strange fruit

I was out wandering with li'l solipsist today, and noticed a lot of strange new fruit (depicted below) amongst the flowers and trees that he demands identification of.

Joe Chan (in the first picture) has had that place for sale for months. Ellie Chan joined him next door, and Winnie Lam is next to her. Two doors down, a house struggling to be completed will soon be for sale (I photoshopped its sign). Half the damn block is for sale! The Joe Chan, and the Winnie Lam both appeared to be vacant. On the block behind me, at least two places were for sale - one of which is vacant.

The new crop continued to flourish, and I could only take so many pictures. I ended with the Wong consortium when I noticed that the wee gaffer had fallen asleep in boredom. Yawn.





There is something wong with this picture (sorry, I could not resist that) - it is starting to look like the pictures we were seeing from California, etc., where everything looked to be for sale - and no buyers.

Strange fruit, come early. I predict a bitter harvest by the time the Harvest Moon rolls through the sky. Especially with the October 15th !Surprise! of revised qualification requirements for mortgages.

It is finally over.

bestial book ends

(click the pic for biggy)

I spotted these evil twins on Copley - just east of Nanaimo. Good grief! They look like raffle prizes from a monster truck show, or worse. Side-by-side slaps in the face.

I have noticed a "deteriorating" trend in the finishes on these now ubiquitous press board boxes. Gone are the heady days of Mandarin Orange, Venous Red, Fecal Brown, etc. stucco, the final push into oblivion is vinyl siding. I guess that maybe there was a deal on it before the carbon tax kicked in. Way to go on mitigating your carbon footprint folks! (and building hideous houses while you are at it) Way to go on maximizing your profits even further. It's just too bad for you that you are too late to the party. BEEP!

But who would buy such candy floss crap? Really ugly twins? What were these builders thinking? Or not? Do they not realise that the days of buying sight-unseen are over? The half-dead tree liability is a nice touch too. Shoulda been more careful with the excavator.

Vancouver is being left with a sad legacy of soul-less, cheaply built (but very expensive) buildings - from leaking, rotting, crumbling condos to this kind of offense. There ought to be a law.

888 state

Yesterday I was out and about, and noticed more "For Sale" signs than I have seen for a while. It seems that there are 4 or so on every block. It seems that it is sinking in that it is over.

My neighbour has had open houses the last three week-ends in a row. It seemed that it was mostly Chinese looking (I can tell the difference between Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc. 19 times out of 20 +/- 3%). No Mercedes, Lexus, BMW, mostly small, less expensive vehicles. Maybe that indicates they are more frugal, and can afford a $900K house on a smallish lot in East Van.? Maybe not. I enjoyed doing yard work while my stereo pumped the Sex Pistols, The Ramones, Forgotten Rebels, etc., out my window. Hey! fore-warned is fore-armed. Right? The asking price is 20% higher than it was bought for last year. And the defects are starting to show. Good luck with that.

So, I was all juiced up, and did some MLS searching. Still no houses in East Van. under $400K. I guess we will have to wait for fall for things to sink in. Prices and quality are all over the map, with tear-downs listed in the same price range as new construction, and big lots in the same range as small lots. A little price compression before the price depression sinks in, me thinks.

What I found interesting was all of the houses listed with a bunch of eights. I counted 10 places (out of 160 or so) that were listed for $888K. That is kind of blatant, and if I were Chinese, I would be somewhat offended. Do the listing agents think that they (Chinese) are that stupid/naive/superstitious? You would not want to mess with over/under bids on a place that was listed for $888,888.00 would you? I'll give you $888,888.88 plus my lucky rabbit foot. No Deal? I'll throw in a four-leaf clover!

Sadly, many who over-extended themselves to buy in the last couple of years - with the hopes of insane appreciation - did not see the credit crisis, doubling of energy costs, accelerating property taxes to pay for Olympic cost over-runs, food inflation of 30%, etc., coming when they factored their top line.

Why don't we just start bidding $300K with a bunch of conditions on these $800K places? Let us bring it down!

There are deals ahead. Keep your powder dry.

a buyers' market

Yay! It's a buyers' market!

At least, that is what was breathlessly reported on the CBC Vancouver news at 11:00 PM. The Reasoning is a 43% decrease in sales (timeline not provided), and an 18% increase in listings (ditto, and Huh? It must have been an 80% increase in listings...?). But, it was said, 'prices are still rising, just not at the same pace as recent years.'

Well golly! Colour me finicky, but as far as I'm concerned, the market for any sane buyer will be when the 50% haircut is realized.

