“In the Truth there is no news, and in the News there is no truth”
Pravda [Truth in Russian] was the leading newspaper of the Soviet Union. Actually, newspaper isn’t the right word. It was actually a propagandist rag. But before we look down our noses at the farce that was Soviet reportage, let’s take a cursory look at our own beloved Vancouver Sun.
Now, I’m not calling the Vancouver Sun propagandist, especially when they run excellent articles like this one. But when it comes to the Vancouverite’s obsession with real estate, the Van Sun has, in large part, been manipulated as a tool of industry.
Here’s the article short novel that the Sun ran this weekend. Purportedly it’s a round-table of local experts on the case for real estate in the lower mainland. These experts consist of a builder, a seller and a pundit, which is like going back exactly one year from today and having a round-table with a subprime mortgage broker, a Bear Stearns broker and a Moody’s analyst over the prospects of ABCP.
Here’s the piece. The article is well over 6,000 words long, double-that of any coverage on the gangland shootings so far, which goes to show what’s the real cause of the fear and trembling in Vancouver.
But, thank the muses, poetic justice is still alive and well over at condohype where Bob Rennie admits that
the cost of paying the tickets is less than buying a parking spot
To which condohype so beautifully compares to
the same logic when I look at renting versus owning.
ZING!
Where do I stand? There are two types in my mind. Real estate that you invest in, and real estate that you live in. In my mind they are mutually exclusive.
For anything I own to be considered an investment it must meet two qualifications.
1 – I must have zero emotional attachement to it.
2 – It must be liquid.
Real estate that you live in fails in both of these categories. But I’m not a complete bear. I own some.
I own development land in the Eastern Townships of Quebec (which I plan to sell very soon).
And I own farmland in Saskatchewan (which I am adding to)
But where I live is not an investment. It’s where I live.
