^^ I'm interested in getting a car cave warehouse space like trove. Maybe build like a lounge there with a bed. Store cars, memorabilia, and a stereo system without getting noise complaints:accepted:

The $2.1M unit that sold has an attached garage.

Lot sold for $1.93M in Feb 2020. $1M seems like a reasonable guess considering both remaining units are listed for $1.5M/$1.6M. Not a bad way to get 25%+ return in >2 years

Pretty challenging to do these as this particular lot had a heritage home on it and part of the deal is that you have to preserve it to get the extra square footage needed to do an infill. That said, I fully agree that more infill would be great - there are lots of lots out there (especially in Killarney or so) that are big enough to retain the existing home and put in a nice infill. Every corner lot should be rezoned to allow for a healthy sized infill (1000sf).

I have both anger and sympathy for the city planning department - as long as city council is full of old white people who live on the west side of Vancouver we will not see serious changes in zoning. We need folks on the east side to vote in droves and support the progressives so city planning can make the changes they know we need.

I'm not about to go do the research, you might be technically right, but are many people on the city council old white people living on the west side of Vancouver? I'm skeptical.

Would, say, young asian people on city council make different decisions? They'd be okay to open up rehab places or subsidized housing or recovery centres or needle exchanges down the street from them? Rezone all their neighbouring properties into more "affrordable" (I use the word somewhat in jest given this is Vancouver) multi-family developments?

I really don't think wanting your own space and privacy and safety are an ethnic issue. It's a have/have nots issue. Every single one of us would like to have a house with a yard and a little fence if we could, we only live on top of each other out of necessity.

https://vancouver.ca/your-government...uncillors.aspx - it's almost a 100% "whiteout". The only person of colour is Pete Fry who is the son of Hedy Fry who is part Scottish, Chinese, Spanish, and Indian. The senior leaders are also overwhelmingly white: https://vancouver.ca/news-calendar/c...ship-team.aspx

A few of their bios say where they live - several are in East Van (though the less diverse parts of East Van), one is in the West End and the loathsome Colleen Hardwick is in Kits.

I think having a diverse council that's reflective of the city would be helpful on the housing front - for example, they'd understand that Asians naturally like having several generations under one roof and they'd modify zoning to make that easier to do (like allowing 2nd kitchens without requiring a legal suite). Having councillors who have immigrant backgrounds would likely make them more sympathetic to housing needs of working class immigrants (look at the garbage they have to live in now) and/or they'd be from places where density is not considered an evil in of itself.

A few of the bios of the councillors imply they came up through blue collar working class families though the most influential ones are creatures of massive privilege (Hardwick and De Genova in particular, Pete Fry probably too) - these people live in their castles throwing loaves of stale bread at the peasants (I sorta kid).

Some of these councillors (Hardwick in particular) want to turn the clock back and return Vancouver back to what it was when they were growing up - by itself that sounds like a reasonable claim except it doesn't hold up under close examination. The language is always coded but is really about keeping out immigrants and the "others".

It's not about yards and privacy - if that were the case they'd push to rezone those mega sized lots in the West side so that they could be split into smaller lots that still had yards and privacy. They'd convert our golf courses into housing. They'd focus on zoning rules that allowed for dense living while preserving private space and ensuring livability. Instead they focus on not allowing ANY changes to the city - this is not about how the city can't support more people (it totally can and it can do it in liveable ways) - it's about keeping us coloured people out (or making it miserable for us). That the other collateral is poor white folks is just cause for them to open more bottles of champagne.

I don't live in VAN and won't pretend to know that much about the council, I can tell just from the parking thing they're a bunch of dipshits... but are you honestly lumping yourself in as having suffered or being pushed down economically in some way? You seem to be doing quite a bit better than just fine.

All the rezoning I see everywhere I go is for tearing down homes for multi-family developments. In fact, it's pretty much the ONLY way you can get anything passed for rezone in Richmond for example. The days of single lots with houses on them are dead here and the number of grouped sales/land assemblies in Vancouver points in the same direction.

I think a truly backwards city council is LANGLEY... you can't even get approval for religious places of worship there over a certain height so you never see any temples out there for example... and there's that whole thing about ALR?

The government has this ridiculous assumption that we need to keep farmlands in the lower mainland... and I found myself brainwashed by the same thinking... it's an easy sell right -- farms and nature, keep locally produced food, farm to table, organic, it's all so nicely packaged especially for the ideals of many people today in a bougie or quasi bougie lifestyle... but the amount of ALR in all these regions is ridiculous and almost none of them are doing any significant farming... the acreage locked up in them is insane and if they even took a fraction of that stuff out of ALR and allowed it for development it would help to flood the housing market a bit. This is just my opinion though, I'm open to commentary on it for sure.

Langley council JUST recently opened up to allowing a second dwelling to be built on a farm. So you can have 20 acres of land and never be able to build a second house on it before now... lol... there's a visionary city council if I ever saw one. Nevermind they have mapped out all their stream network and handed it over to Fisheries and Oceans... there can literally be a trickle of water 8 feet underground on your property and you can't touch the land 20 yards in every direction around it because it's important to Fish habitats? How? It's tens of miles from anything resembling a body of water up on top of a hill. Anyway, I'm just rambling... have some personal experience on these fronts. Langley is the absolute shits to deal with.

