Real estate market gets reality check

It seems like only yesterday the favourite parlour game of British Columbians was guessing the obscene sum of money the shack at the end of the block was going to fetch.

And whether it would last more than a day or two on the market.

Now the game has been turned on its ear. Today, people try to figure out how many months a place will take to sell and the amount the owners will have to drop the price to find a buyer.

In British Columbia, nothing better illustrates how profoundly the world has changed in a few short months than what is happening to real estate. A report last week from Central 1 Credit Union declared the province's housing market in a recession - a deep, dark and possibly long one.

According to Helmut Pastrick, the bank's chief economist, housing sales will decline by 30 per cent this year, 17 per cent next year and 5 per cent the year after that. As sales decline, so do prices.

The bank estimates the provincial median sale price will drop 13 per cent next year and a further 5 per cent in 2010. That is on top of a decline of 10 per cent or more in 2008. Meantime, new construction is expected to drop 37 per cent in 2009. "The widespread impact of the credit crisis on mortgage finance, the economy and consumer confidence has generated an external shock," Mr. Pastrick said.

The housing decline actually pre-dates the stock market drop of a few weeks ago. The first signs of it began in the spring. We have friends who put their house in an upscale suburban neighbourhood on the market last May for just over $1-million. Since then, they've dropped the price more than $200,000 and it still hasn't sold.

If you didn't have to buy a house right now, why would you? Especially if forecasters like Mr. Pastrick are suggesting prices could tumble by 18 per cent in the next two years.

The implications of the real estate collapse are frightening, especially for those who panicked and took out massive mortgages to get into a market they feared would be forever beyond them if they waited any longer. Homes bought at the market's peak could be worth 30 per cent less than the purchase price in two years.

Some people in B.C. are almost certain to find themselves "under water" - a term applied to those whose mortgage is greater than the value of their home. One in six U.S. homeowners is in that position. And in a period of protracted economic downturn, it doesn't take much to push an under-water mortgage into default.

Bankruptcies in B.C. in August were up 10 per cent over the same month last year. And that was before all hell broke loose in economies around the world. Meantime, reports of condominium projects in B.C. being halted seem to pop up every other day. Pre-sales of new developments have dried up. Sellers are using every gimmick in the book to entice people to take the plunge. Developers are reportedly offering prospective buyers new cars. Others are paying the first year of the mortgage. Even that's not working.

B.C. real estate agents suddenly are wearing those pained expressions you see on the faces of traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

If Canadians in other provinces are feeling a bit of schadenfreude at what's happening here, who can blame them? The smugness of those becoming paper millionaires because of the rising value of their homes was a bit hard to take.

Of course, this record-setting period of price escalation had to end - they always do. Central 1 declared that the recent drop stopped an 88-month rise in house prices that saw an almost 100-per-cent increase in residential real estate values in current dollars.

Now, the market is going to return to levels that make more sense and reflect a reality that is not based on the orgy of speculation that helped drive up those prices in the first place.

If there is any good news in all of this, it's that when things finally settle out a couple of years from now, there may be a whole generation of young people for whom the market will again become attainable.

And maybe a home will become just that again, a home - not simply an investment opportunity.

(prepared by Gary Mason/Globe & Mail)