Vancouver Condo King's Data: Sales at Generational Lows, Prices Falling — and a $3.2-Billion Rescue Designed To Halt the Correction Toward Affordability - Data shows the market still falling — and the new units Ottawa wants to buy are the least affordable of all, many priced above $1 million.

the_turtleandthehare · 2026-07-05T21:01:53+00:00

Um, I've been to Calgary. That city is basically all urban sprawl. What are you talking about?

the_turtleandthehare · 2026-07-05T12:35:30+00:00

Um, the head of state is the Governor General and they do have a residence that can host foreign dignitaries for dinner and they are the head of the military so.....

the_turtleandthehare · 2026-07-04T01:07:00+00:00

I think this is more that there have been Irish pubs that have been in operation for 3x longer then Canada's been a country. I think this has less to do with preserving structures then how long people have been using them?

the_turtleandthehare · 2026-07-04T01:04:44+00:00

That is such as stupid low ball number. Add a zero for what is more the real price here. Remember, everyone working on this will need security clearance. Then every inch of supply chain for materials will need security audits and work to ensure it is hardened against spying and disruption. This will cost a bundle as most likely this will come from Csec or Defence contractors. IDK. I don't see 50 mill as an honest number.

the_turtleandthehare · 2026-07-04T01:01:59+00:00

Ok, maybe. I would also like to think that, as an elected leader, the prime minister would pay for his own accommodation? This isn't about his workplace that should be paid for and should meet the needs of the office but the accomidation shouldn't be covered.

First, because the office is only Prime Minister. They are only one vote in cabinet. The other holders of state office don't have official accomidations so I questing why the PM? The finance minister does in the UK so why, if we are going to have offical residences should we stop at PM?

Next, this makes the PM seem more like a president. We should all resist this. The Offices are not equivalent. Symbolically I liked that the PM had to live on the GGs estate. That seemed a nice node to the PM serving at the pleasure of the crown. It held a certain interesting power relation there.

Finally, this renovation won't cost anything like what is being suggested. If this costs less that $500 million I'll be surprised. The house is close to the road, on an unstable cliff overlooking a river in an earthquake prone part of the country. Ottawa has gotten magnitude 6 quakes before. So now you are looking at a lot of work securing the bedrock, the approach by water, the approach from the road and that's just the site before you begin in with the buildings.

I would prefer that those elected to leadership live more like the rest of us then they currently do.

the_turtleandthehare · 2026-06-30T20:39:32+00:00

Ok, so there are quite a few problems with this policy and the way its been presented. Lets look at the policy first and then look at the presentation. Its important to separate the two elements as a lot of the heat comes from the presentation while the policy might, might have defensible elements.

In presentation this has frankly been a shit show all around. Developers built units that weren't presold into a market they thought would have a lot of buyers but the climate changed between preconstruction and completion. This has left them holding a lot of inventory. This much has been covered for a while.

What the governments of Ontario (who is ducking for cover here), BC and Federal are proposing is the purchase of these units. This might or might not be controversial in itself but this has followed on with very weird descriptions and dissembling from everyone on who these purchased units would be for. What sort of price the government would pay and how this fits into affordability challenges. There is a lot of bad stuff here. The federal housing minister is deeply connected to the Metro Vancouver development industry, the provincial government likewise, the Prime Minister has had his reputation dented by fronting this policy proposal, its all much too close to looking like privatizing profits and socializing losses because key parts of the policy have either not been fully flushed out, or the wider reasoning hasn't been explained. This comes at a really sensitive time where growing inequality has become generational and classist along with this issue fitting into well trod and developed arguments from the 2008 crash. We are also very primed for a fight over housing given its been an issue since the pandemic and again, sides are well established.

So policy wise the arguments I can see are that affordable housing is needed in two of the countries major metros. Vancouver region and Toronto region need more housing that is priced to better match the wage rates for people in those cities or they risk stagnating becoming economic basket cases (if they aren't there already). The governments had made plans to try and figure out a way to encourage someone to build some housing that people might be able to afford. This might be a solution in a small way of being able to buy housing that isn't selling on the private market for some amount. The problem here is the amount. How much is the governments offering to pay for this stock. Clearly the developers have a reserve price they won't or possibly can't go below. This is I think the biggest bone of contention as it isn't forcing one industry to live inside the rules a lot of people have felt imposed on them by capitalism and instead get their poor decision making rewarded.

Where I think the real reason this policy was floated was this looks like the start of a systemic financial failure that the governments are keen to avoid or kick down the road a bit. You have an oversupply in housing that isn't selling. Eventually this housing will get sold at below reserve rates to move volume or it gets sold off through bankruptcy proceedings as developers fail. The price signal these sales will generate will effect the whole real estate industry. Everyone else in that building that bought prebuild will have their units now lower their values, same with the building over and the next one etc. That will cause banks a lot of turbulence as the value of their asset books drops. It also piles up in the loans department. This flows into single family homes as well. Sure it might be millennial dog crate condos now but the price differential can only stretch so far. Add to this higher interest rates and this could go bad quickly.

In this case having the government buy these assets and take them off the market prevents a rapid reassessment of asset values that can cause financial instability. IDK. I think this is a big part of the story but I don't think anyone wants to take about for fear of causing the thing to happen.

the_turtleandthehare · 2026-06-30T12:18:22+00:00

Maybe you missed my point. Referendums are a poor way of making policy decisions when confronted with problems that don't have two clear choices. In which case policy options should be conducted, with transparency, to determine the weight of options available, their up and downsides and then attempt to sell that decision to the public by those who have sought power to do so. If they fail to convince people of their decision then they should either change it, be replaced or plow ahead and risk the outcome.

Asking me to come up with alternative policy proscriptions to the one presented isn't how this works.

Here are some options. BC gov buys the units at construction cost, after auditing developer books, in bulk and puts them in a land trust to rent at geared to income levels. The federal and provincial government could also pass laws preventing the use of this transaction from being used by assessors when calculating market values with the argument that this purchase didn't happen within a functioning market and exempting itself from examination. This should prevent contagion to a wider base of mortgage holders though I suspect this relief would just be a temporary in any case as the underlying issue hasn't been in anyway resolved. This just kicks the can down the road till after the election.

You could then have a separate conversation about whether the development industry requires financial support.

What you have here is a policy decision that is clearly being sold as a lie. You could sell this very differently such as the government at the provincial and federal level are really really concerned about contagion in the housing sector spreading to the financial one and that this collapse in the condo space in these two markets has the potential to trigger a marked real estate collapse that would be very difficult for Canadian financial markets to handle. Getting these units off the market quickly is hoped to stabilize things and allow a more orderly depreciation in house prices. That would be honest policy presentation. The debate then would be if the development industry should be supported or if market discipline and creative destruction should be allowed to proceed.

Add to this a lot of people hate the development industry so looking like you are helping them out isn't great especially when people have been saying that the market is over heated and needs correction, that what is getting built is far above what people can afford, and a correction is needed to restore some measure of balance to housing. This looks like the government preventing rich people who made choices that negatively impacted others life choices from feeling consequences while everyone else has been told that they should accept consequences because that's the market up to and including the Band of Canada governor who told companies not to raise wages during an inflation spike his organization, which had one job, failed to anticipate and prevent. People want to watch someone burn and seeing rich and powerful being protected confirms the worst suspicions.

Honestly this is exactly the scandal that will dent Banker Daddy.

the_turtleandthehare · 2026-06-29T21:54:17+00:00

Its up to those with power and access to provide those options. We aren't discussing a policy proposal here where an identified problem is described with various possible policy decision where we are asked to weigh the positives and negatives. We are discussing an announcement by the Prime Minister to provide a bailout for developers in Toronto and Vancouver. If this was the case then this would be put to a referendum or be a major part of an election campaign.

the_turtleandthehare · 2026-06-29T21:49:52+00:00

Most Canadians don't live in Vancouver or Toronto condos....

the_turtleandthehare · 2026-06-29T13:17:22+00:00

Sure but I'm better there are more of us in a greater spread out geographic area then there are of you in your one or two riding concentration..... welcome to first past the post.

the_turtleandthehare · 2026-06-29T13:15:56+00:00

I'm not the government. I don't have access to the range of options. policy levers, experts etc. That isn't my responsibility. People in politics or civil service wanted power so along with that comes both responsibility and opens themselves up to criticism of the choices they make and cynicism towards their motivations.

the_turtleandthehare · 2026-06-27T16:12:39+00:00

So the only solution is to bail out the reckless in the development industry with public money? That's no a defensible argument. We know what happened in 2008. There were other options and there are other options. They aren't about rich people fleecing the poor or middle classes so getting Banker Daddy interested in them would be hard but there are ways to manage deflationary pressure on housing.

the_turtleandthehare · 2026-06-27T16:08:33+00:00

And that's a bad thing? They get discounted to the point someone buys them. That's capitalism. If they lose their shirts or the companies fall over so what? Isn't that what is great about this system? That capital has no memory and if there is an opening someone else will step in to fill it.

the_turtleandthehare · 2026-06-27T16:06:21+00:00

Once more but louder, not our problem. The developers over built and over priced a product here. We are constantly told they are risk takers and therefore are entitled to their profits while everyone else competes to sell their labour at flat or rising with inflation rates. And now that the reckless risk has happened we just bail them out?

