Vancouver's Real Estate Market

[multicartual]

I rent a detached west side Vancouver home now...


...



Living in a detached house ROCKS!!! So nice to have a backyard and to be able to just walk out of your door and get in your car. No crackheads yelling all hours, no fucking junkies leaving needles, no poop all over the sidewalk, vomit everywhere on a Saturday or Sunday morning... haha!


Living urban is fun as fuck for awhile, for sure! I couldn't do it forever. Fuck that.

[Hehe]

Originally Posted by multicartual

I rent a detached west side Vancouver home now...


...



Living in a detached house ROCKS!!! So nice to have a backyard and to be able to just walk out of your door and get in your car. No crackheads yelling all hours, no fucking junkies leaving needles, no poop all over the sidewalk, vomit everywhere on a Saturday or Sunday morning... haha!


Living urban is fun as fuck for awhile, for sure! I couldn't do it forever. Fuck that.

OMG... imagine one day multicartual comes onto RS and says "I bought the house, getting married with a kid on the way. Life is complete now".

[Gumby]

Originally Posted by Hehe

OMG... imagine one day multicartual comes onto RS and says "I bought the house, getting married with a kid on the way. Life is complete now".

Who will buy a house in Vancouver first - multicartual or 4444?

[J____]

us housing isn't that great, you are taxed on any revenue from a sale with profit over 500k within 2 years. There's no tax in canada on a housing sale as long as you are the primary inhabitants.

[4444]

Originally Posted by J____

us housing isn't that great, you are taxed on any revenue from a sale with profit over 500k within 2 years. There's no tax in canada on a housing sale as long as you are the primary inhabitants.

are you ignoring the rollover provisions available to US real estate holders (is it 1031? I can't remember the section number).

for principle residence and investment properties, you can roll over the cost base onto a replacement property

normally once you enter the real estate market, you don't leave it (you'll continue to own) - the US system way of deferring taxes until death is better, IMO

edit: I do accept what you are saying (ignoring roll over provision), but the roll over provision does make real estate investment more attractive in the US (you can buy and sell with no tax, vs. any sale in canada is taxed), but for principle residence with a huge (one time) capital gain, without a roll over, canada is better... sadly, the average person moves 7 times in their lifetime, so at least once per decade, so chances are you won't have $500K gain all that often (and you'd roll over usually).

you'd also need that capital gain - buy today in canada vs. US on this basis as a major factor - you're crazy! (LT cap gains tax rate is 15% in US)

[ImportPsycho]

Harper promises to address foreign homeownership if re-elected - NEWS 1130

[Ronin]

I'd vote for anyone that says there's a 100% tax on foreign home ownership on homes more than $500k.

So if you're not a Canadian citizen, you pay double what you would for a house and the taxes go towards...I don't know...lowering housing costs for the rest of us.

Not saying I'd vote for Harper but at least that made me pay attention to him rather than just writing him off altogether. The housing marketing and economics are the vast majority of what affects my vote.

[CivicBlues]

Originally Posted by ImportPsycho

Harper promises to address foreign homeownership if re-elected - NEWS 1130

Did you read this part?

"Harper is also promising to increase the amount of money you can take out of your RRSP to buy a home. It’s going up by $10,000 to $35,000"

It's sorta like pissing on some embers on the side while at the same time pouring gasoline on the fire.

Sorry folks, if you think taxing foreign buyers like in Australia, NZ, and UK is the be-all-end-all of your affordability issues, you need to look at the housing listings in Sydney, Auckland, and London.

[Mr.HappySilp]

70% of Vancouver homes over $3 million sold to Chinese buyers

not sure if this is true. But if it is guess we now know foreign investment does play a role in the price of our housing marketing going up.

[punkwax]

Don't need an article to know that...

[StylinRed]

Originally Posted by CivicBlues

Sorry folks, if you think taxing foreign buyers like in Australia, NZ, and UK is the be-all-end-all of your affordability issues, you need to look at the housing listings in Sydney, Auckland, and London.

hefty taxation on foreign ownership has its benefits, better than our plan...of what? tracking? lol the data exists

as for the UK the average price of a home has been on the rise and it's now at $405,000CAD (thats amazing considering the size of the uk and its population) but, as i posted earlier, the UK will be taking steps to limit foreign laundering of money into their housing market, which theyve admitted to being a major problem

Why can't Britain build enough homes to meet demand? - BBC News (average price info, home construction deficit)

[asian_XL]

Interesting things I see this week when browsing the RE websites.

The 900sqft apartment we sold in 2006, I see it again on the marketing with the price only 10% more than we sold. Then I looked at the house we lived in the 90s and sold in 2004, 3000sqft house / 6000sqft land, the price has been doubled!

[Hondaracer]

Supply and demand, simple.

Think I may have mentioned this before but Me and my parents are standing at 10k+ loss on investment over a 6 year span on two condos we bought in Whalley. We got the absolute best price imaginable by knowing both the developer and builder and buying on Presale. Selling at about 190 we'd take a slight loss, however people in the building who presumable you bought for far more than we did are all selling at huge losses just to get out.

Why would they buy our units when there's 6 new towers going up around them for similar pricing. They'll walk into some new unit with a $300 stainless range and take that 9/10 times over ours.

While the place my GF bought in Burnaby has gone up approx 35k in a 4 year span. No other buildings around us, no opportunity for development.

Shit properties might take a nose dive, but the people who are buying 1.5+ properties, I hardly doubt any sort of enforcement Harper might impose will hamper their buying power.

With that said I do support SOME SORT of taxation system for owners who lives abroad

[nah]

It's speculation that's driving up the market. People are afraid that they won't be able to afford in the future because "prices will go up" and are buying what they think can afford now.

I don't get how people are still buying these properties when there's a recession coming. If you look at Calgary, prices are dropping as people are out of jobs.

Canadian house prices up 1.2% in July, but Calgary drops - Business - CBC News

[Jmac]

Originally Posted by asian_XL

Interesting things I see this week when browsing the RE websites.

The 900sqft apartment we sold in 2006, I see it again on the marketing with the price only 10% more than we sold. Then I looked at the house we lived in the 90s and sold in 2004, 3000sqft house / 6000sqft land, the price has been doubled!

My parents' old house in Youbou, which they sold for $65k in 1990, sold for $380k in December. About 6x value over 24 years. Of course, you probably could've bought it for peanuts in 2001 after the Youbou sawmill closed and the town was a complete ghost town for several years before becoming a summer vacation town.

Meanwhile, the house they bought in Duncan for $125k in 1990 is valued at $280k today (according to e-Value). Hardly any appreciation at all (2.25x) relative to the Youbou home.

The condo we sold in Burnaby in 2010 for $288,888 (because Chinese) is valued at $303,700 today. I saw it listed for $299,000 last year, apparently it didn't sell as there's no listed sale price in the past 3 years on e-Value. We bought it for $267,000 in 2006.

[4444]

problem with condos is that they're a commodity, no distinctive value - even if you have a yaletown waterview... they can just build in front (for the most part).

my old condo in yaletown used to be waterview, now it's "other condo" view

having said that, whilst land is, obviously, a finite resource, rezoning can change things a lot, freeing up a lot more usable land.

in the UK, there's a massive housing shortage based on > a decade of underbuilding. there's a huge discussion now of opening up green zones for building, rezoning brown zones (ex industrial).

in germany, they tend to not have huge fluctuations (ignore berlin, which is going through a major hipster change and has a lot more to do with history), as the governments are a lot more proactive with respects to opening up green space to build for future growth in people. also, renting is the norm in germany, i assume they have pretty tight rent controls too... no one talks about real estate in mainland europe (like they do in vancouver - this is a generalization), and i find people are way more content in life (it's also hella socialist here which is a main driver of general content feeling, but they have massive other problems, i'm not saying it's an oasis - everywhere has it's downsides)

[sonick]

Fucking Harper, adding fuel to an already uncontrollable fire:

Stephen Harper pledges higher RRSP withdrawal limit for 1st time homebuyers - Politics - CBC News

Literally allowing people to mortgage their retirement EVEN MORE for a home.

[VR6GTI]

wow 35k on 900k. Thanks mr harper

[Tapioca]

I wouldn't worry too much about the increase in the RRSP HBP - 10K is a drop in the bucket when it comes to hot markets like Toronto and Vancouver. It may help people at the low end who want to get into something like a condo.

[CivicBlues]

Originally Posted by StylinRed

hefty taxation on foreign ownership has its benefits, better than our plan...of what? tracking? lol the data exists

as for the UK the average price of a home has been on the rise and it's now at $405,000CAD (thats amazing considering the size of the uk and its population) but, as i posted earlier, the UK will be taking steps to limit foreign laundering of money into their housing market, which theyve admitted to being a major problem

Why can't Britain build enough homes to meet demand? - BBC News (average price info, home construction deficit)

Foreign Speculation Taxation would benefit government coffers for sure, but I highly doubt it will have much effect on the demand from foreign speculators.

Have a look at Sydney . They don't even list the prices, only states "Auction" -as in a group of people get together in an Open House and bid openly like a Christie's Auction. - THIS is what causes the insanity, along with cheap money and a government that flogs RE like a pimp in Bangkok.

http://www.realestate.com.au/buy/in-...sw+2000/list-1

btw, 2 bedroom condos in the CBD go for about AUD$800,000 - median price ($800,000 CAD) there.

This is all in a market that taxes foreign speculators, like we so demand as a cure-all for our problems.

[quasi]

Looks like the rest of the Country is fucked but we're just fine, seems legit

Toronto, Winnipeg, Regina face ?high? risk of housing downturns: CMHC | Globalnews.ca

Back in April, the national housing agency pegged Toronto as being at only a “moderate” risk of a correction.

CMHC also says Winnipeg faces a high level of risk due to overvalued home prices and overbuilding.

In Regina, rapid price growth, overvaluation and overbuilding, especially of condo units, are responsible for the high risk rating.

CMHC says housing market risk in Vancouver, one of the country’s priciest real estate markets, is low, as none of the individual risk factors that the agency examines are present.

CMHC’s house price analysis and assessment aims to identify potential risks in Canadian real estate by evaluating economic, financial and demographic factors.

The agency uses four factors to identify the level of risk present in regional housing markets: overheating of demand, accelerating price growth, overvaluation of prices and overbuilding.

“Nationally, CMHC continues to detect a modest risk of overvaluation,” Bob Dugan, CMHC’s chief economist, said in a statement.

“However, our overall assessment of the risk of problematic conditions varies from centre to centre due to regional differences in housing markets. Imbalances in local housing markets could be resolved with further moderation in house prices or improving economic conditions.”

[Ronin]

So what they're saying is...if you buy a house in Vancouver, chances are...you'll make money and you'll almost never lose money.

...okay, but the problem is not being able to buy in the first place.

[!LittleDragon]

If you believe Garth and Ross Kay, 46% of Vancouver's listings this year did not sell. While it doesn't jive with what I hear in the media, it does jive with what I see in Vancouver. Homes with a for sale sign for months and months. Often the sign just goes away... don't they usually leave a sold sign up until the new owners move in?

I'm a little skeptical about the number tho, there's no mention where Kay got that stat from.

All the media talks about are sales being up and prices being up. Would be interesting to see if the number of unsolds are up or down month to month. When it comes to local RE, you only seem to get the good news and not the overall market view. Even a simple sold vs listings would suffice.

[Expresso]

^^^ Doesn't really jive with some first time home buyers I've talked to. Seems to be bidding wars out there.

[Tapioca]

There are definitely bidding wars on detached homes in certain municipalities such as Burnaby and Richmond.

Based on the sign tree outside of my building, there were 5 listings and all 5 had sold stickers within a few months.