The thing is, I don’t have psychic powers. But I’ve never been a follower. As even many libertarians have seen, I’m quick to challenge conventional wisdom, wherever it lies and even if I tend to agree with it.

The prediction I made was based on several months of analyzing rent-to-price ratios in the Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto markets. It was becoming clear, despite the fact that prices were rising, that there was something very amiss in the real estate market.

Real estate investors were pouring in, buying up condos in major cities representing about 40% of buyers, bidding prices up and up, while the rents they were getting were stable at best, to edging downward.

When I made the claim on Twitter, a flurry of real estate agents challenged me, making various claims like: “the Canadian real estate market is very healthy” and “rent-to-price ratios do not matter all that much really”.

You know, it’s not just rent-to-price spreads that’s the problem. It’s consumer debt load at all-time highs. Canadian consumers have the highest levels of consumer debt in the OECD.

You might also wonder that when inflation-adjusted wages have only increased 10% in the last fifteen to twenty years, how the hell real estate prices have managed to rise by over an order of magnitude. But most people don’t wonder such things. They make silly assumptions based on trends.

Most financial experts rely on the fallacy of analysis by analogy. A perfect example would be: “for the past ten years, real estate prices have risen by about ten percent. Therefore, you can expect that over the next ten years, housing prices should rise about ten percent a year”.

This is not an exaggerated example, either. This is exactly what financial analysts on CNBC, Fox Business and Canada’s BNN have been saying, leaving myself screaming at my television on more than one occasion.

Naysayers like myself have paid attention to factors that the analysis by analogy financial bimbos have ignored. Like rising consumer debt, rising public debt, and an exceptionally low interest rate environment, making borrowing far too easy.

When I’ve argued with some financial experts and quote-unquote “real estate experts” on this point, their retort has often simply been to just state that I don’t know “how real estate works”. A claim that seems somewhat absurd given my track record vis-a-vis theirs. Especially in light of today’s news.

And if you’re wondering if I take a teensy-bit of pleasure in being right on this, then the answer is sort of. It always feels good to be vindicated. But this is a stark reminder of people’s ability to get caught up in the moment and ignore obvious warning signs.

The warning signs that a severe housing crash in Canada was coming, is coming, and is now unfolding were numerous, easy to understand and very stark. Yet, instead of consider them, we chose to believe without warranted reason theories that immigration-led demand, and Canada’s “resilience” could sustain the trend. But these were silly pipe dreams.

Although a real estate bubble is not seen as a problem in Thailand, it would take at least 11 months for condominium developers and up to three years for single houses to clear their current stocks, according to the Agency for Real Estate Affairs (AREA).

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Bubble not expected, but caution urged for developers

The severity of the global financial crisis also saw the government introduce additional sweeteners for buyers a 300,000-baht income tax deduction for any buyers of a new home that was transferred within 2009. At the same time, mortgage interest that could be deducted from taxable earnings was increased to 100,000 baht from 50,000 and has now become a permanent tax benefit.

Property market in Thailand remained in a strong position thanks to good sales in the first quarter which were not only driven by the incentives. The stock market is risky to invest in, while buying gold for investment has limitations.

The recovering economy is re-building consumer confidence while homebuyers purchasing power is also strong, he said. Development of the mass transit network in Bangkok was another boost for the market. Politics has had little impact on condominium sales but it has dampened investment and the industrial, commercial and tourism sectors.|

The mid to high-end segment boomed this year in Thailand as demand was wide and remained strong. The high-end will recover in the third or fourth quarter. But supply in this segment is very limited due to scarcity of land for new developments. Around 80% of the new launch in this segment was taken up. New supply in the high-end segment, now quoted at 150,000 to 200,000 baht a square metre, will be provided by developers with a strong financial status, experienced teams and products that match demand.

The British Columbia real estate market had experienced a brief cooling off period. Now, this exciting and beautiful Canadian province has started to make a strong recovery. A distinct bounce back in consumer demand has turned a possible gloomy 2010 into a very strong year for home sales. The interior housing markets are also seeing vigorous demand because of stronger market conditions and current low mortgage rates that are boosting home sales. Vancouver, BC has recently seen a large jump in quarterly sales. According to figures released by the Canadian Real Estate Association, Vancouver is fast becoming one of the hottest real estate markets in Canada.