And that nice family looks so happy...

side note - I read today (from an unverified authority) that natural gas prices are going to go up by 35% by winter. And that is not going to be due to any carbon tax. Oil hit $145/bbl today.

Energy prices are going to kill the RE market, and the economies of the world. The big shakedown is on. Banks collapsing in the US.

And what would inflation be right about now? 2%? Snicker.

Oh my. If video killed the radio star...

updating utopia

I wrote in January 2007 that The crazy weather has the environment on everybody's minds, and gov'ts will react. Whether (no pun intended) they react with vision remains to be seen.

Since then, they have reacted with some vision; the provincial Liberals have enacted a carbon tax of 2.4 cents per litre of gasoline, which takes effect the day after tomorrow. Is it too little too late? We got our cheques (and cashed them), but rumour has it that there is a fair bit of backlash, and Campbell is wavering. I'm not giving my 100 bucks back! The federal Liberals have also proposed a carbon tax, and are taking it as an election platform.

Personally, I don't understand all the crying - energy prices have sky-rocketed beyond imagination all by themselves (thanks to speculators?), and it is just going to get worse before, and if, it ever gets better. I figured out the other day that we spend 8.73% of our gross income on fuel for our vehicles. Ouch. We need the one gas pig for business, but my 17 year old 6 cylinder pig could use replacing with something of greater efficiency. Can someone spare me $40K for a Prius?

So what does that mean for the city? Less cars on the road (or more energy-efficient cars...), less pollution - lower insurance premia? It will probably mean more densification as people move back into the city and the emptying of suburbia. Back to small, self-contained towns. But what about employment? Vancouver has been hollowed out as far as jobs are concerned - fewer office buildings in the core as companies have moved out, and condos replace them. So what kind of economy will we have? Tourism is returning to the ambit of the affluent, so low-paying service jobs will be lost too. If it wasn't for the pending lack of employment, I would venture to say that property values would actually increase as people move into the cities.

Things are going to get harder before they get easier. With escalating food prices, more people will be turning to produce their own food in their gardens, so we may well see the end of manicured lawns, and litle-used streets may well be turned to food production, infill housing, etc. The only comment on that January '07 post was someone who said that my utopian view of the Vancouver of the future could not happen because of all of the sewers, fibre optics cables, power, water mains etc., that run under the streets, but those are quite deep for the most part, so tearing up the asphalt and planting corn will have little to no effect on that aspect. What about police, ambulance, fire services? We could keep the alleys as they are and tear up the streets for infill housing, gardens, etc. Condo dwellers are going to face a bit of a challenge to grow their own food, so maybe more community gardens in parks? Allotments are old hat in Europe, why not here? The skies will be quieter with much less air traffic (and less chemtrails?!).

It looks like the USA might not be wanting the dirty oil from the tar sands very soon, so it will be interesting to see what happens to Alberta, I suppose China may want to buy it though.

Speaking of China, with the rising cost of transportation, it will soon be uneconomical to import everything that we wear, computers and electronics, etc., so there will be opportunities to start producing what we use here, and that will recreate jobs that have been lost to globalization.

There is a time of transition ahead, and that will not likely be smooth, but in the long run, we will likely be better off, and living much simpler, and hopefully, more meaningful lives. I read a good book some years ago called The Fifth Sacred Thing. It was an interesting and idyllic look at how we would live post-oil economy. It sounded great.

From that January 2007 post, here is a link to some of the ideas for a more livable city. It is a good start, and was produced before energy prices went hay-wire.

abbreviation

A few shots of the sky over Vancouver last might.

Got Chemtrails? Climate change? HAARP? Tune in for more details - it might just turn into a series - The Skies Over Vancouver, or such.

Don't know about chemtrails, or HAARP? Google them for some background.

This was to be a post, but time is not on my side. li'l solipsist has moved to one nap a day, and I have even less time than ever. It's well after midnight, and 5:30 AM comes early, and I still have to eat dinner. I want to write about carbon taxes, and oil prices, and suburbia, and back to the future, and I will...

letters, queftions...anfwers?

clicky pic for biggerness

I got an e-mail yesterday (below), and sent a response.

I see no need to write a thesis on it, so without further preamble:

What would you do/say?

Queftion

20 Jun (1 day ago)

Hi,

I am moving from Yaletown to Port Moody, because I have a new job there. Should we keep our condo in Yaletown as an investment? Or should we sell and buy a condo out there? Which is a better investment: Yaletown or Port Moody?

