Vancouver's Real Estate Market

[CivicBlues]

All those ah pors and ah gongs from East Van unknowingly bought into the hottest RE market on the continent 30 years ago for 100K and became net worth multi-millionaires without lifting a finger.

Yeah, biggest buncha losers I've ever seen.

/s

[Hondaracer]

Originally Posted by supafamous

Nowhere do I say they can't afford it (and they've been paying it up till last year) yet your conclusion is that they are living beyond their means.

You seem to live such an incredibly sad life - you hate everything about where you live, you don't find it safe, you think it's a shithole, you call others losers and can't help but putdown people who don't see this horrible country for what you think it is. You seem to live to be angry at the world.

I’m living the Canadian dream bro

Surrounded by crack heads, drowning in debt

[RabidRat]

Maybe it's low key depression. Are you ok?

[JDMDreams]

Well remember this though. The uneducated boomers most likely threw every penny they had into the house to pay it off. So unless they had that much extra money and invested massively in gics which were paying what like 1% a year normally. They wouldn't really have much savings. And they definitely can't unlock a $1.7m heloc with $40000 a year income. They maybe able to chip reverse mortgage up to 55%, but that's another rabbit hole.

[Hondaracer]

Originally Posted by CivicBlues

All those ah pors and ah gongs from East Van unknowingly bought into the hottest RE market on the continent 30 years ago for 100K and became net worth multi-millionaires without lifting a finger.

Yeah, biggest buncha losers I've ever seen.

/s

Ah so the people digging through my recycling?

Definitely winners

Better them than the homeless I suppose

[Jason00S2000]

Originally Posted by supafamous

you think it's a shithole

Buddy... it is 2025... take a fucking look around.

Everything that as a young man that I thought was cool about Canada.... is gone.

Everything that I expected to see in Canada as I got older... never manifested.

Basically the only winning game is getting rich and insulating yourself from the coming shitstorm. HondaRacer might not even agree with me or like me, but he's like the canary in the coal mine. So many people can see the writing on the wall that Canada is going to continue sliding off a cliff.

[Gerbs]

Originally Posted by JDMDreams

Well remember this though. The uneducated boomers most likely threw every penny they had into the house to pay it off. So unless they had that much extra money and invested massively in gics which were paying what like 1% a year normally. They wouldn't really have much savings. And they definitely can't unlock a $1.7m heloc with $40000 a year income. They maybe able to chip reverse mortgage up to 55%, but that's another rabbit hole.

That's true, my parents scrambled enough to DP $150k in 2003, at 52 years old. Every dollar, no investments from equity etc.

[Hondaracer]

So in this same vein.. when everyone goes on about tax the rich bla bla bla

These people with zero liquidity but a 2+ million dollar home without a mortgage, these people are “the rich!” lol honestly.. they aren’t Bezos but they are wealthy enough they access ALL their services for free and don’t pay taxes, or very little tax, on income, property, etc.

Like these boomers who have millions of dollars in wealth in their home, who worked “low end” jobs who likely contributed the bare minimum on OAS and CPP through their taxes are now deferring their property taxes and are the greatest users of:

Social assistance
Social services
Healthcare

These peoples wealth could be paying for their own services, yet someone living in a 3 million dollar home is eligible for govt. funded dental care?

For lack of a better term, these boomers who did not build a retirement independent of their home are just leaches.

On top of that, withholding SFH drives up prices, money now is worth WAY MORE than money later in terms of deferment, etc.

Am I wrong?

[JDMDreams]

I don't think deferring sale of sfh is a people problem. I think it's a government problem. It's the govs choice to gate keep and milk property tax, developer fees, house building permit fees. There's nothing stopping them from building a road up north Van mountains and start developing. Or use all the warehouse land, so called alr to grow fucking blue berries. Literally drive down highway 1 or out east or north. There's plenty of low density/ unused land within 30 min from Van that the gov chose to not develop. But rather waste money on drugs, and free handouts to illegal migrants.

[CivicBlues]

Originally Posted by Hondaracer

Ah so the people digging through my recycling?

Definitely winners

Better them than the homeless I suppose

Yeah every single one of them is a bottle collector. Come on man, there's like 1 or 2 per neighbourhood.

[Badhobz]

Or you know just make more of Richmond. Start filling her out westwards. Endless low tidal flats to make more land.

