This is what I always tell my friends, Vancouver real estate is borderline free in comparison to HK pricing. Last I recall the "normal" condo over there was like 150-200sqft, and in newer builds the pricing was 500k+ for those. People in 500-700sqft condos are considered rich. If you have a view then you are hard baller.

Then bring in the whole cage home issues, it's pretty crazy.

No wonder people from HK buy property here like it's a subway lunch.

And then that watch goes on a display case in your house, just to flex on your friends.

I remember working at my old company 10 years ago, and my journeyman was telling me when he went back home to HK, he would go to friends houses dinners. Some of his friends would have a 10k DSLR camera just sitting on a shelf, just to flex. They didn't even know how to take pictures with it.
I thought that was insane, but that's just Chinese/HK culture according to him.

Cov approves tripling development fees adding $10,000 to each new home built

https://vancouver.citynews.ca/2023/1...pment-charges/

Can’t wait for even more homeless people roaming around! Gonna be pretty sweet

When an average new build costs at the minimum 500k nowadays, what's another 10k :pokerface:

Why didn’t they just keep the stupid empty homes tax at 3% fuck it, make it 20

Punish the speculation not the people trying to solve the problem. Fuck

This is true on many levels.

I've been hearing from my parents' group on politics and they always say "oh, this candidate is supported by xxx and he puts yyy amount of money in political donation."

And if you really think about it, it's fucked up. We are not talking about national elections for presidents or PMs... but mayors and city councils.

If you look into political donation of these "local" elections, 20-50k donation is huge in their campaign. And many of these folks that my parents hang out with are in RE development. Imagine having mayors and city councils at your disposal for what's basically some spare change in a project of 50mil+.

Life is like monopoly for a handful of people.

Absolutely. This place is utterly insane. Shanghai is pretty much like this now too but OG Hong Kong RE is mind blowing. I mean the whole friggin area is less than 200km including the “dangerous” new territories that none of these ultra wealthy wackos would ever be caught dead in. In fact I got a feeling they don’t leave central or even go to the Kowloon side.

I wanted to go see tai-o (a fishing village closer to the airport) and people are telling me I’ll be made into char sui if I go. I’m like wtf ? It’s literally only 50km from central.

https://imageupload.io/2d6Nu0gcKRrEK31

Vancouver / Canada is at least is trying to stop this sort of runaway RE madness. It’s more socialist than communist China lawl.

Don't let people scare you - New Territories is fine, especially the eastern towns like Tai Po and Sai Kung. Yuen Long is the place to go if you want to live a little - there's chicken there if that's you're thing. Fun Trivia: the area where Yoho Mall is on now in YL used to be called 雞地 (chicken land) as it was a live chicken market.

Hong Kong RE is just a different animal. There are those that can't afford anything, then there are those who buy each of their kids a new townhouse with family-coordinated vanity plates the moment they turn 18. Even the middle class with down payment money has to strategize when choosing a presale unit since it's chosen on a lottery basis.

You can see the same effect with the most basic form of investing - a savings account.

$10k @ 5% interest vs. $100k @ 5% interest vs. $1m @ 5% interest vs. $100m @ 5% interest.

The wealth gap can ONLY expand.

The only way for us poors to slow down how far we fall behind is by taking on an unproportionate amount of risk.

Lol having over $1M in liquid assets ain't "balling hard" in Vancouver. Fun poll nevertheless...

You shouldn't have included the house for networth. It's skews the results and a house isn't liquid either. What's the point of having $500k in equity from the home when you can't do anything with it unless you sell?

That's silly. The equity of your house is definitely part of your net worth and there are lots of ways to access it without selling it such as refinancing it/securing lines of credit against it.

-Mark

In the technical sense of net worth, of course, include the equity of your house, but if you only have one house I don't see the point in including it.

Just a different perspective. My house isn't an investment, it's a necessity for my family to function, therefore, I will never sell my house. So even if I had $1M of equity in the house, my family still needs a place to live. Assuming i'm not going to move to Alberta or a third world country, having $1M of equity doesn't do anything for me if I need to live in Vancouver because if I sold the house, I would still need to live somewhere.

I'm not going to take a loan on my house to buy a car or go on vacation, that's not financially responsible. I think it's far more informative to know how much liquid assets people have, as these assets can be used to enhance your life without going into debt.

If you had a second property I would include that because that is an investment. One house isn't an investment in my eyes because I would never sell my house.

