all I'm saying is that everyone runs around with "can'taffordamillion" but refuse to accept that they just don't want to live the burbs.
I dont disagree that I wouldn't jump in to this market if i was on the sidelines .
dude c'mon, that's a poor argument considering how the R/E market has played out in metro van over the past decade. before that you didn't have the "i can't afford a ferrari bitchers" because there was a decent amount of modestly priced housing stock, inlcuding SFH's in vancouver proper. YOY price increase of 20-30%? that's totally unreasonable. hell, even jumps of 10% could be considered out of line considering other factors like wages in this region. the market has been unreasonably skewed by foreign investment and housing stock has been turned into a commodity.
20 years ago i could buy a house in the east of sfu region for a bit more than what i paid for my condo 8 years ago. now that condo is priced about the same as what a home on the east side of vancouver was worth about 5-6 years ago. we're looking at across the board 100% price increases (or more) in less than a decade. that's just fucked.
in the past living in the burbs might have meant east side of burnaby, tri-cities, surrey, etc, now that means mission, abby, hope. it's fucked. you have 60 yr old homes getting close to $1 million on the east side of burnbay and in most of coquitlam and port moody with poco not being far behind.
here's the picture if you set SFH prices at $850K. there are two anomalies, the one blue dot in vancovuer is actually a houseboat and the one on the north shore is actually a listing for a property on an island with no ferry service.
now cut the price to $700K - even bleaker
now cut it to $600K - well holy shit.
if i'd have said even 5 years ago that unless you went out to or past the east side of maple ridge or the shit parts of surrey that you couldn't buy a house for under $600K you probably would have lauged. in many places, home prices have come close to doubling in 5 years - that's insane. that you can't get a house for under $630 in poco for fucks sake is just stupid. even if we have a major correction of 25% the idea of owning a SFH for most people who don't already have significant equity in a property is GONE.
We don't know what our limits are, so to start something with the idea of being limited actually ends up limiting us.
Ellen Langer