can not measure in imperial and do conversion in my mind.
A bit of more factual details would help – I always find the listings very bland – I wish I would be able to read more details on the property.
off topic comment for the blog – the top wish for me is to get user settable width of the text/workarea. This is not as hard as it may appear – via css or simple javascript that would get controlled by the cookie content that is selected by the user.
forgot to ask – what is the platform you are using for this site ?
oh, and disable doubleclick via javascript – no user should be let to click multiple times on the same link (you are just wasting cpu and resources on the server).
I’d suggest adding a Bing “Birds Eye View” link
http://www.bing.com/maps/default.aspx?v=2&FORM=LMLTCP&cp=s6mtrw4rgbp1&style=b&lvl=1&tilt=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&phx=0&phy=0&phscl=1&scene=29218640&where1=2015%20Rivergrove%20Pl%20North%20Vancouver%2C%20BC%2C%20Canada&encType=1
http://www.bing.com/maps/default.aspx?v=2&FORM=LMLTCP&cp=s6769v4rs8g1&style=b&lvl=1&tilt=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&phx=0&phy=0&phscl=1&scene=29237648&where1=%23707%20-%20460%20Westview%20Street%2C%20Coquitlum%2C%2C%20BC%2C%20Canada&encType=1
It’s certainly functional… viz. all the elements are there; clickable expansion of property imagery is a definite plus (and your illustrations are trending better SenorCabellero!)… The aesthetics/design seem pedestrian overall (perhaps the blog format is best kept for the blog??) – but could probably be quickly improved with a few typographical flourishes?…
House.
Pacific House.
C’mon Rob! You’re a natural headline writer. Give it a bit o sell!
Give it a bit o sell!
“Now is a good time to buy and sell!”
I suggest that you minimize the number of clicks required to get the essential details of the properties. Location&Price are there, but I the size is missing. Maybe hovering over can pop up the info. Also, I’d like to see a thumbnail list of the pictures instead of flipping among the large collection (22).
I’d like to see a feature that shows you how much your monthly payment would be if you bought the place.
That’ll make the prospective renters feel happy as clams.
Oh, be nice, Best place!
But seriously, <a href=”http://www.pbs.org/pov/utopia/”>rich asians</a> will save this market. After all, they aren’t spending their money at home.
Oh, crap, that’s right, no HTML in this new platform. That would’ve looked prettier.
Go to http://www.pbs.org/pov/utopia/ to see the biggest shopping mall in the world. That’s by total area. Not by tenants. Or customers. Or sales. That stripmall outside Williams Lake beats it by any of those standards. But who cares, they have canals and an indoor rollercoaster!
Looks like CIT’s trouble is going to cost the US government some $.
“One investor that would take a hit in a CIT bankruptcy is the U.S. government. The United States’ Troubled Asset Relief Program invested $2.3-billion in CIT in December and much or all of that could be lost if the company files for bankruptcy, analysts said.”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/cit-bankruptcy-filing-likely-sources/article1321120/
When you show stats can you also show the YOY stats? Weekly or monthly stats are great but some perspective to where we came from would be great.
8percent down for Vancouver y-o-y based on cdn home price index…credit is flowing….wonder how bonds do today and any impact on rates…cdn dollar rising – good for cdn economy??????
Gold/oil rising….and nat gas – will inflation/rates rise?
Should the Cdn$ go over par vs. the US$, what impact will this likely have on the BC economy?
Time to re-instate the Suspicious Fire Alert! Now taking bets on what time the yacht blaze in Cole Harbour is deigned “suspect.”
Good Morning All… Following is a ‘party bag’/pix n’ mix of interesting geopolitical/macro-econ developments (& think pieces) from the last 18 hours or so of the news cycle (and one travel related piece of potential interest to VD)….
http://tinyurl.com/yzwrjng
http://tinyurl.com/ylnqqlz
http://tinyurl.com/yfcc7h8
http://tinyurl.com/yff3ge8
http://tinyurl.com/yj6amgu
http://tinyurl.com/yk7czlp
http://tinyurl.com/yz9b2r4
http://tinyurl.com/yj8t2d8
http://tinyurl.com/ykky8mw
15
8percent down for Vancouver y-o-y based on cdn home price index
Any link? I thought we are near the peak prices of 2008 again?
