Quote:
Originally Posted by Radley77
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Once in awhile, I like to check out Ben Jone's housing bubble website. You go to all these links and you see case study after case study of the same thing. People buying very expensive houses with very little money and then
hearing them sob about, "We never thought the housing market could go down". Treat the real estate market like stocks. The market can go down and fast. You should see some of the mansions you can get in Denver,Orlando and southern California for under 300,000. Just amazing monster houses. Prices in many markets there have dipped below 1996 levels. And the preceding skyrocketing rise was very similar to Calgary's. I'm not saying its happening here, but the price escalation between 2005 and the first half of 2007 in Calgary was too fast. Quite a correction in the second half of 2007. Who knows what happens next, I didn't see one real estate expert say prices were gonna nosedive 40,000-50,000 in q3-q4 2007. There is still an abundance of resale and new homes on the market. And if the market further drops another 20,000-30,000, Its very likely that people will just foreclose on their house because it just makes economic sense. I'm happy I have a house in a fairly desirable part of the city. But houses that are averaging 400k to 500k in the outskirts of the city seem insane. I know we all love this city, but on aggregate level, people move to Calgary because of the economy. Places like Vancouver and Toronto are much more destination cities. Heck, when the B.C. economy was slumping in the late 80's and early 90's, housing prices still continued to escalate. It's just a beautiful city in a beautiful part of the world. We just need to look back 25 years ago to see if the same holds true for this city. It's clean and safe here, but with the exception of the stampede, how often do you run across tourists here. You'll see more in Banff and Canmore on a weekday than you'll see here on a warm weekend. My own personal opinion, if you buy in Calgary, focus primarily on location and then location and more location.
Of course, if you're happy with the house you bought and have no intention on moving, then don't bother with real estate fluctuations. If you're happy, you're happy.