Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities • Hacker News Board

Re: Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

#201

Post by pkaler » Wed, Mar 16, 2016, 5:16 PM UTC

illumin8 wrote: post #200

dghughes wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This seems to be a direct result of capital flight from China. It's even happening to tiny PEI in the east we have seen a massive surge of Chinese people (to clarify yes from China) investing in and living in the province. Five years ago you could walk down the street and it was typical small town Canada last summer I went to a Starbucks and every single person was Chinese. There are now at least two if not three B…

I wouldn't even say it's speculative condo buying - it's more like treating the condo as a piggy bank. It's considered a safer investment because it can be purchased through a shell company (LLC), hiding the true identity of the buyer, and unlike the funds in a bank account, can't easily be seized. There was a well known phenomenon: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/29/business/international/chi... "In London, Chinese i…

There is no such thing as an LLC in Canada. You are either a federal corp or a provincial corp. http://www.canadabusiness.ca/eng/page/2853/

Re: Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

#202

Post by pkaler » Wed, Mar 16, 2016, 5:18 PM UTC

illumin8 wrote: post #196

pkaler wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm standing at my desk in my apartment that I pay $1589/month for. An equivalent apartment in SF or NYC would be $3500 or higher. The problems are two-fold. 1) Vancouver hasn't created a single-family detached home lot since the 1970s. There is an ocean to the west, the US border to the south, Burrard Inlet and mountains to the north. There just isn't any land. The only way to expand is east into the Fraser Valley.…

If property values were tied directly to incomes, as they are in any normal market, and what you are saying is true about salaries being low, the Vancouver market would not be as hot as it is right now. The market is being artificially inflated by foreign buyers. Don't forget that Vancouver is a very attractive destination for wealthy Chinese multi-nationals. This is the same phenomenon that has wealthy Chinese buyin…

"If property values were tied directly to incomes..."

They are not because there is no land left.

It is impossible to buy a single-family detached home because there is no land left. Renting a condo is still very economical compared to other large cities.

Re: Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

#203

Post by emodendroket » Wed, Mar 16, 2016, 5:19 PM UTC

illumin8 wrote: post #180

This seems to be a direct result of capital flight from China. Wealthy chinese who are able to get their money out (through corruption, money laundering, or otherwise) are looking for somewhere safe to park their money for the inevitable decline in value of the yuan. China can only artificially peg their money to the dollar for so long, until they run out of dollars, and they are drawing down their reserves at a reco…

I mean, yes, but who says cities have to allow Chinese investment to dominate the market rather than the people who live in these cities? Maybe that is the best political choice, but it is a political choice and we all pretend it's a neutral and inexorable natural law.

Re: Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

#204

Post by run4yourlives2 » Wed, Mar 16, 2016, 5:20 PM UTC

Tiktaalik wrote: post #179

tallanvor wrote: post #47

I see this as a problem all over the world. - San Francisco, Seattle, New York, Vancouver, London, Oslo... Really the list could go on for quite a while. So many of these cities feel like they have to retain their "identity" or the "feel" of the town, so they set restrictions that make it very hard to develop properties that can hold more people. The result is always the same: continually increasing prices in the cen…

Vancouver has various restrictions just like any town, but in general it would be incorrect to state that they restrict construction or don't build high density buildings. Comparing a photo of 1990s downtown Vancouver to now it is shocking how many glassy residential towers there are now. Vancouver and its satellite cities are constantly building new condo buildings. I suppose you can always argue that a city can bui…

Actually, we do restrict construction particularly in the "view corridor" that is downtown. It's not that we don't build buildings, it's that they are all under 40 stories, whereas a typical city of our size would have buildings of the same type pushing 100 stories easy.

For a sense of scale, here is Vancouver's tallest building compared to the world leaders: http://i.imgur.com/YcCozCE.png?1

Re: Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

#205

Post by emodendroket » Wed, Mar 16, 2016, 5:23 PM UTC

tallanvor wrote: post #47

I see this as a problem all over the world. - San Francisco, Seattle, New York, Vancouver, London, Oslo... Really the list could go on for quite a while. So many of these cities feel like they have to retain their "identity" or the "feel" of the town, so they set restrictions that make it very hard to develop properties that can hold more people. The result is always the same: continually increasing prices in the cen…

That is, frankly, a very small part of the problem. The housing that does tend to get built in these cities is almost universally luxury housing.

