M- and MarKoz brought up this topic – Vancouver seems to be seriously lacking in affordable family housing.
There are lots of 1 and 2 bedroom apartments, but not much available for 3-4 bedrooms until you go to houses. M- suggest the city requires more large units to be built to provide future homes for Vancouver families:
CoV could require condo developers to include a much larger percentage of 2-bed and 3-bed units in the towers that they’re approving, and require some of those units to have a more family-sized square footage. Maybe in exchange for higher density, to make it less controversial.
It won’t help much of anything today, but it will prevent today’s towers from becoming tomorrow’s ghettos.
My wife and I used to have an 800 sq.ft condo. It was too small for the two of us. Then we got a 1000 sq.ft apartment, and it was enough space for the two of us (we would have liked more, but it was good enough).
Then we had a kid.
The 1000 sq.ft unit slowly became too small for our family, so we’ve upgraded to a house (rental, of course).
We keep an eye on the condo/house markets, and there’s not much selection of 3-bed units out there, until you get into houses.
MarKoz adds:
When I went condo hunting I could find nothing similar. You would have marginal master bedrooms and second bedrooms the size of a closet. The master bathroom was usually huge at the cost of a smaller living room etc. All had fireplaces – a waste of precious wall space in a small unit. Stainless and granite with barely enough counter space to lay a pizza box. Closets were minimal as was out of suite storage.
I moved on to townhouses. 1200 square feet spread over 3 floors is worse than 800 square feet on one floor. So much space given over to stairs and landings.
Who wants these places? Apparently everyone but me. They sure are selling. In the US they have plenty of 3 bedroom units but I guess those don’t attract specuvestors like 565 sq ft one bedrooms.
