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Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town

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Re: Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town

#51

Post by epimetheus »

branchless wrote: post #27

Come to Montreal! It's great here. No way would I want to pledge the rest of my life to a bank in exchange for the right to exist. Rent controls here. It's odd: it's like the state understands that banks are bastards. Montreal has some issues with organised crime but nothing compared to the organised crime of banking / money laundering through land. I don't have to pay some gangster $1MM for a shack. Leave the boomer…

I wonder how much climate is playing a factor in Vancouver's issues. Just from my perspective, I'd love to move to Vancouver, but would never, ever consider Montreal, not because it's not a beautiful city, but because of the harsh winters.

Other people don't seem to really care about weather extremes or scenery, etc. I have no insight into these real estate investors dumping money into property, sure if they aren't living there, there's some other factors involved.

Re: Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town

#52

Post by rootbear »

hellofunk wrote: post #2

I'm curious how this problem is unique to Vancouver. Berlin's real-estate values have risen some 40% in just the last 7 years or so. New York City, in the 10 years I lived there, had an enormous escalation in what you get for the same rent payment, even adjusted for inflation. Big cities deal with this all over, so how do they deal with this "problem," or is Vancouver somehow unique in other ways?

I live in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC. Real estate in DC is very high and did not suffer as much in the Great Recession, due to the extremely limited supply of available housing. But I don't think our problem is foreign investors. Many people who moved into the burbs in the 80s and 90s now want to move back, as DC becomes more desirable. I see young people everywhere, even though it's hard for someone just starting out to buy here. But because DC can't physically grow as a city, it becomes harder and harder to find places for new housing.

Out here in the burbs, it's a different story. A development just down the road from me suffered very badly in the downturn, with houses losing as much as 50% of their value. Some of those owners will never be above water on their houses. I'm very glad I chose not to move from my townhouse into a single family home a decade ago, as prices soared, even though I really wanted a place with a mad scientist basement workroom. And as my friends retire, most are moving to warmer and/or cheaper places.

Re: Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town

#53

Post by maxsilver »

hellofunk wrote: post #2

I'm curious how this problem is unique to Vancouver. Berlin's real-estate values have risen some 40% in just the last 7 years or so. New York City, in the 10 years I lived there, had an enormous escalation in what you get for the same rent payment, even adjusted for inflation. Big cities deal with this all over, so how do they deal with this "problem," or is Vancouver somehow unique in other ways?

> Big cities deal with this all over, so how do they deal with this "problem,"

As far as I can tell, they simply don't. I don't think there is any city that "deals with it", or even tries to, in any way.

Every city I can think of that has value in living in, is experiencing explosive bubble-like growth in them. Even the supposedly "cheap" or "low cost of living" cities are undergoing this process.

I think most cities secretly want this to happen, since it leads to higher property taxes and drives out members of their community they consider less desirable.

Re: Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town

#54

Post by ajmurmann »

I wonder how much of this and similar cases are based on low interests. You can't keep your money in the bank because you won't get any interests and at the same time leveraging your money and buying housing is cheaper. So maybe the solution to housing prices is significantly higher interest rates?

Re: Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town

#55

Post by api_or_ipa »

As someone who just moved from Vancouver to the Bay Area, it's obvious the issue isn't housing. It's income. My apartment in trendy yaletown was $2350/month for a very nice 2 bed, 2 bath place within 10 mins of anything in downtown. Try finding something even remotely as nice around Silicon Valley.

The issue we should be tackling is the low wages seen in the area. The same developer who could make $100k USD in the valley makes $60k CAD in Vancouver.

Re: Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town

#56

Post by rgoldade »

jseliger wrote: post #42
cdnsteve wrote: post #19

Vancouver real-estate is like buying gold for foreign investors, without paying tax. "suggesting the typical wealthy foreign family buying Vancouver real estate pays little or no income or capital gains tax" http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/ho...

This is the best response I've seen so far. Real estate is actually a great export for cities and countries, at least properly considered: http://www.slate.com/articles/business/billion_to_one/2013/1... . Seattle has a bunch of similar articles about "outsiders" supposedly driving up housing costs. Which is absurd: steel frame construction and elevators are very old technologies that allow humans to build just about…

I'm not sure if you're familiar with Vancouver but outside of the small downtown core, there isn't much zoning for density. Government policy has created a supply shortage.

However, condos come with their own issues as well. There has been a building boom in Toronto that has it owns issues.. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/fears-that-shoddy-toro....

I think urban planning is more complicated than simply increasing supply.

