“No one could ever have imagined the real estate market would drop as much as this.” — Except for those who did.

Unfortunately the musings of real-estate developers and realtors need to be taken with a large pinch of salt.

Despite Mr Evans’ protestations, many people did correctly predict the current melt-down. Vancouver Housing Blogger even had a nice graph to show what was going on. Most people didn’t want to pay attention though, so they decided to face the other way and walk towards the precipice backwards. This phenomenon is perhaps most assiduously captured in Bob Rennie’s quote in Vancouver Magazine’s, June 2006 Issue. “If the blogger is right . . . then 1000 people are wrong.”

Omni’s prices are still way too high, but they are right to come out with a big marketing push around a substantial price cut to try and get ahead of the curve. In contrast, most people (and developers) trying to sell into this market will continue to make the long series of small price cuts known as the ‘death spiral’. No one should consider buying until pricing returns to 03/04 levels … and it most assuredly will.