THINGS A LITTLE SLOW?

[hogjowl]

Let me spell it out for you Fon. If you want a sales job, don't just look at people.

Ask.

 

[Fon Johnson]

I thought you of all people wound understand that "looking" at someone is redneck speak for considering and checking someone out. :roll:

 

[Desk Jockey]

My first walk-up.

and so the lying begins!

Easy...easy...take it easy there Mr.Compensating for my physical short comings, it was just a joke!
:mrgreen:




Psst... Enzyte would have been cheaper!

 

[Bob Foster]

I can understand why things are slow but living it is another thing. I have had next to no phone calls in three weeks -ever since the stock market meltdown. I live in a good area social economically speaking. The slowness of our local economy is papable with nothing but bad news headlines about our local economy - lay offs, complete large construction project shut downs, dramatic drops in real estate sales and home prices etc. I have lived through several national and local economic downturns and I have never experienced anything like this. I'm at wits end.

 

[Larry B]

Just think of it as a vacation.

Start another business that you hate doing and hire others to do the work untill CC picks back up.

 

[Bill Soukoreff]

I hear ya Bob, I am finding the same out here in Calgary. It's like one day someone turn a switch and the calls stopped. I thought there was a problem with my phone. This week is starting to get better though. Let's hope.

 

[Brian R]

So far I have not been let down by the economy thank God.

I can make it through the winter if it gets bad.

I will pray for you guys.

 

[Bob Foster]

Here is my reality. Read the whole article. This stop has occurred in less than a month


Cracks appearing in condo land

Credit turmoil, costs and threat of a recession have left several Vancouver projects stranded or on hold



VANCOUVER -- Holly Wood's first hint that something was "smelling fishy" in Vancouver's champagne-infused construction market came several weeks ago, when she discovered that the presentation centre for the city's most glamorous project was strangely closed.

The Ritz-Carlton hotel and condos is among the richest development to begin construction in Vancouver, a $2,500-per-square foot, 58-storey ultra-luxury tower with an eye-catching 45-degree twist designed by Arthur Erickson.

But that $500-million design is currently little more than a half-completed hole in the ground - the most glittering symbol of the troubled times that have humbled real estate development in Vancouver, a city that spent the last half-decade treating new condos like an evergreen money tree.

Credit turmoil, construction costs and the threat of a recession have left several towers stranded, unfinished and searching for either new designs or new money, while some developers are now threatening to sue buyers who are walking away from huge cash deposits, unwilling to commit to condos they pre-bought.

The problems have extended from suburbia to downtown Vancouver where Ms. Wood, an agent with Re/Max Masters Realty, had sold a unit in the Ritz-Carlton, a place where "cheap" begins in seven figures. But Holborn Group, the developer had not paid her commission. Concerned that something was terribly wrong, she did something that would have been unthinkable a year ago, in the days when real-estate was still quick money and worry-free.

She marched into the office of Holborn, sat in the board room and demanded her money.

"I said, ‘I'm not moving. I don't care how long it takes until I get my cheque'," she said. "I had nothing to lose. What's the worst thing they're going to give me, nothing? I'm not moving if I have to get arrested, do a hunger strike, or phone CTV news."

Thirty minutes later, after a conversation with the Simon Lim, Holborn's president and managing director, she left with her cheque. That night, local TV news carried a story that construction had been halted at the Ritz-Carlton. Mr. Lim's reason: the need to redesign the parkade. He denied financial troubles were to blame.

In a brief interview, Mr. Lim said, "it's my intent to resume [construction]," but declined further details. "It's a private site, I own it. It's a private enterprise. I don't think I have an obligation to disclose what my private business plans are to you."

Ms. Wood can't quite believe such a high-profile project could have problems.

"I'm just very shocked," she said. "I don't know what to say. I'm at a loss for words. Vancouver should be a strong market."

But signs of weakness are becoming increasingly obvious. As recently as August, Merril Lynch calculated that Vancouver - as has Toronto - had more multi-unit buildings under construction "than in all other Canadian cities combined a decade ago."

Today, some of that construction has ground to a halt. In the Vancouver suburb of Surrey, workers have abandoned a set of unfinished towers that stand at 21 and 25 storeys tall after the developer, who had secured some of his funding through Lehman Brothers, ran out of cash. (Work will resume if a new developer can be found to pay the $100-million in remaining costs; 560 of the towers' 690 units have been pre-sold.) In North Vancouver, work has stopped on two high-rises - one with seven storeys built, one still at the foundation stage - as the developer waits for a finalized subdivision plan. That work is expected to resume. One developer said a half-dozen other towers are vulnerable.

Across the Lower Mainland, developers who only months ago were gobbling up easy money to build wherever they could are now scrambling to rearrange construction schedules. They are adjusting to a new reality where credit is constricted; pre-sales, the lifeblood of the construction boom, are drying up; and buyers, amid forecasts of a 13% drop in housing values next year – after falling 10% this year – are growing too skittish to commit.

In the first nine months of 2007, the city of Vancouver issued building permits for 3,842 dwelling units. This year, it is down to 1,476. The Real Estate Board of Vancouver reported September sales were down 42.9% from last year, while listings were up 28.8%.

Even those major developments that have pulled back from the brink have not been spared. The Bowra Group Inc., a Vancouver firm that specializes in corporate rescues, has been ordered by the courts to take over management of four towers in the past year after their developers ran into problems. All of those are now either built or nearing completion, but Bowra now faces another problem: pre-sale buyers who left large deposits are walking away from sums as high as $40,000. Some estimate that fully 70% of condo buyers in recent years were speculators. With credit tightening, some are so over-extended they cannot get mortgages, while others simply no longer want to take on units they committed to at the frothy prices of the past few years.

"There's a lot people there to make a quick profit, and it backfired on them," said Mario Mainella, a vice-president at Bowra, whose firm is now contemplating legal action against some of those owners.

"The way most contacts are written, the developers can pursue a damages claim if the unit is sold for less than what it was sold for originally," Mr. Mainella said.

Problems with pre-sales have brought worried brows at the highest-profile project in the city, Millennium Water, Vancouver's Olympic Village project. Its developer, the Millennium Group, has already had to swallow a $60-million – or 6% – cost overrun on the 1,100-unit project, which is billed as Vancouver's last waterfront. But it now faces the challenge of marketing 60% of its units in a time of falling prices. Millennium has pre-sold more than 75% of the units it has already marketed, and Hank Jasper, the company's general manager of development and construction, said he is confident the remainder will sell thanks to their prime location and the long waiting lists already in place.

Still, he admitted that Millennium wants "to let the dust settle a little bit on what's going on out there right now" before it begins marketing those, likely next year.

"We're obviously concerned," he said. "We don't have a pre-sales requirement, so we could hold onto the product for as long as we need to. We don't believe that's going to occur. But that's always our failsafe."

Still, talk of failsafe plans is strong evidence that the radical shift in fortunes for the city's developers has tempered the thing that, until recently, flowed as fast as the money: pride.

"I've never seen anything so deep, so fast," said Eric Carlson, the CEO of Anthem Properties Corp. "I used to be a know-it-all. Now, I'm pretty humble."