Our condo here is at xxx Cambie on the 26th floor w. SW views. 1150 sq. feet w. engineered hard wood floors, 2 bedrooms and solarium. Assesed (sic) at 550k.

In Port Moody, we would buy a 2000 sq. foot townhouse for about $500k

My theory is to keep our condo here, and wait 10 years or until it reaches 1 million - whichever comes first.

thanks,

(name removed)

*************************************************************************************

Anfwer

Hello,

I would sell the condo, and rent until the correction has bottomed. Common consensus has it that the market has peaked. Look around at formerly "impregnable" markets (UK prices off 30%), and repeat the mantra - It is not different here, this time.

In 10 years, your condo may only be worth $50k - let alone a million. Your townhouse might be worth the same, and you would be on the hook for the mortgages on both.

If you have read much of my blog, you will know that I have been predicting a meltdown akin to, or worse than the Depression of the 1930's. Do you want to owe at least a half a million (for the TH) in a situation like that? If you want to make an investment, sell the condo, and buy two TH with the proceeds when the market bottoms.

My opinion is worth what you pay for it. I am not a financial planner, nor an RE guru, but I do have much, much more than I owe, and live very comfortably in my rented house, with no stress.

Best of luck, no matter what you decide.

solipsist

all bets are off

or, your guess is as good as anyone's.

Good grief. The TSX blew over 15,000 for a couple of days - setting it up to be worth almost 25% more than Wall St. Is that historical? Hysterical maybe. It shaved off a bit today with oil dropping by over $5/bbl. And the dollar edged up on expectations of the BoC raising interest rates to counter inflation. Gird your loins. (and why did it take so long to acknowledge that inflation? We have been noticing it, and commenting on it for ages!)

I look forward to higher interest rates so that my savings will actually mean something. It will, hopefully, cool the RE market a bit more too. Not that I really pay much attention to that anymore anyhow.

Mining companies are receiving federal permission to use pristine lakes as tailings ponds now. At least 16 Canadian lakes are being used thusly at present, with more to come. Got waterfront?

This weather is taking its toll too on our food crops - especially the weather in the American Mid-West, where the Mississippi is inundating cities, towns and villages - not to mention all that corn.

Turns out that what is killing all the amphibians is a type of fungus that infiltrates their skin, leading to a horrid death. Many species are now extinct in the wild, and there has been a concerted effort to salvage as many as possible for captive breeding, and release back to wild habitats. 30% of species are now extinct in the wild, and 50% of the remainder are endangered. Canaries in the coal mine?

The US presidential race is particularly uninspiring. I don't think that Americans are ready for a "black" man and his wife to take up residence in the Whitey House. If Obama does win, expect him to be assassinated post haste - especially if he is reckless enough to have Billary Clinton as his VP.

What else?

The federal Liberals unveil their carbon tax plan today, and I have doubts about whether Canadians will swallow it in any forthcoming election, and we will probably have another paralyzed minority government which acts like a majority until the world ends in 2012 (no, I do not really think the world will end).

A complex crop circle showed up in England representing Pi to 9 digits. The aliens are warning us, or the hoaxers are getting more proficient.

Some guy on Vancouver Island has been making electric trucks for the past 5 years and selling them into the US. Transport Canada will not pass them for use on Canadian roads (not the Zenn Electric car either), but has approved an American manufacturer's more or less identical vehicle to be sold and used in Canada. What's with that?

The American military has been making raids across the Pakistan border, and Canadian soldiers are likely doing the same - in pursuit of "Taliban insurgents". I thought that they were after Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. Oh, that's right, it's really about the gas pipeline into Pakistan and India. Whatever happened to the good old days with al Qaeda and the "Axis of Evil"? Got liberation and democracy?

My neighbour has not sold their press board mansion yet, and I doubt they will without taking a huge loss. Tough tofu, I say.

It's kind of a grab bag day because there is so much going on, I can't keep up. I can't even get my police helicopter surveillance video up. I feel like I am in the calm before the storm. How about you?

random repair residences

Yay! I was allowed back in!

I was out perambulating with li'l solipsist today and grabbed a few shots for curb appeal/appall/whatever. I don't think that the correction has happened yet, and I can't even be bothered to check.

So, a few shots of what East Vancouver has to offer, though none of these are for sale to my knowledge.

From not too bad to worst.

This place isn't too bad for some reason. There is something that I like about it. The colour is bold, the lines are fairly clean, but the designer seemed to have nothing really to say.

