For a lucky few, of course, Vancouver real estate has been a gold mine. Those who purchased a home after the last major downturn in 1990 and hung on through the frequent bumps and dips until today -- or rather until February this year -- hit the motherlode.
Depending on who's doing the math, the value of their investment has more than tripled. And house flippers who snapped up a teardown last year and cashed out near the peak have also made a killing.
The rest of us, lemmings who bought during the frenzy and bid up the price of dumpy asbestos-filled bungalows that are worth less than they were six months ago, rue the day we placed a call to a real estate agent.
A dwindling number of realtors cling to the fiction that we are in a "balanced" real estate market where, since no one has an advantage, everybody presumably gets a fair deal.
