The Decline of Vancouver.

Posted by: Couch_Surfer

Posted by: Bull_Dozer

I just think it's messed up that we live in a country with basically an unlimited amount of land but you either need a very high paying job or a big cash gift from family to even afford a small condo here.

We don’t have an unlimited amount of land.

What’s the stat - 90% if the population lives within 150 miles of the US border?

We have a huge amount of land that most people don’t want to live in.

I'm not suggesting that people move to rural areas in the middle of nowhere. We have tons of unused and underused land within 150 miles of the US border. Vancouver isn't densely populated at all. The downtown peninsula is but drive 3 mins outside of downtown in any direction and it's like 95% detached houses. We have tons of land, we just aren't using it properly.  Zoning and NIMBYism is a significant factor in housing affordability. 

And I'm not surprised that the core areas are unaffordable - Vancouver, Burnaby, North Shore, etc. What's crazy to me is that even when you drive an hour outside of town into the Fraser Valley everything is still very expensive. 

Compare that to NYC for example - of course Manhattan is insanely expensive. But if you get on a train and go 30 mins into New Jersey you can get a half decent house for under $500k USD. We just don't have that option here in the GVA. A house in Vancouver is like ~$2M for something not terrible but it's still like $1.3M in Langley and like $1M in Abbotsford and maybe $850k in Chillwack... And we also don't have sufficient infrastructure (trains, highways, etc.) to allow people further out to efficiently commute into downtown Vancouver.

Posted by: XXX_er

PG housing, Smithers housing, everywhere the RE prices are way up and stupid

and there are mtn biking area's every where

F'kin' mtn. bikers eh?

well obviously its the mtn bikers, the provincial gov is giving away money to mtn bike associations cuz its good tourism for not a lot of money

and stupid prices isn't that stupid compared to vangroovy

Posted by: Kenny

So what do you suggest? Since you clearly can observe how terrible all of these dirty scheming lazy homeowners are, who don't work for a living and just live from tax loophole to tax loophole, screwing over the working class, from your elevated perch of socioeconomic superiority? 

In case the sarcasm is lost here, I think I speak for a lot of homeowners who own homes simply because they worked hard, set goals, and made sacrifices for something they felt was worthwhile long-term, when I say its annoying when people classify us as some type of silver-spoon/lottery winner/had everything handed to them/got in early /speculator/ tax evader or whatever in an attempt to discredit the notion that some people just figure it out however they can. Either do it or don't but whining won't solve it.

Well it's important to continue to do nothing.  Look how well it's worked so far. 

I mean Taleeb was elected in Van-Granville so...

Anyway; "Global city! Serfdom! etc"

There's only 1.34 million vacant homes in Canada.  Maybe we can get a "2MilX2025" campaign going or something?  So long as we continue the path of global wealth being stored in Canada it should be an easy task.

https://www.straight.com/news/cibc-says-vancouver-homebuyers-receive-average-of-340000-gift-from-mom-and-dad-for-property

Posted by: Couch_Surfer

https://www.straight.com/news/cibc-says-vancouver-homebuyers-receive-average-of-340000-gift-from-mom-and-dad-for-property

Sort of makes sense, their parents would have bought for super cheap when housing was cheap, maybe bought a second property for good measure. Sell the second property and end up with 2M in the bank, sprinkle 340K per kid and still have a healthy retirement lined up with a fully paid up principal residence.

Posted by: Endur-Bro

Taleeb .... Van-Granville so...

Soul mates, eh?

"Global city! Serfdom! etc"

Monaco-by-the-sea

Monaco is already by the sea.

Posted by: Adam-West

Monaco is already by the sea.

He got you on that one, Tungsten, lol.

Pretty good racket these developers have going. They promise a certain amount of affordable rental housing in the planning phase then when it's almost done cry that they're not gonna make enough money and have to sell everything as condos.

https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/burnaby-market-rental-housing-policy-changes-risk-cancellation

This is also the site I happen to be working on. I hate my job.

Posted by: Stuminator

Posted by: Adam-West

Monaco is already by the sea.

He got you on that one, Tungsten, lol.

Oh boy, are you two ever dumb?

Posted by: Endur-Bro

Posted by: Kenny

So what do you suggest? Since you clearly can observe how terrible all of these dirty scheming lazy homeowners are, who don't work for a living and just live from tax loophole to tax loophole, screwing over the working class, from your elevated perch of socioeconomic superiority? 

In case the sarcasm is lost here, I think I speak for a lot of homeowners who own homes simply because they worked hard, set goals, and made sacrifices for something they felt was worthwhile long-term, when I say its annoying when people classify us as some type of silver-spoon/lottery winner/had everything handed to them/got in early /speculator/ tax evader or whatever in an attempt to discredit the notion that some people just figure it out however they can. Either do it or don't but whining won't solve it.

Well it's important to continue to do nothing.  Look how well it's worked so far. 

I mean Taleeb was elected in Van-Granville so...

Anyway; "Global city! Serfdom! etc"

The first sentence in my post is "what do you suggest?". Your response proposed nothing and simply complained more, so thanks for proving my point, I guess? 

Everyone seems to miss that it's supply and demand at the core of it. 

Therefore, in my mind we should probably ban detached zoning like they're looking at doing in parts of new Zealand and densify everywhere they can. But then everyone complains about real estate developers.... 

The other problem o  that front is building costs. Last I checked it costs about 600k just to build a typical detached house in Vancouver. So how are you going to slash prices by the percentages people are talking about here? Even if the land was worth nothing, you can't even build a house for that.

Posted by: Kenny

Posted by: Endur-Bro

Posted by: Kenny

So what do you suggest? Since you clearly can observe how terrible all of these dirty scheming lazy homeowners are, who don't work for a living and just live from tax loophole to tax loophole, screwing over the working class, from your elevated perch of socioeconomic superiority? 

In case the sarcasm is lost here, I think I speak for a lot of homeowners who own homes simply because they worked hard, set goals, and made sacrifices for something they felt was worthwhile long-term, when I say its annoying when people classify us as some type of silver-spoon/lottery winner/had everything handed to them/got in early /speculator/ tax evader or whatever in an attempt to discredit the notion that some people just figure it out however they can. Either do it or don't but whining won't solve it.

Well it's important to continue to do nothing.  Look how well it's worked so far. 

I mean Taleeb was elected in Van-Granville so...

Anyway; "Global city! Serfdom! etc"

The first sentence in my post is "what do you suggest?". Your response proposed nothing and simply complained more, so thanks for proving my point, I guess? 

Everyone seems to miss that it's supply and demand at the core of it. 

Therefore, in my mind we should probably ban detached zoning like they're looking at doing in parts of new Zealand and densify everywhere they can. But then everyone complains about real estate developers.... 

The other problem o  that front is building costs. Last I checked it costs about 600k just to build a typical detached house in Vancouver. So how are you going to slash prices by the percentages people are talking about here? Even if the land was worth nothing, you can't even build a house for that.

It's not a supply-side issue.

There's a reason the provincial Liberal party never even entertained the idea of an iron-clad beneficial ownership registry and instead leaned on, "That's Racist!" whenever anyone mentioned foreign ownership.

They make most of their money from property developers.

Until we have iron-clad provincial and federal beneficial ownership registries we'll continue being a dumping ground for ill-gotten gains from abroad and we will all suffer from it.