Vancouver's Real Estate Market

[supafamous]

https://twitter.com/mikepmoffatt/sta...5JZtK3XQA42sog

Pulling out a few snippets from this thread illustrating how brutal things are for younger folks or folks trying to get into the housing market.

Short thread time. TL;DR version: We underestimate how affordable housing was in the 70s and 80s and overestimate how affordable it was post-2000 because traditional analyses ignore saving for a downpayment.

...

Yes, interest rates were high in the 1970s and early 1980s, but a family could make a 25%+ downpayment on a single year's income.

By 2017, this fell to 10%.

For single people in Toronto in 2022, it's down to just 3%.

...

In short, our affordability metrics, which are all based on assuming a 20% downpayment, are highly flawed because they fail to incorporate how the difficulty of saving that 20% changes over time.

It was far, far easier in 1977 than it was in 2017.

[JDMDreams]

^ but isn't that like every country, supply and demand everything gets more expensive over time. It's just Canada bureaucracy, democracy, lack of forward sight makes it worse.

[Hondaracer]

Trudeau is allowing longer mortgages now on brand new builds though, that will certainly help you be even poorer for longer

[westopher]

Originally Posted by supafamous

https://twitter.com/mikepmoffatt/sta...5JZtK3XQA42sog

Pulling out a few snippets from this thread illustrating how brutal things are for younger folks or folks trying to get into the housing market.

It's hilarious how math even 8 year olds can understand gets left out of the conversation.
Like 20% mortgages don't really hit that hard when it's a 30k mortgage compared to 6% on a 700k mortgage.

[JDMDreams]

They should bring back 35/ 40y amortization

[Hondaracer]

Longer terms just mean more debt.

I’m sure even the brilliant minds in the liberal party and BoC realize adding more debt to one of the most debt ridden countries on this planet likely isn’t the answer

[Great68]

Let's just forget about the Conservatives bringing in 40 year, zero down mortgages in '08?

[Hondaracer]

You mean when homes were 1/3 the cost they are now? Hehe not like that was a good move either but the context matters

2 million dollar homes now were worth 600k then

[Great68]

You think the beginning of the price spike after '08 was purely coincidental?

Lol!

[AstulzerRZD]

Originally Posted by mikemhg

There are a litany of fake job boards online where a business owner can post a role that no one will see, have it posted for a month with no applications (by design), and then submit a LMIA application for approval. The Feds have no real mechanism in place to vet with applications with scrutiny.

This is a huge contrast to the US where the PERM labour certification is taken pretty seriously, and even Facebook were sued for being a lil funny with the way they posted/processed them.

[Hondaracer]

Prices were still reasonable in 2012, I know because I have images outlining how my buddies dumb parents who thought they were outsmarting the market sold their home in 2012 for 630 that was subsequently worth 1.6 in 2018

Any graph you can find shows detached homes were still within reach long after 2008.

[68style]

I bought my condo in 2011, it certainly didn't seem reasonable at the time to me.

It does seem reasonable NOW... but at the time fuck no! I was paying $365,000 for a 1 bedroom when I had bought a 2 bedroom 9 years earlier for $254,000 and I was plenty choked about it.

BTW Multi-generational (!! ie: more than even 30 or 40 years) mortgages are common in Europe, you should read up on it it's kind of fascinating... Germany and Switzerland in particular have a lot of them.

[Hondaracer]

Almost a decade for that difference though. As opposed to say, 2014 to 2016

I know my own home assessed almost 40% higher in that 2 year period

[JDMDreams]

I think it's the same shit as the immigration issue we have now. It's the fact that we have a 3 level government that doesn't talk to each other, city, province, federal. Everyone's just an office worker and it's not my problem as long as I get that gov pay, benefits and that sweet pension.

Kick the ball to the other court. I don't have authority in that department. The government isn't structured to move forward and have any long term planning. All they do is kick the can and try to keep their jobs. There's no accountability no one gets fired. Tax payers will foot the bill, not my money.

[Great68]

What prices were in '08 is irrelevant. A 40 year mortgage is a 40 year mortgage. "Longer term means more debt". It was the beginning of cheap money policy that spurned where we are now. It's comical that you think the liberals came into power in November 2015, were to blame for your 40% rise between 2014 to 2016.

[noclue]

What I'd like to see is the amount of people living large on HELOC due to rising assessment and low interest rates during that time. So many new cars/trucks in Vancouver area compared to Seattle or even Calgary where you see more old beaters.

[supafamous]

Originally Posted by JDMDreams

They should bring back 35/ 40y amortization

Interest payments on the front end of a mortgage are brutal enough on a 30 year mortgage and that already implies that most people will retire with a mortgage. A 35/40y mortgage is nearly a guarantee that they'll be in their 70's (or their 80's) and will still be paying for their house.

On a $1m mortgage over 30 years at 5% you'll end up paying $238k in interest and your principal would only drop to $918k after 5 years. 74% of your mortgage payments end up as just interest.

A 35/40y mortgage is just sticking our pinky finger in the housing crisis dike.

[JDMDreams]

Well there's no other option, what other options are there? Articles are coming out in To. Saying that ppl can't afford rent so they are moving away, rents can't come down cuz carrying cost and the price of property. There's still a huge shortage of homes, but developers won't build cuz there's no buyers at current %. Also they can't lower price cuz that's how much it cost to build, they have to make money. It's not a charity. So it's like the chicken or the egg situation. Gov doesn't want to step in and keep their hands out of this. Their rent policy just makes things worse and less people wanting to buy for investment = no homes for renters.

[supafamous]

10 years ago I walked by this teardown by my parents and it was sold for $850k. It was crazy pricing back then when you could build for $150/sf. Today that same lot would go for $1.7m as a teardown and you'd need to pay $400/sf to build something.

[underscore]

Originally Posted by JDMDreams

rents can't come down cuz carrying cost and the price of property.

They'll have to if they sit empty long enough.

[Hondaracer]

Originally Posted by Great68

What prices were in '08 is irrelevant. A 40 year mortgage is a 40 year mortgage. "Longer term means more debt". It was the beginning of cheap money policy that spurned where we are now. It's comical that you think the liberals came into power in November 2015, were to blame for your 40% rise between 2014 to 2016.

Replace Liberal with government then. Albeit the vast majority of gains have happened in the last 8-9 years.

Policy fucked housing far more than this perception that boomers are to blame

[68style]

Yah boomers are just BENEFITTING... big-time.... even my gen is if you were smart about things/prudently on track.

Government fucked things up as far back as 1986... made Vancouver a world stage but then didn't have world class thinking or policy to back up the world coming to take a piece of the beautiful pie they saw while they were here.

[Badhobz]

I just watched a video on Vancouver history and they were speculating and dealing RE since 1890s when Vancouver proper didn’t even include the “city” of point grey and mount pleasant.

Nothings changed.

https://youtu.be/QqNMp3GHKyw?si=u95A7zAhUrVXb0TH

[supafamous]

If you dig into newspaper headlines you'll find that as early as the 60's there was talk of a housing crisis but the real leap took place in the early 80's - 1987 was when the property transfer tax showed up and that was intended to slow down real estate speculation. Between then and recent days there's been little to nothing done to address the housing crisis and even the PTT was a demand side solution. Almost everything we've done has been around reducing demand versus building supply.

Historical Vancouver home prices going back to 1990: https://www03.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/hmip-p...Name=Vancouver

Detached averages:

1990: 306k
2000: 414k (35% increase)
2010: 791k (91% increase)
2020: 2.369m (199% increase)
Dec 2022: 2.539m (7%)

Somewhere in the early century (20 years ago) real estate truly lost its mind.

[JDMDreams]

Well we just ran out of space, no supply but demand goes up. Time to start cutting down Stanley Park and fill in false Creek, they can rename it false land.