I think y’all got it backwards

Too bad for me, as I really enjoy the Gulf Islands… I guess the moral to the story is bring your own beer, eh?

Its called exports and that equates to income in Canada. Ask Europe and China, they’ve been trying to keep their currecies artificially lower for decades to sell us their manufatured goods.

I can imagine a shift to American glueboard from Canadian gluboard if the dollar keeps sinking….Canadian natural gas will go up and guess what….Americans will turn their thermostats down or switch to electricity….

There’s a curse to high currency rates and China knows it the best. We theoretically stop buying their stuff and they lay off their people. Their income plummets too.

The good news is that if you took out a 100% loan a year ago, then you effectively got a 10% back-dated discount on your house.

so, why not compare the YOY price change for Seattle homes against other investments.

what is the YOY price change in Seattle homes vs oil? more importantly, who cares?

it is not as if large numbers of europeans or canadians are going to start moving to the US so they can start paying for medical care and buy a bigger house.

insofar as our currency dropping value relative to virtually every other currency leads to greater inflation, this is a concern.

but why look at the CAD for that? it seems that looking at inflation numbers would be more direct.

I was visiting in-laws in interior BC this summer and I was completely floored when I went to buy my toddler some pull-ups: the same package of pull-ups that I pay $17.99 for in the US cost $37.99 in BC… plus the 14% sales tax! This was in August when the C$ was about .95 to the US$.

I was reading articles in the newspapers up there where politicians were encouraging Canadians to shop south of the border because Canadian retailers had not passed on the savings (the retailers claim inventory was purchased before the US dollar tanked). Even after paying duty at the border, Canadians are saving 40% or more than what they would have paid for the same products in Canada.

I’d imagine eventually the Canadian retailers will adjust their prices, but that doesn’t change how the tourism industry up there will suffer when Americans do the math and their “affordable” Canadian weekend turns out to be a lot more than they want to spend.

I’ll probably calculate this myself, but maybe someone will beat me to it.

This great! What no one realizes is that the Canadian Loonie is fairly stable with regard to world markets (compared to the Euro, Yen, Gold) but its the US $ that’s tanked!!

So with inflation increasing, housing prices stagnating, what does it mean when a Canadian comes to buy real estate?… yep, Washington State housing is really worth way less on the world stage than it was a year or so ago, effective home prices here are dropping with the dollar.

(for Chinese investors bringing cash to the table)

because our interest rates will be too high for loans to be payable, our currency will be in the crapper, and the Chinese save their money when they see a recession coming.

note: this is not racist, it is merely repetition of observations on the state of the market in China today