My buddies parents live on knight street in a Vancouver special, they have three kids, their house has about $100k left on the mortgage. The dad works in a factory making $60k a year and the wife works part-time maybe making $20k a year. They have at least $1M (edit; definitely more) in equity in their house, but so what? What are they going to do with that? Their oldest son lives on the ground level with his wife and kid, and one of the sons lives upstairs with the parents. If the parents sold the house, where would their kids go? The parents are millionaires on paper but how does that enhance their life?

Of course you need to include your home value.


Otherwise by your calculation someone with a 360k apartment but 200k in liquid assets would appear more "balling" than someone with a half paid off 1.5Mil detached and only 100k in liquid assets?

I mean if I had to choose between a yard of my own and never taking a trip outside of the country again, I'd choose the yard.

I think that's a bit rigid.

Let's say Person A had just purchased a house with a $400k downpayment, and had $1.6 million in principal & interest to pay over the next 30 years. And they also have $1.6 million in cash.

Vs Person B who has their entire $2 million mortgage paid off on their house.

You're saying that Person A is better off because they have $1.6 million in liquid assets, whereas Person B is essentially worthless because they aren't allowed to free up any capital from a house that they live in?

There's no difference between Person A taking some of their $1.6M in cash to make a needed purchase, vs Person B taking out a loan against their home to free up cash to make a needed purchase, risk-wise. They're both using the home for collateral on the loan. And neither is more or less likely to lose their home defaulting on their loan: if you can't make mortgage payments, it's the same as not being able to make payments on a loan against your home.

Like imagine someone decided they were going to pay off their mortgage with all their remaining liquid assets. And then next year their kid's unexpectedly going abroad to some really good but expensive university. What's wrong with them taking out a loan against their home to fund that, vs if they'd held off on paying off their mortgage to keep some liquid assets lying around?

So in summary, yes I do think you should include your home that you live in as part of your net worth calculations. I understand your rationale and it's a good heuristic our parents taught us to keep us safe, financially. But it's not the full picture, and it's only helpful if we'd otherwise be thoughtless with our finances.

You guys are definitely right about the net worth argument, there's no question about that. On paper what you guys are saying is correct.

I'm just trying got rationalize this in my head. My friends parents are house rich, but they're cash poor in a sense. Of course it's amazing they have a $2M house in Vancouver that is almost paid off, but I don't see how that helps the parents at this moment. They are not going to sell the house because their children live in it and they're not going to take a HELOC out so they can go on vacation, so it's great they will pass on a detached house to their children when they die, but I don't think they will be able to enjoy the equity they have.

And I feel like there are thousands of people in this exact situation, especially the families that I know. They are house rich but cash poor.

I agree that they would never do it (due to stubborn traditional thinking), but imo they should totally do the HELOC / refinance, go enjoy their lives!

Just my opinion but I don't think parents should feel like they owe their kids a house. And even if it's half a house (because half is still being mortgaged), that's still a house being left to their kids with the mortgage half paid off: isn't that already pretty generous?!

Given their mindset, they wouldn't be enjoying their $ even if it was in an investment account or if it was all cash in a savings account.

Honestly if HELOC wasn't stupid like 9% right now... I would totally GT3 that shit up.... lolol jokin...

hear me out, hear me out... if my wife listened to me, and bought the 458 at 190K... i would have drove for free for 3.5 years and probably got out free with interest/insurance/gas paid for... and now I would have scratched that itch and can forever remember that f-car experience of "once upon a time, when your dad was irresponsible and stupid"....

But no... HELOC is 9% and 458 are now 350K lmao...

Don't listen to your wife tomorrow, go buy a 458, post it on the latest pic of your whip thread by Sunday.

Do us proud dark0821

I'm not sure if this is the case. It's much easier to sell some stock and spend it than to take a HELOC on the house.

They're not so stingy they won't spend money, but they just don't have a lot of cash flow. It's hard to do things without cash flow.

Jesus so much back and forth whether or not housing is considered net worth.

The literal definition and formula for net worth is your assets minus liabilities. Of course home equity is part of net worth, no argument. It's like debating how long an inch is.

If you want to use another metric to compare your financial dick size with the rest of RS go for it, but net worth is net worth.

For me I measure dick size from my taint to just past the tip.

^ Well... that was graphic lol

Hard or soft tho?

Revscene 2023.

What would the founders say. :heckno: