The definitive correction and other bullshit

My apologies for the obscenity in the headline but after Bob Rennie’s cussing on yesterday’s Bill Good Show, I felt I had no choice but to pay homage to King Bob’s verbal transgression. (In a response to an open-line call about pressure tactics, Bob said real estate agents should be called on their “bullshit.” Bill Good laughed and the caller hung up.)

On a normal day, this kind of event would be the sole subject of a post, but Thursday’s Bill Good was so jam-packed with quotable awesomeness, I need to move on to its other treasures.

It starts at the top of the program with CKNW money expert Michael Levy saying with certainty that he believes “we are into a DEFINITIVE correction” in the Vancouver housing market. A few minutes later, financial guru Michael Campbell shares less bearish views but concedes the high number of listings mean “we’re looking at a lid on price increases in our area.” In the middle of the mix is my idol Condo Bob. First he goes off on how “absorption is just numbers.” Later he’s mumbling mumbo-jumbo about how it always makes sense to own “the right place on the right street” but not “the wrong place on the wrong street.”

Then we hit this remarkable exchange between host and guest:

Bill Good: There are people who have felt so much pressure to buy because the market has been increasing so dramatically, they’re thinking that if I don’t buy today I can never save the $10,000 that it’s going to appreciate next month.

Bob Rennie: It’s been throughout history that you save up a down payment and you buy a starter home. You don’t buy way beyond your means — you get in. We’ve convinced you that you have to have a new granite counter with a Sub Zero in your first home. You don’t! You’re supposed to buy in and slowly move along. I think if you go to your parents and say I’m buying a house and I have no money down, your dad says you can’t afford it.

Words cannot express how devastated I am by this revelation. What do you mean, Dearest Bob, when you say we don’t need the granite countertop!?! After all these years of pumping up the virtues and luxuries of Vancouver lifestyle living, now you tell us we don’t need it! How could you?!

Bob, for all my criticism of this god-awful condo marketing business, I took comfort in your unwavering commitment to your condo product. Now you’ve confessed it’s bullshit — to use my new favourite expression — and I don’t know what to do. Once I called you on the condo hype, now you call it yourself. Bob, are you taking my job away from me?

Oh, Bob. Please, keep the hype alive. I need you to keep pumping so I can keep dumping. Without you, I am nothing. Like the Joker says to Batman, you complete me.