They had to put up job ads and brought in government IT workers to fill the position.

Yeah because they want to pay below market rates to save money. Below market rates for temporary position no less, not a permanent full-time position. Good luck filling those positions with quality applicants.

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Local buyers are in the game partly because of propaganda perpetuated by ‘the developers’. True, no one is holding a gun to their heads, but the ‘fear of loss’ pitch is scaring people into never being able to buy if they don’t do it now.

Scullboy, good luck back east! I grew up in Ottawa and have also lived for 2 years in Toronto, and 2 years in Montreal. There’s nothing bad whatsoever about living back there IMO. It’s a totally different lifestyle than Vancouver, that’s all. The only reason I’m still here is due to my ties to the music and film biz. Oh, and I rent by the way. I would never buy here unless prices dropped dramatically. Nice city, but best in the world? Not likely.

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Why would anybody work for free while others are making big bucks off the Olympics? Nobody wants to be a sucker (not intentionally).

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But what’s funny…is that with all these layoffs and high tech workers being idle in Vancouver….and we have a shortage of high tech volunteers for 2010 Olympics. They had to put up job ads and brought in government IT workers to fill the position. Strange…

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Ultraman

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Totally agree with you as many have demonstrated on this blog before, renting is the way to go. This is why I sold my condo. Moving this weekend in a brand new apart at the Woodward’s. About $700-$800 cheaper than owning, worry free, cash in the bank and like I said 1 month notice away from moving. I find the transition to renters to be very liberating. This consumable desire to buy that so many people are obsessed with is making them slaves.

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I don’t agree with you that the tail is wagging the dog. There is no scarcity of housing in Vancouver and yet there is a plenitude of people — under no duress — willing to take out significant levels of debt to be owners. The developers would have no power if there were no buyers. Just witness last year when sales fell through the floor and projects were canceled left right and centre.

The real reason for high prices isn’t rich foreigners or even record low interest rates. It’s the locals who buy at the high prices. Nobody, especially the developers, is holding a gun to their heads and there are thousands of places available for rent every month if they don’t want to buy.

But go ahead and run your expose on the Real Estate Industrial Complex. IMO the real story are the buyers willing to make bad investment decisions. But nobody wants to read about that.

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Chumpdog if you look at the history of Vancouver it is one of speculation.

“You or your agent hold on to it till property rises, then sell out and buy more land further out of town and repeat the process. I do not quite see how this sort of thing helps the growth of a town, but the English Boy says that it is the ‘essence of speculation,’ so it must be all right.”

Rudyard Kipling writing about his investment about 100 years ago.

Vancouver “is suffering in a special degree from haphazard growth and speculation in real estate, notwithstanding the progress that has taken place in the last few years in regard to the control of sanitary matters and local improvements.”

Thomas Adams urban planner in 1915.

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Good luck and wish you success. I will definitely miss your rants – one of the kind. In a way, I envy you – you are getting out of the madness and going back to the real world.

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It’s really a reversal of that title which explains why all the complaints people lay on Vancouver can be traced back to the high cost of RE (whether it be renting or owning)

It will likely never be published in Vancouver, but if it does I may be found floating in the Burrard Inlet. There is an investigative aspect to it. I intend to expose the small group of developers who have a stranglehold on the city which in turn creates an artificial sense of scarcity- thereby increasing the cost of RE and sucking dollars from just about everything else into

Think of all the complaints people make about Vancouver and most of them can be linked to the high price of RE

-No art scene- too expensive to be an artist here- Montreal and Toronto are way cheaper
-No night life apart from 19-24 year old mayhem- no money left over for partying after high rent and mortgage. Imagine if people didn’t need to scrape every cent together for the mortgage…
-No great jobs- why locate your office here when the cost is so high? How can you start a company when all the capital in the city is sucked into RE? There is little money left over for entrepreneurial activity or investment in production so people look elsewhere for investment capital.
-Boring people- imagine how life could be if people didn’t talk, think or worry about RE all the time? they might (gasp) be interested in other things.
-Lame festivals…again, no money left over for people to spend too much on events

Imagine if you could spend less than 30% of your income on housing…how much extra money would people have? what would they do with it? the answers would surprise you.

there is no economic argument for the current situation other than the artificial creation of scarcity and the speculation it encourages. Look around you at all the vacant land…from Main to Clark is nothing but a wide open space…..downtown is still riddled with street level parking lots- unheard of in most urban areas. by strangling development into a few hands and with slick marketing, people have been duped into thinking that paying 8 times annual income for a mortgage is acceptable.

The profits produced for a small group are incredible-and so the will to protect those profits is powerful.

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Hey, I resemble that comment

For us eBayers, we are now moving from severance to EI, so we’ll have to at least go through the motions of looking for work. Time to stop the video games…or at least less of it Its so much easier to achieve that way these days.

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The time to find a job depends on your industry and your skills. Support staff have less to offer a company than somebody who can bring in the bacon. There will always be a demand for the latter.

If job security is a big issue for people, then you should either work for the government or be invaluable. If your job is supportive, then it is more vulnerable.

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Thanks for the good wishes. I started on one side of the country and moved to the other. The things that surprised me most about Vancouver was how few Vancouverites had been east of the Rockies. None of them have a clue about the charms of any other city in Canada. I suppose that’s why they parrot the whole “best place on earth” thing so mindlessly.

I made the same calculation as Firmaa. I spend a lot of money and worked hard in the last few years in order to attain a number of certifications. I even switched careers for a while. No matter what I tried I couldn’t find decent work in Vancouver. I’m not the only one. A number of friends from culinary school did the same thing.

I eventually came to the same conclusion as Firmaa: No way would I ever be able to afford a decent standard of living here no matter how hard I tried. All those zombies claiming this city is “livable” are missing the point. In order for the city to be livable, you have to make enough money not just to pay the rent but also to save for your future.

