40% :lawl:

we were looking at properties to upgrade our house as our family is growing, and pricing in vancouver/burnaby for houses is still pretty ridiculous. i see the same homes on the market for months. i can see it's harder to sell a $800k house for $1.1 million ... i walk in to the open house i can almost see the realtors' faces looking like :badpokerface:

we'll be holding on upgrading and see how things play out for a bit. not too worried about increase/decrease in prices since when we sell the gap to upgrade the bigger house IMO will still be the same. i figure if pricing for the bigger house drops, pricing for my smaller house drops too and vice versa.

i agree with some of meowjin's assessment to an extent, but you make what you can of your situation. for me i choose not to hang out with dbag's or people with drama and hang out with real people and live my life, and don't worry about all the other negative stuff you might see. every city will have stuff like that.

Vancouver is an extension of BC, all of those places you mentioned are mostly dumps outside of their metro area

Although foreign buyers and plenty of long time residences probably have never been north of Squamish or east of Langley
Posted via RS Mobile

^^
http://www.vancitybuzz.com/image.php....jpg&w=650&a=t

http://www.vancitybuzz.com/image.php....jpg&w=650&a=t

LOL

:lawl: wtf

^^Well, that sums it up right there.

People are spending too much of their income on housing, and as soon as one little thing goes wrong(ie.interest rates), we could be in for a snap.

Where has your work sent you?

This year I travelled to the beaches of Hawaii, South Florida, and the Black Sea. Might wanna see those places first. All the stuff you wrote up there is the opinion of someone with rose coloured glasses on.

You think those places are better than van? I've been to Hawaii for a reasonable vacation I'll take Cabo over it any day...

I'm not going to turn this into a bigger dick type thread but I've been around pretty well and coming back to Van to simply drive across the port Mann in the morning with the sun coming up is more beauty then alot of people in these other places will ever see (of course being subjective)
Posted via RS Mobile

40%? Where do these people get these numbers from!?

Funny you mention vacation destinations when we're talking about liveable cities. Is that all the travelling you've done?

There are a lot of people, who have been a lot of places, that still choose to call vancouver home. I still love hawaii, mexico, chile, and many other places for vacations and would love to see all over the world, but lots of people are very happy and proud to call Canada home for many reasons, and as far as Canada goes, I can't think of somewhere better than Vancouver.

No that's the travelling I've done plus 3 months in London this year alone ;)

South Florida has a bunch of liveable cities, you should go visit.

Conditions continue to favour buyers in the Greater Vancouver housing market | Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver

Coles Notes:

Basically September 2012 sales (# of sales) are 42% below the 10 year average for september. So volume or amount of transactions are decreasing, but prices have only gone down 2.3% over the last three months according to the benchmark prices.

Which means inventory is at a high and not many people are buying or selling, but prices havnt really come down.

However if you annualize 2.3% for 3 months over a 12 month period that is a significant decrease (assuming prices are going down at that same rate).

^ PS, the REBGV has the title "Conditions continue to favour buyers", but a disclaimer should be put as these guys represent the Real estate industry and want realtors to do well, so of course they will say conditions favor buyers.

What are peoples thoughts about buying in the False Creek area?

Its directly in between my work and home, and I think it looks great. They have reasonable $/sq ft, are close to DT, a close walk to the water, and close to gastown if you are into great local food. The only thing that worries me is with the whole olympic village fiasco, how well built are these places? They are going up FAST. Also I can see the yuppie attitude of yaletown filling it up quickly.

I remember the insulation in the mechanical duct was all wrong in the village and made front Page News. Don't know if and how it was resolved.

Also not sure how the chunk of housing there used for social housing affects things either. But I remember seeing units of the village advertising in the paper hory shit its expensive lol. Rather try to get in to the social housing portion :lawl:

If you think the Olympic village was built poorly you should see how all these pre-fab 3 story townhouses are built.
Posted via RS Mobile

I have been shopping very seriously in the area and have spent some time looking at every display available in the area. IMO one of the biggest problems is that a lot of the new units are on either W2nd or Quebec St. ie big ass traffic. Also, a lot of the builders in the area are not being 100% straightforward about other proposed developments, the SEFC community plan is located here:
https://vancouver.ca/docs/sefc/offic...pment-plan.pdf

Currently there are approximately 2000 units that are being developed and there are about another 1500 units that havent even been announced - ie the big parking lot directly to the east of the existing olympic village is actually owned by Concert and slated to be 3 towers 12, 13, 14 floors respectively but nobody who sells at Lido or Central across the street seem to be acknowledging that all their units will stare directly at 2 years of construction and then into new units.

The biggest problem is all the units will be like interior yaletown - facing one another directly, which I personally really don't like.

With that said, the prices are reasonable - ground floor walkups are what I have been looking at and prices are around $620-$630sqft which is definitely a good 20% cheaper than equivalent downtown.

Hope that helps, if you have questions about specific developments, shoot. FWIW if I was buying pre-sale I have narrowed it to Lido (Bosa) or Meccanica (Cressey).

Mark

Holy fak. I was wondering when someone would start construction on that plot of land. Now we know.

Don't forget the plot of land on the north side of the water near Rogers Arena. That is owned by Concord Pacific if I'm not mistaken. I believe that is going to become condo's too.

Like I said, a lot of $$$ and planning is going into underdelveloped space in Vancouver.

I wonder who owns the piece of land behind the Mediterranian market on Venables?

40‰ drop is too drastic. If it hit 20% boc and govt is sure to step in. I melt down of real estate will be bad for economy overall. A correction maybe not so and will be justified.

Anybody who is considering should go over this document very carefully:
https://vancouver.ca/docs/sefc/offic...pment-plan.pdf

The area is going to be a dramatically different place as of late 2014 when most of the buildings in this phase are complete, but you want to make sure you are clear with what it will look like!

Mark

Travelling to a city for work when you're housed up in a hotel and are living on an expense account is completely different than living in a city. South Florida is great if you're retired and have investments to fund your lifestyle, but it sucks if you're young and have to support yourself. In fact, South Florida is what Vancouver will be in 30 years if there is no focus on drawing capital and investment here. And the Black Sea? Sure it's nice to visit, but look at the countries surrounding it - Ukraine, Turkey, Georgia, Romania, etc. All of these countries may be nice to visit and be good to stay for a short period of time if you are in a position of privilege, but I would argue that your average Joe is way better off in Vancouver than in say Odessa.

I'd love to buy a detached house in Metro Vancouver, but the economy has changed. You need to be mobile and be willing to leave on a moment's notice for the next job.
Posted via RS Mobile

Having been to S. Florida for vacy and knowing people there, it's not as nice as people make it out to be. The crime/murder rate is pretty high there. Step into the wrong neighbourhood and it is almost as bad as Compton.

Driving along the highway, you will see a lot of boarded up buildings and run down crack shacks a few minutes from the beach. Remember the hotel scene in Slum Dog Millionaire? There is a big hotel that went under and is all boarded up right on the beach.

Oh yeah, and when it is huricanne season, you don't want to be living in S. Florida.

But like what Tapioca said. Short term work or vacay doesn't give you the full spectrum of what living in that place is like.

I always enjoy my visits to Hong Kong, but I don't think I would enjoy living/working there in the summer when it is hot and humid or when the typhoons hit.