Thinking of relocating?
From the gosh-what-a-suprise department: the Sun has an article about Northern BC having the most affordable real estate.
The survey found that despite average house price increases of 30 per cent across northern B.C. in 2006, owning a home in the region consumes less than half the household income of a homeowner in Vancouver.According to the BCNREB report, which was commissioned after RBC Financial Group released the results of a cross-Canada housing affordability study showing that B.C. was the least affordable place to buy a house, the Housing Affordability Index (HAI) for northern B.C. was 28.9 per cent compared to 68.5 per cent for Vancouver and 62.5 per cent for B.C. as a whole.
I wonder if anyone in Vancouver actually does spend 68.5 percent of their pre-tax income on housing.. Is that even physically possible?
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May 23rd, 2007 at 8:18 am
May 23rd, 2007 at 8:24 am
May 23rd, 2007 at 8:35 am
May 23rd, 2007 at 8:44 am
We are recently married & he is currently living with me in my tiny but awesome West End apartment. We are looking for something with a little room to grow. We’d like to stay downtown but can’t find anything that has what we want that isn’t a shoebox (ie:500-600 sq feet) for the general amount of cash we want to pay (less than 35% of our salary which is under $1700). We’ll likely have to move to the suburbs (blech!) this fall (can’t leave downtown in the summer!!!)
This market is stoopid.
May 23rd, 2007 at 8:55 am
Of course it’s possible.
3 words, “negative savings rate”.
Live on Mac and cheese, sell your car, bike to work and keep re-financing your house every 6 months.
I think this scenario will be the “neg am mortgage” of Vancouver. Things start to turn sour and the banks refuse to re-re-re-finance your home so you can no longer make payments and have to sell at a loss.
May 23rd, 2007 at 9:07 am
total BC savings/total BC income
And given that over 50% of BC’s wealth is owned by under 10% of the population. Assuming that those 10% ARE saving money the median savings rate by population has to be in the -20s or lower.
I know it’s based on a lot of assumptions I don’t have references for but that seems about right to me. Pretty scary stuff.
May 23rd, 2007 at 10:22 am
3 words, “negative savings rate”.
Anything’s possible in the short term. They could just be living off credit cards rather than a heloc or refinancing. In the long term, though, you can’t spend more than you earn. If people are really doing this they’re going to go from being house poor to good old regular poor.
May 23rd, 2007 at 10:38 am
May 23rd, 2007 at 11:43 am
May 23rd, 2007 at 11:50 am
Everyday…counting the months.
Last night my partner and I agreed that living in Vancouver is, for us, like living in Fort Mac. You make as much money as humanly possible for a couple years then get the hell out.
Why other people choose to live here is a total mystery. It’s like they believe the hype on the new BC license plates that proclaim “The Best Place On Earth”.
This Olympic hubris is getting dizzying.
May 23rd, 2007 at 1:30 pm
Ditto. In fact my rent is less than 20% of my net. And that include free hydro and cable.
Now, back in 1999 I bought a studio apartment on a much lower income and paid approximately 55% of my NET income on mortgage payments and maintenance fees.
That was back in the glory days when 5% down and a 25 year amortization worked out to payments very competitive with rents. Tough to believe now.
May 23rd, 2007 at 3:01 pm
This Olympic hubris is getting dizzying.
You know? That’s the biggest thing. I’ve lived here for many years, and it is in some deep way my home. However, I’m getting really tired of the sheer egotism of it. Yes, we’re good. We’re not New York.
My family is paying about 30% net to rent, and that’s about do-able, with the other things we have going on (investments, student loans, child-expense).
May 23rd, 2007 at 3:11 pm
May 23rd, 2007 at 4:19 pm
May 23rd, 2007 at 4:34 pm
I think whether you can afford something has a lot to do with lifestyle, unless you’re trying to support a family on $10 an hour.
When I was a “poor” student, I rented a basement suite for 70% of my income.
I now own a condo My mortgage, taxes, strata fees and utilities come in around 24% of gross or 30% of net. When I refinanced I had the bank increase rather than decrease the payments because my shelter costs were so ridiculously low.
In both circumstances, my lifestyle has remained much the same. I still take public transit, shop at second hand stores, take in free events around Vancouver. My happiness score hasn’t changed either.
What has changed is my income. I now make around the BC average. When I was a student, my income put me below the poverty line.
Anyone thinking of relocated should take more than the cost of owning a home into consideration.
When I lived in Northern BC, I paid more in car payments, gas and upkeep on the car than on shelter. Public transit was not an option. Heating costs were high and food was expensive. So was almost everything else. There were jobs, but few careers. I saw more kids get into trouble there because they had no mental stimulation and nothing interesting to do.
May 23rd, 2007 at 4:54 pm
May 23rd, 2007 at 4:58 pm
motive creat directions.
real estate price=locations
buying real estate=attempt
affordabilty=risk
managing mortgage payments=challenge
overcome of risk=profit
losing=losing because if we do not start we were and we will be anyway.
May 23rd, 2007 at 5:28 pm
I have no debt whatsoever, and just have to pay the cable/internet and utilities. I find this is about the MAX I would want to pay for shelter/housing and if I had to run a car I think I would be pushing it to the brink. I think there must be many people that have less a precentage of disposable income remaining than I do.
I moved to Vancouver in mid 2004 and have since missed this real estate bull run so I will NOT buy unless something changes. It’s different for some people if they bought pre 2004.
May 23rd, 2007 at 6:38 pm
Why would any thinking person move here? If you had a reasonable life somewhere else, why would you take a serious cut in pay/lifestyle to live here?
Is it the rain, fog, dank, drizzle, mold? Excessive housing costs and the most money anybody pays for fuel?
