Vancouver's Real Estate Market

[quasi]

Originally Posted by Gumby

I get what you’re saying, but if your house didn’t have a suite, depending on the neighbourhood, it could also make it harder to sell.

I agree although I will say suites were a turn off for me when I was looking but realize I'm in the minority. Someday when we sell.in like 25 years someone probably going to knock my house down and take advantage of the lot or at least I hope.

[6793026]

SOOOO many people with a home now wants the rental helper... There was a 2.8 - 3.3 M unit which took 3 yrs to sell SPECFICALLY cause it didn't have a unit.

Other 2 places had a rental and got sold within 3 weeks (same street), same neighbour)

[Teriyaki]

Originally Posted by 6793026

SOOOO many people with a home now wants the rental helper... There was a 2.8 - 3.3 M unit which took 3 yrs to sell SPECFICALLY cause it didn't have a unit.

Other 2 places had a rental and got sold within 3 weeks (same street), same neighbour)

Its not so much the WANT for a mortgage helper, but rather a need for many buyers. The property is simply way too expensive for many buyers to buy with their qualifying income.

With the rental unit, the banks can factor that in to approve the mortgage to really stretch that budget.

At 3mil, using very back of the napkin math. Assuming DP is take care of (600,000), you're left trying to qualify for a 2.4mm mortgage. That'll need an income of about $500,000 annually. Hard pressed to find that kind of income (reported, verifiable income).

The chasm between housing prices and realistic incomes has increased to epic proportions.

[supafamous]

Originally Posted by Gumby

I get what you’re saying, but if your house didn’t have a suite, depending on the neighbourhood, it could also make it harder to sell.

Also...

Detached houses have gotten a LOT bigger over the years - it's not just land costs that have gone up but as the houses have gotten bigger they've also gotten more expensive. The advent of the laneway means you can build 3500sf on a standard lot whereas 10 years ago the max was 2800sf and 10 years before that it was 2400sf and if you wind the clock far back enough it was around 2000sf (don't know the date).

Very few of us NEED a 7-10 bedroom house on a detached lot - we just want the detached lot part but the expansion of the how big houses have gotten (and no means to subdivide) means that rental suites are a natural consequence regardless of cost - even new builds in HOPE come with suites now (https://www.rew.ca/properties/325754...n-road-hope-bc)

I'm a family of 3 so I have no need for 2800-3500sf of space for ourselves - I want 4 bedrooms, a mud room, a laundry room, and a single or double garage. That's doable in 1600-2000sf but detached homes that size still have the same property costs as a 3500sf house and I could use the extra space for taking in my parents or in-laws or if my family grows. Suites give me that kind of flexibility - I'll rent it out while I don't need it and save on my mortgage and I avoid the need to go have to go buy a bigger house later on which is a PITA (I rent out 600sf of my 1800sf duplex right now cause I don't need the basement but if I have another kid I'm definitely taking it back)

So while some folks definitely need the rental income to make it work there's also those of us who want flexibility or who just don't need the space but want the detached life.

[supafamous]

But to add a layer to this - rental suites largely exist b/c of racist and discriminatory zoning policies that were introduced in the 1920s that prohibited multi-family housing in nearly the entire city.

https://www.abundanthousingvancouver...condary_suites

Prior to that there was an abundance of different housing forms - 4 story walk-ups, oddball quadplexes, all sorts of weird lots sizes etc.

The restrictive policies of the 1920s which were designed to punish minorities and low income people live on today so that there's not enough housing for people in Vancouver thus driving up housing prices. The pressure for housing resulted in people being opportunistic in portioning parts of their homes out to rent out - Vancouver specials in the 70s were the tipping point, they were designed to be multi-generational which meant they could be multi-family. (Oh yeah, Chinatown and Japantown and Hogan's Alley ended up where they were because of these policies - they didn't chose to be next to the downtown east side)

By 2004 Vancouver chose to legalize rental suites and the fiction of real single family homes ended. Vancouver could have chosen a different path - they could have allowed subdivision of existing detached lots, they could have allowed for duplexes, triplexes, row houses, and walk ups but FUCKING RICH WHITE PEOPLE blocked it. Don't blame foreign money (at least it's not that high on the list) for the ills of today's housing market.

We likely wouldn't be so riled up about housing prices if it weren't for a bunch of racist white people in the 1920's and their descendants.

[westopher]

Racism, now classism, generational divide, with a sprinkling of racism in there.
I'm bummed. I never want to be a landlord again, but I do want to have a detached home with a suite, as I never want my grandparents to be in a home. They are still independent, but won't be forever. That ship sailed, and it's shitty. The brain drain will happen here in Vancouver. Many of the best chefs I knew in the city when I moved here left. I have doctor friends who left, etc.
I stand by the issue currently being that there are too many homes owned by too few people that live here these days. One of my Mom's ex-employees family has 11 houses here. I'm taking immediate family. 4 people. None of them were lived in (although this was before the vacant home tax implemented a couple years ago, so that may have changed) and quite frankly, thats fucking absurd.

