WeneedLumme
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Posts posted by WeneedLumme
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13 hours ago, stawns said:
I wish they'd transition to an older draft age..........19 at the youngest, preferably 20
Or at least do what they did for a while, draft 18 year olds in the first round only, but draft 19+ in subsequent rounds.
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9 hours ago, Elias Pettersson said:
The banks prefer that you float, go variable, as it allows the bank to match rates with bond yields over time. They can't do that with fixed rates as those rates don't change while the bond yields fluctuate.
You have that backwards. The banks' ideal scenario is to match up the term of the (fixed rate) mortgage with the term of the bond where they raised the money. Ie: borrow the money with a 5-year bond and then lend it out on a 5-year mortgage. That locks in their profit, minimizing their risk.
While the yields of existing bonds do indeed fluctuate over time, their interest rates do not; those are fixed. The way the yields fluctuate is that the bonds are traded on a free market, so their market value/price fluctuates, changing the yield provided to the buyer by the (fixed) interest rate. The cost to the bond issuer/bank however does not change when the current market value of an existing bond changes.
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8 hours ago, taxi said:
Housing isn't cheap in the small cities in BC either. If housing was cheaper elsewhere you'd see more people moving out.
Vancouver also had plenty of land to expand to the east. And like I said before huge chunks of land within the GVRD are being not farmed as part of the ALR. On top of that Vancouver has archaic zoning laws and is purposely not zoning for enough density. There are massive areas of Vancouver full of rotting warehouses.
Of course housing is much cheaper in small cities and towns than it is in Greater Vancouver. Stating otherwise is just silly.
Most cities can expand in at least 3 directions, many in all four directions. Being able to expand in only one direction obviously limits the supply of land.
With respect to Vancouver's zoning bylaws, Vancouver, like most civilized cities, plans for different uses in different areas. Wiping out the industrial landbase to make the city just a bedroom community is not considered extremely desirable by planners. And saying "purposely not zoning for enough density" is also silly. Why would you say that?
Permitted densities and uses have been increasing over time as demand increases. Have you ever been to Yaletown, Granville Island, False Creek or Fairview Slopes? Do you know that when I was in school, those areas were filled with "rotting warehouses"? The city obviously does change zoning bylaws when demand for different uses changes.
It sounds like you prefer the situation that exists in some US cities, where property owners can do almost whatever they want, which creates an ugly hodgepodge of random mixed uses. What exactly is "archaic" about Vancouver zoning bylaws?
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On 9/3/2022 at 5:04 PM, ronthecivil said:
Clearly the answer is to actually raise rates until the employment situation normalises.
And on that note, I am locking in my mortgage tout de suite......
Fixed rates have already risen substantially, in anticipation of further central bank rate increases. They are not that likely to increase much more.
The rate increases we have already seen are slowing the economy/inflation, but it's like manoeuvering a big ship, steering inputs need some time to take effect.
Everyone has to decide their own risk preferences, but locking in a mortgage right now for a long term is likely to feel like a bad choice within a couple of years.
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11 hours ago, taxi said:
We need to create more housing, and lots of it. Zoning is the major issue in Canada. We have lots of land. The issue is artificial lack of supply created by extremely restrictive zoning.
High interest rates are good for cooling prices, but they also prevent anyone but the rich from entering the market.
That may be the case in some cities. But in Greater Vancouver our supply of land is constrained by mountains to the north, ocean to the west and the USA to the south.
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His playoff stats look much better than his regular season stats. I wonder if he is a playoff warrior type. Here's hoping.
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3 hours ago, ronthecivil said:
People bringing in a bunch of money, while not the government printing it, is still going to cause inflation, which is the major problem we have. Prices of everything has jumped.
Obviously. But I was responding to his claim that wealthy immigrants do not contribute to our economy. Right now the objective is to weaken the economy, not to stimulate it.
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On 9/1/2022 at 9:05 AM, Elias Pettersson said:
I have a business degree from UBC. I’ve studied economics extensively. As another poster pointed out, buying Gucci, Lamborghinis and other high priced items has minimal benefit on the economy as a whole. Also, scooping up high end real estate and investment properties with cash only only helps to drive prices higher, shrink supply and make real estate unaffordable for the average local.
Also, these immigrants don’t actually work when they get here, not in the areas that need the most help anyways.
I am happy for you. In that case, no doubt you will remember from the economic base analysis you learned when you were taking the urban land economics courses, that bringing money in from outside the area and spending it IN the local area creates economic activity through the multiplier effect.