Seriously?
May 23rd, 2007 at 6:49 pm
In the meantime, we’re saving like bandits and waiting for the crash. Life is good.
May 23rd, 2007 at 7:10 pm
Well, no; actually it’s not that good. We shouldn’t have to ’save like bandits, waiting for the crash’. We could just live like human beings, instead.
I just want a place to retire and be a quiet respectful, peaceful citizen, contributing to everything around me.
Waiting out the life-span of sharks doesn’t fit the description of ‘life is good’.
May 23rd, 2007 at 7:41 pm
Is it the rain, fog, dank, drizzle, mold? Excessive housing costs and the most money anybody pays for fuel?
Seriously?”
I just liked the city here and as a single person it offered me a lot more than where I was living at the time (East Coast). The savings by living downtown verus running my car there cover a good portion of my rent.
I am use to rain and fog and snow so this is better than what I am accustomed to.
May 23rd, 2007 at 10:28 pm
Me too, eventually, but not because I don’t like Vancouver. I’ve been here too long, miss the snow and need more space. So much for the myth about boomers downsizing and moving to warmer climes.
But prices in northern BC are no better than prices in Vancouver when you consider what you’re getting for your money.
$70,000 will get me a mobile home in a trailer park in Fort St. James, BC. Yuck. If I move east of Alberta, that same $70,000 means a nice house on an acre or two. Either way, I’d have to factor in transportation and heating costs to see if I can really afford it.
BC is beautiful. People really do want to live here which is one of the reasons real estate is so expensive. I’m going to enjoy it while I can.
May 24th, 2007 at 1:37 am
May 24th, 2007 at 5:18 am
This stat is a little deceptive. I think few people pay 68.5 percent. The median income household does not live in the median house.
As Vancouver proper grows, a higher and higher percentage of housing will be high density.
The crazy thing is that townhomes now have about the same affordability levels as SFH did when this madness started. That is nuts I tell you.
Also, I think the fact that our population growth is falling off a cliff IS related to pricing ourselves out of the market. Will pop growth go negative? Not if prices cave first.
May 24th, 2007 at 7:24 am
Not only do we live like human beings, we live better than 99.999% of all human beings who ever lived on this planet. Cheer up, dude. You got it good; only your perspective sucks.
May 24th, 2007 at 7:53 am
Sour grapes, anyone?
May 24th, 2007 at 8:25 am
Just thought I’d mention may 28 to June 3 is Bike to Work Week.
Save gas, stay fit. Save the planet.
Details at vacc.bc.ca/biketowork
May 24th, 2007 at 9:08 am
Yeah, I’m ticked. I was born in this mildew infested pretending city. My parents could have had sex someplace nice and decent, but oh no.
Lucky for you, your standards aren’t terribly high. Must be nice.
May 24th, 2007 at 10:21 am
I was going to respond to your comments above, but others did before me. I have to ask: where do you live now? What makes it better than Vancouver to you?
Obviously people want to live here. Even prior to the recent run-up, long term prices in Vancouver are high compared to the rest of Canada. The only rational explanation is that is supply and demand. The west coast of North America seems to have been in demand since the gold rush.
If you have a chip on your shoulder and hate Vancouver for reasons only you can understand, then I don’t think this blog is really the place for you.
May 24th, 2007 at 10:31 am
Details at vacc.bc.ca/biketowork
Great link. I bike from east van to Richmond at least once or twice a week. Its a great way to get around and stay fit. Vancouver’s bike routes are great, but the Knight St. bridge and Richmond roads have nothing for bikes.
May 24th, 2007 at 11:58 am
If rich foreigners and boomers don’t materialize like the bulls predict, we could end up having both lower rent and lower RE value, something a bit unfamiliar to most Vancouverites.
May 24th, 2007 at 12:36 pm
Hurray Hurray!
May 24th, 2007 at 1:09 pm
Well folks, I finally did it. I drank the kool aid and bought into this market. A market I once considered “Stupid†but now a realize I was the stupid one. Now that I’m in I understand just how beautiful and fulfilling home ownership really is-AT ANY PRICE!! My wife and I now dine every night by candlelight. Partly because it’s romantic and party to save on electricity and partly so I don’t have to look at what I’m eating. I take the bus to work now and that saves the enviroment so - YOU’RE WELCOME. And after work I collect cans and bottles to pay my strata but man our condo is AWESOME! Life truly is wonderful now that we’re “on boardâ€. Except for the occasional argument when my wife unthinkingly turns on the bathroom light and I yell “WHO’S GONNA PAY FOR THAT!!†as I dive for the switch. But then, we’re both very tired.
May 24th, 2007 at 3:31 pm
No major maintenance to worry about in the next few years other than general upkeep, and some minor renovation projects we planned during our inspection…
May 24th, 2007 at 3:44 pm
Richmond does have *some* bike lanes.
Knight St. bridge eh? I bet you work in suite 200 and the postal code ends in a ‘1′. Java, hp-ux, solaris and ms systems, oracle with some sql server?
May 24th, 2007 at 5:35 pm
No 3 Road maybe? I’m not sure. All I can say is that its an abrupt end to bike-friendly streets once I leave Vancouver. I’m not even a big fan of bike lanes on a busy street, but more the specific side streets for bikes, that include controlled crossings of major roads.
Knight St. bridge eh? I bet you work in suite 200 and the postal code ends in a ‘1′. Java, hp-ux, solaris and ms systems, oracle with some sql server?
Heh, no sorry. I’m not even sure what place you’re talking about.
May 24th, 2007 at 11:57 pm
Tell us this: why does someone who has such lofty standards - who clearly shows contempt for this city - spend his/her precious time commenting on a web-site about the very place that s/he has such hatred?