Hear Garth tonight, Red Deer Holiday Inn 7 pm

The Little P.O. that’s a little p.o.’d

What happens when two truckloads of books descend on the Caledon Village post office? Well, assistant postmistress Meryl and the girls get a bit testy, as they process endless boxes of ‘Money Road’ advance copies.

The books streamed off the press in Toronto on Monday afternoon, and by Monday night, the Canada Post assembly line had started. Every one personalized and (pricelessly autographed), they should be making their way into mailboxes across the country in the next few days. The book will be in Chapters/Indigo early next month.

One piece of good news from Meryl: a surprising break on postage rates, given the deluge. If you’d like a copy while supplies remain (and the first printing is almost gone, yikes, in one day), then go here. — Garth

I chuckled as I passed a TV monitor last night and listened to the breathless TV anchor proclaim that “cottage country is on sale.”

“If you’ve been dreaming about a life of leisure on the dock,” he effused, “this may be your chance.”

Flash to a reporter standing beside a Royal LePage realtor in front of a $500,000 property that, incredibly enough, just happens to be for sale two hours north of Godless Toronto. The gist of the story: prices are down, bargains are up, so get yer butt and your chequebook to Lake Rousseau.

Hmm. Speaking of Lake Rosseau – that idyllic, rock-strewn iconic Lawren Harris kinda place –  a $170-million luxury condo/time share development that recently went into bankruptcy protection sits on its shores. Tony two-bedroom units with suggestive fireplaces that sold a year ago (pre-occupancy) for $2.1 million are now changing hands for pennies on the dollar. And around the country, high-end, spare-no-expense companies like Intrawest are scrambling to retain financing and solvency.

So, what’s up with the cottage/recreational property market? The Muskoka-Haliburton real estate board reports sales were actually good in the final months of 2009, with prices about neutral. Mind you, with fewer than than two hundred deals a month in the entire region, it doesn’t take many fools from the city to bug up the stats.

Without a doubt, some spillover from the urban bubble has been felt in the hinterland of our major cities, and if prices dip a little at a time of year when the loons are in Caracas, that may be interesting. But it ain’t stuff fit for the supperhour newscast. And it won’t last.

A blog dog emailed a day or two ago asking if his millionaire inlaws should buy a retirement condo in Canmore for $500,000. With my usual aplomb, I replied, “Are they nuts?”

Recreational, cottage, mountain and seashore property, including hobby farms, bug-free condos and timeshares have a lousy future. Worse, in fact, than those urban properties which will be impacted by a host of factors we have mined on this blog – mortgage rates, sales taxes, affordability, mortgage insurance changes, economic sloth and demographics, among others.

Here are some reasons:

• Most cottages are bought as second properties by urban types, often when their principal residences rise in value. The most common form of financing is an equity-take on the city home to buy the place on the lake.

• This means when any pressure is exerted in town – like a mortgage renewal at higher rates or falling property values – the easiest safety valve is to dump the cottage. That’s why in a falling market these are the first kind of properties to go.

• Supply and demand are soon to be seriously out of whack. By April or so, it should be clear the economy in 2010 is not going back to its 2008 lustre. Jobs will stay tight, growth will be tepid, and costs will be rising, while everyone is in more debt. Besides, with rising gas prices, it will cost $800 to fill up the tanks on the cigarette boat. Yup, list the sucker.

• But while the sellers will increase, where will the buyers come from? Relentlessly rising real estate prices now have most 40 or 50-year-olds still enslaved to mortgages on their principal residences. The advent of the 30 or 40-year mortgage has house debt now extending through most of adulthood, which means few the Boomer’s adult kids can even dream of pulling leeches from between their toes.

• But the biggest reason is just that – demographics. Overwhelmingly, the cottage experience has been a Boomer thing, a throwback to that idyllic time when Beaver Cleavers stalked the land, Dad wore a tie to dinner and happy middle-class families in Buicks left the paved streets behind them every Friday between the Queen’s birthday and sweet September. Well, kiss that goodbye.

Today, as I’ve been reminding you, seven in ten Boomers have no pension while six in ten have no retirement savings. But they do have real estate – sometimes way too much of it, and often including the family cottage. As this nine-million-strong cohort starts turning 65 next year, the waves crashing through cottage country will not just be on the lake.

So, if you have cash to burn and love to terrorize fish, wait.

If you get your economic and real estate news from the TV, have we got a deal for you!