I know from first-hand experience that wealthy people who move here spend huge amounts of money in restaurants and miscellaneous local stores. The employees and owners of these businesses then have money to spend elsewhere in the local area, allowing the owners and staff of the other businesses to do the same.
Even when the wealthy people buy expensive name-brand products, the local sales staff and merchants make substantial amounts of money from the sales, often totalling more than the manufacturer makes, money that gets recycled throughout the local economy.
Choosing to assume that the huge amount of money that wealthy immigrants spend here all goes to offshore corporations and does not benefit the local area, sounds like willful ignorance when coming from someone with a B. Comm.
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17 hours ago, Elias Pettersson said:
... Their contribution to the economy is to purchase real estate and drive the prices up as well as spend money on non essential items like high end clothes, jewelry, furniture and expensive cars.
... I don’t blame them but it doesn’t really help the locals and the local economy.
You seriously believe that people spending money on "non essential items" like clothes, jewelry, furniture and cars does not help the economy? How do you think they acquire those items? A wave of a magic wand, with no humans involved? I can only assume that your income is salary and comes from tax dollars, and that you have never studied any economics.
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2 hours ago, NewbieCanuckFan said:
Best never to "time" a purchase (much like in stocks). If one is going to "invest" a given amount of amount, spread it over time (unless it's a small purchase then it doesn't really make that much a difference). But that's my viewpoint. I'm hardly a financial advisor lol (looks at my assets & weeps),
That is bad advice. Using one-size-fits-all rules for dramatically different types of assets is pretty much a guarantee of poor results. Good quality stocks can be expected to continue to rise substantially in value over time, year after year. Currencies on the other hand, generally do not, and are often range-bound.
As I pointed out, anyone who bought USD's at any time in the past when our dollar was 0.90 USD or more was probably happy with their choice. Anyone who bought USD's when our dollar was in the 0.70 USD range or lower probably regrets their choice.
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16 hours ago, NewbieCanuckFan said:
Never really a bad idea holding a bunch of USD as a Canadian. At worst, you’ll be able to use it on excursions south of the border.
Depends on where our dollar was when you acquired the USD's. Cdn $ usually trades between about 70 cents US and par. When our dollar is closer to par, sure. But buying USD's when our dollar is anywhere near the bottom of that range, anywhere near 0.70 USD, there is a pretty good chance one would regret buying.
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2 minutes ago, vancan2233 said:
So which scouts are right?
Corey Pronman - The Athletic - May 31: "He is a goal-scoring threat from the faceoff dots with a hard, accurate wrist shot and one-timer that projects to be a weapon in the NHL. He has good speed, hands and vision to generate clean entries and make plays but those aspects don’t pop like his shot."
Jeff Svoboda - NHL.com - June 27: "He's a versatile player in the offensive zone with excellent skating skills, a great release -- he might have the best shot in the draft -- and the ability to handle the puck at a high level."
Adam Kimelman - NHL.com - June 29th: "Lekkerimaki (5-10, 171) has an NHL-caliber shot, with a one-timer or wrist shot he can use to pick corners. He's an excellent skater with good offensive instincts."
Until I see for myself, I think I will lean toward the very detailed opinion along with the named and dated opinions. I am guessing he is a good skater.
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On 7/5/2022 at 8:31 PM, Elias Pettersson said:Sales are down 35% year over year. Prices are down 2% from May to June this year. With the Bank of Canada looking to increase its rate by .75% this month, look for sales to plunge even further, increasing supply and lowering prices further.
I see a nasty correction in the works here. Buyers can't afford to buy at these prices with these interest rates. Should be an interesting summer...
I was just chatting with a former colleague who is still in real estate. He has had recent sales that were arranged in the spring and just completed now that are worth 10 to 15% less than the selling price. The market peaked around February and prices have been sliding since, as rising mortgage rates choke off demand.
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On 6/28/2022 at 1:55 PM, Harold Drunken said:
Nice physical play, for sure. But being able to hit doesn't guarantee you $3m a year in the NHL..there's no reason why he would be paid that unless he has improved significantly Let's remember in the 79 NHL games he played he was a -10. He's unproven. You don't pay someone that just because they are big.
The bolded is supposed to prove something? Let's remember that in the full year he played, 2016-2017, he was a minus 7. And let's also remember that Hutton (-22), Edler (-20), Stecher (-16), Gudbranson (-14) and Larsen (-8) all had worse plus minuses on the blueline that year. Does that mean anything to you? Now that there is some context, does his plus minus still have significance to you?
