Chinese Investors Driving Up Metro Housing Prices

[logicbomb]

http://www.scmp.com/property/internation...onference-ridicules-canadian-governments

A Canadian provincial government statement that only three per cent of BC, Canada residential sales are made to foreign buyers and that Chinese nationals represent just 2.5 per cent of Metro Vancouver home buyers drew rolling eyeballs and laughter at the packed Asia Real Estate Association of America (AREAA) conference in downtown Vancouver.

“No. Absolutely not,” said an incredulous Byron Burley, Shanghai-based vice-president of Chinese-language juwaii.com, China’s largest foreign residential real estate search engine. “It is way, way higher than that.” Burley noted that millions of Chinese nationals use his site, which has from 3,000 to 5,000 residential listings from BC at any time.

Racists.

[Migrant_Coconut]

And now, some good news.

Vancouver to get powers to tax empty homes, says province

The B.C. government will give the City of Vancouver the powers it needs to implement an empty home tax, provincial Finance Minister Mike de Jong announced this morning.

"It strikes us that if the city wants to do this, it is a reasonable request on their part," said de Jong, who has requested the Speaker's office reconvene the legislature on July 25 to implement the legislative changes necessary.

The provincial government is solely responsible for providing the "statutory powers" necessary within the Vancouver Charter to allow for the tax, he said.

It will then be up to the City of Vancouver to determine the tax rate and how to measure whether a home is empty or not.

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by Vin

....
Imagine if there's a thread here in this forum that reads: "Why are there so many white people who are homeless", or "Why do so much of our tax money go to subsidise free-loader white people in social housing". Well, again, this isn't about race: just pointing out a fact or even casual observation of a problem in our society. Well, guess what, I'm sure such threads would've been shut down by the moderators as it would be deemed highly offensive. And I do agree.

Targetting an ethnic group that can't even defend themselves here makes hate-mongering all the more easy, doesn't it?

Perhaps you should think before you post. There's nothing stopping anyone Chinese from posting here. Some openly do and others likely do and just don't share their background. Or are you insinuating that Chinese people don't have a strong enough command of English to participate on an internet forum such as this?

[casper]

Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut

To the rest of the thread, I apologize in advance for the giant wall of text.

First off, the idea is to attack the post and its logic, not the poster. It's a hard habit to break, but it's worth it.

Second, I'm not exaggerating anything. Anybody can view your history and see you wondering if a certain high-rise could be even higher, or advocating towers in Kerrisdale or malls in OV (neither of which are viable) so that the area “feels” urban. Not going to happen, not when there's still plenty of room to grow downtown and along the main roads.

I think these are both Viable. Downtown has significant residential today. Perhaps to much relative to the amount of office space. Having more residential high-rises popup in places like Kerridale is probably good.

Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut

There's a system: first a city zones from low-density to mid-density, then as downtown fills up and starts expanding (and it isn't yet), from mid-density to high-density. You do not jump from low to high, any more than you go from crawling to running without learning to walk.
Regarding OV, Fairview, Mount Pleasant and Kitsilano, they're already growing from low to mid – heck, there's a new townhome being constructed on my block. While a lone Trump or a Shangri-La admittedly grants more prestige and bragging rights, entire block of townhouses and rowhouses accomplish the exact same thing as one tower in terms of densification.

I don't think the economics of having a given area move from SFH to low-density and then to high-density works. Once a series of lots get assembled into a lot to built multi-family that is the one and only change. There are some examples of strata property being assembled and the entire site re-developed again but they are vary few.

Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut

You might want to familiarize yourself with something called Brusselization - or again, just go to Surrey – to understand why lack of planning and out-of-control development is a bad idea. One high-rise sticking out like a sore thumb, another here, another over there, without the demand for them or the services and transport infrastructure to support them? Like I said, it doesn't work in SimCity, and really doesn't work in real life.
Rome wasn't built in a day. Likewise, going from Kelowna to Manhattan isn't a process that happens overnight by changing a few zoning bylaws.

As for Burnaby's “high density?” Let's look at the map together: I see one group of towers around Kingsway and Metrotown (admittedly large, being Burnaby's unofficial downtown and close to a Skytrain station), a small one at Kingsway and Edmonds, and a future group at Brentwood. The rest is low-rises and SFH, just like Vancouver.

Burnaby has basically up zoned the area around every skytrain station and that is where most of the growth has been. Some pockets predated skytrain. Older residential and office building along Kingsway predate Skytrain. Many of the older building around Loughead predate Skytrain. Hastings is another corridor of density. Burnaby has just be more open to development that Vancouver. It probably is an example of Brusselization. The end result has been positive.

Some examples:

The Old BCTel/Telus offices on Boundary and Hasting. The only office high-rise in the middle of a sea of SFH when it was build. Vancouver would never have permitted it to be built on their side of Boundary. If you look at corner you have a high density office building on one side and a three story office block on the other. The low density office building is unlikely to be replaced in either of our life-times.

Before skytrain arrived at Brentwood or Lougheed there were are a number of high-rises. Lougheed also has a number of 4 story residential building. If they are owned rentals they have a chance of being replaced with highrises if they strata it is unlikely.

Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut

Because it's mostly Mainland Chinese money that's flooding the market - the same problem facing residents and citizens in Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, America and many other countries along the entire Pacific Rim. All except Canada have imposed regulations (or at least enforced existing ones) in reaction to it, and none have the dubious honour of having the 3rd most expensive real estate in the world. This goes WAY beyond regular market forces.

Vancouver has the same scenery, size and population as Seattle or Portland, and is also twice as densely packed as either one. Yet we face nearly the same housing crisis as San Francisco, and Seattle and Portland don't. It's incredibly disingenuous to attribute the tension solely to skin colour; I for one find it very hard to be bigoted against myself.

Seattle and Portland play different roles in the national economy in the US than Vancouver. They also do not have the same geographic constraints that Vancouver does. I think San Francisco is a better comparison to Vancouver in many ways.

[Migrant_Coconut]

Originally Posted by casper

I think these are both Viable. Downtown has significant residential today. Perhaps to much relative to the amount of office space. Having more residential high-rises popup in places like Kerridale is probably good.

Kerrisdale doesn't have enough road space or a rapid transit line to handle several new towers. A lack of transit means all the new residents would have to drive to get where they want to go; coupled with Kerrisdale's tiny, crowded roads, that makes our already infamous traffic problems worse. A few mid-rises can increase density without swamping it, and without looking completely out of place in a quiet neighbourhood.

Likewise, OV is in the wrong place for a mall. Not to mention that with our existing malls having problems with their department stores, another mall might be a bad idea. Personally, I support mixed-use restaurants and stores in the area instead of yet another seawall park, but that's another post for another thread.

Originally Posted by casper

I don't think the economics of having a given area move from SFH to low-density and then to high-density works. Once a series of lots get assembled into a lot to built multi-family that is the one and only change. There are some examples of strata property being assembled and the entire site re-developed again but they are vary few.

It's a process that happens over several decades, and repeats with every other North American city. The demi-urban areas adjacent to downtown go from low-dens to mid-dens, then when space runs out downtown and it starts expanding, they become high-dens and are assimilated into the downtown core. Even then, you still see some mid-rise pockets such as OV, just like Greenwich or Little Italy.

Vin usually pushes a “bigger is better” attitude and wants to see it to happen all at once.

Originally Posted by casper

Burnaby has basically up zoned the area around every skytrain station and that is where most of the growth has been. Some pockets predated skytrain. Older residential and office building along Kingsway predate Skytrain. Many of the older building around Loughead predate Skytrain. Hastings is another corridor of density. Burnaby has just be more open to development that Vancouver. It probably is an example of Brusselization. The end result has been positive.

