Yes: http://www.amazon.com/Progress-Poverty-Industrial-Depression...
Prices are related to available credit. Wages (and rent) have hardly budged but land prices have rocketed.
Prices are related to available credit. Wages (and rent) have hardly budged but land prices have rocketed.
Low interest rates allows banks to more efficiently financialise housing (that is to say price housing at the optimal point to extract as much economic rent as possible). You get to spread your repayments over a long time and end up paying lots of lovely interest.
Higher rates (and therefore more wage inflation) quickly erodes the debt whilst putting a ceiling on the asset price bounded by wages at the time you sign the mortgage deeds.
The west has been utterly captured by banks. We've seen politicians walk rates down to zero to allow the asset price bubble to continue to extract value from labour.
This is the issue. It's not off-topic for this - all families are working two jobs for the banks.
ps also dude as you are in Canada (so am I):
Vancouver is nuts. Calgary: timber