Vancouver's Real Estate Market

[sdubfid]

I live in yaletown among the fancy people and you can expect this almost daily on the way up to $3500 cell. Dog urine

[Hondaracer]

We are just finishing our suite in east Van and i'm debating what to set the rent at considering prices around

pretty much 6 bus stops from Water front, Hastings/Nanaimo area, it's a ground level suite, 700 sq ft, really nice brand new 1 BR, full laundry in suite, radiant heated bathroom floors, etc.

only downside is the ceiling height isnt great at just under 7 feet..

still thinking should be able to get 1500+ with all utilities, cable/internet included

[Selanne_200]

Not so sure what you can get in that particular area but 1500 might be a bit of a stretch for a one bedroom in a ground level suite when you can rent a condo for around the same price. Also, a quick look on craigslist shows that 2 BR suite are asking for 1550 fully furnished.

[SkunkWorks]

RS, any thoughts on what a 1200 sq ft. 3 bed 2 bath condo right beside the Yaletown station would rent at monthly?

[westopher]

4k?

[godwin]

Don't give internet / cable out if you are sharing and not that tech inclined (ie cannot control QoS etc).. most people that would rent in that area are millennials and will have data plans anyways. I have seen too many renters abuse internet use.. do you really need to run BT 24/7 at full blast?

Originally Posted by Hondaracer

We are just finishing our suite in east Van and i'm debating what to set the rent at considering prices around

pretty much 6 bus stops from Water front, Hastings/Nanaimo area, it's a ground level suite, 700 sq ft, really nice brand new 1 BR, full laundry in suite, radiant heated bathroom floors, etc.

only downside is the ceiling height isnt great at just under 7 feet..

still thinking should be able to get 1500+ with all utilities, cable/internet included

[twitchyzero]

quick question on rental increases maximum

does it apply to ALL rental even one without valid contract?

long story short: my contract was up last summer...last few months was month-to-month...landlord is trying to spin it that the maximum rate hike only applies if I'm still under the contract.

note: on the original contract i chose month-to-month option after agreement date ended which states tenancy will stay on the same terms. But the rate increase document doesn't specify the type of tenancy it covers.

[snowball]

Originally Posted by twitchyzero

quick question on rental increases maximum

does it apply to ALL rental even one without valid contract?

long story short: my contract was up last summer...last few months was month-to-month...landlord is trying to spin it that the maximum rate hike only applies if I'm still under the contract.

note: on the original contract i chose month-to-month option after agreement date ended which states tenancy will stay on the same terms. But the rate increase document doesn't specify the type of tenancy it covers.

Applies for duration of tenancy regardless of when your lease expired! Don't get fleeced! IIRC it can only be done once a year max as well.

[twitchyzero]

^ confirmed by the Residential Tenancy Branch

on the note of the upcoming program from the Liberals

someone crunched the numbers on the mtg insurance premium vs interest-free down payment loan

Compare this maximum premium of $26,950 that you might pay, with the maximum benefits you can get from this program (which is max $37,500 interest free for 5 years), assume 4% mortgage interest you don’t have to pay for 5 years is $37,500 x 4% x 5 = $7,500.

In this example they are giving you $7,500 while making you pay $26,950 more to join home ownership. If you passed Math 8, you know if this is a good deal or not.

https://colinngblog.wordpress.com/20...f-the-program/

[unit]

the fact that they are encouraging people with household incomes below 150k to purchase up to 750k on assistance is a little scary.

[lowside67]

Originally Posted by twitchyzero

someone crunched the numbers on the mtg insurance premium vs interest-free down payment loan

https://colinngblog.wordpress.com/20...f-the-program/

Pretty dumb post. The entire crux of his article is that you should just "save up more money" because mortgage insurance is expensive - thanks bro.