Anonymous is talking to himself again…
19 – not according to the August Cdn Price stats quoted this morning on BNN, just released this morning.
And remember, Aug 08 prices were lower than Sprin 08 prices, so if these stats are accurate, then we are way off peak prices.
I do believe the sales activity was off the charts though. Just not prices.
http://www.vancouversun.com/Metro+Vancouver+home+prices+inch+August/2097024/story.html
new homes, not resale, fyi…could just be sales mix…
23
Thanks. I figured it had to be something. For resales, I assume we are still just slightly off the peak as reported last month….
Why did they refer to new home price increase as a ‘disappointment’ in the press?
25
Because it was less than projected based upon past sales, our “economic recovery,” and all the cheap and easy credit available
Can the same be said of our market?
http://tinyurl.com/yhcfrlb
And the original piece:
http://tinyurl.com/yjhtunp
I get the occasional opportunity to read the Province. (With apologies to Max Reger, “I am sitting in the smallest room of my house. I have your paper before me. In a moment it will be behind me.”) This gem was printed over the weekend: http://tinyurl.com/yj44quk
Bears tend to mock the “average guy.” I tend to think that’s cheap elitism, but this article is an interesting read since it’s aggressively telling people (a) what their neighbours are saying, and (b) what they ought to conclude from it, under the aegis of a reporter’s byline. Some notable quotes:
‘It’s one of the best deals going, he said, as low interest rates mean good prices for homebuyers.’
‘”It proves that people are confident in the Vancouver real estate market because they’re buying something today that’s not going to be complete until 20 months from now,” he said.’
‘Other buyers didn’t yet have a plan, but knew they wanted a piece of the Luma pre-sale pie. “For us, it’s more like we can live in it or it can be an investment,” said Alice Wu, who currently lives in a house nearby.’
(of the 2010 Olympics), ‘Which can only mean one thing: The biggest lineups are yet to come.”
Turkey/29…. Yikes! Just when you think the cond0-advertorial has died a death it does a zombie on you and resurrects. Oh, how I do miss thee, CondoHype (whereever you are)….
VD/27+28 – Classics! (albeit survey design/interpretation is a ‘dodgy’ enterprise at best … What we need [and will probably never get] is a genuine, open source/real time + historicals YVR RE transaction data set)….
Some interesting analysis I heard briefly on the news this morning that pertains to our recent discussion of whether an increase in rates will cause a return to declining house prices: the rising CDN dollar with respect to the US dollar would work to reduce inflation by cooling the economy. The BoC then wouldn’t need to increase rates.
However, I don’t have faith that the economy needs cooling at this point. At best, recent economic growth signals have been smoke and mirrors (recent job growth has been in the public sector, not the private sector, so reflects government stimulus not true economic growth). A rising CDN dollar is not what we need right now. And the BoC may want to raise rates for other reasons (to “prove” that the economy has turned – a self-fulfilling prophecy – or to keep bond investments in CDN dollars competitive) and will now feel stuck. Either way, the banks seem to be increasing their lending rates anyways.
A lot less chatter these days about the inevitable crash of the Vancouver RE market.
Looks like some old time bears have given up in the face of the overwhelming strength of the RE market. Nothing like waiting a few more years for maybe a 5-10 % correction. All that rent paid will offset any gains made by waiting.
Chatter – I’m noticing more For Sale signs out there – how about you?
Can anyone comment on the pace of sales thus far this month? They still look strong to me, must admit.
I am noticing more sold signs than for sales signs. We have pre-sale line ups again, bidding wars, cheap financing. All good for moving this market higher.