Am I arguing that I'm part of the poor and working class that have been affected? No, they've been the ones that have been affected the most in really, really awful ways and I'm really angry at our civic leaders for what they've done to those people.

Have I been affected by these housing policies in a negative way? Definitely and in total dollars that are much higher than how it affects the working class but I will survive just fine - any complaining from me about how housing policies have made my life worse is going to come across a bit like Marie Antoinette offering cake to the peasants. The richer I get the angrier I actually get about the treatment of the poor and working class - I got very lucky in life and every day I can't believe how this luck compounds and I keep getting richer while others are getting royally screwed.

A city council with any courage and any real empathy for the working class (or even middle class) would fight like hell so that buildings like 4 story condos were allowed in residential areas rather than only on major streets. The zoning guides specifically say to locate those kinds of building on major roads so they can block the noise for residential areas which is nuts - they're basically building walls full of working class folks to block road noise. That's not even taking into consideration the extra pollution from main roads.

The city is condemning low income people to more respiratory illnesses b/c they want rich folks to live more comfortably.

I feel this is bordering on conspiracy theory though.

1 point of view is that they're on major roads to be close to transit as a dense housing development won't have much allowance for parking of personal vehicles...

Another point of view is that the size of sewer and water and power infrastructure required to feed density structures only exists on major routes. There's not gonna be a 20 foot wide sewage pipe or water connect under some side street in Vancouver.

Kinda tinfoil hat to say they're using structures to shield side streets from noise and pollution? That's pretty out there man.

I mean... are... uhm... "poor" people living in $900,000+ 2 bedroom apartments on Main St? Those are the destitute people that are having their health affected?

It's not a conspiracy theory - it's LITERALLY in their planning guide that they want taller buildings on main roads to block noise. I don't have time to look that particular passage up but it's the standard policy in most cities to do this - it's not a secret, it's IN THE COMPUTER.

And there's no physical reason why taller buildings can't be on side streets - see Kerrisdale - they snuck in apartment towers in low density areas south of 41st. And the city is now looking at putting apartments in lower density areas: https://vancouversun.com/news/local-...ntal-buildings

Edit: Here's what I could find as an example: https://www.vancouverisawesome.com/c...tivist-3118397

City policy says: "Shield, to some extent, single family homes from the noise of arterial traffic as the new housing types and their landscaping act as a buffer.”

You sure that's not cherry picked as some ad-hoc comment some councilor made? I find it hard to believe that it's in a planning guide rather than just a comment made in a meeting. Edit: The twitter photo didn't load for me before, I see it was on the billboard for the design forwarding... that is pretty bad and shortsighted... and condemning to put up as a reason for approval??? How can anyone not read that and get annoyed.

I think the physical requirements of larger buildings DEFINITELY plays a role in where developers are willing to build and connect into the city's infrastructure as much of those costs are borne by them. I wouldn't minimize that aspect so much.

Go big, there is never enough space. I have 4000+ sq ft of garage/man cave. I've run out of room.

I saw some units at TROVE for sale and honestly the price isn’t as out to lunch as you’d think, but the maintenance fees are awful like $600 a month

I thought they were like 400k and up?

The ones available are $870k and $1.5M.... but you're talking 1800 and 2800sq ft respectively... so it's pricey... but not completely out of line with what other commercial spaces are going for.

I feel like a house with a bigger garage is the move at that point but my place of residence doesn’t even cost that much so what do I know about rich people shit.

does it include wash & ceramic coating every 2 weeks?

I feel the same but I am surprised it’s not more considering the… audience they’re going for

Well I don't need one in the middle of the city, I don't mind it being in the outskirts. I just see the guys down in the States buying giant shops for like $200k or even hangers. I think there was some in Kelowna before for around $400?

https://i.imgur.com/PihFDoC.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/jJyIcLB.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/o23PxiC.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/Shh99lx.jpg

Hangers are actually pretty cheap. You can get one in Pitt Meadows (they are between developments right now). The catch is you need an airplane. Either rent out a spot, have a kit plane sitting in the hanger etc. I was pretty tempted to do so. Not sure they make you get a private licence, or maybe even AME ticket. But a private licence is pretty easy to get and probably around 10-12k these days.

Just put a wing in there and say your restoring the plane.

Yeah, that’s what people do. It works for a while but eventually they want some form of progress.

The guy I know built an apartment inside. Said it was the shit. Just a big sausage fest of dudes playing with their toys. Borrow a welder from Ron next door, go have a beer with Fred. Haha. Hilarious.

You guys need to start a not for profit automotive maker space. A place with a bunch of tools where members pay x amount of month to use them. Charge extra if they want a parking spot. I am part of a maker space that does everything except automotive (for now) and it's awesome. Started 7 years ago with next to no tools now we have over 70K worth. The best part is the community and hanging out with like minded people.

I would love to, but I think the insurance is the limiting factor. That’s what people have mentioned in the past.