Cant you guys tell by now that 4444 doesn't consider anything that gets his hands dirty a "real job"?

The problem is construction is solely reliant on the continued housing boom. It's sort of like a Ponzi scheme. The higher the housing, the higher the construction rate. When the bubble bursts, guess how many people will be unemployed? Guess how many of these people will be homeowners with mortgages?

If you can be so short sighted and not understand the relationships between certain industries, then there is really nothing more to say except keep drinking the kool-aid.

There are other sectors of construction/maintenance unrelated to housing...

Currently residential is a big driver, but when commodity prices climb back to levels we were seeing 3-5 years ago, industrial takes over as the biggest employer for construction workers.

But yes, what you are saying can and does happen.

When this happens, when that happens, this industry or that industry will suffer.

What's new.

Civil construction projects will always be underway. Regardless of a boom or bust billion dollar projects like the Massey tunnel replacement, new patullo, light rail, Broadway corridor etc. these are all billion dollar projects that will happen regardless of the housing situation that employ hundreds of thousands of people for years on end.

I'd say most of these construction jobs outside of single family residential are safer than most industries, even if the market was to soften or slow.

Everyone points to tech, but how about things like Nursing? Every single person I know in nursing could not be more in demand. Same goes for the people I know in bio-med.

Peeps on dat tunnel vision shit?

Residential is only a piece of the construction pie. It does help to drive up demand and prices in other areas but construction does not solely depend on it. Will some people lose there jobs when it slows down? Of course they will but you make it sound like it's the end all be all for jobs in the construction industry, it's not. What happens is the residential guys move back to other areas like commercial, institutional and industrial and yes labour rates tend to drop as there is more competition for jobs but anyone worth anything will have no problem staying employed. It's all these guys/gals who are getting paid way to much working out of there depth cashing in on the situation that are going to be kicking turds.

The reverse is also true.

With the mac slow as it is now, and mining and pulp/paper/mills in a huge holding pattern, a lot of friends of mine have come back to work on high rises, or locally at the docks (couple small expansions), or even a it on houses.

Construction skills are so transferable, assuming you are even remotely capable you can usually find work fairly easily anywhere. A lot of guys also take time off in between projects, or can afford to wait a bit before hunting for another job.

I know a project I was just on is ramping down last month and this month, and there was nobody there who was hurting looking for their next job, most guys would have been perfectly happy taking july and august off and enjoying their summer. These are people who in the midst of a project work 10-15hours a day, 7 days a week. Breaks in between projects is likely the only time off they get in many instances, and sometimes you don't even get that. When you get offered a good job that could last a year or 2, you take it.

What? Nursing? Infrastructure? Do you understand how an economy works? We don't sell healthcare in Canada. We spend public money to develop infrastructure. Healthcare is not a commodity we export for sale around the world or rather it is, but not in Canada. So at the end of the day, who do you think pays the salary of these "nurses". Who pays for infrastructure? Taxpayers. So where do these taxpayers make their money? Other industries that contribute by increasing money inflows.

We need industries that stimulate trade and export. Not internal industries that do not contribute to the economy. Healthcare is a net consuming industry that takes away from public wealth as is infrastructure.

If you can't wrap your head around this concept, then think about healthcare systems in undeveloped countries. Guess what? It is non-existent. Guess why? They have nothing of value to export to others, their economy is shit and no one can afford to pay for it.

Sure, governments can borrow and borrow to artificially support the economy, but eventually they have to pay back their debts unless you want to end up like Greece.

there's a need for more nurses, but lots of departments are understaffed - i can only assume to meet budgets. eg. at children's in some of the more critical departments it should be 1 nurse to 1 child, but they are in situations where it's 1 nurse to 2 or 3 children b/c there isn't enough staff on shift. it could be for a different reason but i think it's for budgetary reasons when it comes to staffing.

Oh the irony is strong on this one.

When the economy is in a recession, governments tend to spend more money to help stimulate the economy.

Look at the great Depression. What brought the would out of the Depression, war. Or to be exact, money spent on labour to build tanks and bombs to fight wars.
Last time we saw a recession in BC, the government spent a lot of money to help stimulate the economy while not giving away free handouts like the US government.
Same thing goes for the BOC lowering their overnight lending rates, in hopes to lower the cost of borrowing to help stimulate the economy.

As far as nursing goes, in good times and bad, you will always need nurses. Same goes for teachers in the growing municipalities. Remember back in the days when it was 1 teacher for 20 students?
Then it got to 1 teacher for 30 students.
I'm scared to ask what the ratio is now.

But I sorta get what you are talking about, but it isn't what hondaracer is talking about.