Re: Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

#206

Post by hokkos » Wed, Mar 16, 2016, 5:23 PM UTC

When the forced reload timeout of the page (to gather more fake views) is less than the video duration of your article you know your site is broken.

Re: Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

#207

Post by J-dawg » Wed, Mar 16, 2016, 5:23 PM UTC

JPKab wrote: post #139

zeemonkee3 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would "strong social support systems" be connected to this?

I have a suspicion how this works: As an American, when I was early in my career, and had a baby and wife to support, being underpaid was super painful. Medical care, for instance, was expensive. Being able to be easily and quickly fired without a typical European justification process is another factor. You can find yourself unemployed at any time, with any justification. It all lit a fire under me to demand better…

I think you're overestimating European social support systems a bit.

Here in the UK, you can be fired quite easily until you've been in a job for 2 years.

After that, you can still be made redundant. IBM are currently laying off a lot of people and only paying them the legal minimum settlement (1 week's pay for every year worked).

Our unemployment benefits are very low. Most professional people wouldn't even bother claiming them when between jobs, the hassle involved is huge.

It's nice to know the NHS is there and I'm not going to go bankrupt if I get cancer, but it's massively overstretched and under-resourced. I'm happier knowing I have private health insurance.

So I still feel pretty damn incentivised to look out for myself, even in this socialist utopia.

Re: Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

#208

Post by emodendroket » Wed, Mar 16, 2016, 5:24 PM UTC

vanthrow wrote: post #72

I'm a millennial immigrant to Vancouver (came with my family when I was 10). I'm a software developer by trade. The problems are real, but the outcome is greatly exaggerated. The fact is MOST millennials outside the most lucrative STEM/Law/Finance fields are in no position to be buying real estate anywhere in North America. And the Vancouver rental market is actually not half bad. You can get a basement suite for und…

> The problems are real, but the outcome is greatly exaggerated.

> The fact is MOST millennials outside the most lucrative STEM/Law/Finance fields are in no position to be buying real estate anywhere in North America.

Well then it sounds to me like the problem is not overstated but understated.

Re: Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

#209

Post by nacho2sweet » Wed, Mar 16, 2016, 5:25 PM UTC

mabbo wrote: post #99

lewisl9029 wrote: post #12

As someone who's lived in Vancouver for more than 10 years, then went to Waterloo for school (and lived in Toronto for most of my co-ops/internships), I think we Canadians should be more worried about highly educated millennials fleeing Canada entirely. Everybody I know from school who were offered the option to work in the US have picked up their Canadian degrees and left. To the Canadian tech industry: How are you…

Some do leave, yes. Many come back home later. Amazon opened the Toronto office back in 2011 because there was demand- Canadians who didn't want to live in America anymore- often because of family, friends back home or because they wanted to have kids and not raise them as Americans, culturally. It started with less than 10 people, plus the hiring they were able to do locally. It's now an office of over 300 people, m…

Amazon already has an office on the low here in Vancouver that I heard has upwards of 200 employees and started out the same at 10. I heard it is also used as a staging ground to get people into the US office, and also easier to get foreign workers in Canada than the US.

Re: Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

#210

Post by logfromblammo » Wed, Mar 16, 2016, 5:25 PM UTC

illumin8 wrote: post #196

pkaler wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm standing at my desk in my apartment that I pay $1589/month for. An equivalent apartment in SF or NYC would be $3500 or higher. The problems are two-fold. 1) Vancouver hasn't created a single-family detached home lot since the 1970s. There is an ocean to the west, the US border to the south, Burrard Inlet and mountains to the north. There just isn't any land. The only way to expand is east into the Fraser Valley.…

If property values were tied directly to incomes, as they are in any normal market, and what you are saying is true about salaries being low, the Vancouver market would not be as hot as it is right now. The market is being artificially inflated by foreign buyers. Don't forget that Vancouver is a very attractive destination for wealthy Chinese multi-nationals. This is the same phenomenon that has wealthy Chinese buyin…

I saw an answer on Jeopardy! recently that described Vancouver for one of the daily doubles. Oglethorpe math professor Philip Tiu apparently had a long enough brain fart before responding correctly that I had time to yell at the television, "How do you not know Vancouver?! You're Chinese!"

My spouse immediately informed me, "That's racist."

We then had a short discussion about the ways in which the Chinese nouveaux riches expatriate their assets.