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For forty years my companies have worked with some of the top Real Estate agents in the Seattle area to prepare properties for sale. Since becoming an agent myself in the early 1980s my niche has been distressed properties.
I have been looking at the conversion of rental properties into condos, and town homes here in Seattle. What's interesting is the increase in housing units created. It's the same all over the country, and globally. The price of housing units is declining because there are so many of them. It's supply on steroids. As contractors ramp up to generate rental income the price per unit will fall in order to compete. As was pointed out, generation Y doesn't need a lot in terms of housing. All together we can expect rents to plummet. As rents decline the price of property will continue to decline. There is no reason to hold property that is declining in price even if it does cash flow for the next five years. You are outlining a lose, lose situation for any one holding leveraged property.
You could probably stop the analysis at an influx of Chinese yuan. Canada, Vancouver in particular, is a close haven for immigration, both of currency, and people. Canada needs tax dollars. Immigration is a way to ensure new taxes. Once in Canada there are several places without border restrictions. Trying to read anything into a Vancouver housing market is completely pointless. If you are making good commissions on the sale of property that is all that matters. Any other consideration is just fluff.
I get three or four calls a week about improving my ranking, or trying to get me to buy into some group to handle my social media presence. What you are saying is very true. You can do a lot of damage by making some very slick moves. On one site we had for about six months we had a flash intro that got people to look at it, and when it was done they were gone. It just loaded too slow on different systems. On my computer it looked great, but at the office it took forever to load. My opinion is that a good domain name is the game. If you have a domain name that people search for then it makes sense to work on the site. Then it depends on if people buy based on the site, or if it's just a business card, or if they are entertained. It's the entertainment aspect that really has me stymied. In Real Estate we deal in hundreds of thousands of dollars. People have lost billions, and trillions of dollars globally by making rash, or bad financial decisions about the properties they bought. We are only talking a ten year cycle that began in 1998, and ended in 2008. My question lately is if consumers will continue to be sucked in by tech gimmicks, or will they be looking for solid financial expertise in home purchases.