I paid for mortgage insurance and it was not inexpensive, mine was about $10k. On the other hand, the mortgage insurance also allowed me to get in with about $40k less down than if I had put 20% down which equated to about an extra 2.5 years of saving. In that 2.5 years, my place has gone up in value by nearly $100k and I am repaying my mortgage at an accelerated pace allowing me to build equity faster. The $10k "cost" was an excellent investment.

To simply make a blanket statement that "mortgage insurance is bad because it costs money" is the kind of ignorant crap that we need to stop perpetuating. There are people that it makes sense for, and certainly also some that have no business buying a house, insured or otherwise.

Mark

[twitchyzero]

the criteria of pre-approved mtg insurance really has been downplayed though

[Tapioca]

So some interesting news in real estate over the last month. Rennie is taking Shape Properties to court over missing payments for marketing the Amazing Brentwood. The BC government raised the home owners grant threshold to 1.6 million. And of course, the first-time buyers loan program comes into effect today. No news on how lenders will be handling this program.

In terms of the attached market, I'm still seeing some stickiness in pricing and not a huge amount of inventory.

[Hondaracer]

Rise just sold out 800 units at city of Lougheed in 48 hours so I'm sure they'll be fine in paying a few fines

[6thGear.]

Originally Posted by lowside67

Pretty dumb post. The entire crux of his article is that you should just "save up more money" because mortgage insurance is expensive - thanks bro.

I paid for mortgage insurance and it was not inexpensive, mine was about $10k. On the other hand, the mortgage insurance also allowed me to get in with about $40k less down than if I had put 20% down which equated to about an extra 2.5 years of saving. In that 2.5 years, my place has gone up in value by nearly $100k and I am repaying my mortgage at an accelerated pace allowing me to build equity faster. The $10k "cost" was an excellent investment.

To simply make a blanket statement that "mortgage insurance is bad because it costs money" is the kind of ignorant crap that we need to stop perpetuating. There are people that it makes sense for, and certainly also some that have no business buying a house, insured or otherwise.

Mark

In before comments "$100k isn't in your bank account so you still lost on $10k for insurance"

I too paid an extra $5k for insurance but since then my place has gone up $97k since the latest assessment. Which doesn't really mean much till 2018 assessment when it should be a more stabilized number.

[604STIG]

So will condo's/townhomes (because houses are still out of range) see a bump in price since there will theoretically be more buyers in the market due to this new Home Assistance plan?

[Hehe]

Originally Posted by 604STIG

So will condo's/townhomes (because houses are still out of range) see a bump in price since there will theoretically be more buyers in the market due to this new Home Assistance plan?

In a relative short term... probably. However, once the price on SFH drops enough, the condo prices have to catch up.

[Timpo]

YouTube

[GLOW]

someone took CiC's idea to reality
https://www.facebook.com/techinsider...5685104629849/

[originalhypa]

Originally Posted by Timpo

some stupid random timpo video

I'm sure that people in Africa sleep in mud huts, so what does that have to do with us?

We used to have the space to spread out in north america. Unlike Asia, where the population has been breeding like rabbits for hundreds of years. I look at Japan with it's current population of 127 million people on an island with far less land mass than our own province. Of course they're forced into high density.

The problem is when that sort of population density begins to become a global entity. City planners love high density because it allows for more tax profit and easier to manage infrastructure. But it's not a nice way to live.

Compare this, which is the way I grew up.


To this, which is the way a number of people that I know are growing up.


Is it xenophobic to ask that the new members of our country conform to our way of living, rather than their way?

It's no wonder why people move here from Asia. BC is a great place to live.
What confuses me is when they try to turn BC into new Asia. I just don't get it...

[Hondaracer]

What I don't care for is the argument against density increase by the very same people who cry about unaffordable housing.

Things like the "no tower" campaign around comcercial drive. Fucking people making 30k a year part time living in a disgusting dump who say prices are too high yet will throw rocks through windows of information sessions about redevelopment of an area? Fuck off.

