If any realtor is "forcing" you to take a price, you must be elderly or stupid.

Unless somone is in tough with their mortgage right now, selling well below the point they may have got 3-6 months ago seems short sighted, especially with the prices rentals are going for.

Btw..so where is the best place to look for rentals? CL?

Lots of anxiety in everyone's post. 15% foreign tax does not break the camels back. Look around there's no where to build. Once the dust settle it'll pick up again.

Perhaps you should look a little harder. Have you ever been to Richmond? Ladner? Tswassen? Langley? This doesn't matter about demand at this point anyways. What matters is people actually need to have an income to pay for their place to live at some point.
It's funny how many live in denial that there is a breaking point. Just because it took so long to reach doesn't mean it will never exist.

Don't even have to leave the city. Southlands. No where left to build cause we need this giant space to ride horses....

Ludepower is right though - there are very few places left in the Metro Vancouver where new single family homes are being built. The future is multi-family. If you want a new single family lot, you're looking at leasehold on Indian reserve or somewhere in the Abbotsford, Mission, or Chilliwack. You're never going to get politicians who will upheave the ALR.

If you look at any community plan for new subdivisions, you'll see that townhouses and apartments are the dominant housing forms. The millennials are whiny, but they are the largest group since the boomers. As we age, we're going to want more space. There aren't enough lots in Metro Vancouver to satisfy demand, foreign ownership notwithstanding.

It's true detached housing is giving way for townhouses and towers, but that doesn't really mean anyone looking for a house has a bottomless wallet to keep up with these skyrocketing prices. If you're a local then there's a limit to what you can afford, who's to say that the reason things started slowing down before the tax was even introduced was because the majority of people are maxed out?

^ Two points about what's driving locals' affordability.

I think affordability has changed due to low interest rates and perceptions around debt. People are no longer afraid to carry housing debt; housing is now viewed as a monthly cost as opposed to a 20-25 year burden that has to be paid off ASAP. Also, people are a lot more informed when it comes to investing - leverage is no longer the dirty word that it once was.

The millennials stand to inherent the greatest amount of wealth in modern history. Lots of people in their 30s have been the beneficiaries of their parents' generosity. (People in this thread have admitted as much) Others are being given houses by their parents or other relatives. It sucks that honest people like you who are trying to do it the old-fashioned way are getting shoved aside.

I don't know if I'd call it informed about investing, and moreso people just assuming everyone else is living paycheck to paycheck so they might as well too.

I read in the paper this morning that 53% of workers in BC wouldn't be able to pay their bills if their cheque was delayed just one week. More then half save less than 5% of their net pay.

Like a lot of people, I'll come into some money eventually from my parents, but it will mostly come from whatever their house is worth, or what they sold it for. I know a lot of boomers are only as rich as whatever their house is worth at the time.

As I've said before, there are lots of young people who are okay because they married into money, or have the benefit of secure jobs with lucrative defined contribution or defined benefit pensions. Maybe you don't have these people in your social circle? Many of the women I went to high school with went on to become teachers, nurses, or accountants. Many of the men I know went on to become accountants or engineers. I guess it's an ethnic East Van thing?

I know people who went on to be successful, and I know more people who are just average people trying to afford metro Vancouver.

I'm not denying that there are plenty of well off people in the lower mainland who can afford 2 million for a house, but these prices aren't sustainable even for a good amount of the top 10%.

2 million for a house isn't sustainable for the top 0.1% man.
You think an engineer and a nurse can afford a 2 million dollar home? Maybe after 10-15 years of saving a down payment.
Although if they live off of $200 bucks a month for food.......:heckno:

But China will always be there to pick up the slack when prices start to level off right?

Becuz world class city (with no one to work any jobs there)

I think most people's definitions of a "home" are off-base

For your "average" person, you can't afford a detached home, period.

Hell, for your average person, you can't afford a detached home in Kamloops let alone Vancouver.

Was looking at 100 mile real estate last weekend, anything that would even be remotely acceptable for me to move up there was 650+

3500sq foot homes on 5 acers up there are going for 800-2.5

I think a lot of people locally just don't have shit for savings, have bad habits in terms of spending/saving and they don't even look at real estate which may be achievable for them within 1-3 years of decent saving. They just turn a blind eye to the market and keep preaching unaffordabillity.

I'm curious for anyone who owns a detached home in this thread, how did you come about it? Did you rent and save a shitload of money over the course of several years, live with your folks rent free and save a shitload, get help with the down payment, inherit the house from your family, or buy 10+ years ago before your house price doubled?

I'm curious to know how people were able to get in on dat exclusive detached home club.

Well, just read all the new phone threads and see how many people are buying a new phone every year.
All the new cars on the road.

My friend is in the midst of getting a divorce with his wife and they have 3 kids.
So the first thing he did was go to MB and lease an E coupe. :rukidding:

I think a lot of the spending stems from hopelessness of ever owning a home at this point though. It's the thought of "yeah I saved 30k over the last 5 years. What the fuck is it going to do for me?" Might as well just buy that fr-s and the rocket bunny kit you want because it isn't going to do much in terms of a down payment.

We bought our condo in 2008, sold in 2015. We would be lucky to have netted 10k from our condo over that period as we got stuck with a huge special assessment during our ownership, on top of the annual maintenance related special assessments. We both held average paying jobs, but during that period there were only 2 years that we both earned a full year's salary for 1 reason or another. We lived smartly and prioritized our savings to the house we knew we wanted to move towards.

Bought our house in Coquitlam at the end of 2014, which at the time we felt we were overpaying for due to 10-15% price increase from 2013. But we wanted/needed the space, and I was done with strata living. We carry a very reasonable mortgage as we were able to put down 50% on the house. I have no idea what the house is actually worth on the market right now, it really doesn't matter, but I figure probably 25-40% over what we paid.

If we were looking to buy now, we probably still would. Our finances wouldn't be as flexible and our buffer would be slimmer, but it would still be quite manageable. But make no mistake we planned a long time for this, and we did make certain concessions in our lifestyle for this (but nowhere near having to eat kd or instant noodles and sacrificing modest annual vacations/trips)

Lots of people borrowed from mommy and daddy (interest free fuck yeah), then preach to the rest of the peasants that y'all need to save more and eat $200 a month. I was riding the SkyTrain a few months back and overheard a guy on the phone with his mom talking about down payment in the tune of 80k. Guy looks like shit. A few of my colleagues are also parents-powered.

Price being out of wack has nothing to do with "you need to work harder and save more". I guess Vancouver people on average are a bunch of lazy entitled motherfuckers and everywhere else on the world, people work 60/80 hours a week hard and eat $200 a month. GTFO.

$400k below ask or 20% haircut. No other offers. Yeah I'm sure your paper profit will be fine.

People talk about how they aren't building single family residential in Vancouver anymore, thus the scramble to purchase property. Guess what, Vancouver was built out decades ago.

And as for the Metro region itself, it's not like the mountains, oceans and US border appeared out of nowhere. We all know how much land we have to work with. Yes it is diminishing as time goes on, and new development moves further east into Langley and Abbotsford.

These aren't new issues! But it seems as though many people's heads were in the sand and only in the last few years they are "OMG Metro Vancouver is running out of land!!! Better buy now!" :rukidding:

You were able to save up for 50% of your house, or you got the money through saving and help somewhere else? I'm just asking cause 50% is a lot for a down payment on a house which means you must have had at least 200-300k to put down at the time.

My first place was a 3 bedroom townhouse, I put 5% down which at the time was fuck all. I lived there for 5 years, had a kid decided we needed some more space. Sold when mortgage came due and doubled our money the market had been going up at the time. We bought a brand new 5 bedroom house in Cloverdale 9 years ago, if we sold today we'd get 30-35% more then we paid then. My mortgage is small in comparison to what most people carry now a days, I'll be mortgage free when my son graduates, he's in grade 5 right now.

I don't know how people are doing it, I couldn't save the down payment required now a days.

I think in a city like Vancouver that's full of Asians, it's evident that some people are powered by parents. But white boomers are increasingly helping out their kids too. I'm seeing it first hand.

It shouldn't be like this, but it is what it is. What's next? People are going to demand that our governments prohibit parental support?

I totally agree with this; then complain . But then at the root of it, that's just lack of discipline no?

People being helped by their parents aren't the driving force behind the increases. Those are simply a reaction of necessity because of the market. A major problem is investors and corporations with billions of dollars in real estate that control the demand by removing such large amounts of the supply that they can influence prices. It's like the guy with 500 Porsches in his warehouse offering 100 cars up for ridiculous prices. People see comparable a on the market and match the ridiculous asking prices and it becomes the new norm. It continues to climb until people refuse to buy. When so much of a market is controlled by so few they can manipulat it to ridiculous levels.