AstonLau.com

Citibank Sucks

admin — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 03:57:00 +0000

Citibank, you suck because:

You introduced new banking fees right after I opened a no-fee account back in mid-2010.
You incessantly send me credit card checks that I don’t need. While the teaser 0% APR looks good, you hide in the fine print the fact that you charge a fee of 3 freaking percent of the transfer balance.
More fine print: you hide the fact that your dividend card only pays up to $300 in a calendar year. I easily get double that amount from using my American Express card, thankyouverymuch.

I’m sure there are lots of other reasons why you suck, but that’s all I can think of today.

Canadian Business: “Prediction: The Canadian housing market will crash”

admin — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 23:28:41 +0000

When prices do start to fall, don’t expect a quick rebound like we saw three years ago. The average home price fell by 8.5% between August 2008 and March 2009, according to the Teranet-National Bank House Price Index, in a decline sparked by the financial crisis. By November, the market had already recovered. Part of the reason for the quick rebound was massive government intervention.

The Bank of Canada moved fast to slash interest rates to unprecedented lows, allowing banks to continue lending to businesses and consumers. The federal government also established a $125-billion program to buy mortgages it had already insured from banks and financial institutions, providing even more liquidity. The government ultimately bought mortgages worth a stunning $69.4 billion. The Bank of Canada has less room to manoeuvre today. The overnight rate is now 1% compared to 3% in August 2008. Cutting rates to stimulate the market is hardly an option this time. Banks have less flexibility, too. A five-year fixed rate mortgage is roughly 3.8% today, down from 5.7% in late 2008.

Doesn’t look like there’s much more the government can do to prop up the Canadian housing market. The pending correction is long, long overdue.

San Jose less affordable than New York

admin — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 05:08:47 +0000

I always knew my hometown, Vancouver, as well as places like NY and SF were expensive places to live… but San Jose??

Doesn’t look the least bit glamorous, does it?

SJ’s affordability ratio sits at 6.9, while NY is at 6.2. (The affordability ratio is the median annual household income divided by the median house price.)

As someone who’s looking to buy in the Bay Area, this comes as a bit of a shock to me. I’ve been looking at San Jose as an affordable place to live — at least compared to places like Mountain View (home of Google), Cupertino (home of Apple), and Palo Alto (home of Facebook and countless other tech companies). No doubt that’s true; I suppose I’ve just been desensitized to the cost of housing around here.

Lacoste == Itchy

admin — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 23:31:26 +0000

The stitching that’s holding together the Lacoste crocodile is pretty darn itchy on my chest. Oh, the price one pays to be fashionable.

Etude Pinot Noir

admin — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 00:15:33 +0000

Came back from Napa a few months ago with a bottle of Etude wine. Turns out to be one of the most delicious, sublime wines I’ve ever tasted…. It was so good, I went a bit crazy and bought an entire case of it online. Of course, I was a bit drunk at the time, so that might have explained my impulsiveness. Kudos, Etude, for deviously parting me from my hard-earned money.

Yum.

Acura is Back, Part 2

admin — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 05:14:42 +0000

I almost forgot… Acura also unveiled this jaw-dropping beast of a sports car today:

The NSX is back. So yeah, Acura’s back.

Acura is Back?

admin — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 04:34:56 +0000

I used to have a 1996 Acura Integra that I absolutely loved, but nothing from Honda since then has really excited me, especially not since the era of the bird beak grille began. I swore I’d never buy an Acura again.

I really enjoyed driving my dad’s 2012 RDX over the holidays, though, and Acura seems to have knocked it out the park today with the unveiling of the new 2013 RDX. It’s lighter, has a naturally-aspirated V6 that looks great on paper (and hopefully won’t require premium gas like the turbocharged I-4 does), and doesn’t look half bad. They even fixed the dashboard — the speedometer and tachometer look downright European. They also made the center console less bulky, which is a peeve of my wife’s.

If they can keep it fun(nish) to drive, give it cargo space to rival the RAV4 or CR-V, and keep the base price under $33,000… I think they’ve just made a sale.

It’s hard to be a wine snob in Canada

admin — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 07:33:54 +0000

Layer Cake Shiraz at BevMo in the U.S.: $14.99.

Layer Cake Shiraz at a local cold beer and wine store in Victoria: $30.72.

Layer Cake’s not even that good.

The case against policy intervention

admin — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 21:08:22 +0000

From the Vancouver Real Estate Anecdote Archive:

At the very most any policy intervention would only forestall the inevitable crash. To cause an ‘orderly unwinding’ of a bubble you require an orderly and never-ending supply of buyers willing to take on large amounts of (albeit cheap) debt to buy assets that are falling in value and still grossly overpriced….

Policy change to prop up the market via new buyers would simply delay and magnify the bust, not resolve it. The pool of people facing certain future financial hardships would grow even larger.

Truer words were never spoken. When the housing market begins its correction (and many of us believe it already has), the last thing the government should do is try to stem the tide. It only prolongs the pain, wastes taxpayer money, and rewards those who foolishly bought into the real estate hype.

Deleveraging is inherently a painful process, and the sooner we get it over with, the better.

Now They Tell Us: Experts Say Housing Is A Lousy Investment And Always Will Be

admin — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 18:36:11 +0000

From this Yahoo Finance article:

Well, the experts are weighing in again. And, once again, they agree: Housing is a lousy investment. And it always will be.

But wait. Just a few years ago, weren’t the experts saying that housing was always a great investment? That house prices would always go up?

Yes, they were.

One thing you can be sure of with respect to market punditry is that experts will extrapolate recent trends into the hereafter. As will most people, actually. That’s why, no matter how many times markets overshoot, people get burned.