Oh crap. Markets wither on recovery jitters

Some called it predatory selling. Others said it victimized the victims. One visitor hissed that I’m despicable, and threatened to regurgitate my own words when they might be most damaging. And then, on BC real estate discussion board momentarily devoted to my last blog posting, this cogent comment:

He is on meth.
What a meth.tard.
If he was so f*ckn’ smart he would be doing it and he would be rich.
But no, he’s just whinin’ and cryin’ and poor….P.O.O.R. or should we say POO-R.
Quit wasting chip space with your drug incited posts.

And what was all the angst about? My ideas on being a bubble buster – taking advantage of an unsustainable housing market through savvy selling. In one case I suggested dumping your home into a bidding war environment, getting a fat, non-returnable deposit and a long closing date of six or nine months.

The logic was twofold: Sell now in a bubble and close in the Spring when the market may well be cheaper. Sell high, buy low (my family motto). Second, if the purchasers choke on rising rates and falling house prices, and bolt, you end up with a serious chunk of money and your house back.

I also mused on selling with a VTB on favourable terms to the buyers, and a 20% or better downpayment, favourable to you. After closing, you get a tax-free whack of cash, a tax-free 5% return on your mortgage money and your principal returned in five years. In other words, rent for free and await the housing correction.

But if the new owners end up under water, and walk out on their mortgage payments, you have every legal right a bank does. You can foreclose, force the sale of the house, regain possession or sue the defaulters for damages and any shortfall between the sale price and your mortgage amount – plus arrears and costs. And, you still keep the tax-free downpayment.

Is this stuff so scary?

What should I suggest? Sell your home in a bidding war environment – the tippy top of the market – and, if the buyers change their mind, just hand them their deposit back, share a Bud and try to resell in a declining environment? Or sell and take back financing, then let the buyers off the hook, after some hugs,  if they decide to stop making mortgage payments?

I mean, get a grip.

For real estate sellers, this is the Olympics, dude. It doesn’t get much better than this for dumping an asset at its greatest value. After all, we know interest rates and taxes will be higher in a year or two, that manufacturing jobs are not coming back, family incomes will be stuck in the mud and the real estate market burned out. Why wouldn’t you want to score?

It’s not like anyone’s forcing people to buy, holding Tasers to their temples and ordering them into the bidding war trenches. All around us in Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton and Winnipeg, folks are stuffing themselves on cheap borrowed money and hitting the streets to compete for houses which went begging six months ago.  They insist on buying high, and higher, and highest.

Reasonable people know how this will play out.

Unreasonable, emotional, hormonal, peer-pressured, spouse-abused, right-brained, give-peace-a-chance, idealistic, kumbaya-humming deniers don’t. Fine. Sell your real estate to people without money and see how it goes.

I’ll be waiting.