The fundamentals dont matter here. Never have, never will. People pay a premium to live here even when there are no jobs to support those high prices. If there are no high paying jobs, and prices are still this high, for this long, then it shows you that people are paying for their houses somehow. Who cares if some of you know more than the average buyer, and make more money than the average family. They still own while most of you are still waiting – and waiting.
33 AnonyWoW:
anecdotal:
i’ve seen several open houses at odd hours
and odd days 8:00 PM Monday nite
and another at 9:00 AM today
anomaly? harbinger?
BS
Ya, I dunno – what do you make of it? Rush to the exits? Trying to get buyer attention given all of the competing open houses on the weekends? trying to accomodate your target market and get as much exposure as possible?
I see 14,000 as a start and 15,000 as a trend – to the end…and sales pace waning…if it does not happen maybe Chatter is right – but I highly doubt it…when the lowest interest rates in HISTORY and record buying does not take us to new highs (when interest rates were much much higher), it just shows you that you can flog a dead horse with great vigour but not get very far…how did you know it was moi?
for the record – I am increasingly optimistic that we are about to enter the second and more dramatic phase of the meltdown…but that’s just me!:)
WoW
BS
When VRM ticks up it will be like a bomb went off.
WoW
tick tock…how did today’ turn out any increase in listings? (net)
RJ, what do you make of gold?
RJ, where do you think interest rates go in the months ahead? Do you foresee vrm rates ticking up before the Olympics? What say you.
with copper more than 100% higher than where it was in the crash, and oil the same….and many other things in the same range…what happens to inflation stats going forward?
how about interest rates?
could the 5-year gov’t Canada go above 3% this month? And what does this do to mortgage rates?
interesting times?
I did it again. I cut and pasted Garth without quoting him so Rob deleted me.
One question I didn’t ask when I swallowed him hook,line and sinker was: when was the last time you had to re-qualify to renew a mortgage?
WoW:
whither the CDN$?
mebbe we can sell all our water….
so, are realtors lying?????
Or is Stats Canada????????
who do we trust?
Or should I just trust Dave?
BS….ya, oil, water, copper, gold…we are in good shape…its just construction and RE that are in the midst of toppling over.
I don’t yet see it in the stats, but I feel the crash in me bones….can anyone post if we added or subtracted net listings today??? gavin has not updated…thanks.
March to 14,000?????? (listings)
anon 38,
i think carney was quite clear – he will do what it takes to keep the CAD$ dollar competitive….. this means QE which means artificially lower rates that would otherwise prevail.
Chatterbox (32) wrote
>> A lot less chatter these days about the inevitable crash of the
>> Vancouver RE market.
>> Looks like some old time bears have given up in the face of
>> the overwhelming strength of the RE market.
Chatterbox –
I’m still a bear. I’m a slightly different kind than I used to be. And it’s not because of the “strength of the housing market,” it’s about the magnitude of the bailouts of housing markets in general.
Here’s a chart for your perusal –
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/case-shiller-chart-updated.png
Note how housing keeps pretty close to that 110 line. Booms, falls back, booms, falls back.
Except, WWI – WWII. These were times when something happened to “change the rules.” I don’t know about the end of WWI, but at the end of WWII they had the GI bill in the U.S. and probably the equivalent in Canada, and they came up with the “long term mortgage.” So, when you give a pile of people subsidized access to house purchases, and change the way you pay off the mortgage so you can afford to pay for a much larger price tag on your house, it changes the long-term price tag on property.
What we’re seeing now, and have seen over the last 10 years across the US and Canada is another “change of the rules.” That massive spike in housing prices didn’t happen because of scarcity, because of more people owning homes, or anything like that. It happened because of a random “bubble” fueled by the invention of a new type of financing. The zero-down, 40 yr mortgage (Canada) or the “interest only” or “teaser rate” mortgage (US). That allowed people to buy houses with bigger price tags, so naturally the price tag went up. Just like the end of WWII.
What happens next remains to be seen.
The governments have a choice. They can
1) Return to more conventional financing, let house prices tank, foreclosures spike, and get the pain over with, or
2) Make a permanent change in the rules to increase buyers’ ability to buy housing and make the spike a permanent plateau.