[Hondaracer]

Originally Posted by CivicBlues

Yeah every single one of them is a bottle collector. Come on man, there's like 1 or 2 per neighbourhood.

I’m just being a dummy.

I love my man John, gives me vegetables in exchange for cans. Although I think he got squeezed on his territory

[Tapioca]

Surprised that no one is talking about this landmark court decision that dropped on Friday afternoon:

https://www.biv.com/news/cowichan-tr...lands-11053714

Full decision is here: https://www.bccourts.ca/jdb-txt/sc/2...25BCSC1490.htm

The BC government announced their intention to appeal: https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2025AG0041-000758

[supafamous]

Originally Posted by Hondaracer

So in this same vein.. when everyone goes on about tax the rich bla bla bla

These people with zero liquidity but a 2+ million dollar home without a mortgage, these people are “the rich!” lol honestly.. they aren’t Bezos but they are wealthy enough they access ALL their services for free and don’t pay taxes, or very little tax, on income, property, etc.

Like these boomers who have millions of dollars in wealth in their home, who worked “low end” jobs who likely contributed the bare minimum on OAS and CPP through their taxes are now deferring their property taxes and are the greatest users of:

Social assistance
Social services
Healthcare

These peoples wealth could be paying for their own services, yet someone living in a 3 million dollar home is eligible for govt. funded dental care?

For lack of a better term, these boomers who did not build a retirement independent of their home are just leaches.

On top of that, withholding SFH drives up prices, money now is worth WAY MORE than money later in terms of deferment, etc.

Am I wrong?

Even if these people downsize and we implement some form of net worth requirement the odds that many of them would exceed that threshold are exceedingly low because having a million bucks (what's left after a downsize) wouldn't even touch the upper end of net worth for that age group. Median net worth for a senior is around 800k in Canada - making these people sell their homes just to charge them for social services that all Canadians are entitled to sure seems like a real asshole move.

And using $3m is just your douchey way of trying to make these working class folk sound way richer than they actually are. My in-laws' house is assessed at $1.7m - after taxes and fees they'd walk away with a bit more than $1.5m (and then have nowhere to live). The folks who worked minimum wage jobs and managed to stumble their way into a $3m home are exceedingly rare - there's not even that many detached houses in Vancouver (40k of them - about 15% of housing stock. Burnaby is 18% of housing stock with 19k units).

About 2.2m Canadians get GIS (these are folks with too little CPP) - I bet there's fewer than a thousand of these folks who own a $3m home. Basic math (60k detached homes in Van/BBY) would suggest that maybe best/worst case is that there are a few thousand who own a home worth more than $1.5m in the GVRD. Of the various demographics that take "advantage" of our social services this isn't really a group worth targeting.

With that said...

I think property taxes are far too low and stuff like restrictive zoning, property tax deferrals, homeowner grants (I fucking hate the grant) are all giveaways to homeowners. Get rid of the grant, double property taxes (or more), kill the property transfer tax and upzone all residential zones to allow 4-8plex units by right (and upzone for apartments everywhere else).

We have to make it feasible for people in these million dollar homes to downsize in a reasonable way that allows them to stay in their neighbourhoods while also removing incentives for them to stay in their detached homes. We need land use to reflect its value (thus higher property taxes and more up zoning).

I understand why elderly people do not want to relocate - there's often decades of routine and access to specialised services that are hard to replace especially if they cannot drive any longer. The way we zone land gives them few good options to downsize - try staying in the same neighbourhood if you live in a detached home in Burnaby, it's basically impossible. Aside: the location of senior homes is super sad, they are basically prisons for them (see: https://maps.app.goo.gl/TgEArZTg37Mh9YCK8)

If you get rid of the grant and the PPT while doubling property taxes (or thereabouts) I imagine we'd probably net out around the same total taxes - it'd just be different people paying it (but the right people paying it).

[Hondaracer]

Build purpose built rental housing. Which seems to be the new thing anyways albeit ridiculously expensive.

With 1.5 million in cash they wouldn’t just “not have a place to live” they could rent and spend the rest until they died and likely still have a substantial sum to leave behind.

The bizarre tend, mostly with first generation immigrants, where you basically live in a dilapidated shack until you’re either dead or it falls in around you really does no one any good. Not them, not their children, etc. but people are stuck in their ways and “cultural norms” put up road blocks for families

[68style]

Originally Posted by Hondaracer

Am I wrong?

I am beyond shocked you’re picking on boomers instead of all the people who bring their retired parents over from wherever to fill up hospitals, buy land and use services to the max without ever having contributed one single tax dollar into the country

[GS8]

Originally Posted by Jason00S2000

Basically the only winning game is getting rich and insulating yourself from the coming shitstorm.

So what you're saying is most of revscene is perfectly safe

[JDMDreams]

Even if you have $1.5m cash after selling your house. You're still pretty poor. Let's say you bought an average on the cheap end 2 bed condo. That's still easily $800000. And the gov wants their ptt or gst on that, so another $50000 gone.

That's only $650000. Split between 2 people, $325000 each. That's no where near rich. You're gonna be burning at least $500 a month on strata, $200 on insurance, another $300 on property tax before utilities, TV etc.

So you went from 2000 sq, + basement rental. For 800 sq, your cost expenses hasn't gone down much + now you lose rental income. So why downsize?

[Hondaracer]

Originally Posted by JDMDreams

Even if you have $1.5m cash after selling your house. You're still pretty poor. Let's say you bought an average on the cheap end 2 bed condo. That's still easily $800000. And the gov wants their ptt or gst on that, so another $50000 gone.

That's only $650000. Split between 2 people, $325000 each. That's no where near rich. You're gonna be burning at least $500 a month on strata, $200 on insurance, another $300 on property tax before utilities, TV etc.

So you went from 2000 sq, + basement rental. For 800 sq, your cost expenses hasn't gone down much + now you lose rental income. So why downsize?

15 years of rent at $4000 a month is about $720,000. You’d then have $800,000 to live off for those 15 years, $53,000 or so a year

You downsize because then you’re liquid.

But yes, many would rather live where they are familiar and many have no need of money if you don’t travel and just hoard or whatever you do lol

[JDMDreams]

$53000 a year + let's say $24000 from gov = $77000 - $48000 rent = $29000 left /12 month = $2416 between two ppl a month is pretty poor.

[RevYouUp]

The $53,000 a year is the net amount of $800K after subtracting $700k of rent at $4,000 a month for 15 years (Hondas being generous $4K a month pretty much covers all living expenses)

$77,000 a year between two people after gov money is pretty high standard of living with rent already paid lol.

This is all assuming these people that downsize don’t invest their capital at least in a GIC and get 3% returns right now lol. 3% return on 800k is already 24k a year in interest income.

Don’t lie to yourselves, old people not downgrading their $1m properties make no sense, while milking social services and cheaping out on their own health/dental because they’re “poor”. I got no sympathy for the boomers that complain about living costs while living in a $1.5m+ paid off property. Everyone’s just lazy to get their asses moving after living in a place for 20+ years and too attached to their homes.

[Tapioca]

It's easy to look at this from a numbers perspective, but we all know the downsides of living in an apartment building. Everyone here wants a detached house, or at least, ground-oriented housing with a separate entrance, garage, etc.

Modern high rises are pretty unappealing for seniors, to be honest. Most are still not climate controlled, there's little community, no areas to keep a small garden, etc. My mom moved to a seniors only complex and it's pretty good, but most developers don't build this type of housing (e.g. with good amenities like sufficient meeting space, shop room, etc) because it doesn't sell.

It's why the well off are stratafying/subdividing their larger lots and building coach houses, laneways, etc.

[Hondaracer]

There are very few elderly people who are still utilizing what a SFH offers. Especially those 70+ most can’t even keep up with the most basic upkeep. Hell, I’m not even 40 and I’ve got ample free time and I can barely keep up.

In my experience with friends and family, seniors in these situations are generally VERY isolated. Especially if one of them dies early. People are stubborn and obviously push back against change but in general I’d say moving to assisted living or a seniors community is a huge step up for their health and social aspects.

[yray]

There's a single senior that lives across the street, nurses comes by every day. Handy bus comes by every 2 days to drop him off from his hospital appointments. Best part is after the handy bus drops him off, he goes out and drives his RX or camry.

ambulance seems to come by once a month too

[bcrdukes]

Originally Posted by yray

There's a single senior that lives across the street, nurses comes by every day. Handy bus comes by every 2 days to drop him off from his hospital appointments. Best part is after the handy bus drops him off, he goes out and drives his RX or camry.

ambulance seems to come by once a month too

Did you just describe future Badhobz?