Vancouver, BC - North America's Costliest City, Rich Chinese are to Blame
 

In North America's Costliest City, Rich Chinese Take the Blame
By Jeremy Van Loon

October 6, 2015 — 3:00 PM PDT Updated on October 7, 2015 — 6:31 AM PDT
In North America's Costliest City, Rich Chinese Take the Blame - Bloomberg Business

James Hankle, a 50-something software engineer sporting blue jeans and a Green Party T-shirt, is explaining his fix for Vancouver’s runaway property prices when he’s interrupted by an eavesdropping passerby: “Stop allowing people from China to buy our houses and leave them vacant,” she says and walks away.
Despite British Columbia’s aversion to pipelines and affection for pot, housing affordability has pushed both aside as the number one issue raised by area residents in the run-up to Canada’s election this month. It’s not completely surprising given that Vancouver has become North America’s most expensive city.
Surging purchase prices have triggered protest movements like #donthave1million, started by a group of young professionals frustrated at being shut out of home ownership. They complain of having to delay starting families as they remain bunked in with roommates, often into their 30s and beyond.
The affordability issue speaks to broader campaign themes: the difficulty young people face getting established in the labor market, the economic anxieties of the middle class, growing concerns about income inequality, support for families with children. Residents also increasingly point fingers at wealthy Chinese immigrants and investors whose lavish embrace of the Pacific metropolis of 2.5 million has inspired reality TV shows with such gaudy names as “Ultra Rich Asian Girls in Vancouver.”
Vancouver, with its C$2.23 million ($1.7 million) average price tag for a detached home is playing an unusual role in the national election to be held Oct. 19. British Columbia is the only place where all four national parties are competitive -- the Conservatives, Liberals, New Democrats and Greens -- and, given the tightness of the race, its choices could spell the difference. As of now, the New Democrats and Liberals look likely to take some seats away from the Conservatives in the region, according to poll aggregator ThreeHundredEight.com.

Campaign Fodder

The top contenders for prime minister, incumbent Conservative Stephen Harper, Liberal Justin Trudeau and New Democrat Tom Mulcair, have all given voice on campaign stopovers to the city’s particular anxiety by promising they will, if elected, gather data on foreign ownership of its pricey condos and bungalows. “There are real concerns that foreign, non-resident real estate speculation is the reason some Canadian families find house prices beyond their budgets,” Harper said Aug. 12 in Vancouver. “That is a matter we can and should do something about.”
Though no expert on the subject, Hankle, like just about everyone else across the city, is obsessed with the topic and increasingly resigned to never owning a house himself. Standing in Yaletown, a one-time industrial site where nearby two-bedroom apartments can go for C$1.8 million, he calls on political parties competing for his vote to build more low-cost housing and introduce programs to guarantee people a livable minimum income.
He also picks up on the theme of the passing woman, saying governments need to begin collecting data on exactly who’s coming into the city and their impact on affordability. “There’s a huge concentration of wealth and it just isn’t sustainable,” he says.

Bubble Unburst

Unlike the U.S., Canada didn’t experience a housing price collapse with the global recession and has defied predictions ever since that the bubble is about to burst. With the exception of declines in 2009, 2012 and 2013, housing prices have risen in each of the past 15 years, with the cost doubling from August 2005 to 2015, according to the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver, out-pacing wage gains.
“Our big challenge is affordable housing,” said Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson, in a Sept. 25 interview at Bloomberg headquarters in New York. “It’s been difficult to deal with more affordable housing for a younger work force in particular.”
The Economist Intelligence Unit has named Vancouver the most expensive city to live in North America and a 2014 study by consultancy Demographia cited it as the second-least affordable housing market in the world after Hong Kong. Rising prices in Vancouver pushed housing affordability to “risky levels” in the second quarter as the costs of owning a bungalow rose to an unprecedented 86.9 percent of household income, an August report by RBC Capital Markets said.
“There’s national trend on affordability and it gets especially bleak in Vancouver,” said Paul Kershaw, an associate professor at the University of British Columbia who studies the impacts of public policy on housing. “The dynamic is signaling a change in the standard of living and home ownership that has been the norm for previous generations.”

