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Vancouver Special

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Re: Vancouver Special

#41

Post by cperciva »

ripley12 wrote: post #26
cperciva wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first generation of Vancouver Special owners were largely families who occupied the entire property. By the late 90s either their kids had moved out and they had space to spare or they sold their homes (at much higher prices!) to families who needed to help pay the mortgage. BTW the "slightly below grade" situation is helped by Vancouver having lots of hills -- in many cases the front door is at grade even though…

> The first generation of Vancouver Special owners were largely families who occupied the entire property. I guess it's hard to get exact numbers on this, but the things I've read suggest that a lot of Vancouver Specials had multiple households right from the start. e.g. Barbara Pettit's excellent thesis: "By the 1970s, the Special had a distinctive style and was spreading throughout the east side as the "popular pla…

The ones in Vancouver, yes. Not so much in the suburbs, and despite the name there were more Vancouver Specials built outside of Vancouver than inside.

Re: Vancouver Special

#42

Post by vkou »

ripley12 wrote: post #32
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are towers outside of downtown. In the 90s, I marveled at Vancouver's density compared to Seattle. But I guess it is a matter of perspective.

There are a few, but the vast majority of Vancouver’s residential land still bans apartment/condo buildings of any height: https://twitter.com/GRIDSVancouver/status/640544192045826049

The majority of the land is low-density, but there are condo forests that have popped up over the last twenty years at ~every SkyTrain station, both in the city proper, and in its suburbs.

Each of those condo forests house more people than the mile of suburban housing surrounding them.

Re: Vancouver Special

#43

Post by kridsdale1 »

When I was a uni student in Vancouver in 2005, “The Vancouver Special” meant a tall young white man with a much shorter Chinese girlfriend.

Most people in my circles (UBC engineering and humanities) agreed with this appellation. I wonder if it’s still used.

Re: Vancouver Special

#44

Post by teunispeters »

ghostpepper wrote: post #19
SnowProblem wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not so cheap anymore! They go for $2M each today which seems insane to me.

The Vancouver housing market is really insane when you compare it to average salaries. New-grad software developer at a non-big-tech can expect the equivalent of $45k USD

I left Vancouver over this.

Average salary : Canadian normal. (median $33K, 90% of people under 90K - Stats Canada and Canada Revenue Agency for sources circa 2015-ish). Need at least $300K/year to afford rent, and if you're not a multimillionaire, owning a home is out of reach. Well, except condos... then $200K+/year is ideal.

The rents are too damned high!

And yeah, there's a whole pile of homelessness and safety issues over that. That Vancouver has (on the whole) nicer climate than Seattle, let alone anywhere else in Canada - makes it "easier". I worry a lot about the people I know still stuck there.

Oh and if anyone's looking for causes, I recommend this podcast : https://www.cbc.ca/listen/cbc-podcasts/191-sold

Re: Vancouver Special

#45

Post by teunispeters »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #28
ghostpepper wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Vancouver housing market is really insane when you compare it to average salaries. New-grad software developer at a non-big-tech can expect the equivalent of $45k USD

NAFTA (or whatever succeeded it) allows many of those Canadian SWEs to go south for better pay (e.g. Seattle), and a lot of them do. It isn't great situation all around (Vancouver loses talent because they don't want to pay for it).

Vancouver has NEVER paid that well. 50-60K is high end for SWE in Vancouver.

Re: Vancouver Special

#46

Post by ripley12 »

teunispeters wrote: post #44
ghostpepper wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Vancouver housing market is really insane when you compare it to average salaries. New-grad software developer at a non-big-tech can expect the equivalent of $45k USD

I left Vancouver over this. Average salary : Canadian normal. (median $33K, 90% of people under 90K - Stats Canada and Canada Revenue Agency for sources circa 2015-ish). Need at least $300K/year to afford rent, and if you're not a multimillionaire, owning a home is out of reach. Well, except condos... then $200K+/year is ideal. The rents are too damned high! And yeah, there's a whole pile of homelessness and safety i…

The main cause is that Vancouver bans apartments on the vast majority of its residential land, and has done so for nearly a century.

Re: Vancouver Special

#47

Post by ripley12 »

teunispeters wrote: post #45
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NAFTA (or whatever succeeded it) allows many of those Canadian SWEs to go south for better pay (e.g. Seattle), and a lot of them do. It isn't great situation all around (Vancouver loses talent because they don't want to pay for it).

Vancouver has NEVER paid that well. 50-60K is high end for SWE in Vancouver.

That's not been my experience at all. Amazon has really pushed compensation up over the last 10 years and 50-60K (CAD or USD!) would be low for even a junior position in the companies I'm familiar with.

FWIW the local market is fairly bimodal; there are the FAANG companies and those who keep up with them, and there are some local companies that still pay peanuts. The gap between those two is large.

Re: Vancouver Special

#48

Post by ripley12 »

klyrs wrote: post #38
Patrick_Devine wrote: post #20

The concept of a cheap, post-war house that you can finish out yourself is great... for certain places. There isn't really room in Vancouver for them any more, as [Vancouverism]( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vancouverism ) has taken over much of the city (i.e. low podium of 2-4 floors with a slender 100m tower). Vancouver's biggest problem right now is housing affordability, and "the missing middle" (i.e. 20-30m hig…

"Fun" numbers on affordability. A 3-bedroom rental unit is considered "affordable" if it rents at $4000/mo, or $48k/y[1]. The poverty line is at $60k[2] for a family of four. The city is encouraging developers to supply housing at a full 80% of poverty-level income, and wondering why tent cities keep growing. [1] https://www.straight.com/news/4094-rent-for-three-bedrooms-n... [2] https://www.vancouverisawesome.com/na…

> A 3-bedroom rental unit is considered "affordable" if it rents at $4000/mo

This is an oversimplification that has been repeatedly pushed by Carlo Pablito for clicks. He knows it's not quite right, but the incentives for media these days are what they are...

I would summarize the situation like this:

- Vancouver wants to incentivize some % of new development to be rental instead of condo

- For various reasons (some dumb, some legal) they ended up using the word "affordable" when defining some limits on said rental developments

- Newer-than-average buildings are understandably more expensive than average, so the limits are fairly high

It's a bad choice of words but the program is generally more ambitious than what other municipalities around the Lower Mainland do for rental housing. Please think twice before sharing this misleading information again.

Re: Vancouver Special

#49

Post by Tiktaalik »

huhtenberg wrote: post #40

Here's a modern reno of one of these that made it look nothing like the original even though it's the same blueprint - https://www.darcyjones.com/430-house

Really nicely done.

I'm under the impression that despite being maligned in the middle of the century Vancouver Specials are in relative high demand compared to houses newer and older because of how their basic flexible layouts make things relatively simple for new modern renovations.

Re: Vancouver Special

#50

Post by curmudgeon22 »

ripley12 wrote: post #47
teunispeters wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vancouver has NEVER paid that well. 50-60K is high end for SWE in Vancouver.

That's not been my experience at all. Amazon has really pushed compensation up over the last 10 years and 50-60K (CAD or USD!) would be low for even a junior position in the companies I'm familiar with. FWIW the local market is fairly bimodal; there are the FAANG companies and those who keep up with them, and there are some local companies that still pay peanuts. The gap between those two is large.

This matches what i see in the past 5 years or so as well.
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