I worked retail in Fort mac for 3 years.
6 figures doesn't mean much when my Edo Lunch at the mall foodcourt us $17 w/ a drink

And 3 years ago when oil was 100/barrel rent for a 1 bedroom basement suite was $2500

I remember hearing stories where Tim Hortons would close during non-peak times because they couldn't hire enough staff to stay open the usual hours.

I also heard stories about how Superstore tried to open a new store and was paying $12/hr, which was the lowest pay out of 3 anchor stores in that mall.
Needless to say, the store's opening was pushed back 6 months before they hired enough staff.

Ok so you've been saying since the start of the thread that people shouldn't be putting money on black, yet you being a "finance" guy can't do any better than "going to vegas". I see:nicethread:

Maybe in your world, investing is:
Red - don't buy Vancouver real estate
Black - buy Vancouver real estate

But it's not true for a lot of people. :facepalm:

Thanks for the insight, but you don't comment about getting the money back into Canada. If you keep the money & profits in US, that makes sense, but if you want to pull it back into Canada, get ready to raked over the coals by the US govt and both taxmen......

Hahaha, I posted this on the first page of this thread back in 2012.

Boy did I call that wrong.

Don't worry. This is the fourth real estate thread on RS. The first one was pre 2010 Olympics and many people were certain the bubble was going to pop after the Olympics ended.

Never mind. There's been over 6 threads on RE/housing/condo's on RS. All basically said the same things. Kinda interesting and fun reading all the things people said pre-2010.

I remember that first thread, and I was one of those people :p

I recently re-read the 1st page for lulz as well...

Which just shows you can never predict the future. A lot of the times it is just luck.

Remember that arrogant prick on here who drove the riced out Mercedes hatchback? He used to brag about how smart he was for renting and investing his money in the stocks rather than housing. He seemed pretty sure of himself.

So yeah.
I took his posturing as maybe he knew what I didn't. So I sold one of my rental houses, instead putting my money into stocks and funds. Fast forward 5 years, and my old house has gone up $250k, while my investments are up about 6%.

I hope his dick gets caught in a chain link fence.

Is crazy. I saw a feed on my fb selling those pre sales unit in the apartment I purchase. 1bedroom 505 sq ft(same as the one I purchase) they were going for at least 355k on a unit on the 3rd floor. When I purchase mine I got it 300k and on the 10th floor. Surprise to price went up so high......

Won't get into detail on this, but let's just say it's a smart structure plus they do re-invest the earnings through 1031 exchange so they have very little capital gain tax to pay.

To be fair, Vancouver RE market did drop 15-20% when the US was in trouble due to their sub-prime mortgages.

6% in 5 years eh... maybe you just chose bad investments, because the market has returned about 50% in the last 5 years (s&p, 1300 in march 2011, 2000 in march 2016)

If you have time, here is some more good reading.

I think this might have been the first detailed RE thread.
http://www.revscene.net/forums/52840...-downtown.html

Damn, maybe you had some bad luck with some investments or bought dividend stocks........ because looking back 5 years:

AAPL +123% + currency
Visa 313% + currency
Mastercard 281% + currency

Imagine the calls on these on these :chairdance::chairdance:

Then we have the shitty canadian stocks
Royal Bank +27%
CIBC +20%
Rogers +52%

The smart people would have borrowed on their homes and invested into the markets and written off the interest.

I wonder how many of these people are on RS? I don't have that kind of risk tolerance, even with a passive investing strategy. I'm weary of collateral charge mortgages too - don't like being tied down, though it's possible to get a HELOC with a separate lender.

I find it funny how people here talk about these double digit returns on equities like it was a some guarantee.

Most people I know who have invested fairly heavily in US equities over the past 10 years have done quite well, but to talk about these 50+% returns is retarded. I highly doubt anyone here, let alone in the industry managed to pull off massive returns in the last 20 years. Done well? Sure. But these comparisons vs the housing market are the most ideal outcomes possible, and assuming people REALLY knew what they were doing when it came to investing.

On the other hand someone purchased a home and did nothing and made a 20%+ return.

the housing market in vancouver is the absolute most ideal outcome possible in the last 10 years, so how is it unfair to judge one ideal vs another?

If we all had crystal balls, there would be no poor people in this world.

Buy if you need to.
Invest with your gut.

6% per year on average is what I saw.
Not bad, per se. But not like the $100k bump that some people are seeing in the span of a year.


It's easy to look like Warren Buffet in hindsight. So I won't give this reply too much credit.

A simple 5 year look at Apple shows me the following.

$45.75 in June 2011.
$100 in September 2012.
$55.79 in April of 2013.
$132.54 on May 22 of 2015.

To today's value of $105.91

We all know that to make money in this game you need to sell high, and buy low. But unless you have a crystal ball, you have no idea when these gains and losses are going to take place.

What if you bought in September 2012?
What if you were forced to sell in April of 2013?

What if you held $100k of stock for the 5 years? It would be worth $200k today. Whereas my home value shot up beyond that in the same amount of time.

This is why people talking about the gains they could have had is absolute bullshit. I could make millions on the last lottery if I knew the winning numbers beforehand. Same goes for the stock market.

For the record, my banking stocks and real estate hedge funds did very well, but my resources and Canadian dollar didn't, bringing my overall portfolio down.

To you folks with all of the answers, I ask you this.

Where is your Lambo?
What is the view like from your Coal Harbour apartment?

Yeah. Just like I thought...... All talk.


Thank you!

with the market, there are fluctuations but that's why investors typically buy periodically not just enter the market at one point, whereas with housing, the price you pay is your entry point, there's no dollar cost averaging with housing. you buy high, some day you sell high (hopefully). with stocks, you buy high, it goes low, you buy low, it goes high, you've made some money in the middle too.

with your apple example, you'd be buying apple on sale in april 2013. in some cases it works much better in your favor, so it's a bit more complicated than what you've stated.

Anyone who buys into the market in single lump sump deserves to be taken to the cleaners or to jail for being an inside trader.

I wish I had that crystal ball as well since I bought into resources too. Then again, Canadian banking stocks are notoriously safe investments.

However, just remember in 2011 there was this thing in the US called Quantitative Easing, and the same thing in different names and forms around the world. The main purpose of QE was to bail out all the risky investors that lost money in poor investments, and thus allowed them to cash out and reinvest in "better" investments. Not only that, no one knew when the Feds would stop putting money into the market (somewhere around 80 billion a month?). The governments were backstopping everyone's stupidity/greed with no end in sight. Imagine going to PNE with a limitless ATM and playing the carnival games until you win that elusive big stuffed animal. The limitless ATM ended up being $4.5 trillion dollars.

Around that time interest rates were trending down, companies were merging or buying out each other, bidding wars for companies, credit was easy to obtain, commodity prices were stable, Osama was caught, US consumer spending was slowly improving. etc. I wouldn't dare to say "the writing was on the wall" but there were definitely more than enough signals to see where equity markets were heading and more importantly, how the major players (funds/conglomerates/state-owned companies) would benefit.

And in Vancouver, 2011 we were still thinking about the Olympics and too caught up with the Stanley Cup. I don't recall overnight lineups at condo presales or bidding wars. There were a lot of new immigrants and lots of new cars on the road, but nothing too much out of the ordinary. Houses were still being sold around asking, and property wasn't hard to find.

Not that it matters now, since that boat has long sailed. Maybe that fellow who sold the real estate, rented and invested all the capital is now on a hookers and blow diet or still working 9-5. But at that time a few years back, if you looked at the potential of RE and equity markets given your financial experience, you made a choice that seemed right for you. At that time you didn't anticipate 15% gains YoY on real estate.