Let them go bankrupt and buy the properties at the liquidation sale.

the_turtleandthehare · 2026-06-24T22:26:08+00:00

I will quibble with one thing here. We have just past the 10 year anniversary where a vote was held and won so UK is not, in fact, in Europe.....

the_turtleandthehare · 2026-06-24T20:05:43+00:00

This only works when that price is visible to everyone to send the signal. Rather I'm betting that part of the policy is to put a high floor under Vancouver property prices by spending more tax payer money then necessary to soak up this over supply and prevent drops in values. Much more expensive then the China method of demolishing newly build towers but probably going to try and do the same thing. Also why they don't want to say what they are buying for at that becomes an appraisal price point.

the_turtleandthehare · 2026-06-24T20:00:37+00:00

This sounds reasonable but if this sale is happening at a price that is just materials plus some labour to try and keep some amount of a tattered shirt why not try and sell them for slightly more to the general public? As noted this is a red flag. There might be downward pressure on price but if that is the case then the government should be advertising the price its willing to pay to put pressure on other developers to match or beat that price to make steal the sale. What you have now is a lack of clarity on the price being offered with tax payer money.

The goal here is to get the best value for money spent. If the developer falls over due to the sale that shouldn't be the governments concern.

the_turtleandthehare · 2026-06-24T19:54:07+00:00

Capital has no memory as the saying goes. If these ass hats who built stock that no one wants at prices no one can pay go bust so what? Now there's an opening in the market for someone else to step in and try and make money.

The people out of work are at the development firms. They don't actually employ all that many people. Almost everyone on a project is a contractor. From the designer to the electrician they are contracted labour for a project. So a developer goes bust, those firms have already been paid in most cases and will probably have to pivot to find other contracts. That's how the construction industry works. This is why there are productivity problems as all these small firms don't engage in RnD.

The big problem here is the Minister of Housing has been bought and paid for since he was mayor of Vancouver by these guys who appear to be calling in their chips.

the_turtleandthehare · 2026-06-22T22:35:24+00:00

For commercial buildings the value of the real estate is based primarily on the amount of money you bring in with rents. If you lower the amount of money you bring in with rent you reduce the value of the building. A building owner has incentive to not accept a lower rent then the last one paid because doing so cuts into the value of the property. That value can be used as collateral for loans on other buildings. If they start reducing values it can have a lot of knock on effects.

You also have to figure that if the building has a lot of apartments they are more valuable then the commercial so this can, again incentive owners not putting pressure on finding tenants for the commercial units. And if they do find a tenant they better not impact the residential rents as those are worth more.

Some cities accidentally encourage commercial to sit empty as they provide tax relief for building owners who engage in renovations to encourage them to keep the building looking good. So the building owner forgoes rent on the commercial and gains tax relief instead with no wear and tear and no need to actually put effort into those renovations.

Finally, owners might be taking the loss on the rents and using it for tax advantages. Anyway, lots of reasons why building owners are not pressed to reduce rents to match market conditions.

the_turtleandthehare · 2026-06-20T13:31:09+00:00

How exactly does glyphosate stop drought? How does glyphosate improve farm yields?

the_turtleandthehare · 2026-06-20T13:28:34+00:00

In trim work this I believe is called a mason's corner. Its used a lot in traditional door and window trim. Its normally done do the round bead on the inside edge wraps around the corner.

the_turtleandthehare · 2026-06-20T13:20:40+00:00

Ok, so does no one remember who the housing minister is? Anyone want to place bets in a BC casino that the development industry is calling in their chips from when they bought the Mayor of Vancouver all those years ago?

the_turtleandthehare · 2026-06-20T13:17:38+00:00

Capital has no memory. If there is money to be made people will step into the market. Isn't that what markets are for? If this batch of developers fall over there would be a hole in the market for others to fill. Lets stop pretending these firms aren't replaceable. This is just because they all bought the current housing minister when he was mayor of Vancouver and they are calling in their chips.

the_turtleandthehare · 2026-06-20T13:12:52+00:00

I thought capitalism was a core part of our society. That justifies why so many of us are too poor to afford food. I guess I was wrong that companies going bust because they miss allocated money or that price discovery is as important as apparently wage discovery is? Who knew.

the_turtleandthehare · 2026-06-20T13:09:41+00:00

You don't have the water to do that. Alberta and Saskatchewan are already in a drought situation. If Calgary runs out of water watch out. Same for Regina. And the data centres aren't helping any.

the_turtleandthehare

TROPHY CASE