Re: Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town

#57

Post by jonknee »

pascalmemories wrote: post #33
legutierr wrote: post #3

> There are already enough houses and condos in the city with no lights on because no one actually lives in them. To me, there seems to be a pretty obvious public policy response. Institute a very high property tax, which is abated on some kind of curve according to the amount of time the owner or tenants spend living in a property, with no tax being due if the property is legitimately occupied for more than, say, te…

And how much do your 'Occupancy Police' cost to administer such a system ? If it relies on a property owner filling in a form, they're just going to lie to avoid the cost and without someone going round to every single house and monitoring it for weeks and months of the year, you have no way to detect people avoiding the tax. Super high property tax when I'm not there? Simple, employ a cleaner on some minimal wage an…

I used to live in Florida and amazingly enough the homestead exemption works pretty well. I'm sure there are some people abusing it, but it's effective overall. You can only have it on one home and it doesn't apply to businesses so the only real fraud angle would be to live out of state and take the exemption on a single Florida property. You have to be a citizen or permanent alien resident which weeds out foreign buyers looking to park money. You'll also need to be able to access its mailbox, be registered to vote at the address, etc etc. A lot of potential legal trouble for a $50,000 valuation haircut on your tax bill.

The fact that Florida has no state income tax is an even bigger incentive to actually reside in Florida if you have a lot of passive income coming your way.

Re: Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town

#58

Post by ghaff »

tetraodonpuffer wrote: post #48

sure, you can't buy a house in Vancouver anymore on a normal salary, but nothing prevents you from living in Surrey, there are plenty of towers going up around the skytrain at Surrey central and King George where you can get an apartment for less than 200k Yes, it's not Vancouver city, and yes, it's not a house, however via skytrain you can be downtown in a little over 40 minutes and get work done on your laptop in t…

This sort of thing is true broadly. It's a bit more complicated in California because the South Bay is also very popular and very expensive, but the trendy areas of many downtowns have, over a relatively short period, become very popular with, among others, a certain young & educated demographic that really has turned them into luxury goods.

This has arguably long been the case in some places like Manhattan. Going back decades, living in a crappy tiny apartment in Manhattan rather than, heaven forbid, Queens was a thing for recent graduates. But, at the same time, tech was generally moving out of metropolitan Boston and the computer companies were mostly out on the 128 and 495 corridors.

Re: Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town

#59

Post by iheartmemcache »

tomkinstinch wrote: post #34
ucaetano wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Berlin's values have risen to the point where rents are on average 10 euros per square meter. You can rent a 100 sqm for only 1000 euros per month!!!! You can't get 40 sqm for that same amount in Paris.

Berlin seems like an amazing value for a capital city with rich culture. Here in Boston I'm paying 3700 euros for (poorly maintained) 90 sqm, of course split with five people. Maybe it is time to consider a stint in Berlin. Are there any resources you would recommend to learn more about the city, and the tech scene?

I've lived in Boston, DC, NYC and London for extended periods of time, and spent a stint in Berlin. It's tech scene is awesome - if you find the right group of people it feels like CCC year round. It's art, music and food scene was an amazing value for the money when I was there circa 2011.

I'm guessing the equivalent of their hipsters got wise to it and drove up prices a la the gentrification you saw (compare the between the dirty-grimy NYC of the "Taxi Driver" 1970s vs the clean power-tie NYC of the 1980s bond-trading years, or the early 2000s Williamsburg where the rent was somewhat reasonable vs 2010 where anything on the L costed literally 3 times as much because every white kid with a fixie had his parents pay his $2600 rent, etc. $800/mo on a split isn't too bad for Boston if you're anywhere close to a decent spot on the T, considering the supply/demand (it's arguably the biggest college region in the US - between Cambridge, Boston and BC in Newton it's probably the densest student:non-student ratio in the US). Berlin had that vibrant feeling that's hard to explain but yeah the tech scene was (and hopefully still is) spectacular, especially re: the hardware hacking scene when I was there and it's certainly worth a visit.

Edit: http://ccc.de/ In math if you solve something major, odds are you'll wait till that years AMS Symposium to present; if you crack the PS3, CCC is where fail0verflow went to present. (Don't write them off because of their l33t-name, these guys aren't script kiddies -- these hacks are worthy of PhD theses if you see the detail of reverse engineering they go into.).

Re: Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town

#60

Post by bishnu »

branchless wrote: post #27

Come to Montreal! It's great here. No way would I want to pledge the rest of my life to a bank in exchange for the right to exist. Rent controls here. It's odd: it's like the state understands that banks are bastards. Montreal has some issues with organised crime but nothing compared to the organised crime of banking / money laundering through land. I don't have to pay some gangster $1MM for a shack. Leave the boomer…

The only issue with Montreal is, not speaking French will disqualify you from a few different kinds of jobs.
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