Real Estate developers are not only attracting retirees, but they are also attracting an innovative young work force. Many developers are responding to consumer demands for a private piece of paradise where people can enjoy the beautiful scenery, but still have access to a vibrant and culturally diverse city such as Vancouver. Whether you are looking for a cozy and private residential home or looking for new real estate investment opportunities, British Columbia provides many real estate options for the informed investor.

Investors and home buyers are recognizing these opportunities. For instance, the average annual MLS (R) residential price in the province is expected to rise 2 per cent. In 2010, many experts are also expecting to see another increase of 4 per cent in the price of real estate. More specifically, home sales in 2010 are projected to increase an additional 8 per cent. Many regions across the Province are now seeing strong home sales. For instance, home sales in the Fraser Valley and the city of Victorian have seen a rapid growth in home sales. In fact, sales in Vancouver, the Fraser Valley, and Victoria have boosted the province’s overall home sales total to almost record levels. In December of 2009, The British Columbia Real Estate Association reported that Multiple Listing Service (R) residential sales in the province have made a remarkable increase this past November.

However, it is important to note that the demand in these residential sales markets is expected to level off in 2010 as demand is exhausted and home prices begin to rise again. With the current low interest rates available on mortgages, many experts suggest that it may be a good time to look at the real estate investment opportunities in British Colombia. As the economy slowly rebounds, one may find themselves with a lucrative investment in a beautiful province.

Clickscape today announced the launch of the Clickscape Atlanta Real Estate iPhone App now available in the iPhone App Store. This free application allows a user the freedom to explore any house for sale in the metro Atlanta area directly on their phone. Now users can drive or walk anywhere in the metro Atlanta and easily find homes for sale in close proximity. Clickscape’s App provides more complete and accurate listing information on more active metro-Atlanta homes for sale than other national real estate Apps.

Leveraging GPS and proprietary technology, the Clickscape Real Estate App puts the details of all Atlanta homes for sale at a user’s fingertips including asking price, pictures, home features, and more. As a user’s location changes, the Clickscape App constantly updates the map display with all surrounding homes for sale. Simply click on a home’s icon to view key features (price, bedrooms, bathrooms), scroll through full-sized photo galleries, get directions and more. Moreover, if a buyer wants more information on a particular home, the Clickscape App easily connects the user to clickscape.com to gather additional details and even schedule a formal showing if desired.

Unlike most other real estate App providers, Clickscape is an Atlanta real estate brokerage and grants total access to all the listed properties for sale in the Atlanta area ” something most other real estate Apps cannot offer.

Other Clickscape App features include:
-Locate and explore all homes for sale in the Atlanta area from home, in a car or on foot

-Create custom searches or filter search results to find an ideal home

-Contact Clickscape agents directly via phone or email for more information on a home with a simple click

-Obtain driving directions from a location to any home listing

-Easily determine if a property is a single-family home, condo/townhome or a multi-family via specified icons

“Today’s home buyer is more interested in and more capable of researching properties independently. By making this free App available to buyers, Clickscape is continuing its mission of making real estate easy,” said David Lightburn, Clickscape co-founder and President. “We are quite literally putting all relevant home information at a user’s fingertips. We hope this App spices up our users” real estate search by making it easy, convenient, and enjoyable. Clickscape provides a real competitive advantage in today’s unprecedented real estate market.”

About Clickscape
Clickscape is an Atlanta-based real estate brokerage that partners with and empowers buyers and sellers to maximize their real estate experience. Through proprietary technology, superior market knowledge and dedicated customer service, clickscape.com provides buyers and sellers a faster, more accurate and more complete picture of the Atlanta real estate market. With innovative programs such as the Atlanta Home Buyer Rebate Program, Clickscape saves clients thousands of dollars by rebating up to 50% of their commissions. Visit clickscape.com to search Atlanta homes for sale, browse Atlanta neighborhood maps, find Atlanta foreclosures, and to keep up with current Atlanta real estate market conditions.

Many things may be said about the last decade in the real estate market – that it began with falling prices and ended with rising ones, that after a serious slump in the early years a bubble might be forming in the later ones. It’s all true. But overall, it can be summed up as a lost decade.

At the end of the decade’s last year we passed the price threshold of 10 years ago, when the high-tech bubble was at its height. In many places – Haifa, Be’er Sheva and the country’s outlying areas – prices at the end of the decade did not even reach those at the end of the 1990s.

