@gordholio:

Interesting. Might just be the time of year. I've never had a problem finding a place to live either. Hopefully I won't have to go that route for awhile, our landlord has owned for about 5 years and said he doesn't want to sell anytime soon. Knock on wood.

When no one buys your condos, blow it up!

[MGM Targets Harmon Tower in Vegas for Demolition] – August 15, 2011,

MGM Resorts International on Monday said it wants to destroy its Harmon building — an unfinished condo-and-hotel tower riddled with construction engineering problems….

Starting in 2008, engineers found a series of baffling mistakes through multiple levels of the Harmon. The discoveries came at the same time that Las Vegas’s tourism and condo markets were crashing. MGM made the decision in 2009 to cut the size of the building nearly in half, getting rid of the condos planned for the top levels….

Perini has contended that MGM’s portrayal of the Harmon is fear-mongering to get out of paying bills for a building it no longer needed after condo buyer demand dried up and the tourism market slowed."

http://blogs.wsj.com/developments/2011/08/15/mgm-…

@Best place on meth:

This means rents must go up.

Good news for landlords.

Professional cleaning of rental units??

My suggestion is convert to laminate flooring….at least in Living room /dining room areas.

Carpets in living rooms are encoded with a microchip that tells tenants and their pets to " abuse me ".

@Best place on meth: I don't know about non-Chinese university students. For Chinese international students, a lot of them rents single rooms so they will generally just pay the $500-$800/month to keep the place or sublet to someone else for 4 months while they go back to China. Most landlord don't care as much as long as they get the checks. But since the landlord is renting out room by room, if one student stays while the others all left then the landlord is stuck with a partially rented condo. Some try to mitigated by renting to one person for the full cost but allow that person to sublet the other bedrooms.

@jesse: I noticed that a lot of apartment buildings and even condo rentals from retail landlords now demand a professional cleaning at moveout time or have the expenses deducted from the security deposit. Wouldn't that mitigate the higher clean up cost somewhat? Actually is that legal? In the sense that you have to hire a cleaning company rather than doing it yourself?

However this doesn't help if the students left it messy for a whole school year and the mold builds up over time. I wonder how those new condo buildings with a heavy student rental population will look in 5 years.

@pricedoutfornow: Maybe because she's look in a cool hip area where lots of young people want to live and be part of the cool hip area?

Also how many of those are actually serious? I know for Richmond when we were looking at the apartments, the owner will get lots of calls but not many are that serious. Quite often they expect to bargain $100 or $200 off the asking price. Also, anything that's older than 5 years is harder to rent to quality tenants.

Renting to internation students do nets more rent but I've been told that the wear and tear on the place is quite high. As well a lot of Chinese landlords at least don't like boy /girl friends moving in or stay overnight on a regular basis.

Since we are on the subject of fruit stands, here is one in Vancouver that's been force to close because it's too successful. What's the bet that the anonymous tip from a member of public is really the grocery store owner?

http://www.vancouversun.com/Fruit+stand+successfu…

@pricedoutfornow:

This is definitely the hardest time to find cheep digs as, indeed, all the students are competing for them.

What's up with the rental market in the lower mainland? This morning's CBC had a girl lamenting how hard it is to find a place to rent-she said she's been to many places ($1000 for a basement suite in Strathcona) and 6 other people often show up-very competitive. They're going to do a full story on it tomorrow morning, they said.

I also heard something like this from an acquaintance who is renting out a suite in Richmond. They posted their suite and were flooded with phone calls. Is this a normal summer fluctuation with students moving into the area or what?

The fruit seller has a permit and trying to do it the right way. Any Lawyers here willing to represent the fruit seller against this rich scum-ball who is trying to close him down and remove his livlihood so he can get a few more shekels for his house?

Obviously the neighbours are buying the fruit from him or he would be long gone. Lets see if big money can frighten the City of West Van?

um, personally I would find the fact that I would buy fresh fruit and veges just down the street a plus. But maybe that's just me.

I rent and I'm happy 🙂

The fruit stand truly highlights the problem with world class cities.

The problem is acute in Vancouver (West Vancouver, not quite as desirable as Richmond, but nonetheless problematic).

With the severe shortage of land, since they’re not making anymore of it and with the ocean to the west, the USA to the south, North Pole to the North, and Halifax to the east, where is the poor guy going to set up?

My suggestion is the fruit vendor pays a commission on the sales to the house owner, as some kind of an easement fee.

Think of it as West Van finally getting some benefit somewhat similar to those garnered by those lucky ones who live by Exhibition Park and charge people to park in their yard.

Just Classy, like a world class City.

IB program in Richmond. Big deal, so does britannia secondary in East Van.

Translation…

Without going into details…IMHO….this is a sign of desperation.

I recall realtors trying to establish this sort of thing when HK rush was waning….

Richmond High has an International Baccalaureate Program

This is " Bottom Feeding 101"..maybe more a parameter the $HTF