Student's killer on parole
Charges after investigation
Hostage was on captor 
Regulating power prices
Gen X is raking it in
LeBlanc laying groundwork
US vetoes UN resolution
$100M Nassar settlement
12 Trump jurors picked
Rates slow green economy
Vicinity hires president,
Record housing starts
Warriors ready for Round 2
Kalamalka Bowl cancelled
Rockets live to fight on
Rihanna's parenting ‘hack’
Tarantino scraps film
Munn talks cancer battle
As I continue my charitable expedition around Australia, I keep my eye on the headlines in BC for real estate.
I am not surprised to see the usual flurry of spring headlines, that continue to overstate, underestimate and generalize across a whole country, the statistics of one small region.
Topical at the moment appears to be a “foreclosures radically increase in the Okanagan” headline. In one instance if you read the article, it refers to the fact that this is telling of the economic circumstances of the families struggling to survive, which is true. Yet it points to the fact that added into the mix are developer projects that have been foreclosed and the staggering total of 175 foreclosed properties on the market.
Most developers that I am aware of have gone through foreclosure or, if they have been lucky enough, negotiated forbearance or refinance agreements in the past few years. It stands to reason that if two development projects are foreclosed on, and they each had 80 unsold units, then we would see an additional 160 units of inventory being sold by a court appointed monitor or a representative of the bank. How on earth does that represent the difficult circumstances that families are going through in the Okanagan.
In another almost identical article, this time focusing on the South Okanagan, the article appeared to be nothing other than a press release from someone in the real estate industry who was offering to compile a list of foreclosures and yet the headline had grabbed someone’s attention because it referenced the fact that there were several more homes for sale in foreclosure this year compared to last.
Likewise the forecast “crash” in BC housing prices that is so de-rigeur at the moment is of course referencing a small portion of the Vancouver market that I have been suggesting could not continue as the newspapers were indicating last year. So breathe deep, the Spring is here and along with it comes another opportunity to speculate on what may happen in the real estate markets.
Nothing too exciting in my opinion. Recovery starts with stability. If we hold status quo with last year, or a little better, we will be on the road to recovery I believe.
This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.
