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Victoria is apparently the 9th best place to live in Canada, ahead of metropolises as diverse as Vancouver and Port Alberni. According to data used to calculate Victoria's position in the list, the average house price ($509,000) is only 7.6 X average family income ($66,700). According to the latest stats from VREB, the housing affordability has decreased even further this spring relative to average family incomes since housing prices have continued to rise!

For a counter intuitive take on the fall-out of the US housing bubble, read this book review in Bloomberg where the reviewer disagrees with Daniel Gross, the author of "Pop! Why Bubbles are Great for the Economy''. Mr Gross argues that the US property bubble was alright, because it resulted in building of new housing stock and gentrification of formerly blighted neighbourhoods. As the reviewer pointed out, some of these overbuilt areas will probably return to blighted status in the near future.

Bloomberg also reported the Canadian dollar climbed to an 11 month high on continued strong performance of the Canadian economy.

Meanwhile, and predicatably, south of the border, things continue to go from bad to worse, because as this article from the Arizona Republic points out, regarding the woes of all aspects of the property business, now that actual lending standards are being enforced, buyers can't qualify for fancy expensive houses anymore.

On another note, in Asia, a continent determined to leave a truly titanic mark on the field of architecture, the biggest buildings in the world are being built in an entirely non-competitive manner, except, somebody else is already building bigger buildings somewhere else. So there.

Finally, Twist over at Housing Doom skewered David Lereah, the departing chief economist of the US National Association of Realtors, for a curious interview in which David claimed he did a good job forecasting, he is even now calling for a real estate recession, but names himself as a continued cheerleader for the housing industry. Cheerleader? Huh?

Fire away.