BC's economy has very little exports. During the 80's, pulp and lumber products was our biggest export.
Now, we have some fruits. BC is the biggest blueberry exporter in the world.
We are now exporting a lot of cherries to the rest of the world too.
But both of these items are only available during the few summer months.

So, the reality is that BC doesn't have THAT many industries that flow money in. That's how we are.
Thankfully, with the exchange rate, we are losing less money to the US while more US dollars are coming here as Tourist.
Same goes for tourist from Asia and Europe.

Problems with disproportionate price vs earning goes much deeper than some Joes not being able to afford a place. The need to buy a place is there, some people will move away, but most having strong ties with Vancouver will stay. They will take on more risks in terms of loans and mortgage and to reduce that risk, logical thing to do would be to reduce consumer spending. Reducing consumer spending is bad for businesses and bad for the economy. When we reach the inflection point (we could be there already, no way to tell), there just need to be an event that send everything down the toilet.

You bought early and beat the market? Congratulations, you just got laid off, how are you gonna pay for that house with your paper profit? Sell that house and move somewhere? You just become a willing seller with not a lot of buyer with the balls and powder to absorb.

This is a great city to live in. But you need to have social & economic balance. Otherwise, it's just a resort town with a lot of scenery and not much else to show for. Again, greed is only good in movies.

I think all we need it build a new community(municipality) somewhere very near Greater Vancouver area and build a bullet train to go to Vancouver.
(Canada makes one of the best bullet train in the world, Bombardier Zefiro)

Japan, Hong Kong, Italy, England...where the country's surface area is very small but very over populated, I understand why the price is going up.

But in Canada? Really? We have one of the largest land in the world with very small population. In Canada, we only have like 35 million people in the whole country, which is SMALLER than the City of Tokyo, State of California, etc.

I found it kind of weird why we have to fight for land so hard in Canada.

Lumber and wood products are still 8.5 billion anually.

Pulp and paper is another 4.3 billion.

Energy products (coal, gas, electricity) is 5.8 billion

Agriculture including fish is 3.8 billion.

Anually BC exports some 36 billion worth of goods.

Of that 36 billion about 65% is related to heavy industry; forestry, mining, saw mills, power projects.

This means that manufacturing, agriculture, textiles, apparel, plastics, chemincals, and all that other shit only make up 35% of our economy.

I think someone has the ex-girlfriend syndrome with Vancouver, which is their reason for coming back to this thread.

Think of a guy sitting at home in his underwear, eating cheezies, looking at the facebook page of his ex-girlfriend (Vancouver) and stating how fat and ugly she has gotten. How terrible of a person she is. Describing how it was the best decision ever to break up. How the new men in her life are fools for spending time with her and how there are so many other girls out there who are better than she is.

Yet, this same guy keeps coming back to the same page of the former ex, to see how she is doing, to see how much fun the new men are having, day after day, for the past 4 years.

LUL

And this has anything to do with the discussion at hand? Instead of resorting to personal attacks, it would make you look more intelligent if you tried to make a coherent argument.

have you even been following along in this thread? that clearly was directed towards 4444 and his unhealthy obsession with pissing on vancouver all the time..

I still fail to see how that's relevant. Everyone is entitled to their opinion in any topic. Just because one disagrees another, it's not ground to personal attacks. You can provide whatever point to counter 4444's points, but attacking him off-topic (RE) is not. Last time I checked, this is RS, not 4chan. Why bother posting that shit if it adds no value (entertaining, informative... etc) to the topic we are discussing?

From what I have read in 4444's posts, he seems to be doing ok in his life and voted with his feets when it comes to disagreement with Vancouver's ideology and its environment. We could discuss his decisions like its pros and cons, but why talk shit about his behaviors? last time I check, he's still contributing to the topic in his particular viewpoint. If you don't agree, back it up with other facts.



Now back to original topic, I think the fact that we are so dependent on a single bubbly industry is the reason why Vancouver, or BC gov't for that matter won't do anything about it.

If RE goes kaput, it's going to be disastrous to the province. Gov't gets less revenue (from property taxes, income taxes) and amount of people who would be on EI/out of job would make Alberta's depression looks like a walk in a park. How the fuck do you deal with a sudden 100k people out of job (assuming 50% off demand/different field)

It's either the RE bubble popping, or the city becomes an empty shell and vacation resort for the rich. Neither is healthy in the long term, and I'd arguably say the latter (resort for the rich) is far more damaging.

But none of the politicians have the will nor the guts to take on this political challenge. It is far easier to just pay lip service and enact ineffective policies that looks good on paper (much like what Mayor Bike Boy is doing with the empty houses tax, and claiming how he can't change the big picture as "just a mayor").

to me this entire thread at this point just feels like

http://i.imgur.com/WTDnnwE.gif?noredirect

There are three levels of government in this country, all with different interests. It's hard enough to get two people to work together (husband and wife), so what makes you think that 3 governments can work together to solve a very complex problem that largely affects only 2 cities in the country? Because Vancouver is special? Gregor's jurisdiction ends at Boundary Road. Last I heard, houses in Maple Ridge were selling for 700K. Why not blame Mayor Read for not opening up more land to develop? (Maple Ridge has lots of it and most of it is not in the ALR) Is that affordable for the supposed average couple who makes 75K/year?

The only way for the housing market to truly correct to "fundamentals" (i.e. 3 times the average income) is for something undeniably bad to happen, such as an earthquake, an epidemic, or an act of war/terror. This would be bad for everyone.

I'd beg to differ. If you look down south, getting Obamacare to become a reality is a monumental task that is orders of magnitude more difficult to pull through, and yet Obama got it done. Yes, it took a hell of a long time, and it is still far from perfect, but at the end of the day, he got it done.

The difference is, Obama has the vision, leadership, and most important of all, the political will to get the job done. But Tru-doh? He'd much rather spend time taking selfies at the Toronto Pride Parade, or inviting the British Royals to come for another visit to get some photo ops done instead. Crusty is too dumb to know what a premier needs to do. And Bike Boy is too smart to take on something bigger than he can swallow.

If there is a severe housing affordability problem at the biggest and 3rd biggest cities in the country where the working class can't afford to own their own place, I'd say our country has a problem. It really doesn't take a genius to see that runaway housing prices compared to a relatively stagnant (or at least slow growing) salary is very, very bad for the long term health of the cities and country as a whole.

really? that's what you think?

problem with construction - it makes up too much of canada's GDP - this is not sustainable, fact (look at US pre financial crisis).

And what infrastructure projects are there (genuine question)? when i look at Vancovuer's infrastructure, it makes me cringe - you all complain about gridlock, lack of reasonable (and reasonably priced) transit options.


as for 'better places running out fast' - total ignorance. go travel, see the world, it's an amazing place full of opportunities and great people. the UK is an amazing place, don't listen to the stories of racist abuse - you get that in canada, the US, europe, asia, everywhere...

i guess all my canadian friends of different visible ethnic backgrounds (mostly chinese/indian) must be lying through their teeth when they tell me they love life in london (i hate london, for the record).

not in the slightest, i have a vested interest in vancovuer (my family, my better half's family) - i am connected to the city whether i like it or not.

i will have spend part of my retirement in vancouver (the sunny months)

it comes down to this - i know what vancouver was, how great it used to be. since that time when it was a humble town, it has become a lot worse but people keep on shouting how great it is.
after having lived in 4 countries on 2 different continents and having traveled extensively around the world, i can conclude that the average person is close minded and keeps on banging on about how great what they know is - the thing is, it may be great, but you don't know what else there is until you make that decision to open your eyes.

i'm just the devil's advocate here, trying to open the eyes of people who are blinded by the atrocious local media and blind mindset of the average person (best place on earth, vancouver is different, real estate only goes up, china is an endless supply of money, everyone wants to live here).



and how does all this tie back to van real estate: well, just look at the UK, an event has happened (Brexit), real estate will go down there, the GBP has already cratered. It only takes one thing to create uncertainty for the whole house of cards to come crashing down. Will UK real estate crash down? well, it's not as inflated as vancouver's, so perhaps valuations will just get better, but vancouver's real estate is built on stories, bad government, and general BS - it will end (perhaps when the NDP are voted in).

nothing, ever, in the history of the world has ever been a sure thing (other than death and taxes (in the modern world - taxes were brought in to pay for the war effort))

Back on Topic:
?People are buying blind:? Home inspections drop drastically


I think it's crazy how fast people these days complete a real estate deal. When I bought my townhouse 5 years ago, I basically had to put an offer in the day after I spent 30 minutes walking through the unit. Yes, it was contingent on the home inspection, but that was about it.


Comparatively. the last time I bought a used car, I test drove the car, did carproof, had a mechanic do an inspection, and then thought about it; the whole process took over a week - for something that was worth 1.5% of what my townhouse was worth!

That's your example.
Then you have people paying XXX dollars and buying ITR's and NSX's and other cars online.

You can still buy a house with subjects, but it just means your offer has to be one that the sellers cannot refuse.
Offer them $5M for a $1M tear down. I'm sure they will let you do a full home inspection on it.

I'd be scared as fuck to place an offer on something 20+ years old without an inspection if I actually planned to live in it. Pretty messed up that you either have to take a gamble, or offer more than the place is worth just to get an inspection.