Thank you for taking the time to offer your comments.

In my post, I was attempting to highlight Bob Rennie’s views — specifically his openness to government regulation of pre-sales — as a unique viewpoint within the Vancouver condo industry. In my review of media coverage, I have found no comment from any other major industry official suggesting similar openness to government regulation. If you can direct me to any material that shows otherwise, I would be very interested in seeing it.

Condohype is first and foremost a comedy site that aims to satirize the Vancouver condo marketing machine. I am not interested in personal attacks or intentionally mischaracterizing the views of others. I do not believe I have done so in this case. But as an act of good faith, I’ve voluntarily amended my post to remove the specific reference to you and the GVHBA.

With respect to your comment that buyers should receive their condos for the price they paid, I do not dispute this in any way. I believe you are sincere.

I appreciate your willingness to share your thoughts and to challenge what I’ve put forward. Should you ever want to be a guest contributor to this blog, I would be glad to give you the opportunity.

Best,

condohype

I was just out at a caesar party of some friends. They live in a place that frankly is marginally nice than my place in the West End. Not to sound like a dick but it wasn’t nearly as nice as my old place in TO.

It was *REALLY plain. the colours were stark and kind of depressing. From what I can tell the devolper put not thought at all into how to light the place. Their furniture wasn’t as good as mine.

They’re nice guys but I was talking to one and he was plainly as confused as I was about how things had played out. He told me they’d moved about every six months from one condo to another. Their agent would call them every couple of months and say “Do you know how much I can get for your place?”

Sure enough, each time they flipped they made a substantial amount of money. My friend mentioned several times it was American buyers who were lured into bidding wars by the difference in the dollar.

I look at all of this and I have to come to the following conclusions:

1) The homes here aren’t nearly as nice as the ones in TO, and that’s not saying much since those sucked.

2) People here have been bamboozled by really greedy real estate agents.

3) American buyers may have had a fairly distorting influence on the local market.

4) All the bull arguments are bullsh-t (oh, the smelly irony). The market here has been driven by greed, fear and gullibility, and nothing else.

As for Rennie, well, considering I compared his remarks to a refreshing cold shower, I don’t see how “pride” factors into this. My point is that Bob is a major industry figure and he’s publicly admitting that he doesn’t have a problem with the government getting involved to protect consumers. I invite the rest of the condo clowns to give us as much.

Rennie’s remarks, self-serving or not, advocate a shift of power from the industry to the government. It is not common for an industry spokesperson to make this kind of comment.

It seems many need a wakeup call as to what a presale agreement really is. Sure it sucks now one has to pay (gasp!) market rate for this condo instead of the heavily discounted price the presale contract awarded these people. But let’s not forget investors, err I mean buyers, get their money back, with a bit of interest to boot, as the payments were held in escrow.

What’s the REAL problem? The presale buyers took a risk and were seemingly handsomely rewarded for their prescience. Now all those paper gains have evaporated. Sounds like a mixture of greed, in a few instances the fear of being priced out forever, and a sense of unfairness. Caveat emptor and sorry about your luck.

I say the next building project they name “Gilbert” or “Clarence”. I’d love to live in Clarence. Gilbert sounds a bit too chique for my tastes.