[Hondaracer]

Yea..the policies of the 1920’s had way more of an impact on local housing than expo, Hong Kong immigration, mainland Chinese money laundering, Olympics, etc.. ya kidding me?

Between 1920 and 2000 the median house price probably changed 200%

Between 2008 and 2021 it’s probably 500%

Zoning is obviously an issue but it hasn’t really been an issue for 90% of the time you’re talking about.

[68style]

LOL housing prices blamed on rich white people... they were stagnant as fuck until immigration exploded into Vancouver area.

My dad bought the house he lives in right now in Richmond in 1985 for $143,000 which was like 3x his annual salary at the time during a flat market due to crazy interest rates (borrowed money from my Grandma) and now in 2021 it's up to like $2,600,000 would be the selling price now which would be like 30x an average annual salary now.

In 2003 I remember my buddy bought a townhouse for $156,000 and my dad was laughing that it cost more than his houses did in strict dollars sense (obviously not accounting for inflation, but I digress)... and now those same townhouses are $900,000.

Did rich old white people happen between 2003 and 2021????? Yah sure man.

Look at the stats straight from the Canadian populaltion history website for Richmond (since I used it as my example): Between 1971 and 1991 Richmond's population doubled, due in part to increased immigration from Hong Kong and China. There was also significant immigration from the Philippines and Taiwan. Demand doubled during that period mostly due to immigration, not cuz a bunch of whities had shit-tonnes of babies lol

I ain't complaining as a home owner myself, it's become my retirement fund basically... but the blame whitey thing doesn't wash on this one.

[westopher]

1920s policies here in BC/Vancouver carry generations of ripple effect though. Both of you have a point.
Thats the essence of the systemic racism people talk about though, as it's never been more clear that peoples lives are dictated by generations of success/failure. You and I both agree on that. These people buying 2-4 million dollar homes aren't doing it on their own fucking hard work, by a long shot. It comes from being the 4th generation of rich cunts and having a handout. Of course there are exceptions, but like we both have said, there aren't 100000 hootsuite and WhatsApp CEOs living here.
That said, not even close to all those rich cunts are white haha.

[Hondaracer]

Take a survey of the type of people who own multiple homes in B.C

End of story

[westopher]

I bet they are of many ethnic backgrounds. The one thing they share, is they are all rich, and they all are just getting richer because they are rich, and not because they are making the world a better place.

[EvoFire]

Originally Posted by Hondaracer

Take a survey of the type of people who own multiple homes in B.C

End of story

My understanding is it's from all walks of life.

I feel like you are implying it's immigrants and Chinese. If I assumed wrong, I apologize in advance.

I know people who are Chinese who own 2 or 3 places. I know people who are white who own 2-3 places. I know people who brown who are the same.

I also know people from all those ethnic groups who can't afford shit and have to rent.

[68style]

Who owns half of downtown Vancouver’s property?

Li Ka Shing and a guy from Singapore.

[Teriyaki]

Originally Posted by 68style

Who owns half of downtown Vancouver’s property?

Li Ka Shing and a guy from Singapore.

Developer =/= Owning

[Hondaracer]

Originally Posted by EvoFire

My understanding is it's from all walks of life.

I feel like you are implying it's immigrants and Chinese. If I assumed wrong, I apologize in advance.

I know people who are Chinese who own 2 or 3 places. I know people who are white who own 2-3 places. I know people who brown who are the same.

I also know people from all those ethnic groups who can't afford shit and have to rent.

Foreign investment surely, where they come from it can be largely assumed Chinese/HK based on even the governments assessment

You have to understand that no “white” person or any person in their right mind (see permanent residents who actually live here) would have dumped millions of dollars into real estate back in the early 2000’s because why would you, the prices had never gone anywhere, your rate of return was terrible.

The injection of foreign investment/money laundering is pretty clearly to blame for the current situation in terms of prices.

Not to say that Vancouver isn’t the place to be persay but to have prices at these levels is created by outside sources and lack of govt. intervention.

Walking a tight wire with the race card I’ll say if you drive through Shaunessy and you see some old unkept down-trodden mansion with an unmowed lawn id take the bet the owner isn’t named Johnson or Dhaliwal etc

There is a ridiculous amount of money in Vancouver, but smart money was never really snapping up real estate at the rate they should have been without unforeseen circumstances

[Hondaracer]

Originally Posted by Teriyaki

Developer =/= Owning

Concorde Pacific had more control over the Vancouver skyline than Vancouver.

[donk.]

