[polak]

Originally Posted by lorenavedon

Ok so I'm trying to grasp your arguments and reply.

1) Unemployment doesn't not necessarily mean lower house prices because just because someone is unemployed doesn't mean they need to sell their homes. Even unemployed people need a place to live. Calgary is not a work camp, people live here and call it home, it's one of the biggest cities in Canada and consistently ranked one of the best places on earth to live. Not saying prices will go up, but unemployment alone is not enough to send prices crashing.

Actually, you were saying prices will go up. Unemployment is exactly what would drive prices down. You say Calgary is not a work camp, but when a very large chunk of your population are new migrants then a work camp is pretty much what it is to them. When things go bad the ones with no roots will be the first to leave. Lots of Calgarians with little to no roots living here right now.

2) We don't lack space. You're right, but we lack affordable land in good locations. People have a limit and not everyone wants to live within a 5 hour commute to the center. The rich hoard land in Calgary and will not sell it unless they get the prices they want. If times get tough they just hold onto it. Building a house in Calgary still costs a lot of money, we don't have illegal Mexican day laborers building our homes like they do in Texas or California etc. Stuff here takes a long time to build and it's expensive.

Except people keep building out further and further from downtown into those wide open spaces and all of those houses in Saddleridge and Legacy are still selling for stupidly high prices. They will drop.

3) People will move here even in a poor job market because they want to live in Calgary just like people move to any other city that has a far worse UE rate than Calgary has ever had. Look at how many people flood into Vancouver and it has a horrible economy.

Vancouver is a world renowned, air and sea hub city. Take away the jobs and people want to move to Calgary like people want to move to Ottawa or Winnipeg.

4) Marginal wage people can't afford homes. That's right. So the rich buy the homes and rent them out to the poor and fleece them for %50-%80 of their take home because its the only game in town. I don't like it, but it's reality. It's what happened in the US after the financial crisis. Homes were foreclosed on and selling for cheap so hedge funds and the rich purchased them all and rented them back to the same people that were foreclosed on. The rich get richer. Sucks, but that's the world we live in and it's a similar situation in Calgary. There are tons of rich people here just waiting to jump on cheap real estate. I think you would be very surprised how many people in Calgary are saying, "wow I can't wait for prices to come down so I can BUY". Sorry, that's not a sign of low prices to come. All those bottom feeders will put a floor on this market.

Ummm.... You know your whole point here hinges on prices dropping significantly? The "Rich" in the US didn't go buy up all those homes for the over inflated prices that the "poor" who were foreclosed on paid for them. They waited until those houses were almost worthless, bought them all up and then rented them out for prices that the "poor" could afford because the owners were paying significantly less for the property.

That whole "game" requires the bottom to fall out completely.

5) Look at the MLS. If people don't get the price they want they're delisting. This isn't like in the US where people are foreclosing. It's just not happening here. Our low rates will keep this bubble going for a long time yet. Mark my words.

Yeah they're delisting now. The whole idea of this discussion is that Oil prices look to be staying low for the foreseeable future which means the lay offs will continue and new work won't be coming online anytime soon. Then a lot of those people won't have the option of delisting. On top which, as more and more people are laid off, the amount of potential buyers will continue to go down.

THEN, once prices actually drop and only then will you get a the vultures (like me) who are waiting patiently on the sidelines to scope in and buy.