I know this would be a step in the right direction and stop lots of the violence and the immoral punishment of marijuana users, but why do you want it regulated like alcohol. Legal, unregulated and untaxed would really put them out of business because criminals couldn’t even dodge regulation and taxation to make a buck. There is no grounds to tax pot anyways. Unless you can identify an innocent third party harmed by marijuana use then I dont see the point in a tax.

RCMP Busts Chilliwack Underground Bunker.

My theory is that it has less to do with pot or low interest rates, both of which I think do contribute, and much more to do with psychology. I’ve never seen another city in which real estate has become pretty much a religious issue. People are more than willing here to spend 75% of their income on housing. I am not, so I’m priced out. The multiplier of median income to median house price is something like 11x, which is several percentage points higher than New York City. Vancouver is nice, but it’s no NYC in terms of opportunity, employment, arts, etc. Even Seattle makes it look pretty sad. But people have been fooled into thinking it’s the best place in the world, and they’re more than willing to shell out.

I really doubt we’ll see more than a 10% dip in prices any time soon. Look, we are in the midst of a severe recession, and prices have INCREASED. What happens when times are good?

The real driver of real estate in Vancouver (and most of the rest of Canada) is nothing more complex than cheap money — this and this alone is the sole reason it has seemed immune to the broader economy. Most Canadians have been suckered into thinking it’s better to rent lots of money at low interest rates than it is just to rent housing directly.

Similarly, most Canadians are utterly ignorant of economics, to the extent that they cannot or will not understand why interest rates will have to rise in the relatively near future, why the cost of borrowing will sky-rocket when it comes time to renew that five-year mortgage, or why their real income won’t be increasing by 60% – 100% over the same time frame. And least of all why getting a big mortgage with a small down-payment right now is just about the most foolish financial decision they’ll make in their lifetime.

Real estate prices are controlled by affordability and right now low interest rates have made real estate relatively more affordable than when rates were high. Unfortunately, most of Canada’s middle class have taken unsustainable gains in home prices as the consolation prize to make themselves feel better that their real incomes are just as crappy now as they were 20 – 30 years ago. Seriously, how many people do you know who make even $200k / year in Vancouver? It doesn’t matter one bit if it’s “different here” — at some point the math is inescapable.

Most young / first-time buyers also don’t understand that the huge appreciation in value of their parents’ real estate was paid for with mortgages in the double digits and then some. We’re probably going back to those days or at least to mortgage rates of ~8%, and prices will drop as a consequence of this shift.

Oh, and before anyone jumps all over me for being a “jealous renter”, I doubled my money in under three years on the last property I bought and sold. My family income is well North of $500k / year, but we’re choosing to rent our principal residence right now. You can make money with real estate, but you have to understand that, no matter what your knuckle-dragging realtor says, it hasn’t, doesn’t and won’t always increase in value.

Pot has absolutely nothing to do with it.