Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by lmm » Fri, Feb 12, 2016, 5:16 PM UTC

jamespo wrote: post #46

pascalmemories wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Well let's just abandon all taxation by that argument

No, let's be smart about it; when designing tax policy, take into account what's easy to measure and what's hard to.

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

#132

Post by lmm » Fri, Feb 12, 2016, 5:18 PM UTC

onion2k wrote: post #109

jseliger wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

London has had an influx of foreign property investment over the past 20 years. Now you need an income in the region of $120,000 and a $150,000 deposit to buy your first home. Even our members of parliament are struggling to buy anything[1]. Foreign property investment is very bad for the long term prospects of a city. [1] http://www.theguardian.com/housing-network/2016/feb/12/tory-...

And yet London's population continues to grow at an astonishing rate, and businesses continue to move into London. Doesn't seem like the high prices are doing any harm to me.

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

#133

Post by lmm » Fri, Feb 12, 2016, 5:21 PM UTC

jnowlan wrote: post #111

For all these 'bubble' cities (Vancouver, S.F., Seattle, London, ...), I wonder if the bubble ever pops? Are there examples of the prices/avg. income getting so far out of whack that things collapse? http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/11/global-hou... Detroit probably experienced a R.E. bubble in the day...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decade_(Japan)

Everything is still disputed, but Tokyo real estate prices certainly played a part. There was no crash as such, but rather a stagnation.

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

#134

Post by gearoidoc » Fri, Feb 12, 2016, 5:28 PM UTC

api_or_ipa wrote: post #55

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 va…

Agreed - the last job offer I got was for 95k CAD and they would not budge higher.

Currently working remotely for about 115k CAD with a number of other perks.

I moved from Dublin, Ireland to Vancouver. Dublin rents are very high - probably as bad as Vancouver. The cost of living here is slightly lower though.

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

#135

Post by rchaud » Fri, Feb 12, 2016, 5:30 PM UTC

galago wrote: post #7

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?

Over the last five years, the Canadian Dollar has declined more against the Yuan than the Euro or USD. It is mentioned in the article. I think that explains why Chinese investors purchase more property in Vancouver than say, Seattle.

The trend of foreign investment in the Vancouver market has been occurring well before the slide of the CAD. The immigration regime in Canada is much friendlier to foreign nationals, and especially so if they are wealthy. Until 2014, the federal government had an investor visa program that offered a route to permanent residence and citizenship in exchange for $800,000 investment (not in real estate) and demonstrable assets of $1.6 million.

http://www.cic.gc.ca/ENGLISH/immigrate/business/investors/in...

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

#136

Post by skewart » Fri, Feb 12, 2016, 5:32 PM UTC

msvan wrote: post #82

It seems like many major cities of the world are experiencing this problem, and no city has been able to come up with a good solution. It always leads to displacement and newspaper articles about displacement, but no real solutions. Here are a couple of solutions: 1. Build really tall. Hasn't worked out all that great in Hong Kong, though. 2. Rent control. This is often unfair and inflates price of non-rent controlle…

"1. Build really tall. Hasn't worked out all that great in Hong Kong, though."

What do you mean when you say it hasn't worked out great in Hong Kong? Is it because prices are still high in a lot of neighborhoods there? I'd say the build-really-tall strategy has worked out quite well in HK. There is a range of affordability in close proximity with good transit, and lots of parks and open space. It's a remarkably livable city.

The fundamental problem is that real estate in major cities has become a scarce luxury good covered by the wealthy. Restrictions on building - rent control and aggressive property taxes basically fall into this category - only make things worse.

The only way to make Vancouver, SF, and anywhere else affordable is to radically increase supply relative to demand. In practice things aren't that simple.

The best bet for someone looking to live and raise a family is probably your fourth option. There are a lot of really nice cities out there.

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

#137

Post by gearoidoc » Fri, Feb 12, 2016, 5:33 PM UTC

bonesmoses wrote: post #65

api_or_ipa wrote: post #55

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 va…

Isn't that a housing issue, though? Paying for a $2350/mo place on $60k is... pretty ridiculous.

I'd argue its impossible since $2350 is almost half your monthly salary before tax!

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

#138

Post by gearoidoc » Fri, Feb 12, 2016, 5:35 PM UTC

rubiquity wrote: post #68

api_or_ipa wrote: post #55

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 va…

Ding ding ding. We have a winner. While I've never ever considered moving to Vancouver, I get recruiter emails several times a month for companies in Vancouver looking for Senior programmers to move there and only offering 80k to 110k CAD at the most. That is not nearly enough money to live in Vancouver. Enough to exist but not enough to live. The problem as I understand it is that a ton of Vancouver's housing is occ…

CAD 110k is definitely enough to get a decent place, live comfortably and save some money in Vancouver.

But then again 'decent' and 'comfortably' are subjective.

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

#139

Post by rchaud » Fri, Feb 12, 2016, 5:36 PM UTC

theworstshill wrote: post #78

Meh... article is pushed by special interest groups. Their concerns could be addressed very quickly by raising their employees salaries. Especially since vast majority of companies sell services to the US, and get more CADs than before with the current exchange rate.

The Vancouver economy is not 100% tech, there are many, many businesses (logistics, banking, retail, etc.) that have no exports to the US. Can I ask where you are getting your data?

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

#140

Post by munificent » Fri, Feb 12, 2016, 5:38 PM UTC

Zach_the_Lizard wrote: post #98

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…

>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, ten months. This punishes newcomers and rewards staying in the same property, just like California Prop 13. Have a…

> This punishes newcomers and rewards staying in the same property, just like California Prop 13. Have a kid and need a new place with more space? Prepare to pay punishing property taxes for that luxury. You grew up in the area and it's time to move out? Enjoy your tax! Moving from the countryside for better employment opportunities? Tax please!

Can you explain why this would be a moving tax?

Obvious, property taxes only apply to the fraction of the year that you own a place. Are you worried about the overlapping period where you have the house on the market but haven't sold it yet?

I suppose that would be an issue, but I assume for most people, that's a relatively small fraction of time. It's not like there aren't already lots of other expenses associated with moving.