Overall, the real estate market made a lot of noise this decade, but prices did not go up by much. In other words, if you bought an apartment in 1999 in the hope that the skyrocketing trend would continue into the new millennium, you lost.

To illustrate this, we need to begin in 1998. That was the year the real estate market began to be boosted by the high-tech bubble and apartment prices anywhere associated with this sector, particularly in Tel Aviv’s new north, Ra’anana and Haifa, went up significantly. According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, Tel Aviv apartment prices in 1998 and 1999 (in real terms) went up 20%; in Haifa they went up 16% and in Jerusalem 15%. For the whole country on average, prices increased only 5% because the high-tech frenzy only gripped a few areas.

That’s the context for the past 10 years, which opened with a sharp slide in prices, especially in the areas high-tech people like best. These areas had seen sharp rises at the end of the previous decade. Between 1999, at the height of the high-tech bubble, and 2001, prices dropped in Tel Aviv and Haifa by about 20% and in Jerusalem by about 15%. For the country as a whole, this fall was about 10%.

The second intifada at the beginning of the decade played its part in dampening the national mood. The number of purchases dropped from around 90,000 a year in the 1990s to only 64,000 in 2002 – the decade’s worst year in terms of housing purchases. In 2003 the number of transactions rose to 75,000 and in 2004 to 79,000, but prices stayed low. The number of transactions then rose steadily, topping 97,000 in 2007. It then shrank to 91,500 in 2009.

Orthodox to Jerusalem, others to the coast
Another key trend began at around the middle of the decade – purchases by foreigners. The real estate bubble in the West made its mark, along with a rise in anti-Semitism in some countries, leading to a significant number of housing purchases by Jews from abroad.

Most of them did not buy in order to immigrate, but to have a second home. Religious foreigners bought apartments mainly in Jerusalem and Ra’anana. Others preferred homes with a view of the sea in Herzliya Pituah, Netanya or Tel Aviv. The Ashdod marina projects also mushroomed, and foreigners did not avoid Eilat’s Shahamon neighborhood.

According to the Finance Ministry’s State Revenue Administration, foreigners bought 1,427 homes in 2002. This jumped to 2,305 in 2006 and peaked in 2006: Out of 87,000 transactions, 5,054, almost 6%, were by foreigners.

This may seem to be a small slice of the market. However, foreigners made their purchases in a limited number of communities, mainly upscale ones. This meant they were buying many apartments in Tel Aviv’s prestigious towers and fine homes in Jerusalem’s Rehavia and Greek Colony neighborhoods.

The influx of foreigners drove prices up. This phenomenon began in 2004 in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and trickled down to the whole market the next year. The capital market gave prices another hefty push upwards, and the general public was buying apartments, too.

Prices rose in most of the country, though this took a while longer in outlying areas, particularly in the north, which was under missile attack during the Second Lebanon War in 2006.

After the world economic crisis broke in 2008, apartment purchases by foreigners slowed considerably. In 2008, foreigners bought 3,238 homes, a number that dwindled in 2009.

In fact, the role of foreigners in jump-starting the housing market ended three years ago. Now, locals are mainly responsible for rising prices, especially over the past year. Real estate has become a significant investment – it is estimated that some 28,000 of the transactions closed this year were by people who had found no better place to put their money.

Miami Beach can be the one of the most excellent places in America to have fun. It is the best tourist place and the destination for entertinement. There are so many things in the Miami Beach to look into. Miami Condos would be the most prestigious places and you could definitely plan to stay in condos next time when you visit. The cost would be much equivalent to any other accommodation provided. Many tourists and others enjoy living in the high rise condos on Fifth Street. The luxurious life style and the facilities provided in the Miami Beach are just simply awesome. Also the South Beach district is home to quite a few forms of entertainment, food, and shopping.

Miami Beach Condos have been sold like hot cakes these days. The market share has been increased drastically. In reality, condos are now responsible for 13 percent of the housing market. To tap the market, even normal house owners are converting their houses into Condos. You may wonder why the demand of condos is so great. This is in part due to investors constantly investing in the region. They are the most preferred investments place. Of course, there are lot many reasons behind investing on the Miami Beach. Climate is the leading factor. All Business magnets and film stars would want to live in the condos because of such pleasant environmental factors. This allows for the market to enlarge as people continue moving into the area. Miami Beach condos would definitely offer many things that you do not even expect.

People always say that because of the good climate only, the Miami Beach area is always populated all the times irrespective of the season. All these factors add value to the investor’s money. The price would be assorted from one condo to another and some condos are priced very high because of the extraordinary luxury. Having a second home is a great way for people to getaway when they want a vacation. Many of these units are for rent during the summer months as out of state owners will rent them out. This allows them to be with their families but get away from the cold weather.

The area no longer thrives exclusively on its tourism as it has in the past. There is still a lot of tourism; however the city also has a huge real estate market. There are no signs showing that the Miami Beach condos real estate market will be slowing down.

SEARCHING for a home to call their own over the last year, Rich Kotkin and his fiancee, Bonnie Newman, looked at more than 100 properties, scouring Plainview, Syosset, Bethpage, Bayville and Locust Valley, as well as areas on the South Shore.

It wasn’t until last month that they closed. By then, buying conditions were optimal, and they had found just the right house: a two-bedroom one-bath ranch in Plainview with a new bathroom and a new granite kitchen. The master suite and living room were spacious; the patio was new; the driveway and a walkway had just been redone; an alarm system had been installed, as well as new windows throughout.

“Of everything we saw, this was the best choice,” said Mr. Kotkin, 28, a set technical director for Major League Baseball, who is happy not to have to renovate.

He and Ms. Newman are among the swarm of local home buyers who jumped into the real estate market last month, taking advantage of conducive circumstances – in the form of low interest rates, depressed prices and an $8,000 federal tax credit for first-time buyers of homes costing up to $800,000.

The house cost them $410,000, whereas a year ago, Mr. Kotkin noted, it might have commanded a price in the low $500,000s. “I don’t think we would have gotten into an area like Plainview or a higher-end area on Long Island” had that still been the case, he concluded.

The property taxes, exceeding $11,000 a year, are a bit daunting, but “the tax credit and the price drop made it a whole lot easier.”

In October, the number of contracted sales on Long Island totaled 3,061, up 48.5 percent over October 2008, when 2,061 homes sold, according to the Multiple Listing Service of Long Island. At the same time, prices are sliding, with the median at $360,200, a decrease of 6.4 percent from last October’s median of $385,000. Nationally, prices are off by 8.5 percent, according to the National Association of Realtors.

“More and more homeowners have aggressively priced their homes to sell in this market,” said Frank Urso, the president of the Multiple Listing Service of Long Island and a broker-owner of Long Island Village Realty in Syosset.

Since 1996, there have been only 19 occasions when the Multiple Listing Service reported more than 3,000 sales in a month; it turns out that 4 of those 19 have occurred in the last six months.

In another hopeful sign, inventory levels (though still high) have been reduced: last month, available inventory was 10.2 months, around 40 percent below the October 2008 inventory of 16.9 months.

Joseph Mottola, the chief executive of the Multiple Listing Service of Long Island, said the numbers showed that the residential market was “continuing on the road to normalcy, to a more stable conventional balanced market.”

He said the Island was “in catch-up mode” and ascribed the jump in sales to low financing rates, the tax credit and lower home prices. “The buyers are taking advantage of almost a perfect-storm situation,” he said.

“There is a renewal of confidence in the average buyer, and they are more comfortable,” Mr. Mottola added. “If somebody was thinking about hesitating, they would be less apt to hesitate now.”

It hasn’t hurt that the home buyer tax credit, originally set to expire at the end of this month, has now been extended through April 30, 2010.

It has also been enhanced, providing not only the $8,000 credit for first timers but also a $6,500 credit for buyers who have lived in their current homes for at least five years.

Additionally, the income eligibility limit was raised to $225,000 for a couple, from $150,000, and to $125,000 for a single buyer, from $75,000.

Lawrence Yun, the chief economist for the National Association of Realtors, described the tax credit as “the big factor in bringing the buyer back,” even if mainly as a psychological element. If the government is offering, as he put it, “one would be foolish not to take advantage of it.”

Among the buyers trading up are Louis and Kathleen Tate, who recently sold their three-bedroom ranch in Bay Shore for $300,000, and are scheduled to close the first week of December on a $470,000 four-bedroom colonial in West Islip. The new place, which has a bigger backyard, is a better fit with their growing family: sons 19 months and 9 weeks old.

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