So whos in to make a ricescene LLC with a few rental homes, then we can be on the news for: "greedy car forum landlords buying up vancouver properties"

[68style]

RS already be buying up all the expensive rides according to the pics of your whip thread

And stealing decent deals form the poor in the good buys... we got both ends covered ont the car market. Might as well get into RE too!

[supafamous]

Originally Posted by Hondaracer

Yea..the policies of the 1920’s had way more of an impact on local housing than expo, Hong Kong immigration, mainland Chinese money laundering, Olympics, etc.. ya kidding me?

Between 1920 and 2000 the median house price probably changed 200%

Between 2008 and 2021 it’s probably 500%

Zoning is obviously an issue but it hasn’t really been an issue for 90% of the time you’re talking about.

Housing policy is generational and the ripple effects of it aren't felt quickly (for better or worse) until they are felt very quickly (like climate change). When Vancouver banned multi-family homes in the 1920's (GVRD pop: 232k) there was no shortage of land to build on in Vancouver or the suburbs so that bad decision has little to no impact on society (also there was a depression then WWII).

Up until the 70's or so (GVRD pop: 1m) there was still empty land to build detached homes in Vancouver so the policy of only detached homes or slums wasn't really a problem yet but by the end of the decade the script had been written because that's when we ran out of land and we starting seeing real sprawl. The Port Mann was built in 1964 despite literally nothing being around it. Surrey was 10% of the GVRD pop in 1971 then was 16% in 1991 and now it's 21% of the GVRD - you see similar increases in other suburbs, they all become a bigger portion of the population b/c in the 70's we not only ran out of land in Vancouver but had put a somewhat rigid cap on density (we weren't building enough housing for the population growth).

Housing is generational - once you build a house it sticks around for 60-100 years - so once something is built it's really hard to change what's there. By the 70's we were going to be fucked in some way....cue the following:

- Tax changes that drove wealth towards the rich. Rich got super rich.
- Rise of tech that created a new class of wealthy (this wasn't till the 21st century)
- Drop of interest rates (80's peak), it was possible to borrow more.
- Destruction of the middle class that pushed people into the working class.
- Rise of the "3rd world", namely Asia. We've got a lot of new rich people going around in the world and they want the best.
- Implementation of even more restrictive zoning policies intended to protect the livability of Vancouver. Everything from view cones to restrict height to mundane stuff like setting minimum lot sizes. Most of this was good - we're one of the best cities in the world to live in (victim of our success)
- Housing options remain either detached home or condo (very limited townhouse or multi-family housing allowed).

All the while the number of detached lots in Vancouver (and Burnaby) stayed the same (and actually dropped a small amount). Since 1991 population growth has actually slowed in the GVRD - it used to be about 35-40% every 10 years and over the 30 years it's dropped to about 20% every 10 years. Surprised? I am. We already were unaffordable in the 90's and we already weren't building enough housing.

So you have a fixed amount of detached homes and you have a large increase in people who could afford a detached home (local and foreign), no viable alternatives to detached homes, and you have a massive drop in cost of borrowing. At the same time you have nowhere to build alternative housing options - it's either condo towers in the few remaining empty spots (False Creek, Joyce-Collingwood, River District, Brentwood, Lougheed) or it's a detached house - people with families are having to borrow every cent they have to get a detached home b/c they can't live in a condo.

We've been screwed for a while now - we've got new externalities that make it extra bad from time to time but the core underlying issues are: water border, land border, mountain range, and housing policy. The others are factors but they're amplified by the core 4 issues - it's the same in Sydney, Singapore, New York, London, SF etc, the volume is just different depending on if all the externalities are cranked to 11 or not at the time.

FWIW: There's a tonne of great detailed analysis about housing in the GVRD using real data/math here that explains a lot of the buildup to what we see today: https://doodles.mountainmath.ca

Examples:
https://doodles.mountainmath.ca/blog...bility-crisis/
https://doodles.mountainmath.ca/blog...n-projections/

[68style]

Unaffordable in the 90’s?

I bought a prebuilt Polygon 2 bedroom condo in central Richmond over 1,000 sq ft in 2003 for $254,900.

It was still affordable even in the early 2000’s. Single guy at a entry level position I could afford it.

I sold it 3 years later for $100,000 more ($368,000 to be exact) to move elsewhere... that’s where the massive increase started... 2004+ is where shit went crazy. 30% increase in less than 3 years.

That same condo nowadays is $750,000+ Looking at zealty which is ridiculous... more than tripled in 17 years.

This made me cry a little to look up, wish I could have kept it lol

[Manic!]

Minorities own real estate because they know that's the only way they can get ahead in life. Many no matter what kind of education they have many are forced to work low skilled jobs.

In the 80's my dad worked in a mill working every overtime shift he could get and my mom worked as a short order cook. They had 4 duplexes all rented plus the house we lived in that also had a rental suite. Sold it all to build are gas station.