I wouldn't call Burnaby “more supportive” of development than Vancouver. Not with the same kind of NIMBYs protesting the Metrotown development, or with an anti-development mayor who's been re-elected four times. By all means, densify near Skytrain stations. That's basic TOD, which the whole of Metro Vancouver is already practicing. Vancouver itself is planning two high-rise communities at Oakridge and Joyce/Collingwood.

Regarding Lougheed, Kingsway and Hastings, that's densifying next to a main road - basic city planning. Brusselization is zoning high-dens everywhere in the hopes of quickly becoming a “world-class” city. In reality, developers build whatever, whenever and wherever gets them the most profit, which would translate into towers scattered randomly over various neighbourhoods that may or may not support them, hence the SimCity analogy. Not practical.

Originally Posted by casper

Seattle and Portland play different roles in the national economy in the US than Vancouver. They also do not have the same geographic constraints that Vancouver does. I think San Francisco is a better comparison to Vancouver in many ways.

They're both service-sector economies with a focus on tech and marine shipping, same as Vancouver, and Seattle is equally confined by geography. All three are practically the same city, and equally desirable – it's just that America has decent housing and immigration policies to prevent exploitation of the housing market, and Canada doesn't.

Again, we're a Beta city with Alpha+ housing prices. That does not compute.

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut

Kerrisdale doesn't have enough road space or a rapid transit line to handle several new towers. A lack of transit means all the new residents would have to drive to get where they want to go; coupled with Kerrisdale's tiny, crowded roads, that makes our already infamous traffic problems worse. A few mid-rises can increase density without swamping it, and without looking completely out of place in a quiet neighbourhood..

I would suspect a lot of buyers of the any new highrise units to be either part-time residents, non-working, heading to UBC or not even occupying the units, so transit shouldn't be overburdened.

Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut

I wouldn't call Burnaby “more supportive” of development than Vancouver. Not with the same kind of NIMBYs protesting the Metrotown development, or with an anti-development mayor who's been re-elected four times. By all means, densify near Skytrain stations. That's basic TOD, which the whole of Metro Vancouver is already practicing. Vancouver itself is planning two high-rise communities at Oakridge and Joyce/Collingwood..

The Burnaby protests are not so much NIMBY as against Demoviction. Corrigan has been a complete hypocrite. He's allowed the affordable walk-up apartments that attract low income earners who rely on the nearby transit to be replaced by shiny new expensive towers, populated (if at all) by those who would never dream of leaving the Bimmer in the parkade in favour of taking Skytrain.

[whatnext]

I'm not even sure at this stage of the game would a seemingly intelligent poster try the shopworn line of "no foreign money here folks". Reputable publication after reputable publication has shown that is a lie. There is no longer any question that money from Mainland China is distorting the market, why would you even try to deny this?

Originally Posted by twoNeurons

Love that article about racism... So true. We all want to point the finger out to China... and any report that doesn't support our feelings is obviously faked.

Gimme a break.

Housing in Vancouver is still a Vancouver issue. Is there foreign money here? Of course! Has there always been? Yes! Was foreign money held by Asians? No! It was whites! Filthy Foreign White people!

/sarcasm.

Foreign money does NOT move the needle, it only provides an impetus for the public to latch on to. It provides the WHY. Whenever there's a disaster, the FIRST people want answered is "WHY" did this happen to me! This is no different. It's a relative disaster for young ones getting into the market, and they're mad, upset and looking for someone to blame.

As for densification of SFH, sometimes I wonder how many of you actually LIVE in the SFH area of Vancouver. I've said it time and time again, there are very very few SFHs purchased in the last 15 years. EVERY single house being built today has a minimum of 2 suites. One legal, one finished after inspection. The majority have laneway houses ( where permitted ). These are NOT SFHs. They're mini-fiefdoms. Micro-castles with 4 to 5 families in them.

In short, they're quite dense already. Does it —? YES! Absolutely. Do we need to build high-rises? No. We need adequate stock of 3-4 bedroom townhouses. There is almost NOTHING in this city of that size that can be purchased. The only way to raise a family in this city is to go gung ho, and buy a SFH... while keeping 2 units rented.

Curious what one of these beasts looks like? Look no further than 2489 Lillooet. 2 units in the basement, 2 units on the ground level and a laneway house. How do I know this? I had a friend who lived in the basement unit a while ago.

And if you do the math... if you're bringing in $6000 in rent each month.... what's a $1.2M
mortgage?

As it happens, she ( landlord ) was shut down and some tenants had to leave. Apparently she has other properties.

That's a somewhat extreme case, but I'm telling you, "innovations" like laneway houses have allowed Vancouver to maintain the status quo and made SFHs overpriced.

I get that Vancouver legalized a suite in a house because it was easier to regulate, but if instead of laneway houses and taking a soft stance towards 2nd suites ( seriously, inspectors KNOW they're building it ) they allowed houses to PAINLESSLY be upzoned to multi-family fee-simple townhouses and the like, you would have seen far fewer monster houses, more family friendly buildings, and a more livable community.

Instead of a bunch of mouldy basement dwellers, people would have a place of their own. It is possible to make 3 bedroom and even 4-bedroom ( smaller rooms ) 2-level townhouses with about 1300 sq. ft. You just need to accept that every room won't have its own bathroom and the rooms will be smaller.

These places are usually about 15' wide. 10 houses in East Van take up about 330' ( 100m ). That's about 20 townhouses. Bulldoze 5 houses and you get 10 nice and spacious units that would sell for a decent price.

Throw in incentives and tax breaks for developers who consolidate and you've got yourselves a path towards a city with a variety of REAL housing that families can live in without building high rises and ticking people off who are in SFH territory. Interspersed here, you could build a few low-rises.

[trofirhen]

Originally Posted by whatnext

I'm not even sure at this stage of the game would a seemingly intelligent poster try the shopworn line of "no foreign money here folks". Reputable publication after reputable publication has shown that is a lie. There is no longer any question that money from Mainland China is distorting the market, why would you even try to deny this?

Because it's "illiberal," "un-Canadian," and not "Politically Correct." Our own sense of culture-blindness and mandatory adherence to "no racism of any sort" are going to do us in.
There, I've said said it. Sorry if it seems too hawkish, too right-wing, too prejudiced, but that's my opinion right or wrong. We're a nation of suckers who'd sell their own mother.

[Klazu]

I don't think this has been posted before. Great article and lots of truth in it...

South China Morning Post: A One-Point Plan to tackle Vancouver’s housing affordability crisis: kill Quebec’s millionaire migration scam

It seems like everyone has a plan to address the housing unaffordability disaster in Vancouver these days. There are five-point plans, six-point plans and ten-point plans. If the path to success is all in the planning, then Vancouver has got this nut cracked.

Nevertheless, to this potluck, the Hongcouver blog presents a more modest offering: a One-Point Plan to help tackle Vancouver’s home-price lunacy.

End the Quebec Immigrant Investor Program (QIIP), the fraud-drenched immigration scheme which still pumps thousands of foreign-funded millionaire homebuyers into Vancouver’s market. Divert that immigrant intake to programs with authentic economic or compassionate purposes. Just stop selling passports at Vancouver’s expense, now.

Wait - surely a One-Point Plan is a major simplification?

It is, of course. The war on unaffordability requires a range of weaponry, including supply, taxation and more data.

But here at One-Point Plan HQ, we are all about priorities, and addressing the root cause of Vancouver’s unaffordability. Lack of supply didn’t get us here. If there’s inherent undersupply, it didn’t worsen last year in any correspondence with the crazy price increases. On the contrary, housing starts are at record levels.

Similarly: interest rates in Vancouver are no lower than the rest of Canada. Vancouver’s awesomeness didn’t skyrocket in recent years. Neither did over-taxation nor under-taxation. Our magnificent, restrictive geography? Unchanged. Our demographics weren’t hit by a tsunami of home-hungry millennials who somehow dodged the rest of Canada.

What DOES set Vancouver apart - both in scale at this moment, and compared to the rest of the nation and most of the world over time - is foreign money.

Foreign money, which by definition boosts the price-to-local-income ratio, is the gleaming core of Vancouver’s housing woes. It is the irreducible base element to the alchemy that saw unaffordability double in the decade since 2005 - then saw median prices soar a further 30 per cent in 2015, as the Canadian dollar collapsed and the Chinese yuan floodgates opened.

The One-Point Plan seeks to remove one of the most important conduits for that foreign money. It can’t stop all of the foreign money flowing into Vancouver, and nor should it try to stop that which builds a thriving economy. But it can stop some of it, the bits that bear no relationship to meaningful investment or tax revenue and instead treat Vancouver like a piggy bank.

The QIIP is still on track to send about 1,400 new millionaire households to Vancouver annually for the next few years. (Historically about two-thirds of all millionaire migrants end up in Vancouver, and one third in Toronto).

The passport-selling party didn’t end when Ottawa froze the federal IIP in 2012. In fact, in 2014, likely IIP and QIIP arrivals in BC had only fallen 26 per cent from the absolute peak of intake in 2011 (full 2015 stats are not yet available). In the 10 years from 2005 to 2014, BC took in about 14,300 IIP and QIIP households. That’s right: compared to the 10-year average, millionaire migrant arrivals in Vancouver are to remain virtually unchanged for a few years, despite the Federal IIP’s axing. All thanks to Quebec.

And the QIIP is awful, built on fraud from start to finish. Quebec receives an C$800,000 loan from each selected IIP household. But instead of settling in Quebec as they vow in their applications, at least 89 per cent leave and settle elsewhere, mainly Vancouver.

Even this understates the scale of the exodus, since the Federal government knows that some IIP households use “addresses of convenience” in Quebec, according to an internal 2013 briefing document.

In its own official immigration policy, Quebec admits with droll understatement: “Immigrant investors’ contributions to Quebec’s economic development stems much more from the financial investment resulting from their selection than from their physical presence, which remains limited.”

That awareness hasn’t deterred Quebec from siphoning up the cash. Those 1,400 annual BC-bound QIIP households will give Quebec C$1.12billion in interest-free loans. BC will get none.

Underscoring the ridiculousness of the scheme, which is supposedly intended to direct business-savvy settlers to set up shop in the French-speaking province, only 0.1-0.2% of QIIP immigrants speak any French. That same Quebec immigration policy describes French as “the key to successful economic and social participation” in the province. Indeed.

This is the point where supply hawks point out that 1,400 households only represent a small fraction of Metro Vancouver transactions: about 5 per cent of residential sales in a typical year.

But a basic understanding of the home-buying behaviour of the Chinese multi-millionaires who dominate IIP/QIIP arrivals reveals their folly.

Pretty much all data and market observers – from condo king Bob Rennie, to industry-friendly economists, to academics like David Ley and Andy Yan - agree that such buyers are concentrated in expensive detached housing, in areas like Vancouver’s Westside and Richmond.

So let’s apply conservative assumptions. Let’s assume the typical QIIP household buys a home worth C$2.5 million, the bog-standard average detached price in the City of Vancouver.

According to the REBGV, the all-sales average for Greater Vancouver last month was C$1.06million. This means that if our QIIP households represent 5 per cent of sales, they actually represent about 12 per cent of the entire dollar value of the market.

Yet this, too, seriously undervalues their likely share. It assumes QIIP households make a single lifetime purchase, and this is known to be untrue. IIP migrants LOVE buying real estate. According to federal data, real estate ownership is by far their most popular business activity in Canada.

Real estate ownership made up 63.1 per cent of all unincorporated business activity by IIP migrants, according to the official Canadian Employer-Employee Dynamics Database. For all IIP businesses, both incorporated and unincorporated, real estate ownership was easily the biggest category, at 48.8 per cent.

Modest adjustments to our assumptions boost the QIIP’s dollar share of the Greater Vancouver market. If their average purchase is C$3.5 million, closer to the Westside detached average, their dollar share leaps to more than 16 per cent. If only one in three such millionaire households buys a second property based on the same assumptions, then it’s 22 per cent of the entire Greater Van market. And so on.

These calculations represent the dollar proportion of all sales of all housing types, in all areas from Pemberton to the deepest Fraser Valley. Yet, the QIIP’s impact is not so dilute: it is focussed to an extreme degree on detached housing in areas like Richmond and the Westside, the epicentres of the unaffordability boom in the past decade. The QIIP is thus a vital strut that supports these sectors, and these sectors arguably support the whole market, as other buyers look further afield, and cashed-up boomers hand off the same money to their kids to buy condos.

The One-Point Plan aims to instantly knock out that strut. Scary, risky stuff, yes. But the One-Point Plan isn’t about preserving equity, mitigating risk or allowing cosy price growth at a decelerated pace. It’s an affordability plan.

Could it be done? Yes. The process of winding down Quebec’s IIP could begin as soon as the federal government dares incur the wrath of that province, which says it raised C$671.9 million in revenue from the scheme’s billions in loans from 2000 to 2014.

Although Quebec is in charge of choosing its immigrants, Federal authorities actually issue their certificates of permanent residency, and decide the speed at which to do so.

According to Vancouver immigration lawyer Richard Kurland, there is no doubt that “the feds have the legal right, pure and simple, to cancel the program”. “This is not about a constitutional or legal barrier. There is neither,” he said.

And the time for the Feds to call time on the QIIP is ripe.

Quebec is in the middle of a revamp of its immigration policies, and one goal is to address the admitted failings of the QIIP by “promoting the long‐term settlement of investor immigrants”. Implementation of a new investor immigrant policy is due in 2017.

There have also been huge shifts in opinion regarding the role of foreign money in Vancouver’s housing crisis. Most of the public has long been convinced, but in recent weeks we have seen prime minister Justin Trudeau get on board (“obviously overseas money coming in is playing a role” ), as well as Mayor Gregor Robertson (“unregulated, speculative global capital” ), and a bevy of bankers and economists.

The local real estate board remains steadfastly in denial about the role of foreign money, but you might as well ask a meth dealer about the virtues of moderation.

Despite these obvious openings, the federal Liberal government refuses to object to the QIIP’s current metasticised state. Last week, Immigration Minister John McCallum told the Vancouver Sun he had no intention of doing so.

Why should he? BC’s government isn’t complaining. Premier Christy Clark’s six-point affordability plan unveiled on YouTube this week makes no mention of foreign money whatsoever, let alone the specifics of the QIIP.

Do the federal and BC provincial government care exactly how much of Vancouver’s crushing housing unaffordability is related to foreign funds associated with the QIIP? Probably not – but herein lies the true beauty of the One-Point Plan.

It doesn’t matter whether they, or you, or the development industry, accept the evidence that the QIIP is turbocharging the market. It doesn’t matter if you don’t like the math. It doesn’t even matter if you are the real estate board’s chief economist.

Because irrespective of all these things, the QIIP is horrible. It is a money-grubbing prank perpetrated upon Vancouver by Quebec. It is a betrayal of Canadian ideals that diminishes residency and citizenship to the status of mere commodities. It makes mockery of the true worth of immigration as a whole. It is a scam, and it needs to stop.

http://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-st...one-point-plan-tackle-vancouvers-housing

[WarrenC12]

QIIP isn't going anywhere, sorry folks. BC holds nowhere near the political clout of Quebec.

[Migrant_Coconut]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

QIIP isn't going anywhere, sorry folks. BC holds nowhere near the political clout of Quebec.

Secessionist ranting begins in 3... 2... 1...

[csbvan]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

QIIP isn't going anywhere, sorry folks. BC holds nowhere near the political clout of Quebec.

Moreover, it is hard to imagine that the BC government would ever want that program to end.

[libtard]

Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut

They're both service-sector economies with a focus on tech and marine shipping, same as Vancouver, and Seattle is equally confined by geography. All three are practically the same city, and equally desirable – it's just that America has decent housing and immigration policies to prevent exploitation of the housing market, and Canada doesn't.

Seattle's GDP is 3x more than Vancouver's. Huge corporate power house with lots of high paying jobs for it's residents. Nothing like Vancouver

[Klazu]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

QIIP isn't going anywhere, sorry folks. BC holds nowhere near the political clout of Quebec.

But why is BC letting Quebec reap over one billion each year on its 'expense'. I mean, BC could get this money with its own program instead on Quebec.

Of course the whole program is a scam for rich people and the federal government should intervene and shut it down like they suspended their own program. The downside effect to our affordability is clear and overall it's hurting Vancouver's growth and we are the leading economy currently, so the issue has also a federal impact.

[Klazu]

The future is bright!

The Globe And Mail: The year is 2040 and Vancouver’s houses are worth $80-million

The year is 2040. The schadenfreude-driven doom-and-gloom naysayers who predicted disaster with the bursting of the real estate bubble in the mid 20-teens turned out to be wrong.

From 2016 onward, the double-digit increases in house prices continued at an average annual rate of 17 per cent. A single-family home in Vancouver purchased in that year is now worth somewhere in the neighbourhood of $80-million. Vancouver is now a resort city populated only by the world’s wealthiest.

The good news is the city has never been more multicultural, with money launderers from all parts of the globe living here for at least one week of the calendar year in order to avoid paying the city’s empty-home tax. The rotating cast of sheiks and warlords gives the city a special flair.

A few people who grew up in the city still live here, borrowing against their home equity to survive. Most are elderly and guided by the wrong-headed notion that, because they were born here, raised their children here and essentially built the city, they somehow deserve to live here.

The west end and most of Yaletown and False Creek North have been annexed by Airbnb, which now pays the city directly for services, such as water and garbage removal. Which is good, since even the wealthiest homeowners are deferring their taxes, leaving the city’s coffers to run dry. No one seems to remember how things got this way. Some trace it back to 2018, when rather than simply cold-calling homeowners to offer up international buyers, real estate agents began arriving on doorsteps at dinner time with suitcases full of cash.

Also, they would let you keep their cars after you signed. This enticed many to finally sell out and move to Calgary, where homes could still be had for a relative song since the oil and gas industry never recovered. Effigies of Elon Musk were burned in the street almost daily. Which is ironic, given that many people who live in Calgary now commute to Vancouver via Hyperloop.

Those who still do live near the Lower Mainland (which now encompasses all of Vancouver Island south of Nanaimo, the Gulf Islands and the Sunshine Coast as far north as Lund) must endure hours-long commutes in autonomous cars for which they pay by the minute. The 10-lane Todd Stone Bridge over the Fraser River is jammed beyond capacity. Many have criticized the province’s lack of foresight when it decided to make the bridge just 10 lanes. Meantime, repairs to the Pattullo Bridge continue, since a plan to replace the bridge was indefinitely postponed.

The transit system, while still operational, is barely so. Rapid transit has become increasingly unreliable since maintenance was deferred between 2020 and 2031 because of budget shortfalls. No new rapid transit has been built since the opening of the Evergreen Line more than two decades ago.

The transit referendums of 2022, 2030 and 2035 all failed to secure stable long-term funding for TransLink, leading to the current state of disrepair. Now, only the poorest people ride transit, an ordeal that can often take hours when breakdowns occur.

While Vancouver did its best to create a thriving digital and tech economy through the early 2020s, major industry players could no longer attract talent because of the cost of living. Vancouver’s economy is now based mostly on tourism, servicing the city’s ultra rich, home staging, and tidying up Airbnb rentals. These are low-wage jobs with most workers and their families living in camps in the Fraser Valley.

Children no longer have to make the commute into the city, since the last public school in Vancouver was closed in 2032. Children are now taught in “camp schools” by willing volunteers, many of them former teachers, or through the K-12 “Just Like School” app, which the province developed with a generous grant from the Fraser Institute. Premier Melissa De Genova has said the app is every bit as good as real brick-and-mortar schools, but it does away with frills such as teachers, libraries, and seismically sound buildings, while costing a fraction of what those old schools cost. Private schools, meanwhile, continue to thrive.

There are still those who say the bubble is going to pop – they’ve been saying that for nearly 30 years. Fortunately, the Criminal Code has been amended to reclassify any such talk as hate speech targeting an identifiable group, namely realtors.

It’s hard to believe that 24 years ago there were those who stood on the sidelines, debating whether they should get into the Vancouver real estate market.

There are still those people today, unwilling to carry $79-million mortgages, even with record low interest rates.

One thing that I know is as true now as it was then: there’s never been a better time to buy a home.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/brit...ticle30944616/?cmpid=rss1&click=sf_globe

[trofirhen]

Originally Posted by libtard

Seattle's GDP is 3x more than Vancouver's. Huge corporate power house with lots of high paying jobs for it's residents. Nothing like Vancouver

That's absolutely a fact! .......... so why are houses so less expensive in Seattle?

[giallo]

^Because there are far more areas in the US to speculate property. On the west coast alone, you have Seattle, Portland, SF, LA, San Diego....hell, all of coastal California. Places like Vegas and Palms Springs also hold an allure to investors.

In Canada's big investor cities, we are constrained by more than just geography. Weather plays a big part too. There just aren't enough places to dump money in to that are considered desirable, but the ones that are take the lion's share of foreign investment and Canada-wide speculation.

[Migrant_Coconut]

Originally Posted by giallo

In Canada's big investor cities, we are constrained by more than just geography. Weather plays a big part too. There just aren't enough places to dump money in to that are considered desirable, but the ones that are take the lion's share of foreign investment and Canada-wide speculation.

Somehow, I have a hard time believing that people live here for the weather...

[giallo]

Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut

Somehow, I have a hard time believing that people live here for the weather...

Summers are awesome in Vancouver (maybe not this July though). Have you experienced a summer in East Asia? It's generally horrible. Seriously, southern BC is paradise in the summer; oceans, lakes, rivers and mountains with a bearable temperature. I wish I was there right now.

This is what we are dealing with in Shanghai. That's 51c with humidity. It's unbearable. You walk outside, and feel like you've stepped in to an oven that's preheating. You're covered in sweat in under 5 minutes. The humidity is so high in this part of the world that summer is rarely enjoyable, but a season that just has to be dealt with. It's the complete opposite of back home.

[Metro-One]

To second what is said above, the climate where I live in Japan has a winter climate very similar to coastal BC (usually gray with temps between 5 to 10 degrees or so) but with unbearably humid and hot summers.

So in Van, you get the same winter with a far better summer IMO.

The only months when factoring in all weather aspects (sunshine / rain, temperature, humidity) that I would say are noticeably better in Japan than in Vancouver (IMO) are October, November, and May. June is warm but rains non stop (wet season) July and August and sometimes September are way too muggy (and the sky hear is usually an ugly murky bluish gray on sunny days during the summer) and December to April are similar enough to Van and especially Victoria to pretty much call them a push.