A few Save on Foods within a month
One of them being duncan

It's way worse in housing, because you're leveraged by all the money you borrowed.

Say you put $100,000 in stocks. Market tanks by 30% and you lose $30,000. Shit.

Say you invest that $100,000 in a 3-bed house plus suite worth $500,000. Market tanks by 30% and you don't just lose part of your cash, you lose it all, and then some. You lose $150,000.

Now your house is only worth $350,000, you're paying interest on a $400,000 mortgage, and your $100,000 in savings is gone. Even worse, the bank has you by the balls. If you need to sell, you can't cover the money owed to the bank. You HAVE to keep making the outrageous payments you signed up for, knowing that your neighbours who bought at the bottom are paying way less than you, every month, for the next 30 years.

Being in this situation weighs on people.

This is already the fastest decline in prices in the last 26 years, and those prices have only been going down for 6 months. Wait another six months, and this will be the fastest decline we've ever seen.

I'm not trying to act like the sky is falling, but I get pissed when I read shit like this in our newspaper. People are still out there trying to convince us to buy into this market when they know that it would very likely ruin us.

Bitches.

You know what REALLY pisses me off? If someone decides to walk away from their house by declaring bankruptcy, they get fucked. Fair enough. Everyone who he owed money to gets fucked. I guess that's fair too. The only guy who doesn't get fucked is the guy who sold him the mortgage. Because it was probably a CMHC insured mortgage, meaning they just raise taxes to cover the loss. Meaning our tax money goes to paying off a bank that made a bad choice in lending some guy more mortgage than he could afford.

Fuck!

Holy shizit, US lost 533,000 jobs in November...
http://money.cnn.com/2008/12/05/news...mber/index.htm

How can anyone deny that houses are overpriced... They got too expensive too quick and now they're being corrected.

I love it, I'm contently amassing money in my bank account just waiting until prices hit their floor.

I just read that too...you know...it's kind of funny.

1: Everyone's saying "BUY BUY BUY!!!," if you don't buy and wait for prices to go down you're contributing to the recession/depression around the corner.

2: Everyone's saying how horrible of a fate the downturn is.

I don't know about you guys, but the downturn has been nothing but GREAT to me. :)

- I drive a LOT (about 40-50K a year)...even with my gas-sipping car, the difference between gas at 69.9 - which is what I filled up at yesterday - and gas at 1.40 works out to $2,800 a year...that's a SHITLOAD of money I'm saving. That's something you notice month-to-month.

- My student loan and line of credit are tied to the prime interest rate, which is the lowest in quite some time, saving me a few hundred bucks more per year.

- With the housing market slumping, my g/f and I might actually have a chance to buy a house (if I ever decide to settle down lol), something that was going to be difficult when the AVERAGE house in Vic was going for nearly half mil. Even if I keep renting for a while ('cuz I move around so much), rent will follow house prices in the downhill slide, which is good enough for me.

- The price of consumer goods is going down, that's just a no-brainer. And yes, I AM holding off on buying stuff (ie: GPS, etc) and waiting for the deflation and price slashing that's already happening and they're predicting more of to hit full-force.

On top of all that, my company slashed jobs a few years ago, which means there's no threat of what CanWest-Global did a few weeks ago. I've been at the paper the third-longest (for reporters) and been with the company the second-longest (also for reporters), which means that as long as I don't get my ass fired, I won't get laid off.

I fail to see how this massive economic turndown is anything but a heaven-sent and much-needed and much-appreciated break for me :)

Canada's right up there too...
http://business.theglobeandmail.com/.../Business/home

Wow, Ontario got screwed...

"Even the silver lining of the current job numbers, the remarkably low unemployment rates in Alberta and Saskatchewan at 3.4 per cent and 3.7 per cent, is at risk. As energy prices fall, Western Canadian companies are scaling back their capital budgets and cancelling and postponing major projects, and some economists are warning that the oil and gas sector will see slumping employment as prices continue to skid. "

Interestingly enough, they fail to point out that Alberta's unemployment actually went DOWN 0.3%...(was 3.7%)

on the bright side...crude is pennies above $40/barrel :D That lowered Ford Lighting on 20s that's been collecting snow on a dealer's lot is starting to look pretty damn good lol

Predicting 475,000 job losses in December for the US, and they're also predicting steady job losses into 2010...

you're not the only one. I can't wait to see what happens with real estate in the spring...

With the american dollar back up compared to Canadian, I think things don't look too bad for BC. Plus, our banks are fine.

yuppp

Oh, I was wondering why our banks issued $6.5 billion worth of common and preferred shares last year. It's because they're fine?

lol

Compared to every other country in the world, yes. Canada has recently been rated the safest and soundest jurisdiction for banks globally:
http://www.weforum.org/documents/GCR0809/index.html

There will be -no- bailouts as none are needed.

Interesting..... maybe the world won't come to an end this year?


http://news.sympatico.msn.ctv.ca/abc...cession_090122

Too bad the only way to know they have hit the floor is for them to go up eh.

It is said that people only buy when the price is going up, that is more true than people know. :-)

I bought when prices were rock bottom. $130,000 for a house that is now assessed for more then $400,000. Woots!

Profit not taken isn't really profit though :)

Agreed, and I have no plans on selling the house. But it's nice having the banks wanting you to use your equity, and I can just say, meh.

:p

Meh.

I can't see them going back up for quite a while.

Well maybe they won't jump as fast as they did in the past few years but I know for one example that my moms office is busy again. They were dead in November and even a bit in December but since the beginning of the new year business seems to be picking up again. Mind you she said its still not what it was 2 years ago but she is saying things are defanitly moving better. I guess we will all have to wait and see what happens. In fact she just got into a bidding war on the weekend on a property that has been on the market for 120days with no prior movement. 3 bidders on the same place.

We're hiring right now and I've getting more resumes in a day than I've gotten in a week in the past.

wow where do you work? something similar was happening in our office.

we just laid off another guy this week. sucks, he was a nice guy to work with.

looks like the Obama bounce died off...

Where do you work?