My cousin who came here 15 years ago from India now has a roofing company. When he started roofing with no experience he was working 6 days a week from sun up to sun down. He know owns 2 houses. the house he lives in has 2 rental suites ant they pay his mortgage and then some.

Most of my family owns multiple properties.

It's not just rich foreigners buying multiple houses.

[supafamous]

Originally Posted by 68style

Unaffordable in the 90’s?

I bought a prebuilt Polygon 2 bedroom condo in central Richmond over 1,000 sq ft in 2003 for $254,900.

It was still affordable even in the early 2000’s. Single guy at a entry level position I could afford it.

I sold it 3 years later for $100,000 more ($368,000 to be exact) to move elsewhere... that’s where the massive increase started... 2004+ is where shit went crazy. 30% increase in less than 3 years.

That same condo nowadays is $750,000+ Looking at zealty which is ridiculous... more than tripled in 17 years.

This made me cry a little to look up, wish I could have kept it lol

Here's a chart showing average housing prices in the GVRD since the late 70's



There were wild rides for detached homes during:

- 1977-1981 (more than doubling)
- 1985-1989 (more than doubling)
- 1989-1995 (more than doubling)
- 2003-2007 (more than doubling)
- 2009-2011 (50% increase)
- Mid-2014-2016 (50% increase)

So prices have gone up for detached home up about 30x (From about 60k to 1.8m) since 1977 pretty consistently while the dollar's value has gone up 4.3x. From 1977 till 2008 detached prices went up 15x (right up till the financial crash), since then it's only doubled from 2008, it's just that the numbers are so much bigger now.

tl;dr - it's been fucked for a long time.

Edit: You can see a more accurate chart here: https://globalnews.ca/news/2531266/o...-situation-is/

[EvoFire]

Originally Posted by Hondaracer

Foreign investment surely, where they come from it can be largely assumed Chinese/HK based on even the governments assessment

You have to understand that no “white” person or any person in their right mind (see permanent residents who actually live here) would have dumped millions of dollars into real estate back in the early 2000’s because why would you, the prices had never gone anywhere, your rate of return was terrible.

The injection of foreign investment/money laundering is pretty clearly to blame for the current situation in terms of prices.

Not to say that Vancouver isn’t the place to be persay but to have prices at these levels is created by outside sources and lack of govt. intervention.

Walking a tight wire with the race card I’ll say if you drive through Shaunessy and you see some old unkept down-trodden mansion with an unmowed lawn id take the bet the owner isn’t named Johnson or Dhaliwal etc

There is a ridiculous amount of money in Vancouver, but smart money was never really snapping up real estate at the rate they should have been without unforeseen circumstances

You are right, but there are plenty of non-immigrants(hell, most ppl here are immigrants if you get pedantic) sitting on millions of dollars of property. We were looking at Capitol Hill and you can easily tell who's been there in the very beginning and who's new to the area.

If you get into the whole last name thing it gets messy because there are lots and lots of successful 2nd/3rd generation Asians who have an Asian name but don't speak a lick of whatever cultural language they are supposed to be from. Do you group those as "foreign" money?

There are lots of hidden millionaires in Vancouver that you would never think about, dropping a ton of cash on all sorts of random things. All those yachts and Coal Habour, how many do you think are Asian owned?


Would you consider me having foreign money? I am Chinese, I would say my wife and I are doing ok in terms of finances. We can afford to take out a million dollar+ mortgage and have a sizeable down payment because of equity in our townhouse, we can afford a decent size house in Vancouver or Burnaby. Sure we immigrated, and I'm not sure if you would call us 2nd gen or 1st gen since we grew up here(1.5gen?), but our parents don't have money. They worked and rode the boom. Yes my parents are giving us some money for a house, but without it we can still afford close to 2 million ourselves. I am willing to make the sacrifice to get rid of my toys to make the move, some people aren't.

PS: The numbers are working out that I don't have to get rid of my car, but hey if it was to be, then it's to be.

[SSM_DC5]

Originally Posted by Manic!

Minorities own real estate because they know that's the only way they can get ahead in life. Many no matter what kind of education they have many are forced to work low skilled jobs.

In the 80's my dad worked in a mill working every overtime shift he could get and my mom worked as a short order cook. They had 4 duplexes all rented plus the house we lived in that also had a rental suite. Sold it all to build are gas station.

My cousin who came here 15 years ago from India now has a roofing company. When he started roofing with no experience he was working 6 days a week from sun up to sun down. He know owns 2 houses. the house he lives in has 2 rental suites ant they pay his mortgage and then some.

Most of my family owns multiple properties.

It's not just rich foreigners buying multiple houses.

Your cousins business in metro Vancouver? My roof needs a power washing at a minimum.

[Manic!]

Originally Posted by SSM_DC5

Your cousins business in metro Vancouver? My roof needs a power washing at a minimum.

It's in Surrey. I don't know if he does power washing.