Wow, time flies when you’re having fun!
Did you know that it was ten years ago that the US financial system had a little stumble due to over exuberance in the housing market?
10 years is a long time, but it’s how long it took at least one guy to sell his house.
That guy figures he lost about 60K over those ten years on a house he paid $137k for.
Fortunately in Vancouver there are no $137k houses so that can’t happen here.
Someone at zero hedge saw the unoccupied units stats for Vancouver and decided to refer to them all as ‘mansions’:
There Are 66,719 Empty Mansions In Vancouver
Yan said most of these were concentrated in three areas: Coal Harbour, Marine Gateway and Joyce-Collingwood. Surrey came in second at 11,195, Burnaby at 5,829 and Richmond at 4,021. The focus has clearly been on the most expensive neighborhoods: the number of unoccupied units increased 25% in Richmond between the 2011 and 2016 census and by 28 per cent in Burnaby.
To take advantage of this multi-million mansion ghost town, in November 2016 the Vancouver city council voted to approve a tax on empty homes, the first in Canada. Based on self-reporting owners, the tax is a one-per-cent charge on homes that are not principal residences or are not rented out for at least six months of the year. The goal was to improve Vancouver’s tight rental vacancy rate of 0.6 per cent by encouraging owners of thousands of empty units to offer them up for renting.
Read the full article here.
Shopping for a house but didn’t buy yet? Now may be the time! The benchmark price of a detached home in Vancouver just dropped by $27k. That’s just about the price of a brand new Civic, so if you buy now it’s like getting a free car!
What will next month bring? Is this free car premium a temporary result of snow or will you be able to upgrade to a BMW next month? Time will tell.
Occasionally we have some commenters here who seem to be pretty sure (or at least proclaim to be pretty sure) that Vancouver is hell on earth.
We suspect this isn’t entirely true, because most anyone you meet here has the ability to move away to a number of other options yet they hang around.
But one recent comment references the fear that Vancouver will become ‘hell on earth’ by slowly crushing the economy into two strata:
Soon there will be two classes of Vancouverites.
The service class will live in 200 square foot mini-apartments, twenty such units per building, working for 50,000 dollars a year, paying 2,500 a month in rent, and paying a big chunk of their paychecks on taxes at the provincial and federal levels to pay for schools, hospitals, universities, and the coast guard. They will service the rich class and take the bus to get there.
The rich class will live in 7,000 square foot rectangular box houses, worth three million each, ridiculously crammed on 45 foot lots, their BMWs and Bugattis parked out front. Each household will claim poverty status, claiming to be earning just ten thousand dollars a year. That way the wives and kids and grandparents in those houses will not have to pay anything for their healthcare and education. It is all paid for by the income taxes of the suckers in the service class.
Meanwhile, unknown to Ottawa or Victoria, the businessman head of those rich homes is earning a million dollars a year in China, in activities that are often associated with phrases like “rule breaking” and “money laundering”.
That allows them to own another three houses and condominiums in Vancouver, places that are empty, places the government thinks his kids and nephews own because he put their names on the deeds.
Vancouver is turning into hell on earth.
Original comment from a Globe and Mail article referenced by Yunak.
Syruptrap.ca shares the sad news that another Luxury condo tower is to be torn down and replaced with a small independent bookstore:
Beloved Pinnacle Towers developer Jerry Gotham lamented the announcement in a Facebook post on Monday.
“Pinnacle Towers has been an integral part of the local community for the last seven years,” wrote Gotham.
“I am sad to announce today that the new owners, book lovers Daphne and George, will tear the building down in order to build a small independent neighbourhood bookstore.”
A frustrated Gotham told press that he wishes there was something he could do to save Pinnacle Towers.
“This 40-storey luxury condo development — the marble baths, the helipad, the green roof — was my life. To see it all come down like this is a damned shame.”
Several members of the community gathered in front of the demolition site on Monday to protest the announcement.
“This tall, expensive glass building is an important part of the cultural fabric of this city,” said Sheila Barthelby, creator of a “Save Pinnacle Towers” petition on Change.org, which as of Monday morning has garnered over 200 signatures.
This seems to happen so often these days. Read the full article here.