It reminds me of northern Europe if you scale it down and get rid of the cheesy cultured stone facing, and butt-ugly entrance doors. Actually, the whole front entrance area needs re-working.



This non-descript little place is dwarfed by its neighbours, so they put up a big, ugly sign to compensate.

The advertisement looks to be threatening with a 45 gallon drum of various colours of paint, or a nuclear device of some sort.

I don't know, maybe spruce yer place up before using it as an advertisement, and use a little imagination in your sign.



This unfortunate little place has no windows on the sides at all. The front windows are shuttered. I think vampires live here.



This place looks plain abandoned, and is an eyesore. Perhaps the police should investigate. It just has that air to it.



Well that was exciting. the pope, mohican, paulb, Rob Chipman, et al have the news and numbers, I am just a random commentator.

Stay tuned for my copper chopper/VANOC/CSIS/RCMP surveillance post.

i pick the ending

I have not been posting so much for a number of reasons. l'il solipsist is the biggest one, but I have been engrossed in other areas of study besides. I wrote a post over two days (many, many interruptions), and was just finishing, when blogger crashed it, and it was gone. I will try to reproduce it...

Politics are very interesting these days. I don't fixate on US candidate nomination races - that is all part of the "look at the pretty bauble", or the "lay back and think of England" type of distractions. Canada is a rudder-less ship over-taken by pirates who drink from lead tankards (it is the Canadian politics that have my attention lately).

I picked up a little snippet of curious information; the various churches, of various denominations, own 7-8% of all inhabitable land on Earth. That is a lot of land, and you can bet that those holdings are not mortgaged. Talk about cornering the market...

Driven to distraction by gas/energy prices? (pun intended) Do you think that it is "Peak Oil"? Hurricane Katrina? All those emerging economies like China and India? Horseship! This article on the Oil Pimps might have you revisiting those ideas. And you thought that price manipulation on a vast scale was unlikely...

This article entitled 20 reasons new megabubble pops in 2011 might have you thinking that all we "bears" who refused to buy over-priced Real Estate are actually pretty prescient, if not down-right genii. Those who bought in the last few years will be under water for a very long time, and may never recover their "investment". I smell a lot of foreclosures and bankruptcies in the pipe. I'm glad that I have respectable savings while the rest of the hemisphere has negative savings.

Still excited about the Olympics? An article over at The Republic has a few things to say about that. A couple of excerpts; (emboldening mine)

...the Olympics is not just the two-week show that happens on television in February 2010. It is a decade-long preparation process that includes real estate deals at a ferocious pace, road and rail and venue construction through zones that would never be allowed under normal, calmly-considered circumstances, and of course there is the ubiquitous security preparations comprising the biggest single expense item in the whole expensive affair.

...the IOC’s rules that insisted that publicly-released cost estimates for games preparations borne by the citizens of host cities cannot include allowance for inflation during future years of construction, even though all normal and routine budget plans for all projects public and private include calculations of the future value of today’s dollars over the course of multiyear construction projects. The purpose of this rule can only be to obscure the true costs for cities thinking about making bids to host future Olympic games.

Kevin Potvin goes on to explain that the only Olympic experience that Vancouverites will have is through television, and a city carved up by security perimeters (he neglects to mention the property tax increases and the years of living in a city under construction - with the concomitant traffic snarls, noise, dust, etc.)

My wife and I, and li'l solipsist are planning on being in Mexico for that time in 2010. We can't really afford it, but I won't be able to take running into military road blocks, etc. - especially as we can expect to see an American military presence here (thanks to Harper/Bush deal on that). I am likely to be shot, or at the very least arrested, in such a scenario.

This is all a bit of a pessimistic rant, but there is a bright spot; the neighbour who is flipping their house after 9 months are having an Open House today, and it is very quiet. Just a few tire-kickers, from what I can tell.

sixes and nines...and eights

I've been at sixes and nines over the RE market for some time. But what about eights?

I came across this place (V712672) when checking the state of the market. The wish price is $888,888.00. Do you think they are marketing to the Chinese demographic - who have a thing about the number 8?

Rob Chipman talks about "sharp pricing"; I think that this place is sharply priced (though ridiculous). Would a Chinese buyer risk bidding $850K, or $799K? That would wreck the numerological perfection of the pricing, and wipe out any good luck and prosperity associated with the price.

What about over-bids? 'I'll give you $888,888.88'.

