Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Vancouver Real Estate Prices Are Among The Highest In The World According To Financial News Magazine Forbes

Real Estate prices in Vancouver are among the highest in the world according to Financial News Magazine Forbes. In a complicated way of measuring how overpriced real estate is Forbes has concluded that Vancouver is in the top 10 most overpriced real estate.

Vancouver among overpriced-land leaders
Forbes' formula deals us in for dubious honour

Ashley Ford
The Province

We all know Vancouver real estate is in nosebleed territory -- but globally overpriced?

According to a somewhat complex formula arrived at by Forbes magazine, Vancouver allegedly has the sixth most overpriced real-estate market in the world.

Monaco, the Mediterranean haunt of the rich and plastically-improved, tops the list of the globe's most overpriced real estate followed by Rome.

The rankings were compiled by calculating an effective annualized rate of return on a property based on annual cash flows derived from renting and adjusted for capital gains tax, transaction fees, operating costs and maintenance, appreciation and inflation.

"We then flipped the return rate to resemble the more familiar price-to-earnings measure," says the Forbes report.

That left the champion Monaco with a P/E ratio of 74.07.

The next nine are Rome (50.51), Paris (37.45), Madrid (30.30), Los Angeles (26.88), Vancouver (26.81), Vienna (25.77), Auckland (25.64), Zurich (25.19) and Oslo (23.45).

The study looked at 50 financial capitals in every continent, except Antarctica, of course. For the most part this meant one city from each country but for countries like India, China, the U.S., Australia, Canada and Switzerland where there were multiple, distinct financial centres, several cities were measured.

If you are thoroughly lost by now, Forbes offers a somewhat simpler way of absorbing their numbers.

"Think about each market like you would a stock: The higher the price-to-earnings figure, the more you have to pay to get one dollar of return," it says.

The valuations were based on data from GlobalPropertyGuide.com, an international real-estate research firm. For each market, it assumed no debt financing, a constant cost of capital, a 10-year hold of the property and a non-primary residence.

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