I lived in Toronto for 10 years. I can’t say I’m a fan of the place but at least you can make decent money there. I was up for a couple of jobs there. Those jobs would have paid 60 – 65 here, tops. There, the going rate was 95K. Bear in mind while it’s about the same cost to rent a place there, it’s MUCH cheaper to buy.

The thing I like about Halifax is it’s a *very* under rated gem of a town. It’s low key. YOu’re never, ever going to get an idiot like Browntown or Supratard claiming “everyone wants to live here” although it’s popular with Europeans looking for a good value. I can’t say for certain it’s always going to be that way but there’s an excellent balance of affordability with quality of life.

I’m so fucking sick of the endless real estate argument. I’m sick of the fucking greed. A home should be your little space in the world, not a vehicle to make enough money to retire on. Assholes like Supra yap yap yap away, and you know they don’t actually own anything, it’s like those Asians that lease expensive cars thinking people are fooled in to believing they are wealthy.

I have a friend here in Van I’ve known 15 years. He’s been contemplating a move as well. UNfortunately he owns a home near Tinseltown. He thought he could rent the place out for the Olympics but he’s having some challenges. He was also planning on selling the place, but he can’t get the price he wants, so he’s stuck here in Van.

Meanwhile I was able to jump on an opportunity the minute it came up with minimal cost. I only have to cover December’s rent and the cost of the move back home.

I have another friend who was laid off a couple of months ago. He was a VP for a company doing security for the airport. He has an excellent resume, and was confident he’d find something relevant soon. He was told by recruiters “don’t worry, with your skills it’ll be easy to place you”. (Side note: Never, ever trust recruiters). Fast forward to today. He has money in the bank, but he’s concerned because of the lack of jobs for someone with his qualifications.

The tech industry here is imploding. More and more people are now chasing fewer and fewer jobs in fewer and fewer companies. Most of the people laid off from eBay are still living on their severance (I know a few personally). They are calm now, mainly because they don’t realize what’s coming.

The only reason I can see it is because I’ve already lived through this scenario years ago. I was laid off from a tech company in Toronto. I ran the tech support department for a company that was a household name at the time. It was one of the largest companies of its kind in the world.

After I got laid off, I relaxed for 3 months. I figured I had been working for 20 years and “deserved” the break. I listened to people who said “Relax for a while, take a vacation”.

BIG MISTAKE. It takes a lot longer to find a job and get hired these days. Because of Monster and Workopolis HR departments commonly get 1,000 resumes PER POSITION. Even if you have 85% of the skills they’re looking for in an IT person, they aren’t satisfied.

Most of the people who were just laid off have grown up and worked their whole careers believing their skills are always going to be in demand and these industries are always short staffed. I feel bad for them, it’s not their fault they’ve been fed a lifetime of false assumptions.

Nevertheless, I’m glad for all the hard lessons I learned over the last few years. I’m miles ahead of the curve. I’ll be glad to watch this one from quite a distance. No matter how much money you have in the bank, a city full of scared and anxious citizens waking up to the real situation they’re in is NOT pleasant.

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Having said this, I disagree with you about the steep price. If you are willing to rent, I find prices here cheaper than Calgary. For example, I’m in a decent (not upscale at all) apartment right downtown. I don’t know exactly how much it costs (my company leases it), but I have a friend there with a 1 bed + den in the same building for $1200 a month. That’s about the same as Calgary. Restaraunts here are cheaper, and I don’t even have a car (no need here….Calgary, almost a necessity).

I agree it’s not cheap living here, but if you aren’t consumed with the desire to buy then it certainly very liveable.

Just my opinion

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Logic – this blog will only be dead after the crash, when there’s nothing to argue about. Bull trolls serve their purpose as contrary indicators, as evidenced by the illogic of their arguments. People like Franco above who confuse market expectations with general optimism merely remind us of why it’s a bubble doomed to burst no matter how long it has lasted so far.

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So beginning of this year I have decided that my professional life in Vancouver did not lead to anywhere and I moved to Regina. Yes, Regina.
M life priorities changed. On my new list of priorities night skiing at Cyprus in the winter and relaxing on Crescent Beach in the summer are not there. New priorities are emerged such as: making sure that I have enough income to feed my family and enough saved for retirement. I come to conclusion that I CAN NOT achieve these priorities in Vancouver no matter how hard I work.

On the other hand I am not convinced with chesterlampwick rosy picture regarding IT employment.
Main problem with Vancouver job market was the QUALITY of the jobs. Even the so call “high tech” jobs are actually LOW pay jobs. Small companies expect to pay $15-20 for the coders, database designers, network administrators. That pay is just little bit above retail jobs. Data clearly show that income never increased in the last 20 years. Everything else did – from housing, taxes, education, food.

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infested with trolls

bye

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No public announcement of layoffs in BCBud industry? Hmm…
The media has been kinda busy recently with such “announcements”. Bodies here and bodies there. They probably should come up with some sort of “politically correct” headlines: e.g. “Five layoffs from BCBud discovered at gas station: heated conversation in charge.”

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“i’m lovin it”

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I got the job offer in Halifax. It’s more money then I made here, PLUS 4 week’s vacation. I’m leaving in 10 days

You know what the best thing about Halifax is?

It’s about as far away from F**KING China as you can get, therefore NOBODY claims realestate is going up because of wealthy Chinese.

Well, that and NOBODY uses the phrase “best place on earth”. After 3 years I’m more then ready to trade cold winters for that.

So…. Franco, California and most of all Supraboy, you guys can SUCK ON MY BIG OL’ MARITIME D**K!

It’s bigger and tastier then anything you’ll find in Richmond, I promise.

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