There’s obvious issues with 2), but it seems to be the way things are headed.
So, all along I’ve been predicting a 50% drop in Vancouver RE, from April ‘08 to April ‘12. Adjusted for inflation.
But if the gov’ts do change the rules, I don’t think it will happen. We’ll certainly see a correction, maybe 35% or 40%. Because it’s so darn overpriced. I doubt they could engineer in permanent annual appreciation to match the annual operating losses of landlords, so at some point landlords will have to jump ship — how many years can they afford to dump piles of $ into a depreciating asset?
Time will tell. What is your prediction, if I may ask?
Why Buy When You U Can Rent until 2013?
2) Make a permanent change in the rules to increase buyers’ ability to buy housing and make the spike a permanent plateau.
Are you saying that the rules could be changed even more? What more can be done? 100 year mortgages? Factoring in grow op incomes? Keeping these interest rates low for the next 25 years?
I will admit that each time the market should see a slight correction, the government introduces a new tool to keep things moving – longer amortizations, changed rental income rules, zero down mortgages, 5% cash back, etc.
I don’t know what else they could do to change the rules?
> I don’t know what else they could do to change the rules?
Couple ideas
* free $8K for first time homebuyers
* free $8K tax credit for “move-up” homebuyers — who buy something that costs more than $100K more than the place they sold.
* mortgage rates 1% lower than they are now (I’m sure it could be done with some sort of a slight-of-hand)
* bigger tax credits for homeowners — write off interest on income tax, for instance, for homeowners. Write off insurance, condo association fees, etc? Landscape maintenance?
* they could offer deferment of capital gains for income property (like 1031 exchange in the US), which would free up properties in some markets and provide capital to buy investment properties (sell the family home in Dunbar that’s rented out to students, and each heir buys an Olympic condo as an investment property)
* the laneway housing (and previously the secondary suite universal approval) also do this. And the secondary suites in condos?!?
* assistance for civil servants (police, schoolteachers, firefighters, librarians) to buy homes in the communities in which they work (down payment, low interest mortgages, etc)
* go back to zero-down mortgages
* trigger inflation (wouldn’t change “real value” but sure would hold that spike on the sticker price)
They’re the government, they can change the monetary system however they like, and there’s plenty of things they could do to change the playing field. Most of these would “cost the government money” but I suspect there’s ways that they could just make it happen and not lose a dime.
WBWUCR’t'13?
300 Whybuy
Okay – I had not thought about most of those options. Thanks for the comprehensive list. I may have to go buy now if they start implementing those tactics, as financial prudence just does not matter any more.
Couple other ideas –
* sliding scale bonus for move-up homebuyers — $5K tax credit for every $100K difference in value between old property and new property.
* new type of fixed rate, variable paydown mortgage. Rather than zero-interest or zero-down payment, require a modest down payment (2%, 5%), and have a payment schedule that increases with expected income increase — if the average employee moves up the pay scale at, say, 4%/yr in their mid-career, then ramp up the payments 4%/yr. The first year you’re paying interest-only, the next year its interest + 4% to pay down principle, etc.
WBWUCR’t'13?
To repost vomiting dog’s quote from Mish (next thread, post 84)
p.s. To me, I’ve lost so much interest in economics and finance in the last year. When the financial world started to resemble something as comical as the “professional wrestling” it gets hard to take yourself serious as an analyst of that venue. For me, (or the pros like Nouriel, Krugman, Schiff) or anyone else to sit here and make realistic prognostications on what will or should happen is as ridiculous as talking about whether Hulk Hogan was really better then Andre the Giant. It’s all fake people. Whether we are fundamentally right, momentum can irrationally go another way. Even if we are wrong, governments can intervene, “manipulate/correct” or “save” the economy for whatever reason.
http://www.rgemonitor.com/financemarkets-monitor/257830/pay_no_attention_to_the_140_behind_the_curtain
WBWUCR’t'13?