When i bought my home i used an inspector and he noted most of the things I saw wrong with the building, the only important one was an issue with air circulation for the roof. I needed to provide BCAA documentation of what type of wiring I had before I was approved for home insurance and was able to just send them a copy of the report. Was also able to use his report to lower the sell.

funny, i have close friends who just bought a house and they're about 20k deep in repairs (not renos) for a 20 something year-old house.

i want to say they shouldn't have been surprised given the age, but they were haha

that'll be another $500 and you can get a report on the spot.

$20k in repairs? :ohgodwhy: did an upstairs bathtub fall through the ceiling or something?

leaks leading to floors/walls/parts of ceilings being replaced, mold, replacement of leaky appliances, etc.

but they're in a house they'll probably be in forever in a neighborhood where they both grew up and like, so what's 20k on a $1.5M+ asset lol #staypositive

With how much prices have risen in the last year alone I think it's safe to say a lot of people are buying places 20-40 years old, spending more than they want to because if they don't offer more than asking price with no subjects they aren't even considered.

That 20k they might have saved for repairs probably went to outbid the next guy.

Or I could be wrong, and everyone's wages just went through the roof the last couple years.

always back onto the personal attacks.

one can be content with life - that's not the issue. the issue is hte whole 'best place on earth' 'it's different here' 'prices will always go up because everyone wants to live here'

there's a difference between live and let live and the total ignorance of the general public in vancouver.

living in vancouver, renting at reasonable multiples - having freedom to enjoy life and not be a slave to a BS corrupt real estate market, that's a life I can support. Saying prices will always go up, buy, buy, buy, it's different - yes, i'm close minded to that lifestyle!

you call me close minded, i'd say right back at you.

This thread is now 4 years old, and for 4 years you have been saying the same shit. Yet here we are and prices have doubled up. So if you had been a "slave to the real estate market" you would have made a bunch of money, and could have lived in beautiful british columbia all this time.

Will the market crash here someday? Yes absolutely. But if it takes 10 years, and some idiot has been standing on the sidelines for 10 years saying its all gonna crumble, nobody is gonna think that idiot was anything but an idiot.

I'll take this a different direction.

Say I can afford a million dollars to spend on a house right now. I would spend that on a detached house in north vancouver, you tell me where you would spend it, and I'll see which one was a better investment in 4 years. In 4 years if my house in North van was definitively a better investment than whatever location you choose. You have to change your Username to IDIOT405. If your investment was definitively better than mine I will change my username to whatever you like.

And don't bullshit me and tell me "I would put it into mutual funds or the stock market". I have money in those, I want to diversify and real estate is the method of which I am choosing.

Deal?

Just to chime in on the topic of whether housing is a good investment and when it is going to crash -- there is no doubt that 4444 has missed the mark for the past 4 years. The fact is, RE prices are soaring through the roof, and has been doing so for the past 10+ years, with the last several years being especially ridiculous.

I think we would all agree that the fundamentals are completely out of whack. But then it goes back to the question of how we should invest our dollars. There is a philosophy that an investor should never try to time the market, and I wholeheartedly agree with that. The problem with our runaway RE prices is, because the fundamentals are so completely out of whack, I don't have any confidence that it can sustain the same insane levels in the medium term. And that means I don't feel comfortable investing into it. At the same time, I feel reasonably certain that the insane trends are still going to continue in the immediate to short term -- perhaps up to a year or so, and that means if I am not putting money into the RE game, I am losing out on the investment gains.

So the situation kind of puts me between a rock and a hard place. What is a guy going to do?

...lol a million for a house... hahahaha right keep dreaming ...lol

Im currently going through the process of selling a home in East Van, and in the last few days have met with 5 different realtors on the same house, opinions on the market and pricing are pretty interesting..

Some realtors are useless and i'm the one telling them the price point essentially, they nod and agree and have nothing else to add

others though, who seem like they are fairly well informed and have a good grasp on the market still struggle to price the home.

the "comparables" they have are are all over the place, and even they cant explain it. One house goes for below asking at 1.1 after 3 weeks. Another house in the same area goes for 1.5 and over asking, a very comparable if not worse house that got into a bidding war for whatever reason.

Basically the jist of getting the most money for your home is having people fall in love with stupid shit, like a brightly painted door, light fixtures, etc. lol

I don't know, if someone rented for 10 years instead of getting in the game because they felt prices were over inflated, and that 800k house he was going to buy is now worth 500k I wouldn't call them an idiot for it.

No one saw house prices rising this fast the last year, just like no one knows when it'll correct itself. Some will choose to get in the market, others won't. No one is really right or wrong.

It's my humble opinion that the fundamentals have changed: prevailing low interest rates, city in transition, the rise of China, etc.

What is your objective with RE? Speculation, or buy and hold?

Don't forget the passing of wealth from the older baby boomers who are now cashing out.

what i'd be more interested to see/know is a demographic summary of who is competing for what/which area.

my impression for single detached is that:

van west: wealthy overseas investors/immigrants
van east: mid-high income gen x/y looking upgrade from townhouses or condos

For some reason i have trouble believing that a rich mainlander would want to live in a 30yo vancouver special in east van, hence the more "established" locals competing for those houses.

Late last year I started looking for detached homes in North Van. One popped up, I was out of town and the price was right, I sent my parents to see it. My dad is in construction so he took a quick look around, wasn't much to see the house itself is a raging piece of shit, but the land was still worth it, 50x100 foot lot. Location is decent (just off lonsdale and within 3 blocks of the highway).