Record Debt

Vancouver’s 25-to-34 year old cohort earns less and carries more debt than a generation ago, Kershaw said, meaning it now takes 10 working years to save for a down payment versus two years back then.
Although harder pressed, Vancouver families are in good company in borrowing more and more to get ahead. The debt of the average Canadian household now stands at a record 165 percent of disposable income, according to Statistics Canada, about 30 points higher than before the recession and matching the levels of U.S. debt when its housing market crashed. Still, in Vancouver at least, prices are galloping ahead so quickly, they “make it a stretch” for a typical household to get into the market.
“It’s possible to live decently here as long as you’re single and don’t have dependents,” said Scott McFadyen, a 38-year-old audio designer in the video game industry who moved to Vancouver from Alberta. “Truthfully, I’m thinking twice about starting a family here.”

Here are more links:

http://www.vancouversun.com/business..._lsa=4f87-1906

In Vancouver, North America?s most expensive city, rich Chinese take the blame for skyrocketing home prices | Financial Post

water found on mars

Yawn and why not post this in the on going real estate thread?

Because timpo, that's why :badpokerface:

The real truth at the root of the problem.

Banks creating money out of nothing and lending it on interest. 18:45 - 22:50

^ This is called fiat currency, quite common sense.
It was initiated by goldsmith, when they realized that people rarely ask for actual gold.

If you look at balance sheet, liability and asset should be equal in a perfect world. In reality though, asset and liability will never be equal. There are probably 100x more liability than asset.

We are living in this "virtual money" and they're all data. No physical money.
However, if you look at society as a whole, without those virtual money, our society with multiple skyscraper will never work. Because there's only so much "real" money. If that makes sense.

Timpo is still in Victoria? should deport them all to Vancouver Island and blow up tsawwassen.

Vancouver, BC - North America's Costliest City, Rich Chinese are to Blame
 

yawwn
another blame the Chinese thread

We're blaming the open market allowing foreign ownership. Yes the majority are Chinese but nobody is "blaming" them.

RS kidnap crew

Yawn Timpo talking about balance sheet.

No kidding eh.

I thought the only thing Timpo knew how to balance was:

GTR = BEST

it's pretty gratifying to see a poster like Timpo get this treatment.

oh yea, all that stupid shit you've said over the years? we just discount you like a drunk bitch at the club now.

Just tax more on those people who sell their properties within 2 - 5 years of purchase, the sooner they sell, the more tax they pay. This won't drive current investors out but could stop new ones coming in.

Property investments need to stop so those who truly wants to own a house and live in Vancouver can ACTUALLY buy a house.

Blame the government that whored this place out.

We would just have even MORE empty $2,000,000 houses around. We don't need that

With this kind of setup they were able to create the American depression... the bankers pulled in their loans and limited circulating currency. People resorted to selling their farms and daughters for sex. When that eventually happens in Canada, like in this forum, an escape goat will be Pavlov'd in, like the foreign buyers, to put the blame on.

TBH, I think it's already too late. Vancouver RE has hit the point of no return.

We have had more than a decade of RE boom. So, a good number of people have their entire saving tie to their home and are basically counting their retirement on that because they simply doesn't make enough to bring food to the table, pay the mortgage and still have a good chunk to save up for rainy days or other investments. CBC or Global did a note recently that 1 in 6 Canadian can't pay for the mortgage if the monthly goes up by 500/mth. And over 25% say they need to re-budget. And at today's market where carrying a mortgage of over half million is more than normal, it doesn't take much to increase by $500 a month.

You don't tank the market, the youth (20s) can't afford it. You tank the market, the older can't/won't retire creating high youth unemployment rate.

The only viable solution is slow down the price increase, hoping it won't tank and wage would catch up. Politically speaking though? Just let the other party to take the blame. :troll:

escape goats, that's a new one

Yeah, wage will not increase pass the point where you can afford a house at the current price range. I remember reading a report that an average household needs to be making $50/hr - $78/hr to actually buy a decent house and support their family.

The best solution is definitely tank the house price so some of us and our next generation can actually afford one. Those stuck with a property already will just have to suck it up and accept the depreciation of their homes. Most likely, these people weren't gonna sell anyways and in the long run, people in the future can actually have a house that they actually live in.

Housing prices tank people owning houses lose there shirts. New construction stops people lose there job the economy suffers. People are now making less money so they still can't afford a home.

numerous people i know purchased houses completely on their own through simply hard work and sacrifice. albeit in Langley and Walnut grove, but these people just busted their asses and worked while going to school, worked two jobs, saved every time, and now own 600,800k houses.. dual income but no help from parents etc.

i think people need to get their heads out of their asses in thinking working some median job making 45k a year is ever going to get them into the housing market, it's not realistic.

politics

Why fix stuff, when you can just point fingers?

(and possibly profit from it)

where is gululu :suspicious: