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Montreal has gone condo crazy. The city has a program in place, accesscondo.org,that will front 10% of the total sum of a unit as long as you have 1000$ to put down. Nun's Island, St-Henri, Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, Little Burgundy, N.D.G., even downtown all have sprawling mega-towers popping up... Most of these areas have no services in place to support an influx of that many people. For example, once Little Burgundy's construction projects are finished, they expect an influx of 15,000 new people in that neighbourhood alone. The neighbourhood can not support that many people. People have been raising the issue more and more at borough meetings throughout the island. Meanwhile, if you're renting (like I am) You're stuck looking at crack dens in Villeray and Anjou, paying easily 800$ for a half-room in the Plateau, or dilapidated 3 1/2 workers' homes from the 1930's in Verdun starting at 750$. It's that bad. If you're not making a decent salary your only real options for a good appartment are out in the boonies of Pointe-Aux-Trembles or off the Island on the South Shore or Laval. Otherwise, get used to dealing with roommates you find on Craigslist and Kijiji. Compounding the problem is the fact that Quebecers are now the most indebted and taxed people in Canada and our deficit just keeps growing and growing... Barrakketh fucked around with this message at 21:46 on Apr 10, 2013 |
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Apr 10, 2013 21:44
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SpaceMost posted:I wish I paid closer attention in French class. It's only 374 square foot? It's still cheaper per square foot to buy in Los Angeles. Seems kind of expensive as that's tiny as hell. http://www.redfin.com/CA/Culver-City/4913-Indian-Wood-Rd-90230/unit-507/home/6784343
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Apr 10, 2013 21:50
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Buckwheat Sings posted:It's only 374 square foot? It's still cheaper per square foot to buy in Los Angeles. Seems kind of expensive as that's tiny as hell. There's some other nice places, though: http://passerelle.centris.ca/Redirect2.aspx?CodeDest=PLATEAU&NoMls=MT10301401&Source=WWW.REALTOR.CA&Langue=E I don't know anything about the neighborhoods, though.
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Apr 10, 2013 21:59
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Barrakketh posted:Montreal has gone condo crazy. The city has a program in place, accesscondo.org,that will front 10% of the total sum of a unit as long as you have 1000$ to put down. Schemes like this and BC's first-time buyer tax credit, not to mention RRSP-raiding for down payments, make me furious. Revenue is getting pulled from all sorts of more worthy causes, and as far as I can tell, the only real outcome is more dollars chasing the same housing => thus benefits accumulate to developers. Barrakketh posted:Meanwhile, if you're renting (like I am) You're stuck looking at crack dens in Villeray and Anjou, paying easily 800$ for a half-room in the Plateau, or dilapidated 3 1/2 workers' homes from the 1930's in Verdun starting at 750$. It's that bad. If you're not making a decent salary your only real options for a good appartment are out in the boonies of Pointe-Aux-Trembles or off the Island on the South Shore or Laval. Otherwise, get used to dealing with roommates you find on Craigslist and Kijiji. Well I imagine a good portion of all those condos are going to be on the rental market in short order, so that should help in tempering prices and putting a floor on quality. At least one would hope. I've heard anecdotes suggesting this is starting to happen in Vancouver... Lexicon fucked around with this message at 23:01 on Apr 10, 2013 |
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Apr 10, 2013 22:09
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Barrakketh posted:Montreal has gone condo crazy. The city has a program in place, accesscondo.org,that will front 10% of the total sum of a unit as long as you have 1000$ to put down. The provincial government is so worried about outflux of francophones to Laval and the South Shore that I doubt that they'd step in and try to stop these development projects.
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Apr 11, 2013 00:00
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Barrakketh posted:Montreal has gone condo crazy. The city has a program in place, accesscondo.org,that will front 10% of the total sum of a unit as long as you have 1000$ to put down. That this sort of poo poo gets marketed as "trying to make the market affordable" infuriates me to no end. Believe it or not, providing more loans doesn't provide more access -- it drives the price up and reduces access! It's the same poo poo with student loans and university costs, and not surprisingly we've got a glut of over-priced crap there too.
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Apr 11, 2013 06:32
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man, apples are in short supply. I'll give everyone more money to buy that still limited supply of apples. Hmm prices are going up still. Maybe... maybe we should just grow more apples!
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Apr 11, 2013 07:35
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Baronjutter posted:man, apples are in short supply. I'll give everyone more money to buy that still limited supply of apples. Those new apple farms are a blight upon my neighborhood and lower the value of my own Apples. This new high-density focus on apple farming is ruining the character and sweet charm of the apple farms we originally bought into. Fix this now or be voted out of office!
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Apr 11, 2013 07:41
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Baronjutter posted:You could even get some economies of scale going where the city would be a big enough buyer of construction materials that they'd be able to get better deals with suppliers. A very large part of construction costs is all the red tape and design aspects (a 10 million dollar condo building might cost 6 figures in architectural and engineering fees alone). The city could have an extremely streamlined approval process, as well as design process. Could even look at some tasteful pre-fab or modular construction options. Just because the soviets built ugly pre-cast panel housing doesn't mean it all has to be ugly. I totally agree with this; this is more or less the Swedish model, as far as I know. Everyone can afford at minimum a nice, big apartment, but every apartment in Sweden has the same front door. Baronjutter posted:But we won't, because neo-liberalism. In Vancouver, it's also because our city council is bought and paid for by property developers. In 2011 we had the most-financed municipal election campaign in Canadian history, with around $1 mil going to each of the two major parties. And the majority of that funding was from developers. There's some breakdown here, but you can probably dig out the full documents on the CoV website (I can't be arsed to find them again right now). Until that gets fixed, I wouldn't expect to see much positive change on housing from the Vancouver City Council. (Of course this is also a knock-on consequence of the hot money problem, but getting business interests out of government might help.)
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Apr 11, 2013 08:23
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So is that the problem now? That there isn't enough housing being built?
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Apr 11, 2013 08:51
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Lead out in cuffs posted:I totally agree with this; this is more or less the Swedish model, as far as I know. Everyone can afford at minimum a nice, big apartment, but every apartment in Sweden has the same front door. Can you explain more about this? Every Swedish person I have ever met has complained about the cost of anything near Stockholm.
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Apr 11, 2013 08:51
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Throatwarbler posted:So is that the problem now? That there isn't enough housing being built? Houses currently built are mega-condos that go up for unreasonable mortgages that then lie fallow, or ludicrously expensive McMansions in ostensibly popular neighborhoods. Nobody is just putting up an apartment building for people to rent for an ordinary price, because the current perception is that's a wasteful capital investment. Or so I hear, I mean.
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Apr 11, 2013 09:47
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Lead out in cuffs posted:I totally agree with this; this is more or less the Swedish model, as far as I know. Everyone can afford at minimum a nice, big apartment, but every apartment in Sweden has the same front door. In some slightly positive Vancouver news the Independent COPE faction has taken control of COPE, pushing out the Vision-coalition faction. They are pretty focused on the issue of affordable housing and could use some help, because they sure aren't going to be able to buy their way into office!
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Apr 11, 2013 16:16
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Lexicon posted:Schemes like this and BC's first-time buyer tax credit, not to mention RRSP-raiding for down payments, make me furious. Revenue is getting pulled from all sorts of more worthy causes, and as far as I can tell, the only real outcome is more dollars chasing the same housing => thus benefits accumulate to developers. The money's there if I want to buy a house, but if I decide to keep renting, then I get a few extra years of compounded interest when I retire.
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Apr 11, 2013 16:34
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SpaceMost posted:I like the RRSP plan because it gives me the flexibility to top off my annual RRSP contributions (no small feat) without having to worry about possibly maybe buying a house in 5-10 years. Without it, I'd have to decide every year if I want to save for a house or save for retirement, and act accordingly. You can only pull $25k from your RRSP for your house, so it's still complicated unless you're really bad at saving. And remember too, you have to pay it back to your RRSP over the next 15 years or they add it to your income. edit: vv fixed 
Fraternite fucked around with this message at 17:22 on Apr 11, 2013 |
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Apr 11, 2013 16:48
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Fraternite posted:You can only pull $25k from your RRSP for your house, so it's still complicated unless you're really bad at saving. 15 years. 10 years is for education.
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Apr 11, 2013 17:19
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The First Time Homebuyer Plan is a loving disgrace and a miscarriage of taxation policy, and it should be scrapped ASAP.
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Apr 11, 2013 17:21
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Fine-able Offense posted:The First Time Homebuyer Plan is a loving disgrace and a miscarriage of taxation policy, and it should be scrapped ASAP. How about the LLP? I've used it to get my ticket, and it came in handy. Granted I paid it back in 2 years.
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Apr 11, 2013 17:23
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SpannerX posted:How about the LLP? I've used it to get my ticket, and it came in handy. Granted I paid it back in 2 years. The LLP I still object to on some level because of the taxation implications, but at least there you can make a two-degree argument about income potential leading to better retirement outcomes, so it's still cause and effect. The FTHP, not so much- it's just a naked pro-homeowner tax shift, that also has the double effect of permanently damaging people's RRSP savings rates. All the government is doing is allowing people to mortgage their future in order to prop up consumption in one sector of the economy, while also dodging taxes to do so.