EVENTUALLY you'd have to think the increase in volume would create prices which then become affordable, but I guess when people are buying their 3-4-5th investment property and selling out buildings on ore-sales, maybe not

[CivicBlues]

Originally Posted by originalhypa

Is it xenophobic to ask that the new members of our country conform to our way of living, rather than their way?

It's no wonder why people move here from Asia. BC is a great place to live.
What confuses me is when they try to turn BC into new Asia. I just don't get it...

And yet today, most of the people who own this:



Are the ones who left this in Asia:





Jokes aside, I don't think "The Asians" are the ones driving our shift towards higher density living. It's likely a combination of changing attitudes to commute times, minimalism, environmentalism, and disillusionment with the suburban lifestyle.

Canada has always been much more receptive to apartments/condos than say, the USA. Take a look at the West End 60s and 70s towers not to mention the huge swaths of post-war commie blocks in suburban Toronto. Perhaps because of our weather we find it beneficial to huddle together to keep warm?

Toronto:


vs.

Houston:


We also didn't experience "White Flight" (although one can arguing that's happening now in the 604 ) that the US did in the 60s and 70s whereby the downtowns of many cities hollowed out and became ghettos, while suburbs mushroomed everywhere. It was always desirable to live near the city centres in Canadian cities.

If anything the people we elect who appointed the Urban planners have chosen this model of development going forward. It just so happens we are just following a model that's very familiar to today's immigrant influx.

[pastarocket]

-good article by a MacLean's magazine writer about millennials pitted against seniors in the housing market. A good read.

I do agree with the writer's point that politicians (ahem, Crusty) should do more to help millennials have a better chance to afford to buy a home. e.g. decrease interest rates on student loans. One of my buddies still needs to pay off 30 grand in student loans.

Unfortunately, government officials enact policy to help the larger segments of the voting population so that they can re-elected in the next election. Crusty!

BC's housing market pitting one generation against the other - NEWS 1130

Summary:
One expert says generation gap is between Baby Boomers and millennials

A writer for Maclean's Magazine says the divide continues thanks to things like property assessments


For years, we have been hearing about the entitled nature of millennials. The story goes that those born in the ’80s and ’90s grew up on participation awards and inflated self-esteem.

They were told that the world was their oyster and that they should follow their passion. The cautionary tale, of course, is that this set of values came at the expense of building the grit and work ethic that their elders had. Whenever someone in the younger generation complains of accessing affordable housing, or poor economic prospects, the comments section blasts their entitlement, lack of work ethic and realism, and points disapprovingly to the fact they can afford a flat-screen television and an iPhone.

But this past week has given us a prime example of why this narrative is so galling to the millennials. British Columbians were greeted with the new property assessments. Property owners — largely generations senior to millennials — saw their property values soar by hundreds of thousands of dollars. Suddenly, the $570 homeowners grant — a property tax subsidy whose full value was restricted to homes under $1.2 million — was in question for a number of newly minted millionaires. The media covered senior citizen homeowners worried about where the $570 would come from, some claiming they would need to move if the ceiling were not raised. Within days, provincial politicians were assuring these millionaires that the grant threshold would rise to $1.6 million. Crisis averted.


To understand why millennials would rightly feel that this is a moment where senior generations lost whatever moral high ground they once had, we must compare this episode with a file that impacts millennials. For about 15 years, the BC Liberals have been crying poverty when it comes to improving supports for the young. They presided over an unprecedented increase in university tuition, including moves to increase tuition by over 300 per cent in the most job-oriented fields of study: law, medicine, teacher education, MBAs. Baby Boomers received highly subsidized degrees in those fields. Millennials are expected to pay the full freight, or nearly so. Add to this story the fact that if you need a loan for school, you must first prove you don’t have the financial resources to pay yourself. Provided you meet that standard, your loan carries a fixed-rate option of prime plus five per cent once you graduate from school. Students have been advocating tirelessly to improve this deal.

They have had precious little to celebrate as a result of their efforts.

Now, let’s turn back to the plight of the millionaire homeowner. Take the case of the 60-year-old homeowner who has lived in their house for 30 years — the very people that politicians are trying to protect when they increased the homeowner’s grant (HoG) from properties valued at $1.2 million to properties valued at $1.6 million. Where progress in advocacy on student issues is measured in years, their progress was measured in hours. Homeowners deserve to stay in their homes, after all. Given that the benefit is not connected to income or any means test as student loans are, millennials can conclude that the BC Liberals believe that somehow even the wealthiest of homeowners deserve a handout, too.

While the BC NDP was a bit more nuanced in its position, this was a decision welcomed by both major provincial parties in BC and by city politicians. This was all on the premise that those who got into the property market a long time ago and have had an unprecedented gain in their net worth wouldn’t be able to afford the property taxes that come with their windfall.

This position conveniently ignores another program that also assumes that those who cannot afford the carrying costs of their homes need government assistance. The BC Property Tax Deferral program allows anyone over 55 to defer their taxes and pay an effectively fixed simple interest rate of 0.7 per cent. While many seniors quite justifiably rely on this program to make ends meet on a fixed income, there is no means test for this program. BC’s most famous billionaire, Jim Pattison, would qualify. What impact does this have in dollars and cents? The answer is $10,000 in unpaid principal under the property-tax-deferral program costs the homeowner $700 in interest over 10 years. Meanwhile, $10,000 in unpaid principal under the student loan system costs the graduate $11,800 in interest over 10 years. Is this fair?

Rather than ensuring that millionaires can afford the property tax on their homes, the HoG simply reduces the amount homeowners need to borrow to avoid the cash flow problems caused by their windfall. Even when homeowners borrow, they do so at a tiny fraction of the cost of student loans. Despite this fact, we had massive political pressure to solve the “crisis” homeowners face because of the appreciation of their properties.

As nearly all homeowners are receiving this grant, those that are getting the short end of the stick are those who don’t own homes. A non-trivial proportion of this category are millennials who are working their way up toward homeownership and who have been told to lower their expectations about what they “deserve,” especially when it comes to living near where they grew up.

The $820 million HoG program could be put to better use. Lowering student loan rates would be an option. A $1,000 a year grant for every child in BC would be another — as that’s the approximate cost of the current HoG. There are any number of programs that would be a better use of this money, but it would take a political magician to navigate a change without losing too much support from older voters.

In all this, though, we have a deeper unexamined and very valid policy question. Should government be in the business of keeping seniors in homes they cannot afford? Seniors who can’t afford to keep $1 million homes have options. They can take a renter, they can downsize, they can take out a reverse mortgage. At a personal level, it is challenging to give up the family home. It isn’t the fault of the senior that their once-modest bungalow in the burbs is now a hot commodity. That said, for every story of a senior worried about staying in their family home, there is a story of a young person unable to find adequate housing and even the odd tale of couples living in vans. In many cases, the seniors defending their entitlement to stay where they have been living for years involves a single person or a couple living in a four- or five-bedroom home. This is not so much about having adequate housing as it is about staying in preferred housing. Being priced out sucks. But seniors get help when they get priced out, while young people who argue that there should be better options for them, even if they don’t have a million dollars, get labelled as entitled.

But the situation is far more intertwined even than the above analysis suggests. A major strand in the Vancouver housing affordability debate has been about why housing is so astronomically expensive. The culprits boil down to lack of supply, no new land, increasing population and foreign investment. For most of the past several years, the BC government has explicitly avoided doing anything that might cause a decline in home values. We were apparently supposed to celebrate the windfall that foreign capital flows had on our markets. Again, this was a policy direction aimed at funding the retirements of Boomers at the expense of the future of millennials, or as one BC MLA told me, this windfall can be used by Boomer parents to help out their kids. Many will and some won’t, but what this MLA was unwittingly endorsing was the move away from meritocracy and toward the creation of a landed gentry: if your parents were lucky enough to win the property lottery, you can hope for a piece of it.

The first problem to tackle is the influence of global capital inflows on distorting the housing market — some moves have been made, but more is needed. We also need to increase the pace of densifying the core neighbourhoods in BC’s cities, despite pushback from those in the Boomer generation who want their neighbourhoods to remain largely unchanged.

While it is essential to address the above issues, we should be evaluating why we use tax dollars to forestall seniors from downsizing. There is good reason to support seniors to have adequate housing, but is there a compelling reason to make it a spending priority of government to ensure that seniors continue to live in large and largely empty houses if they can’t afford them?

Housing turnover is what creates supply in the highly constrained market of single-family houses. Government interventions that reduce the pool of sellers has an inflationary impact on prices. Public policy has to balance the needs of all citizens and currently the upcoming generation is paying into programs that help freeze them out of finding adequate housing. The policy ecosystem has become unbalanced. In the ’70s, when seniors’ poverty was far higher, and the housing markets were connected to local incomes, the existing policies made some sense. Presently, however, Canadian seniors have a low income rate that is approximately half that of working age Canadians. The problem of seniors needing to downsize doesn’t seem as important as that of young families who face inadequate and/or crushingly expensive housing. Even if these two issues are equally important, that suggests that government should not be redistributing funds from the younger generation to the older generation to keep them in their houses, as they are doing now.

So, we have a tale of two British Columbia’s. On one side, we have the British Columbia where the housing lottery winners deserve to be shielded from the challenge of facing life without a $570 annual subsidy. On the other side, we have the entitled Millennials of British Columbia, Millennials who must lower their expectations in the face of wage stagnation and housing cost inflation.

It is no wonder Millennials are galled whenever they hear their elders trot out the tired line that Millennials are entitled. Watching those same elders protect their HoG entitlement while they gradually dismantle the supports that helped them in their youth demonstrates why this characterization is utter hogwash

[Traum]

Originally Posted by pastarocket

-good article by a MacLean's magazine writer about millennials pitted against seniors in the housing market. A good read.

I do agree with the writer's point that politicians (ahem, Crusty) should do more to help millennials have a better chance to afford to buy a home. e.g. decrease interest rates on student loans. One of my buddies still needs to pay off 30 grand in student loans.

Unfortunately, government officials enact policy to help the larger segments of the voting population so that they can re-elected in the next election. Crusty!

Unfortunately, too many of the younger generations have yet to learn the importance of coming out to vote. When the demographic group does not prove themselves to be a force to recon with, the dirty politicians won't give them any attention they deserve. This is just a matter of how the game is played.

That is not to say I don't sympathise with the younger generations -- I don't consider myself all that old either. It's just that the sad reality is, the game runs on a reward & penalty system. If there are no consequences, the players (ie. politicians) won't make any changes.

[roopi]

Chinese real estate billionaire says customers troubled by Vancouver tax
Chinese real estate billionaire says customers troubled by Vancouver tax | Financial Post

A Chinese real estate billionaire looking to invest in Canada says his customers are troubled by British Columbia’s tax on foreigners purchasing homes in Vancouver.

Frank Wu, the chairman of Central China Real Estate Ltd., says Chinese investors have told him that the 15 per cent tax implemented in August is discouraging them from buying property in the city.

Wu, who is part of a Chinese delegation touring Canada this week, says those investors will instead look to other parts of the country, including Toronto and Montreal, along with other English-speaking countries such as the United States, Australia and Britain.

In an interview with The Canadian Press, Wu says he understands the B.C. government is trying to rein in Vancouver’s real estate market but hopes the tax will be changed, though he did not elaborate.

He says he plans to discuss the matter with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau when the delegation stops in Ottawa on Tuesday during its eight-day Canadian tour.

Wu says the tax won’t deter him from plans to invest more than $100 million over the next two to three years to build mainly residential properties in Canada for Chinese buyers.