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Moneybox in Slate posted an interesting article by Daniel Gross about the correlation between a slump in US housing and the blame game - the effects of a bursting slump are widespread and not immediately obvious, until a little research is done.

For instance, a tailing off in housing starts since 2006 can be correlated with a drop in remittances to the home countries of many of the migrant workers who provided labour during the US housing boom, countries like Mexico, Brazil and Guatemala.

As housing starts declined, so did the earnings and remittances of these migrant workers.

Here's a new-ish property next to a cycling/walking path, by the Selkirk Waterway, next to a huge future contruction site, with chain link fencing running down one side of the property. Surrounded by immature trees and otherwise newly landscaped, but with some potential.

The seller has adopted a subtle approach.

June 20 - update - ^{_{The sign has now come down, and it looks like the property has sold - after a regular sign went up and the property got listed. No word on whether it was for more or less than the asking price.... Still no word on when construction will start in the giant dirt lot next door...}}

Well, I was looking at the polls, the sample size is statistically insignifant so far, the methodology is suspect, and okay, I did vote myself a couple times, but here's what I 've noticed.

1) Houses prices in the $300,000 range are most popular. Is this realistic? Maybe not, locally, that would mark a 30% retracement from current median prices - in California, even moreso. Cool. One thing is certain, even at $300,000 houses would be barely affordable for most first time buyers, unless interest rates go way down....

2) There's a strong consensus that the US sub-prime housing woes will spread to Canada, even if the pundits in the media are still only dispensing this possibility in code.

In 2005, David Lereah, the chief economist of the National Association of Realtors, published a book extolling the expected continuation of US real estate boom-times until "the end of the decade", titled Are You Missing the Real Estate Boom? The title of the book was later adjusted to Why the Real Estate Boom Will Not Bust, in February 2006.

Now stories are being published which make predictions like this story, courtesy of Kenneth Heebner, manager of a top-performing real-estate fund over the past decade:

I couldn't believe it, yesterday I was out in one of Victoria's leafy enclaves when I spotted this sign. A real estate company putting up a rental sign? Feel free to comment.

"When the size of the working age population is temporarily high as it is now, output is temporarily high and households wish to transfer assets to the future. Because ability to do so is limited , there is upward pressure on real asset prices - house prices rise, interest rates fall. The increase in house prices occurs now despite the certain knowledge that once the baby boomers retire real house prices will fall."

Here is a link to the new, the amazing, the revolutionary, the predicatable, the devastating, the unthinkable, the paradigm busting Google Housing Beta.

Okay, enough of the hype.

Let's look at the latest numbers for the spring bounce, courtesy of VREB. Here are the comparable sales numbers for the months of March 2006 and 2007.

While sales continue at a similar pace to last year, the performance is underwhelming, as year over year, declines can be seen in the prices of single family homes and townhouses. However, condos are doing better and selling at a higher price than a year ago.

The mantra of it will sell, it must sell, it is real estate and all real estate sells after all, seems to still be operative...... or is it?

Reality has started setting in, as the end of the great real estate bull market shifts the action from the frenzied streets, which are imperceptibly starting to empty, and as the dreaded and dismissed bubble word becomes a topic at dinner parties, like it or not, dinner parties thrown by the paper millionaires who have prospered, some fear now mingling with self-congratulations, the dismissals of any failure of the new pricing paradigm of recent springs gone by not... quite... so convincing.