Maybe it will just sit until it is $444,444.00. But that might mean death. Hmm. Maybe this place will indicate the death of the boom.

fat ladies

I have been dying to use this picture (lifted from The Guardian - UK). Maybe it is nostalgia for a life I never knew, or only knew vicariously. Beats me. I just got back from my psychotherapist, and she doesn't have a clue either.

Well, really, I was going to do a post about the fat lady singing, or as it's turned out, real estate agents flipping.


The house next door to me sold for $450K to a real estate agent in April 2006. The buyer tried to flip it for $550K immediately, but ended up razing the place and building a McMonster. The McMonster sold for $799K in August '07. A real estate agent bought it from a real estate agent, and now the real estate agent is flipping it.

Gotta wonder why.

Is the agent finally seeing the writing on the wall? Finally? Be careful of the agent you choose, if that is the case.

Maybe the $2500/month rent income was not covering the oh-so-onerous mortgage payments...

It has not hit MLS yet, but I am so curious to know what the wishing price is. I doubt that it is sharp. I am even more curious to see if it sells, and for how little. I have a front row seat.

I'll keep you posted.

horse cookies

the pope already covered the issue of The Anvil being dropped on "unsuspecting" buyers' heads with a demand for $20,000 to $40,000 if they want to keep their units pre-bought in good faith almost two years ago, but (holding back expletives) ferchrysaches! Anybody who ponies up for that abuse deserves a good swift kick in the head.

The developer - United Properties -

is a well-known developer in the Lower Mainland with more than 10 recent developments, including high rises and low rises, completed...It’s unusual to see such a successful developer run into major cost overruns. linker

If they are that successful, let them eat the "cost overruns", and send them into receivership if that's what it takes. The Sophia developer may have found a bunch of fresh fools to sign on for future bankruptcy to save their sorry arses, but this is much later in the game (inventory-wise). I hope the sucke..., er, people who pre-bought refuse to pay more, and that the general masses are beginning to understand that it is all but over, and thus, will not buy. This company should be able to eat something - in light of all their successes. The sad thing is, the bankruptcies are being passed down to those who can least afford it. I bet the President of the company has a vacation home in Maui.

The Great Extraction is playing out.

"Leading Economists" are now speaking openly of a "Global Recession" in the works. I'm no economist, but I have been saying for at least 5 years that a Global Depression was brewing. If these guys are so prescient, why could they not see it?

Don't worry, buy away. Bob Rennie, Cameron Muir and the boys are predicting high, single digit increases.

This started out to be a good rant (up around the block quote), but li'l solipsist refused to nap, and I have been busy for the last 7 hours or so. He took the rant right out of me.

dada

My posting here has been getting slower and slower, while the residential listings come faster and faster. An incongruity to be sure. I have a good reason - as seen above. My kid is now 15 months old, and demands more and more attention. I can't, in good conscience, neglect the precious moments of growth and development of my progeny to stoke my own self through regular posting.

So what, beyond the obvious, does dada have to do with the RE market? Why, lots of course (no matter how oblique).

The dictionary provides some congruity (it's saved my butt a few times);

n. A European artistic and literary movement (1916-1923) that flouted conventional aesthetic and cultural values by producing works marked by nonsense, travesty, and incongruity.

dada

1920, from Fr. dada "hobbyhorse," child's nonsense word, selected 1916 by Romanian poet Tristan Tzara, leader of the movement, for its resemblance to meaningless babble.

dada

noun
1. an informal term for a father; probably derived from baby talk [syn: dad]
2. a nihilistic art movement (especially in painting) that flourished in Europe early in the 20th century; based on irrationality and negation of the accepted laws of beauty

nonsense, travesty, and incongruity - Yes, the marketing nonsense perpetuates a travesty in pricing that is incongruous to the real value of a home.

irrationality and negation of the accepted laws - Hmm, does that not describe the RE market in Vancouver (and indeed, elsewhere)?

meaningless babble - That describes all the hyperbole about mountains, weather, Olympics, "it's different this time, ...here", "the fundamentals are strong", and indeed, a lot of the meaningless babble written on this blog.

nihilistic - Would describe the attitudes of those of us who saw that it was all a bunch of hyped bull crackers.

OK, so that is it about dada.

Now, I find myself wondering if I should wait for another 5 or 10 years for the bottom to buy a home to raise my kid in, or whether I should just save my money, and give it to him to buy a place (or two) for cash, when all of the boomers have died off and there is no one left to buy over-priced real estate.

I dunno, but time will tell.