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2 minutes ago, Elias Pettersson said:
The scariest part for me is that we are about to exceed the stress test rates that were set to make sure buyers didn’t over extend themselves on their mortgage.
The stress test rate used to be 4.79% and is now 5.25%. The 5 year fixed rate will soon surpass that number once the 75 basis point rate hike takes effect.
I would assume that most of the expected 75 basis point increase has already been priced in to the 5 year fixed rate. They're not like variable rate mortgages where the rate will jump on the date the BoC makes the announcement.
But yes, mortgage rates are expected to soon be above the stress test rates that many buyers qualified at, which creates a rather worrisome scenario.
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3 hours ago, nuckin_futz said:
Maybe then it will be enough to actually meet the demand. The demand is the key factor. In the last 13 years there has been trillions made in global equity and real estate markets. That money is sitting there waiting for a place to park itself. IMO it's more than enough to sop up any temporary excess supply.
Governments change the rules all the time. That's the function of government. Temporarily eliminating the tax would not be political suicide if it averts a housing crisis. Government is run by scoundrels. Scoundrels will do whatever they have to in order to save their own skin. Perfect example of that is 2009. Governments (central banks) decided they were going to engineer a recovery and they did, but not without massive intervention. Government has no qualms about intervening. So can they reverse course to save the market? Their recent history says that's exactly what they will do.
In 24 years of being in markets the one thing I have learned more than anything is do not have a rigid opinion. The vast majority of the time I developed a rigid opinion I wound up getting my ass kicked. Your opinion seems pretty rigid. I think Bruce Lee summed it up best when he said "Empty your mind. Be formless, shapeless — like water. You put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend."
Trillions have been wiped out of existence by the drops in the equity and crypto markets recently. And the trillions in equity in the China real estate market are evaporating even as we speak, much of it tied up in apartments that nobody wants to live in or buy, as the values continue to drop.
And even if they could be sold, the China government is making it harder and harder to get money out of China. I believe that you are mistaken about trillions of dollars sitting around waiting to be invested in our real estate market, which is nowhere near as foreign-buyer-friendly as it was a decade ago.
Demand for real estate (or almost anything else) is very much affected by price, which for real estate includes the price of money. Last year it was possible to get a 5-year fixed-term mortgage for as low as 1.8%. Now you are looking at well over 4%. Consequently the demand for real estate has dropped sharply and is almost certain to continue to drop as rates keep rising.
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1 minute ago, Warhippy said:
The metric I saw was regarding personal income/wages and net worth vs housing prices.
Now compared to them is apparently night and day.
Back then we were in a nasty inflationary spiral caused partly by the quarter-century long post-war economic boom and partly by OPEC forcing up energy prices dramatically in the mid-70s.
Inflation was higher pretty well every year through the 70s, but for the most part, except for fixed-income pensioners, healthy wage increases each year made most people feel pretty good about their financial situation (see: Money Illusion https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/money_illusion.asp ).
Due to the fact that increasing inflation was considered to be normal for years/decades and became embedded into our psyche, it was much more intractable then than I believe the current situation is. Now, much of inflation is being caused by shortages and supply chain kinks, and when those are resolved inflation is likely to drop back relatively painlessly.
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48 minutes ago, Warhippy said:
But, many still had savings, assets etc. We also didn't see the average Canadian owing almost $1.80 for every dollar earned. Nor did we see housing triple in less than a decade or gas double in less than 120 days. Added food and transport costs increasing by almost 40% across the board
Our parents may have seen "worse" with 19% interest rates, but they also didn't have the environmental factors we see now affecting things. Futz may very well be right. No argument there and the less damage done the better. But talk to any local aesthetician or hair stylist/barber. Even a stripper. They're FAR better indicators of where things are then a market expert.
Actually, the housing part you have backwards, our home prices have not tripled in the last decade, they have doubled, but they did triple in the decade from January 1971 to December 1980, doubling in 1980 alone. Inflation was much worse in the late 70s through 1980 than it has been so far in this cycle. The current high inflation rate we are now experiencing was considered to be pretty normal in the late 70s through 1980.
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6 hours ago, Elias Pettersson said:
We are looking at the crash of all crashes. The world as we know it will never be the same. Imagine all the people who bought homes in the last 2 years at these incredulous prices and now have to make monthly mortgage payments that are going to be 50-60% of their monthly pay cheques. And then add to that the fact that they have to pay 50% more to drive their car and put food on their table. And then add the fact that the average person has a boatload of debt via credit cards, car loans, student loans, etc.
