Devon Brooks Bad times gone good

July 20, 2008

Most big news headlines, that is the ones stalking the pages of the outside world capitals like Washington and London tend to pass the Okanagan by. Often enough there are personal connections to the big story, like the fall of the towers in New York back in 2001 but mostly these huge tidal waves of fortune and folly roll on, mostly noted here with a shake of the head.

But real estate is a hot topic here, as it has been for a decade. Every year I think it is impossible that the prices could climb higher, that housing couldn’t get any more expensive, that no one can afford to buy up the hundreds of homes under construction every year.

And every year for at least five years I’ve been dead wrong.

Last year in 2007 when the sub-prime mortgage crisis hit I thought this would somehow shake up our market, but you know what? I was wrong again.

It, seemingly like the other big stories washed up on distant shores and except for the odd twitch, like the rocking of the CIBC share price, seemed likely to roll on, mostly unnoticed.

But then a local mortgage broker started doing seminars on how this particular financial disaster was so big that it provided Canadians with an unprecedented opportunity for money making.

Expecting hyperbole I interviewed Scott Peckford who went bigger, calling it the “investment opportunity” of a lifetime. But Peckford’s enthusiasm has good cause.

So I jumped at the chance to investigate it myself with a trip to Arizona to see real estate carnage first hand. It turns out that financial meltdowns don’t look like what I expect.

It’s a strange world.

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Devon Brooks Bad times gone good

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