So, now that China's house of cards is coming tumbling down

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and taking real estate markets around the world with it (Sydney's housing market is beginning to crash.. Vancouver's is on it's way already.. I bet London is following suit, too - and the rest of Canada's super heated RE market is in decline as well..) - what next?

Hopefully this ft article loads and doesn't require subscription:

https://www.ft.com/content/68286d3b-cd8 ... XLzyS0ou9w

I ask "what next?" because the no brainer thing for people all over the world to do with investment capital over the last 2-3 decades was to buy property and let it appreciate in value. That easy money game is over. (And one I never got a chance to play since I was poor and priced out.)

Now that China is about to implode, financially/economically, and their foreign investments all over the world are coming to a grinding hault.. where to shovel money next ? Of course there's more to it, mostly interest rates that are finally rising to reign in the crazy rise in real estate prices.. but for people with a few cents to rub together.. where to stick it? Real estate will likely still remain out of touch for me as home prices are so obscenely high you need to have several times the average income in order to qualify for a mortgage on a house these days.. and the only condos I could possibly qualify to buy are in areas I wouldn't want to live - plus I'd pretty much have to be All In on home ownership to the exclusion of other investments or cash on hand, which is also dumb. Pretty sure that crypto isn't a safe place to stick any pennies anymore lol (and glad I only ever dropped like $1100 on it ever.) but still not entirely sure where $ will flow next.. kinda thinking maybe some friends and internet strangers are correct: Just keep waiting until the last of the scheduled interest rate rises in ~October, I think, and then start buying some blue chip stocks to hold onto for a while. A whole lot of major companies' stock prices are down 40-50% and still declining.. and it's not like Amazon, Nike, Disney and others are about to just fold and go out of business. Could be a great time to buy up some stocks and then just sit on them for a while as the world sorts itself out and people start consuming metric tons of crap again.

Or maybe I'll just invest in some beers. At least they're still worth 10 cents a piece when they're gone.

I would be delighted to see global property values nosedive. Here in Britain, property ownership is for speculators, money launderers and slum landlords. The only way most normal people can get on the property ladder is if multiple relatives die and leave them a lot of money. Not good for business either: city centre leases are sky-high, squeezing profit margins, and landlords routinely evict flourishing businesses when they get an offer to build yet more mysteriously empty apartments on the site.

This is describes Vancouver verrrrry accurately.

So...the Chinese fueled speculation bubble in Vancouver real estate will burst?

So when it happens then you can jump in on the ground floor and buy up properties at nickel on the dollar...end up owning stuff in downtown Vancouver...which will appreciate in value for the next bubble...

The house I live in, the better part of an hour's drive from downtown, at peak value a few months ago, was worth over $1.7M. Even if prices dropped in half (unlikely), they're still out of reach for an ordinary working class income as I couldn't qualify for a mortgage for even half of that.

And while Chinese money made a big splash in Vancouver, low interest rates probably made a bigger one - locals bid things up like crazy, too.

I don't think anyone is buying anything here for a nickel on the dollar.

It is Possible that I could buy Some type of real estate here, like an older condo in some suburb city somewhere, if owning my own home were the sole financial goal of my life.. but doing something like that here is pretty much at the exclusion of spending on or investing money in anything else. It'd be a bit of an all in sort of purchase.. and if I did that then I'd be cash poor for the next few decades of mortgage payments, as well as bending over and taking it for strata fees and any special assessments.

I'm almost 40 years old.. doesn't make sense to save until I'm 60 for a down payment and then plan on working until I'm 100 to pay a place off. The probability that I, like most people here, will become a homeowner isn't all that high. Is what it is.

What's more likely if/when I move is that I'll rent more home than I/we need, and then sublet or airbnb out the extra space to minimize my own cost of housing.