I put in an offer without any conditions, and no further inspection. The offer was for full asking. Sellers accepted and I took possession 30 days later which ended up being January 1 of this year.

The price was a hair over 1 million. (less than 1.1).

Realtor I dealt with phoned me two months after I got the place and told me if I wanted to sell it I could get 1.3 for it, I said no. I'm holding on for the ride.

I took a big risk not putting a condition of financing, and it worried me slightly. But in the end I got the mortgage I needed and everything went smoothly...

So far the only hiccup has been that the house has Knob and tube wiring (which gives you an idea of how old and crappy it is). Oh well, plan is to tear it down and build a nice house when I have the funds available.

Gentrification of formerly blue-collar neighbourhoods in East Vancouver is evidence of who's buying where. It's been going on for almost a decade.

Brown people I went to school with in East Van now live in the Valley. White people who would have never touched neighbourhoods east of Main now think Fraser and Main are the places to be. Cedar Cottage, Hastings Sunrise, Trout Lake are all neighbourhoods that the children of affluent locals are living and buying into.

CBCs, like me who grew up in East Van or Burnaby, are moving east into areas like Brentwood, Burquitlam, Coquitlam Centre, or Burke Mountain.

I'd say the definition of "fundamentals" is always on a slow evolution. The prevailing low interest rates is not something I am too concerned about -- as a matter of fact, I find it easier to deal with than the random and immediate adjustments that Greenspan used to pull since there is one less variable. The city is transition bit has also been an on-going theme, but you are definitely correct that the pace of the transition has become a lot faster than it did in the past.

My primary objective with RE is to simply protect my assets / net worth. If I have $2M sitting in the bank right now (obviously I don't), and I can purchase a single detached bungalow today, I want to retain that ability to purchase a similar bungalow 6 months down the road. With the way things are going, that $2M bungalow might be worth $2.5M in 6 months, and $3M+ next year.

My secondary but more pragmatic objective with RE is to actually get myself into a house, and not sink into a negative equity situation should / when the bubble pops. It is probably all but an impossible dream now, but I would like to move back into a house (from my current dinky apartment). My naive and wishful thinking tells me that if I were to leverage myself to the max, and borrow money from parents, family and stuff, it can probably be done. But with RE prices being sky high, the fundamentals completely out of whack, it would be far too big of a risk.

So yes, I am stuck between a rock and a hard place, watching my home ownership dreams runaway while my purchasing power continues to decline.

I've told this story before here, but two different sets of parents of good friends of mine are kinda border line "conspiracy theorists" type people, both of them were convinced that the market was going to crash and crash hard back in 2011. They lived in nice neighborhoods and sold at what they figured was "perfect timing" getting about 630 for 25 year old nicely kept home.

Since they sold they've been renting in a shit area of surrey, paying $2000 or more a month rent, and their house is now worth 1.1 or more.

I'd say they were wrong.

Yep, rock and and a hard place. You have two choices: do something or do nothing. I can say from experience that doing nothing can be just as risky and damaging as doing something.

If you decide to do something, here are some options from my perspective:

- Sell your condo now and buy a detached home where you can reasonably afford to buy one. You're probably looking at Maple Ridge or Aldergrove at this point.
- Stay in the condo and invest in difference and just live your life.
- Sell the condo and make a compromise by buying a townhouse or other strata property.
- Leave and don't look back. (Just don't complain about how the city kicked you out)
- Find a partner with real estate, marry, and combine your assets to buy the home of your dreams.

Everyone here can argue until they are blue in the face on whether real estate is a good investment or not. In the end though, Metro Vancouver's real estate market has been completely commodified to a point where nobody views it anymore as a "home". Prices are absolutely detached from reality. It is the greater fool theory, and everyone is hoping that the house of cards doesn't come crumbling down after they have bought. There are tons of market forces at work that are compounding this situation.

Let's be real here, the majority of the people posting in this thread are probably in the top 15% income bracket for Metro Vancouver. So of course things are great when our families have multiple single family or condo properties that are appreciating at 10+% per month. FUCKING GREAT.

But in the end, this situation is really really bad. It's bad for the region, it's bad for the majority of families, it's bad for neighbourhoods, it's bad for the long term viability of Metro Vancouver. It's not economically sustainable. Vancouver schools are becoming more empty and families flee eastwards. Mixed-income neighborhoods are a thing of the past (unless you count families living in basement suites mixed-income). Families are unable to upgrade and stay in their neighbourhoods as their families grow. People are commuting to their jobs from further and further away, but there is limited public transit infrastructure investment. Families are carrying enormous amounts of debt. There is a flight of knowledge leaving BC in various industries due to the high cost of living and relatively low incomes. Rental properties are severely limited and are at historically low rental vacancy rates, so people who cannot afford a home are also struggling to find basic housing.

Pretty much anything you would want from an urban planning and city building perspective is going out the window.

Here are the goals of the Metro Vancouver 2040 Plan. How well are we doing with these 5 overarching goals?

Metro 2040 Goals

I don't care if my condo has appreciated by 20%. This region is fucked.

i think this is about as accurate as you can get in terms of demographics

That's a nice story, it doesn't say much about their financials when they sold a place for 625 and rent a shithole in Surrey.

So when the real estate market finally hits its limit and people who bought in just before then lose a bunch of money are we going to call them idiots too?

They only lose money if they decide to sell. Just like people only gained money on their RE if they decide to sell.

So if these people bought at the height and the market tanks and the fear of them losing money causes them to sell then yes they are idiots.
But if they hang on to it and ride out the wave while living in their house, then no, they are not idiots.

Pretty much what's been going on so far for the past 4 years: