Vancouver Real Estate: bubble or no bubble?

[midgetwaiter]

Originally Posted by daveatwinterpegca

If I was to purchase a house at $300,000 (it would be something meager and a fixer upper no doubt I would assume) - at a 25 year term, that would equal out to about 1850 as a mortgage payment at current 5% rates. Thats 500 dollars per month towards my principal and 1250 on interest alone!

While I do not want to rent, I see no other choice - I will be throwing my money away at interest all together, when I could potentially invest that money and hope to get a return on it.

My brother just got moved by his company to Calgary from just outside London Ont. He was looking at moving from a nice $145k house to a $300k crack den. I drove around with him for days, it was just depressing but we got really lucky and found a nice place that just went on the market and hadn't recived much attenton yet.

He's a very well paid engineer type, it was just the timing that left him with out any money to make a large down payment so he would have been looking at a silly mortgage payment like you describe.

I don't have any real estate experience to speak of but I think any time you get in a situation where real estate is all anyone talks about anymore leads to bubble behavior. It might be a protracted bubble but you can't make money out of thin air like that without there being concequences.