Loyal readers, antisocial voyeurs, shut-ins, pensive realtors, rudderless central bankers and others who read this blog may recall the Post City Magazine real estate roundtable from a year ago. Well, it’s happened again.

For those of you who don’t live in the GTA, and likely lack adequate sanitation, the Post magazines cater to those Toronto neighbourhoods where people think being downscale is buying an E300 as the dog car. Naturally these folks live in honking expensive houses, are extreme shoppers and constitute exactly the audience magazine advertisers love. Lots of those ads are for luxury homes, upscale condos and the objects d’art with which to fill them.

So, once a year, the mag editors bring together a select group to forecast the future of local housing. For comic relief, they include me.

The setting for the event was a club so perfect that beautiful women are paid just to walk around pretending to be employees. Granite and fresh flowers are everywhere; impeccable art lines the copious corridors; and the parking garage looks like a rare car showroom. I hurt only four or five vehicles nestling the Hummer into a space apparently reserved for small cars.

Around the table were the supernovas of Big Smoke realty. A woman who sells $8-million houses; the top producer from one of the toniest brokerages in the area; Toronto’s reigning condo king; a builder-to-the-rich and HGTV (real estate porn channel) star; the chief economist of the largest Canadian bank; a legendary developer of avant-garde projects; a financial editor and romper with the horsey set; and moi, in my squirrel hat.

Of course, I won’t scoop the article to be published shortly, but I will say that the hour I was able to stay was amazing. Among the points made by the luminaries:

> Canadian real estate is safe because we don’t take on as much debt as the Americans.
> Higher interest rates will encourage more house-buying. No worries.
> People paying $1.6 million for a suburban lot will be delighted in two years’ time.
> Investors are selling real estate in Dubai and Germany so they can move to Toronto.
> ‘Middle-range’ homes now sell for between $500K and $2.5 mil.
> Real estate prices will not regress, they will only progress.
> No crash, absolutely. But prices will rise modestly – about 4% per year.
> People are trading down from $2 million houses, to $2 million condos. After all, ‘that’s the price you pay for living someplace where you don’t get a gun in your face, or some neighbour shows up with a pie.’

Hmm. I could go on. But you get the drift of the conversation. The broad consensus, of course,  was ‘it’s different here.’ And when I jumped in to point out that people in Halifax, Ottawa, Calgary, Kelowna and Vancouver say exactly the same thing, they all came over and beat the crap out of me.

So, despite a 20% price increase in a year, the establishment claims there is no bubble. Despite the HST and higher mortgage rates, they think the demand for real estate is insatiable. In the face of record personal and household debt, and tighter mortgage rules, they see no reason young buyers won’t deliver. And regardless of a country, a province and a city sinking deeper and deeper into debt, promising higher taxes and less disposable income, they believe international buyers belching cash will keep the market vibrant.

So I played my final card. Resting my Remington on my knees (just in case), I reminded the high-rollers that the luxury housing scene in this or any other city will only survive if the real estate market in general is expanding, rife with move-up buyers and consumers happy to take on larger levels of debt. Those folks, I offered, are tapped out, over-borrowed and know far too many friends and relatives who are out of work. It won’t take much now – more listings, higher rates, a new sales tax – to whack demand.

An astonished silence crept across the table.

Finally the condo king said, “You cannot comprehend how much money has been made in real estate in this market. It’s staggering. Real estate is safe.” Many nods.

And with that, I quietly gathered my weapons and left, dreaming I’d just been part of a US National Association of Realtors convention, circa 2005.

There, but for the grace of God…