Friday, November 10, 2006

thanks VHB

graphic from the mast-head of the Vancouver Housing Market Blog


Today there was an article in The Tyee about Vancouver Housing Market Blog. It's a good read if you want some background on the best housing blog I have seen. Check it out, and be sure to check VHB's blog.

I won't rehash it all here, but essentially VHB was the first that I have seen that thinks the housing market in Vancouver is ...stupidly out of whack. Most of the readers of my humble little blog will already know VHB (you most likely came from there). I owe it to him and to Vancouver Condo Info for inspiring me to start this blog, and for my readership. Both of these fine gentlemen posted links to this blog on their own blogs, and VHB furthered that by mentioning Vancouver Condo Info, and this blog in a post at The Tyee.

VHB has had in the neighbourhood of 2 million visitors to his blog since he started in March 2005. Many of the commentators on his blog thank him effusively for saving them from jumping in the market before they are "priced out forever" (the mantra of the RE schills).

The analysis there leaves little to be desired - it is concise, extensive, and factual. You will meet people like freako there - a sometimes ascerbic, but always fair curmudgeon with a Spock-like logic.

Anyhow, I am a bit behind on the blogging today, and this serves as my daily post.

Thanks again VHB (for more than the fish).

3 comments:

solipsist said...

Hats off to his blog for doing such a fine job of being the bone in the RE industry's throat that they so richly deserve.

I agree bc_cele.

I didn't need conversion either. I was spewing about it for all of 2005, and since. Nobody listened, and quite a few told me I was wrong. That's what made VHB such a relief when I found it.

I don't care much for details, and economics bore me, but I like the incisive summations of a few. I tend to go by gut feelings tempered by common sense. It doesn't make for compelling discussion with the boffins.

It's good to have company too, when one is way out in the wilderness.

Van Housing Blogger said...

Thanks for the thanks, but maybe you oughtta save it for *after* / *if* the market actually crashes. All I've done so far is convince a bunch of people out of 100s of K of capital gains . . .

solipsist said...

Glad to see you here VHB.

My thanks to you was really for the inspiration to blog, and for the mentions.

I have only myself to thank/blame for the loss of capital gains. The same goes for any others. Your research and arguments are well reasoned, and if they give succour to others in their decision making...nothing wrong with that.

I have been mulling over an idea about the insanity of crowds - as opposed the the wisdom of crowds. I have visions of a couple of buffalo standing back and shouting STOP! to the thousand other buffalo that are stampeding off a cliff.

I very much think that this whole thing is driven by fear. The complicit MSM, and the marketing machines have whipped people into a frenzy. Intellectual properties. Be brave or move to the suburbs. Stroke my ego - please. I wanna be smart and brave too.

I think that 9.11 scared a lot of people inside their homes too, where they saw orange alert blah, blah, superbugs, anthrax, Osama this, blow up that, Debbie Travis, bullshit heroes of renovation, dreams so skillfully fed, it makes me tired. It makes weaker minds more malleable. Fears of not having what others (seem to) have. Fear of poverty?

One of Mahatma Gandhi's Seven Deadly Sins (for what it's worth) was wealth without work. That fits in here somehow.