It's all coming together in one final chapter that will see the stock market AND the real estate market collapse together. The average person has not figured this out yet, but if you have studied history and followed the signs then you will have figured it out. Inflation is uncontrollable at this point. Nothing that will be done to control it will work. It's too late. The higher the rates go the closer we will get to destruction. It's bad. It's really bad. Can't believe I am living in these times.
That's a bit excessively doom and gloom. A big part of our current inflation is due to shortages and the supply chain kinks and they are not permanent.
The higher interest rates are already slowing the housing market which is a big economic driver as well as weakening the stock market, which is another big source of wealth/spending.
And another huge source of this inflation, energy prices, are not likely to stay at/keep shooting past $120/bbl indefinitely. When they start coming down, they bring inflation down.
It is true that it might require driving our economy into recession again to control inflation, as happened 40 years ago, but I don't believe that saying inflation is uncontrollable at this point is accurate.
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3 hours ago, nuckin_futz said:
I don't see a real estate crash around these parts. There's simply too much demand. That demand will buttress any serious price decline. We already saw this in 2009. Canadian real estate fell something like 10% across the board. It only fell about 1-3% around here. I am of the opinion that what would normally be a serious price correction would instead be a period of about 2-3 years where prices go flat to slightly lower.
The government has many things they can do to avert/lessen a real estate crash. They could extend even more credit. Or they could open the floodgates to foreign buyers. Who would trip over themselves to scoop up property in one of the most desirable real estate markets in the world. The government isn't going to sit by as their tax base is eroded. Kind of like the junkie rushing in to save the meth lab.
I remember saying similar things in 1980, and again in 1994. By the time the third crash I experienced was approaching, in 2008, I wasn't saying them any more, but other people still were.
The 2008-09 correction was a LOT more than 1-3%. It was more like 10-15%, but it did not last long; by the end of 2009 the market had recovered all the lost ground. BTW, in case we are talking about different things, I am talking about the Greater Vancouver market.
This time, the situation is much more like the 1981 real estate crash. Extremely high inflation and a ridiculously hot/high real estate market, causing governments to raise interest rates to very high levels to choke off demand. The economy in general is interest rate sensitive, while the real estate market is probably the most sensitive sector due to the universal use of financial leverage.
The 1981 crash dropped real estate prices sharply, and they did not recover to pre-crash levels for almost a decade. Don't be shocked if something more like that happens again, rather than the couple of years of flat markets you are expecting.
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2 minutes ago, gurn said:
Thanks.
Peru, even using that metric, is in trouble at 6299 per mill.
Yeah, they appear to have been hit worse than any other country in the world. Not a pleasant distinction.
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2 hours ago, gurn said:
The mortality rate is strongly affected by the amount of testing (ie: number of confirmed cases). In Mexico, for example, they hardly ever tested anybody unless they were practically on death's door, so their positivity rate was always way high, as was their mortality rate.
What I consider more significant is the number of deaths per million in the population. At 2471 deaths/Million, Mexico has been hit pretty hard, while Italy for example was hit even harder with 2769/M but had a mortality rate of only 1.0% because they did large-scale testing.
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2 hours ago, RUPERTKBD said:
It seems like every time one of these decriminalization, or legalization threads come up, there are one or two posters predicting dire consequences and claiming that the data backs their opinion....even though they certainly do not...
https://transformdrugs.org/blog/drug-decriminalisation-in-portugal-setting-the-record-straight
https://www.cbc.ca/news2/interactives/portugal-heroin-decriminalization/
The CBC article stresses that legalization is only part of the solution. Treating the problem as a health issue, rather than a criminal one, is key....
Oh yeah, well ma preacher sez yew are awl goin to hell, abstenunce is thuh only way. Ah prooved it!
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54 minutes ago, JM_ said:
any kid in high school who has snapchat has access to a network that can get him/her anything they want in about 5 minutes.
Drugs, sure, but of course a case of beer or a twentysixer of hard liquor would take a bit longer since they don't fit into a vendor's wallet or watch pocket as easily as chemicals do.
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Nikita Tryamkin | D
in Alumni
Posted
What? He insisted that his AHL-out clause be honored early in the season when he had not played and was bringing his fitness level up to NHL standards. But once he was playing regularly, he was very useful. "his level of play wasn't good enough for our top six anymore" was not the way it was. I believe he was offered a 2 M/year one way contract, which he declined to go back home to play for his hometown team.