Easy in maple ridge lol
Just picked a random house sold recently.

12181 220 STREET
Maple Ridge - West Central V2X 5R6

Sp 1.188m
BC assement 727k

461k over assement

Are there any stats to show how many of these new SFH buyers over the years are actually house poor?

With SFH in Lower Mainland priced over 1.5 mil, I would guess a number of 'young' buyers (30's - early 40's) are either relying heavily on their parents downpayment or are paying a huge chunk of their combined monthly income on the house + maintenance?

I'm curious to see what the WFH effect has had on the burbs once people need to start going back into the office 3/4/5 days a week. I know this isn't the case with everyone, but there's no denying its had an effect.
What happens when the people with the 1.3 million dollar maple ridge house need to start spending $800+ on gas and 10 hours a week to get to their offices in Vancouver?

I actually doubt that many of these buyers are very house poor. According to Vancouver records there were about 41k detached homes and 57k duplexes in Vancouver in 2017. Let's assume 80% of the duplexes are in East Van (46k) and 60% of the detached homes are in East Van (25K) so that's 70k units that are available in all of East Van that go for above $1.2m.

According to Stats Can ~17% of the GVRD has household income above $150k - let's say that 10% of them have incomes over $200k (about 90k households) which is a monthly net of about $11k/mo, sprinkle some savings/prior equity ($150-250k), and a little bit of help from the parents ($50-200k) and you've got yourself a monthly payment of $4-6k that's helped with the $1500/mo of rental income. Not great but definitely manageable.

Some of those folks will be quite comfortable if they came into it with more equity or higher income and a few will be stretching but not a crazy number I think considering the pool of people making this kind of income is relatively large compared to the number of units available in Vancouver (this doesn't include Burnaby etc which would like 5-6x the total viable units).

Where is people getting their apartment insurance from? Apparently there still isn't much in terms of coverage for over $100k deductable. Apparently for $250k is double the price of $100k.

I doubt much will happen.

They'll just suck it up as part of owning a home and live with the fact that they'll be blowing a lot of their time on commuting to work. They'll have to approach it with a half glass full perspective and know at least they own a detached home. There's no way they'll be able to afford the same size home closer to work and I feel it'll be one of those situations where it's hard to downsize after having a taste of the larger size/freedom of a detached home.

I think you’re right when it comes to the time spent, but I’m thinking there could be financial roadblocks when it comes to the commute. Gas is only costing more, and that million dollar mortgage is maxing people out.

I think there's a certain population that will apply to, but I really hope that it's a minority and not the majority. We could've easily afforded a bigger place, but we had a budget in mind and we stuck with it because we didn't want to max ourselves out. With the cost of living going up, that wiggle room from not maxing out one's mortgage will go a long way to covering any unforeseen expenses.

Gas isn't expensive if everyone gets a Tesla and charges it in their detached home's garage

Yeah and you can grow a Tesla on the tree in your yard.

I think time will end up being the big roadblock for folks - those of us who got to enjoy WFH found out they had an extra 60-120 mins a day to do other things and now can't imagine going back to the "grind". Financially they can swing the gas and extra car costs but the time is going to be the big one for people.

Studies consistently show that longer commute time leads to lower job satisfaction and makes people feel like they took a pay cut (see below).

https://www.inc.com/business-insider...isfaction.html (The summary here is that a 20 min increase in commute time feels like a 19% pay cut).

You literally are if you own a detach or town home. You can buy a new model 3 or X every few months depending on what you own:lawl::awwyeah::pokerface:

Well if it takes you to 1-2 hours a day of commuting to get to work you might as well factor that in to working time or if you get paid hourly subtract that time spent commuting. Definitely a big consideration.

You seem lost so I’ll explain a little deeper.
I’m talking about people who recently purchased homes, at the top of their budget, far from work.
You don’t get to take out massive home equity loans if
A) you can’t afford to pay them back
B) you have no equity in your home because you bought it at the top of market a couple months ago.

Yea it really depends when you got in and what you got into. My friend got a place in Jan, they probably will make $500k if they flip it back out now.:notbad:

Back in 2017 when we bought into the market, we didn't max ourselves out and have been able to save up a pretty healthy amount for our next place. Only problem is as you guys state - market for more space continues to go up and up and up. Feels like no matter how much we save, we fall further behind even though we own our own place.

My realtor thinks the price increases are going to slow down this summer as the market reaches some type of stability and more product comes up for sale. Hard to say though.

As for the commuting topic - from everyone I talk to who works an office job, they are itching to get out of their homes and back into the workplace on a flex schedule at the very least. 2 to 3 days in the office and 2 to 3 days at home. If that happens, that makes longer commutes more manageable since you wouldn't have to do it every day.

Why is there this assumption that people who are buying homes in places like Maple Ridge don't already live there, and aren't already used to long commutes in pre-COVID times?

Someone isn't going to move to Maple Ridge from downtown Vancouver or the North Shore. (Most people here aren't event willing to look at Burnaby Heights vs East Vancouver, even though the lot sizes are virtually the same.) They're already living there, or perhaps they're in a townhouse in Port Coquitlam and making the move to detached with a smaller gap in price point.

someones not gonna just sell once covid is over...if they bough they made the commitment for at least a few years...if you keep going in and out thats an expensive (and stupid) proposition as you'll lose $$ on the land transfer tax and commission to sell...if anything they'll probably just end up keeping it...renting it out and using that rental $$ to rent something closer to work

I think this is bang on. You/they/I (lol) will end up rationalizing it as a necessary sacrifice to own a detached home. I'm sure they didn't arrive at the conclusion to buy a detached home in the burbs/boonies totally by accident. I doubt they are mid 20s, selling their DT condo, and moving to maple ridge for instance (ridiculous example, I know). If anything, I would expect them to be move-up buyers to their 2nd/3rd home, older (30-40s), "settled down", possibly with kids or planning to have kids, etc.

That's a good breakdown. I guess I'm still baffled at how any buyer can splurge on an extra 300-400k to outbid a home. I'm guessing they are going into these bidding wars with a pre-approved mortgage much higher than the listed housing sales prices?

I think it's very situational but I have friends over qualifying through their personal + business to have more ammo in case they wanna outbid for their dream home in South Van.

Pretty crazy because if you went $100k cheaper, we could slap a 911 into our garage too haha.

I'd guess that they are getting approved for much bigger numbers than they "need" - my experience setting up my HELOC and getting approved for another mortgage was that the bankers are trying to stretch my numbers as far as they can. For example, they didn't care that I was still on probation at my new job or that my wife's current pay is higher due to a temporary assignment. They're trying to state things as high as they possibly can to get approved for more.

I think if you're making 200K and have 400k for a downpayment then getting approved for a 1.3m mortgage isn't that hard ($5200/mo at 1.4%). That gets you into the low end of detached (tear downs are going for the same price as legit homes lately).

Don't forget rental income, I've seen ppl say they live in the basement. Rent out top floor, other basement suite and lane way. :ahwow: so they generate like $6000 a month in rental income

Of course he/she does, they want you to buy or sell NOW so they can get their commissions... you wait and maybe you go with someone different down the line.

Never believe a damn thing any realtor says about the market unless they're you're best friend and not involved in any of your deals lol

Never a good time to buy. Buy now when interest is low/FOMO or if you buy later interest "could/might/should" go back up and harder to get in. Real Estate agents sure work in our interest :troll: