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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

#281

Post by pc86 »

gorkemyurt wrote: post #240
rb808 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most countries dont have such high property taxes that the USA does. In London I paid $2500 a year in council tax and thought that was a lot of money, even though that was about 0.25%. Meanwhile NYC suburbs I'm now paying that every two months.

But I am sure you paid more in income taxes in London. Which policy do you prefer? In my opinion taxing wealth is always a better idea than taxing income..

I am generally inclined to agree with your last point, however it is possibly to be wealthy but to have very little liquidity. It has been the case that folks in the US who are on a fixed income (e.g. Social Security or disability) end up losing their home simply because they can't pay their property taxes and eat at the same time. It's rare but it has happened and will continue to happen as long as property taxes remain the large source of revenue that they are for state and local governments.

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

#282

Post by jdminhbg »

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 forecast high temps for Montreal this weekend are -5F/-21C and 0F/-18C. The forecast high temps for Vancouver, BC this weekend are 48F/9C and 49F/11C. I suspect this is a bigger contributor to housing prices than "money laundering" -- it's one of the only places in Canada with a reasonable climate.

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

#283

Post by yellowbeard »

fiatmoney wrote: post #217
gorkemyurt wrote: post #211

One of the main reasons of the housing crisis in the Bay Area is Prop 13 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_(197... ) Prop 13 basically keeps the property taxes constant (or 1% increase) as the value of your house increases (doubles or triples). Your tax gets re-calculated only if you sell your house and the new owner starts paying potentially multiples of what the previous owner has been payin…

Prop 13 has nothing to do with real estate price inflation. If anything, shifting of property tax burdens from long-time homeowners to new homeowners would tend to suppress prices. Shifting that burden evenly across the population would tend to cause more churn as long-time homeowners get pushed out, but would do nothing to increase aggregate housing or lower aggregate prices. Although, you can get pretty far into th…

Prop 13 has been argued (I'd say convincingly) to reduce liquidity:

http://www.nber.org/papers/w11108

(Less churn - opposite of what you hypothesize)

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

#284

Post by fiatmoney »

curveship wrote: post #233
fiatmoney wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prop 13 has nothing to do with real estate price inflation. If anything, shifting of property tax burdens from long-time homeowners to new homeowners would tend to suppress prices. Shifting that burden evenly across the population would tend to cause more churn as long-time homeowners get pushed out, but would do nothing to increase aggregate housing or lower aggregate prices. Although, you can get pretty far into th…

Wouldn't it discourage long-time owners from selling, thereby limiting supply and raising prices?

In this discussion there are a lot of terminology considerations around "supply" (ie, housing stock) vs. "liquid supply" (ie, houses on the market) and "average prices" (ie, total RE value) vs. "marginal prices" (ie, expected home sales price).

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

#285

Post by serge2k »

generalpf wrote: post #95
serge2k wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Loads go to the US. TN is easy to get and you can get close to (or more than) 50% higher salary (not including exchange rate, before tax).

You have to lie and say you're a systems analyst to get a TN visa. (Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.)

Correct, although it's a small lie as you still submit paperwork which states what your job actually entails (albeit with an emphasis on design and such over actual programming every day).

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

#286

Post by wavefunction »

logfromblammo wrote: post #112
goldbrick wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have things upside down. Property rights only exist because of law. Also, when did property rights become vital to democracy?

It became vital back when economies first started to specialize. If you take the net the fisherman wants to use and string it up as a hammock, you're going to eat fewer fish later. If you take the blacksmith's tongs and use them to crack walnuts, you're not going to get that handful of nails that you wanted to build your house. Property rights alleviate the tragedy of the commons, by taking resources with multiple po…

In all your examples, you're talking about tools that would be finding direct use. How do you reconcile your allegories with empty houses purchased solely as stable investment vehicles instead of actually housing people?

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

#287

Post by fiatmoney »

yellowbeard wrote: post #283
fiatmoney wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prop 13 has nothing to do with real estate price inflation. If anything, shifting of property tax burdens from long-time homeowners to new homeowners would tend to suppress prices. Shifting that burden evenly across the population would tend to cause more churn as long-time homeowners get pushed out, but would do nothing to increase aggregate housing or lower aggregate prices. Although, you can get pretty far into th…

Prop 13 has been argued (I'd say convincingly) to reduce liquidity: http://www.nber.org/papers/w11108 (Less churn - opposite of what you hypothesize)

No doubt it reduces liquidity. Probably increases marginal prices as well. But I doubt it makes real estate more valuable in the aggregate except for maybe via second-order effects like policy stability or population composition.

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

#288

Post by jgh »

pakled_engineer wrote: post #118
jimpick wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This! The tech salaries are absurdly low. The tech CEOs who pay poor wages and are complaining about their inability to retain talent are the same ones blaming real estate.

The taxes are also high https://simpletax.ca/calculator Select BC and enter in the typical income for an experienced developer in Vancouver which is 75k. Your take home salary is $59,000 plus you aren't offered any options usually just straight pay. This doesn't include all the other deductions such as EI and CPP. Now convert CAD to USD and you're a professional experienced developer making $42,000 USD per year, in o…

According to that calculator my taxes would be less in Ontario, Canada than California. In reality they aren't because I do married filing jointly and my wife has no income. But were I a single person it seems that it's not true that the taxes are higher there. In fact I'd be paying $5,000 less in tax in Ontario than in California (assuming wages were the same).

I don't know if EI and CPP would add up to $5,000, but certainly it would be much less if you throw Health Insurance into the the calculation.

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

#289

Post by pjc50 »

michaelt wrote: post #256
gorkemyurt wrote: post #211

One of the main reasons of the housing crisis in the Bay Area is Prop 13 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_(197... ) Prop 13 basically keeps the property taxes constant (or 1% increase) as the value of your house increases (doubles or triples). Your tax gets re-calculated only if you sell your house and the new owner starts paying potentially multiples of what the previous owner has been payin…

How are property taxes calculated in [...] London? Properties are assigned to a tax band based on the tax office's assessment of the house's value were it to have been sold in April 1991. Bands vary from A (less than £40,000) to H (more than £320,000). The council tax ratios between the bands are fixed - so a band A property always pays one third the price of a band H property. The band a house is assigned to is esse…

Another disadvantage is that it's regressive because the bands are quite limited: "The poorest lose 8% of their income to the Council Tax system whilst the richest only lose 2%." ( https://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/how-regressive-our-tax-syst... )

"Europe tells UK to reform ‘regressive’ council tax system": http://www.localgov.co.uk/Europe-tells-UK-to-reform-regressi...

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

#290

Post by edwinnathaniel »

mahyarm wrote: post #225
lazzlazzlazz wrote: post #150

If having essentially no affordable housing rendered a city an economic ghost town, then much of the Bay area and Manhattan would be "ghost towns" - which, in turn, would lower housing prices radically. What might happen to Vancouver is probably similar to other major cities with housing crunches but an otherwise desirable economic climate: lower wage workers will be displaced further from the city and forced to comm…

As someone who moved from Vancouver to SF 4-5 years ago: 1. You can drive across a bridge to the east bay and find housing that is half price in semi decent neighborhoods. You can drive out for 2 hours and find housing that is the standard american price. In vancouver, driving for an hour just gives you a 100-200k discount on housing that is already over $1 million, there are no real affordable places to escape to un…

> 2. Nobody in vancouver makes an income over six figures unless you're in the standard professions that make that much, such as doctors, high level managers and successful business owners

Intermediate Software Developers these days made that much for a select few companies (thankfully large ones that hire more and more people).

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