My postings are much more sparse, and I have struggled with the idea of quitting the blog, but I have decided to keep it going for at least a while longer. It is just starting to get interesting.

just thinking

Sorry, but no time to elaborate. Draw your own conclusions. As the NASA motto goes - "Don't let your pre-occupation with reality stifle your imagination"

(Clicky to make biggy) source

What if there never is another boom, but a steady decline to...well...who knows?

Life is changing. "Peak Oil" is a driver of that change (pun intended). Greenhouse gas(p) emissions/Climate change are another. The "Liberals'" carbon tax (or whatever) is 2.4 cents/litre this year, and by 2012, will be 7.8 cents/litre. Gas has gone up by about 70 cents/litre in the last couple of years, and will go up even more, so the "carbon tax" is comparatively negligable.

Tourism and travel will soon be out (as we know it). The 2010 boongoggle will be just that.

I recently read (sorry - no link) that Chinese manufacturers are no longer accepting USD, and our dollar is tied to the USD (soonly, even tighter). Iran is trading oil in Euro and Yen now. Time for another invasion, errr, liberation. Then you have our current lack of governance here at home.

There is a whole new paradigm forming, and it is one that we, as a society, are completely unprepared for. The future will not be like the past.

There is no bottom.

qui en savait?

When I first arrived in this fine burg 20 years ago, I thought that houses were a good deal. I wanted to buy an old Victorian fixer-upper, but I just could not qualify for financing. So I peregrinated, and thought, and dreamed, and had many wild and wonderful experiences. I have not peed away too much in rent, because often I was paying a dollar a night or less for a bunk in a cattle shed in Guatemala, or such. Sometimes it was $500 a night at Raffles in Singapore, and over-priced Singapore Slings (but just one night, and just one Singapore Sling).

10 years or so ago a friend expressed envy of my life style. I pointed out to him that he had a beautiful house, and a beautiful wife, and three beautiful children, while I had a ruck sack and a passport, and a girl friend who shared my need for freedom.

My friend has since divorced, has signed over all equity in said beautiful house, and continues to pay child support.

I know lots of people like him, but I also know people who bought places when prices were still reasonable, and cashed out with a couple of hundred Gs in tax free profit, and they have no alimony, and now they are traveling in style - Raffles every night...

Over all, none saw what was coming. I thought that the top was in circa 2003 (and thought that it was an insane top), and refused to pay the price. Would I have if I had known that I could make a few hundred? Probably.

But who knew?

Now we seem to be seeing the beginning of the end. I'm too weary to call it yet again, but new listings are soaring, and the for sale signs that I see are hosting moss.

Is anyone even interested in RE any more?

Yawn.

world class

I have been despairing because I don't have the time that I used to have to dream up silly posts and do research. Such is life.

One of my first posts at this blog was a compare and despair, featuring a West Side house, and comparing it to a beautiful French mansion - for the same price.

Today I fed the wee one a half bottle of scotch, and while he slept it off, I tried to find something of interest (just kidding about the scotch - I drank it). Forbes.com has an article entitled In Pictures: What $1 Million Buys In Homes Worldwide (for those who feel entitled to their entitlements).

In Buenos Aires, $1.1 M buys A four-bedroom duplex with a terrace, this 3,800 square-foot apartment in the Recoleta district features four bathrooms, oak floors, fireplaces, a maid's room and a laundry room.

We have "good airs" here, too!

In Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt $982,000 buys;

This four-bedroom, Mediterranean-style villa surrounded by gardens and a swimming pool is on the Red Sea, near Nabq Bay. It boasts views of the Sinai Mountains. A finished basement houses a gym, sauna and steam room. Located within a beachside resort, the home has access to a spa, restaurants, bars, tennis courts, a Roman theater and many other luxurious amenities.


Well, we do have the Coast Mountains, and the Pacific Ocean.

There are others too - In the Big Apple, a 650-odd sq. ft. pied a terre will set you back about a million. Close to the United Nations, and all the other fun that NYC has to offer. Paris proffers 615 sq. ft. in 4th Arrondissement for a million bucks, and in Berlin, $990k will buy a place with seven apartments.

None of those cities will be hosting the 2010 Olympic games (technically, Vancouver won't either - but we are just 2.5 hours from Whistler!)


Yes, it's all apples to oranges, but some pretty cool places in some pretty cool places will cost about the same as the 1023.0 sq ft, 10th floor condo on W 14TH AV, Fairview, Vancouver West, for $998,900.00 (pictured above).

I dunno, if I had a million bucks to dump on a condo, I don't think it would be in South Granville.