The Greater Fool - Up or down? Better or worse? Should we party or turtle? The numbers seem bewildering. Seven in ten own real estate, which is going insane. The personal savings rate has not been this high since I had black chest hair (thick, manly, be envious). Stock markets and financial assets are galloping. Portfolios plumping. The US […]

The Greater Fool - A survey by Merrill has found that 70% of Americans now own equities. Stocks. Funds. ETFs. Financial assets. The typical 401k (equivalent to our RRSP) is stuffed with liquid, publicly-traded, negotiable investment assets. And here? In 1991, 64% of us owned real estate. By 2016 that grew to 67.8%. And it has now touched 70%. […]

The Greater Fool - Louis, sadly, came here and read Friday’s blog post. What a drag You might recall that the topic was the tsunami of wrinklies currently being unleashed upon our nation. Over the next decade and beyond, this rabble of aging Hippies, disco freaks, deaf former heavy-metal fans and people who actually remember dial-up Internet and cars […]

The Greater Fool - Planning on buying a home this month? Don’t. You’ll probably pay too much. Real estate analysts, economists, aficionados, experts and key players are now all expecting the same. Bubble, meet prick. The federal budget on Monday the 19th will either set up a blow to the housing market to be delivered by CMHC, or do […]

The Greater Fool - Soon we get a budget. Don’t expect pretty. Red ink to the horizon. All will blame Covid. Fine. We get it. Pandemics are rare and hideously costly. But they also pass, as this one will. However some things don’t pass, and are far more consequential. Like age. Currently Canada is sliding into a demographic crapstorm […]

The Greater Fool - Just in time for spring showers, spring flowers and puppies (at four grand a piece), we have new lockdowns. Covid ain’t giving it up. BC is shuttered. The crazy Kelowna ski hill kids are all fired. Ontario hears the bad news today. ICUs are full. Public health officials are scary. Schools going remote again. Every […]

The Greater Fool - Ride with me to a medium-sized city east of Toronto. My sidekick and I have something to share. He’s a lawyer. A real estate guy, handling deals for a decade now. After reading yesterday’s post about blind auctions and the effect they have on property values, he offers this experience. Single family ranch home in […]

The Greater Fool - The rating agency Fitch periodically parses our silly housing market. The report it produces goes to institutions dealing with residential mortgage loans collateralizing covered bond programs and residential mortgage-backed securities. That’s probably not you. But here’s the interesting conclusion: Fitch’s Sustainable Home Price is derived by benchmarking the current local home price against the sustainable […]

The Greater Fool - Blog doggess Sue borrowed a bunch of money against her home from her bank. The one with the Penguins. She knows the drill. Get a HELOC. Invest the proceeds in non-registered financial assets. Make interest-only payments. Then deduct every dollar from taxable income. All good. Especially when the loan is so damn cheap – the […]

The Greater Fool - Three weeks out from the maiden Chrystia budget, the stats are toe-curling. The virus may be vanquished by the end of 2021 but the legacy will live on. In other words, hide your money. From April of 2019 until the end of that year Ottawa spent $10.6 billion more than it took in. That’s called […]

The Greater Fool - For the past nine months he’s been chronicling the bizarre housing in his neck of the woods on IG. “It’s crazy,” he says. “Each day I posted listings that were either insanely overpriced, missing photos, photos that were poor quality, houses that were messes, interesting features like stripper poles, etc.” Apparently that’s an appealing feature […]

The Greater Fool - Are the bankers worried? One of them – a big poohbah at the nation’s largest lender – says it’s time to reconsider tax-free house gains. Gulp. Heresy. The country’s dominant real estate board has reacted in unvarnished disgust. And from the trenches, here’s the report of one of our own – slogging daily to hand […]

The Greater Fool - How craven has the world become? Reflect on these words from a Blog Dog currently on contract with one of the Big Banks. Working in any capacity that supports mortgage applications these days is similar to an all night shift in a Bangladesh garment factory..  The frenzy you detail on the blog each day is […]

The Greater Fool - In speaking with Evan and Barb on Monday it was clear. Nobody is spared from this. They’re both 40, live in a rented flat (a nice one, leafy street, decent hood, Yorkipoo) and have interesting jobs. WFH and virtual these days, of course. “But the before times were good,” she says. ”They’ll come back.” Savings […]

The Greater Fool - A row house on a leafy street an hour (by car) west of the urban core sold last week with a flurry of offers and for hundreds more than asking. Yawn. Old news. This crazed behaviour is everywhere. But it’s still interesting a decidedly middle-class home with no new renos increased 50% in 24 months, […]

The Greater Fool - Abdullah (“call me Ab, please”) has a problem. His folks. Like a lot of GenXers these days. It’s complex dealing with wrinklies, especially in a world where up is down, safe is risk and the virus is neverendum. The cost of living is galloping higher. Incomes are not. Health care is under siege. Getting old […]

The Greater Fool - It doesn’t stop. One lonely 2×4 at Home Depot this week costs fourteen bucks, with HST. A sheet of plywood, three-quarter inch pine is (gulp) $77. Even lowly spruce is close to sixty bucks. My suspender-snapping fancy portfolio manager buddy Ryan says his basement reno bill went up a little because of material inflation – […]

The Greater Fool - It’s end-of-winter update time. Pay attention. First, whither your portfolio? Were those who said stocks sat at dangerous levels last year, as stimulus billions washed over society, right? How about people who warned that if bond yields/interest rates rose  financials would crack? Here are the one-year gains for markets – suggesting if you bought in […]

The Greater Fool - The vax news is gAdd Newetting more infectious. The AZ brew’s been okayed for all us wrinklies, increasing supply. That floof about it causing blood clots has been discredited. Booster shots for the two-dose vaccines can now be months (not weeks) apart – more supply. And as of next week, boodles of bottles will be […]

The Greater Fool - In Kitchener-Waterloo last month house sales grew 28%. The price of a detached place was 35.4% greater than in February of 2020, when you’d never heard about Covid and couldn’t imagine everyone in the bank looking like they were holding it up. Hundreds of new families trekked 120 km down the killer 401 from the […]

The Greater Fool - Sometimes it makes sense to step away. Would that be now? In the last two weeks this blog has detailed some of the excesses of our pandemic world. In fact, most of the irrational behaviour flows directly from the virus. Governments and politicians have gone extreme. Shut-in, restricted, locked-down and quarantined citizens have made wild […]

The Greater Fool - Here we go, kids. Hang on The beaver economy churned out an incredible 259,200 jobs last month, about three times what the experts had predicted. Unemployment tumbled from 9.2% down into the 8% range – and all this reflected (a) the end of 100 days of lockdowns, vax and the reopening of the economy plus […]

The Greater Fool -   “Love your blog,” says Phil from Hamilton, worming his way into my graces with a slurpy MSU. “My life has changed dramatically since the day a good friend pointed me towards it.  I am a devout follower and I thank you.” Okay, but Phil’s Garthonian devotion is being shaken by current events. The world, […]

The Greater Fool - Well, dogs. We’re on our own. The Tiffer has left the building. Nobody’s in control. On Wednesday the Bank of Canada dropped its latest epistle. Interest rates stay the same – we get it, and were expecting it. The bankers pointed to a ‘strong’ housing market as a key driver of economic recovery. If ‘strong’ […]

The Greater Fool - Tomorrow the Bank of Canada will do its thing. Expect no rate hike. Not yet. The economy’s still fragile. The vax is just starting to flow. There’ll be an election in a few months. So for a while yet banks will offer 2% fivers But, says the boss of the nation’s biggest, the CB will […]