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It took one too many absurd posts from our sporty friend to actually start posting.

My earlier posting was a bit sloppy and should have been proof read, I have had a nasty flu this week.

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That’s the funny part of it. If you rent you have to be careful about who you’re renting from, but that’s true anywhere. Small time landlords are the same wherever you go.

However to tradeoff is all the lovely extra money, which you can use to go skiing or whatever. And if your unit is leaky…. so what? You can just move! No zillion dollar repairs needed (or at least repairing the unit isn’t your problem :).

Pretty soon all those people who are maxed out on their “investments” are going to look around and start connecting the dots. Nothing form the outside world seems to impact, but I PROMISE you…. once they see how many units are sitting unsold or unrented they’ll figure out the jig is up

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Look how many units are still available , for rent, at spectrum 1,2,3,4 (200 on craigslist today?) they’ve been available since November. Mode (538 Smithe) is hitting the market as is Coopers lookout (980 cooperage way?), There is the ritz and saphire coming in coal harbour even though the Cielo units haven’t been fully absorbed (check prompton,bruceward, downtownsuites etc.)

Plus every time a new tower completes first time buyers (renters) move in and vacate a rental, owners upgrade, tenants upgrade and move around so there is a vacuum.

As an example of what i think was one of the nicer buildings in Coal Harbour, the Classico.

Royalrental.ca had unit #2906 at the Classico (1328 W.Pender) for rent (975 or 1,000 sq ft with water view) for rent at $2,000 and it sat for over a month!

This is the same amount of rent that these units were fetching when they were worth less than half what they are today.

So in December you could have bought #2806 in the $800’s (it should still be on mls right now) or rented #2906 for $2,000.

#2806 would cost you about $4,800 a month mortgage plus strata fees ($350?).

Or
Pay $2,000 a month, save $3,000 a month and be free to move without having to pay $25,000 in realtor fees.

Even without a sportsmans body, there are lots of fantastic units available for rent in Vancouver which is a great city to live in once you adjust your cost of living expenses to 20% of your income instead of 70%.

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Nominal prices are not going to drop by much more, because there are still a lot of people waiting for the right moment to jump into the housing market. At some point, they’ll get tired of waiting and buy during this flat period. Many will have substantial down payments. If this happens, nominal prices could go back to what they are now.

What do you base this assumption on? BC has a negative savings rate and I don’t know how many people are waiting to ‘jump in’ to the market. Certainly there are those on this blog, but is that enough to make a difference when prices start dropping? Most of the people that I know who would like to buy were priced out two years ago. The increasing cost of living, gas, etc has meant that their savings hasn’t grown tremendously and neither has their incomes. How many people really are out there ‘waiting to jump in’ and will it be enough to offset listings if speculators see the need to dump units?

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*why* exctly would pay a rent on a place that covers the mortgage cost? Why exactly wouldn’t I buy my own place if I were willing to shell out that much money?

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on your second last post I am agree with you but Idea around transportation hubs is almost sleepless(noisy,shaky)and that could lead to increase crime close to those hubs,Your point on the table should deal with that issue to proceed farther,almost good and you have great knowledge of everything here glad to read your posts.

I am loving it.

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I’m going to try to do the hard stuff. Disclaimer: For a number of reasons including the mountains, it’s a beautiful city and we’re running out of land, I’m more bullish on Vancouver than many on this list.

Housing prices in Vancouver have peaked due to a convergence of factors already discussed on this blog, including media attention to the sub prime problem in the US, affordability and new stock coming on the market.

We are in a decline, or at least a steady state for the next four or five years.

As those who have to sell are forced to lower their prices, prices will come down by 10 to 20% and then level off for a few years. High inflation and interest rates could extend this period time as would investors pulling out of the market.

Nominal prices are not going to drop by much more, because there are still a lot of people waiting for the right moment to jump into the housing market. At some point, they’ll get tired of waiting and buy during this flat period. Many will have substantial down payments. If this happens, nominal prices could go back to what they are now.

If you were planning to flip that condo, you should have sold last fall. If the economy remains good, you might be able to pay the mortgage by raising the rent.

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Unless the have an inheritance, or a good salary and the discipline to save, people in their 20s have always been priced out of the core of Vancouver. That’s one of the reasons they rent.

And where is this ALR land he’s talking about in Vancouver? Stanley Park? Vancouverites are already complaining about the lack of green space for the kids to play or to walk their dogs, so should we use it up by building more 500 sq ft condos to cram them into? Destoying our green space would certainly bring down property values, not just because they would add to the supply of housing but also because Vancouver would be a less attractive place to live.

Lack of affordable housing (and I’m not talking about social housing) is a problem we should be addressing, but taking the land out of the ALR is not the answer. Building denser housing around transportation hubs is one possible solution, as is zoning affordable market housing into new developments.

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Granted, we’d have to address issues of the stability of the mountain slopes, but there are lots of places where development would make more sense than taking land out of the ALR.

Housing development is not just affecting agricultural land, but our industrial land base as well. Part of our economy relies on our location as a port city. We need a balance. If the current crisis in the US teaches us anything, it’s don’t rely on a single thing like real estate to keep the economy going.

And there are people crying about the precious farm land lost in Britain. And the forests that were there before that. The farms gave way to urban development for the same reason. You can’t make money farming when food is so cheap, but who’s to say that will last forever.

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I returned to Vancouver in ‘81, was shocked by the housing prices (they tripled in the two years I’d been away), figured I was priced out of the market forever, but didn’t worry because owning a place didn’t seem to be an issue for those of us in our twenties. Turned out I wasn’t priced out forever anyway.

It would be interesting to hear from those who did buy back then. Especially interesting would be the reasons they did so. A growing family? Peer pressure? Speculation?

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You’d have to tear up condos, asphalt, sidewalks, etc., and cart everything away. Then you’d have to add top soil. Lots of it. The usual way to clear farmland is to cut trees, burn them and then plow. The topsoil is already there to plow.

The environmental cleanup alone would be prohibitively expensive. You can build condos on polluted landfill, like parts of Yaletown and False Creek North, that you couldn’t grow vegetables on.

And where would all the residents in the condos live?

Higher private returns to the few, maybe, but what social returns are there from not knowing your neighbours or having to drive to the stores and entertainment?

I could see the suburbs as a worthwhile trade-off if you could raise a few chickens in your backyard, but most new developments are quite restrictive in what you can do. The neighbours would panic if they knew a chicken was in the vicinity (bird flu).

The economic cost to city and municipal governments is quite high too.

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Comment by sheeplessinvancouver
“Please don’t believe everything you read in this “report”

It is obviously funded by a lobby group that exists to give developers and others keen to make money in real estate something to back up their arguments when seeking approval, money, rezoning or whatever. You know, the same people who gave you the real estate bubble in the US, who profited from it and left the losses to others. They even have a banker doing the introduction!

Sleepless,
I am kind of agree with you but most of non buyers may be not because it will make them feel the current market status justify the prices then every one must buy this argument of “Limted Land Mass”.

Kind of tough situation here as Interest Rates are Low that’s mean more money in buyers pocket on the top there is a countinue appreciation.

Now if the government and developer decide to open the door they can either scare the market or smoothly they can put more money in there pockets.It would only allow us to lose our green spaces forever and let some big fish get rich.

The only force who miss their chance to line up to buy or people who did back up from the 2010 bid may join the force to break the doors for crocodiles.

I can support all the bears on lalaland issue but their should be guaranteed low price on all the unit.

Hughz,billy2bauls,freako,lala land your opinions are very well appreciated.

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At the same time, zoning restrictions go a long way in artificially propping up real estate prices. Take a look at Santa Cruz, CA. Land and land all around, but some of the highest prices and pricing ratios. What makes me really sick about zoning is the whole political process which rewards those with an “in” to profit off any change.

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A country that can’t feed itself is a poor country indeed.

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And if in the future, when food becomes exorbitantly expensive to import and the returns reverse, level the condos and plow it.

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Farmers can’t make a living growing food on the best land in Canada because we can get everything cheaper from California and Mexico where agricultural labour is cheaper, even when you add in the price of fertilizer, pesticides, warehousing, packaging and shipping costs.

Relative to our other expenditures, food is really cheap in Canada at about 10% of average household gross income. This may change as oil prices go up and inflation takes its toll.

Soil fertility and climate in the Lower Mainland rate high for Canada. Floodplains are excellent places for growing things.

In our stupidity we build more condos (so realtors, bankers and speculators can make a profit) on floodplain. Next, we have to spend money on dikes so the condos don’t get flooded. And if some of those global warming projections are correct, it’s going to cost us a lot more to protect those condos.

The ALR exclusion requests are all about money. There is a farmer in the East Kootenays who had to cut back on his (profitable) operation because the land he had formerly leased was taken out of the ALR so they could build a ski resort.

It’s all about greed, greed and greed.

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I think he’s blown some kind of circuit.

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It is obviously funded by a lobby group that exists to give developers and others keen to make money in real estate something to back up their arguments when seeking approval, money, rezoning or whatever. You know, the same people who gave you the real estate bubble in the US, who profited from it and left the losses to others. They even have a banker doing the introduction!

Stating that affordability of housing is a “function of just one thing”, is simplistic. Claiming that urban planning and government “interference” places the biggest constraint on land supply in Vancover is a stretch. Clearly, the biggest constraint here is geographical.

Based on this report, I’ve reached the “overwhelming” conclusion that people will pay more to live in warm places and larger urban centres. There’s a reason why Thunder Bay is number one in affordability (yay! a Canadian city makes number one in something again) and Regina is number twelve.

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