News   Apr 26, 2024
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Baby, we got a bubble!?

Who exactly are the losers here? Those without money, I suppose.... but hasn't that always been the case?
The losers are basically anyone born after 1985-1990. It's not about being rich vs being poor. People who were born early enough had better chances of getting into the real estate market when house prices were affordable, so they can afford to upgrade to bigger houses now.
 
Let's say the bubble bursts tomorrow. How much of a 'drop' are we anticipating? 2014 level prices? 2009?
In Toronto proper? I'd say SFHs are immune to drops, but a period of near zero growth is possible.

Condos.... now those might collapse since the majority are not sufficiently large for families, and the glass panel walls' half life will soon approach, resulting in insulation-value failure and massive retrofit costs, forcing owners to sell. http://www.cbc.ca/toronto/features/condos/
 
The losers are basically anyone born after 1985-1990. It's not about being rich vs being poor. People who were born early enough had better chances of getting into the real estate market when house prices were affordable, so they can afford to upgrade to bigger houses now.
In that case, if existing homeowners are simply selling high and then buying high, the only winners are the LTT-funded government and of course realtors.
 
Home Capital Group, an alternative sub prime lender in Canada, took a 65% stock hit today. The Globe and Mail has articles citing that this might be what finally pops the bubble. Hold on for the ride...
 
The rent controls should limited to pre-~2010 buildings and the government should waive property taxes, in an all out effort to keep get rental construction going.

But, this is pretty much the only place where I see them going wrong. I really hope that the great towers on the boards come up, and I'm sure that the impacts of these measures will cool the periphery far more than Toronto (esp pre-amalgamation city limits Toronto), where any declines will be offset by people priced out coming back in.

Overall, as Poloz himself said, the speculators and those treating housing as an asset class like any other, have really inflicted a lot of misery onto a couple Canadian cities.

Vancouver brought it on itself by staunchly protecting the 75-80 of the city that's single family homes instead of zoning them for midrise development. Could have built housing for an entire generation. Instead, people traded houses and cashed out, and everyone else was forced into highrise and the suburbs.

In Toronto and Toronto region, the price increases have been at least mitigated by bananas construction numbers. You take foreigners and speculators out of the market, keep adding your 10,000-20,000 year population growth, and you could see the same level of development but lower prices.
 
In Toronto proper? I'd say SFHs are immune to drops, but a period of near zero growth is possible.

Condos.... now those might collapse since the majority are not sufficiently large for families, and the glass panel walls' half life will soon approach, resulting in insulation-value failure and massive retrofit costs, forcing owners to sell. http://www.cbc.ca/toronto/features/condos/
What? SFHs are definitely not immune, and I say that as an owner of a SFH.

Home Capital Group, an alternative sub prime lender in Canada, took a 65% stock hit today. The Globe and Mail has articles citing that this might be what finally pops the bubble. Hold on for the ride...
I'm just as concerned about what this means for HOOPP, the pension plan that decided to prop them up, for a price. Apparently HOOPP negotiated some really high interest rates for their loan to the tune of $2 billion (out of their holdings of $70 billion), but that is just even more worrying, because only a company in horrible shape would ever agree to those terms.

Also, a prediction about this company:

Billion Dollar Fund Manager Comes Out Of Retirement To Bet Against Canadian Real Estate

Home Capital Group (HCG) is where Marc is betting the implosion of this industry will begin. Despite not being a household name, HCG has built a mortgage portfolio that’s around 1/5th the size of BMO, impressive considering BMO had a 160 year head start. Shortly after Marc began shorting HCG, an anonymous letter to the board of directors explained irregularities in their numbers, which forced the board to launch an investigation. The board revealed around $1 billion in fraudulent loans, that they traced back to 45 brokers. They stopped doing business with the brokers, and that $1 billion was quietly adjusted to $1.9B.

Globe article from 2015:

Whistle-blower prompted probe into Home Capital mortgage fraud allegations

Short-seller Marc Cohodes questioned why the company didn’t disclose problems with its mortgage brokers earlier than July 10, given the company began cutting ties with brokers as early as last September. The Ontario Securities Commission requested Home Capital disclose more details about its investigation as part of its second-quarter earnings release on Wednesday. “All the way through this they were blaming origination shortfalls on the competitive nature of the market and being conservative, when in fact there was some form of whistle-blow on the fraudulent mortgages that were going through,” he said.
 
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