221–230 of 247 posts
This is about making your money work for you. Speculate and accumulate.
(Just to add, I've lived in Vancouver for over 50 years, and helped pioneer the net here back in '93)
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> The city is getting stuffed by each passing day with rich kids. What are you waiting for? My impression is that many of those buyers don't even set foot in Vancouver. It's just an investment for them.
I think this is true, but it's also the case that businesses that cater to the very rich are doing very well. My wife works for a luxury retailer who's Vancouver location is seemingly supporting the entire company with it's sales. Revenue has basically tripled over the past 4-5 years.
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I put the possibility of them massaging the data in some way at very remote. This study had a lot of eyeballs on it so risk of getting caught would be too high for them to entertain. Moreoever, the CoV grunts who do the actual work, like doing studies, seem both competent and of high integrity, and I don't think they'd be willing to betray their duty to the public and try to create a false impression of the unoccupan…
I think you are naïve if you believe that a government wouldn't fudge a study to support their best interests (best interests in this case being that most of their top campaign contributors are in the real estate business (1)). Let me give you an example of this happening recently in regards to the Vancouver real estate market. The provincial government released a study on July 7th, stating that only 3% of real estat…
Very surprised Bloomberg would put out such a fluff piece about the Vancouver Real Estate market. There are very serious issues in Vancouver, and some suspect Canada is in for a ruder awakening than the US. http://www.vice.com/en_ca/read/meet-the-wall-street-short-se... 1) Canadian Real Estate is being used as a money laundering facility http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/ike-awgu/canadian-real-estate-f... . 2) Canada also…
You really should include a link to this as well- Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver MLS Home Price Index http://www.rebgv.org/home-price-index?region=all&type=all&da...
This shows the the price trend of Detached, Townhouse, and Apartment up to the last 11 years, broken by individual cities in Greater Vancouver.
But it is misleading. If you look at Metro Vancouver's trend, all 3 types of housing have gone up in prices. But if you look at the surrounding cities, only the Detached and Townhouse prices have gone up. Apartment pricing have remain relatively flat until 15 months ago. Since then Apartment price have gone up as well.
This is probably because 15 months ago, the Detached/Apartment pricing have increased to the point where buyers started to consider Apartment as a viable resident.
PS. If you look at the graph, you will notice that the prices have gone up so much it broke the graphing software.
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> You can buy a condo, the prices of which are totally uncoupled from SFHs If domestic buyers can't afford SFH's and shift their attention to condos, this increases demand for condos, thus raising the price. It is practically impossible for the two to be "totally uncoupled".
> this increases demand for condos, thus raising the price Condos are not supply-constrained. You can tear down like 6 detached houses and build 240 condos in that space. In Toronto they're making over 100,000 new units a year: http://business.financialpost.com/personal-finance/mortgages...
As a vancouverite, and a person that's lived in Toronto for over a decade, I can say that while vancouver has about half the population (of T.O.) it has maybe 1/4 or 1/8 of the tech jobs. Also Canada is not like, say, the US, where there are many different industrial centers (ie Entertainment in LA or Finance in NY). In Canada, most corp headquarters are in Toronto and a small fraction are in Calgary and that's it. V…
Return is a function of risk. Doesn't a 25% yield imply far more risk than you are implying? Why is anyone selling right now if prices are going to skyrocket like that? What if China institutes tight capital controls? What if oil goes to $20 a barrel?
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What's wrong with riding in the winter? You have to make sure you have the right clothing and equipment, but that's about it.
We tend to get quite a bit of snow in Canada, and it is pretty cold. I'm not sure if riding in the winter is common elsewhere but where I live in Canada I don't ever see cyclists in the winter.
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> Yes, I know mandarin and English. Wait, I have to learn French also? Pass. Is there a government that makes it mandatory? Because otherwise we're not talking about the same thing. I speak 4 languages and I learned each of them for different reasons... None of which was "because otherwise I would be breaking the law".
All services that serve Quebec have to be available in french. So if you're making an application front end, you have to provide a french version even if your userbase doesn't care. It's just extra overhead.
On a broader scale, I don't understand why (other than politics and legal) this massive multi nationwide demand for housing hasn't created opportunities in the construction industry: building out with existing technologies as well as incentives to produce more efficient methods and tech. Whatever happened to big problems leading to big opportunities? I mean we're talking about a multi-trillion dollar industry begging to be disrupted. I can't name a single unicorn company that's involved in this right now.
This situation can be turned around into a positive. The higher real estate boom could be used for a massive building boom to reduce unemployment and boost wages in the construction industry. I doubt every last bit of land has been used up, I don't think their density is anywhere near that of Hong Kong. On a broader scale, I don't understand why (other than politics and legal) this massive multi nationwide demand for…
Source: I was just reno-victed I had a front row seat. My new apartment had been available for 30 minutes when I put the deposit down. It was pure luck that I found somewhere to live . It's not sustainable.