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Apr 11, 2013 17:30
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SpaceMost posted:I like the RRSP plan because it gives me the flexibility to top off my annual RRSP contributions (no small feat) without having to worry about possibly maybe buying a house in 5-10 years. Without it, I'd have to decide every year if I want to save for a house or save for retirement, and act accordingly. We're only talking about 25 grand here, which is gently caress-all as a percentage of any sort of housing in this property-daft country of ours. And that money does nothing but goose asking prices higher - as everyone can rob their RRSPs.... so again, more dollars chasing the same housing. Retirement saving should be for retirement. End of story. MaterialConceptual posted:In some slightly positive Vancouver news the Independent COPE faction has taken control of COPE, pushing out the Vision-coalition faction. They are pretty focused on the issue of affordable housing and could use some help, because they sure aren't going to be able to buy their way into office! The only thing that'll make Vancouver more affordable is when it becomes sufficiently poo poo of a place because so few people are willing to live there, not municipal parties. There's the odd article in the G&M, etc, about doctors and similar professionals who want a house, and but obviously can't buy. When you're at the point of driving away professionals that are integral to the functioning of a city...
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Apr 11, 2013 18:06
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Lexicon posted:We're only talking about 25 grand here, which is gently caress-all as a percentage of any sort of housing in this property-daft country of ours. And that money does nothing but goose asking prices higher - as everyone can rob their RRSPs.... so again, more dollars chasing the same housing.
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Apr 11, 2013 19:17
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shots shots shots posted:Can you explain more about this? Every Swedish person I have ever met has complained about the cost of anything near Stockholm. My wife is Swedish. A good friend of hers owned a nice two-bedroom apartment on the edges of Stockholm despite being only part-time employed. It was a little far out, but you could be downtown in about 30 minutes using the transit system. I think this is a pretty good example (and looks fairly similar to what my wife's friend owned): http://objekt.fastighetsbyran.se/Objekt/?source=hemnet&ObjektGID=OBJ1460_1258913776 85 square metres = 900 square feet, 2 bedrooms, spacious kitchen, spacious lounge/dining room, hardwood floors, balcony. Price: 1M SEK = CAD$160K. The building itself is ugly as sin, but it's in the middle of park-like grounds and the inside is beautiful. It's located pretty far out, but the J-train station is a short walk away. This is basically low-cost housing in Sweden, and I think the government plays a pretty big role in its construction (my wife pointed out that her friend's apartment had the same front door as her parents' apartment on the other side of the country, and that this was true of about half the apartments in the country.) That said, actual houses closer in to Stockholm do seem to be creeping up into the $1mil range, but it's still possible for pretty much anyone to own a two bedroom with hardwood floors within reasonable travelling distance of their work.
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Apr 11, 2013 21:54
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Lead out in cuffs posted:My wife is Swedish. A good friend of hers owned a nice two-bedroom apartment on the edges of Stockholm despite being only part-time employed. It was a little far out, but you could be downtown in about 30 minutes using the transit system. I think this is a pretty good example (and looks fairly similar to what my wife's friend owned): http://objekt.fastighetsbyran.se/Objekt/?source=hemnet&ObjektGID=OBJ1460_1258913776 Something like that is easily 400k in Montreal. Jesus that living room is huge.
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Apr 11, 2013 21:59
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That would be about 250k or more depending on the laundry situation in Victoria. I'd be fine living in an ugly soviet-looking apartment if it was built well and near transit. How do they keep them so cheap? A bit of wasted space though, not a huge fan of the layout. I'd have made the kitchen/hall/living room one large space. Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 22:23 on Apr 11, 2013 |
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Apr 11, 2013 22:20
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Baronjutter posted:That would be about 250k or more depending on the laundry situation in Victoria. I'd be fine living in an ugly soviet-looking apartment if it was built well and near transit. How do they keep them so cheap? Oh, it also comes with bicycle storage, 6-8 square metres of dedicated basement storage space, in-building laundry, in-building exercise room, and access to a communal pram storage room. As for how it's so cheap, I really don't know. Someone who understands more about the economics should probably comment on that, but I get the impression that there is a fair degree of government fiscal policy management to regulate housing prices. I also think there may be something in your suggestion of goverment supplied standardized plans and materials, but I don't know for sure.
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Apr 11, 2013 22:49
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Barrakketh posted:Something like that is easily 400k in Montreal. Jesus that living room is huge. That's an exaggeration. I had a comparable place to that in the plateau...bought in 2009 for $245K, sold in 2012 for $294K.
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Apr 11, 2013 23:47
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mr. unhsib posted:That's an exaggeration. I had a comparable place to that in the plateau...bought in 2009 for $245K, sold in 2012 for $294K. Probably a wise business decision. As mentioned above, Montreal is off the charts right now with inventory.
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Apr 12, 2013 00:20
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Lead out in cuffs posted:As for how it's so cheap, I really don't know. Someone who understands more about the economics should probably comment on that, but I get the impression that there is a fair degree of government fiscal policy management to regulate housing prices. I also think there may be something in your suggestion of goverment supplied standardized plans and materials, but I don't know for sure. 30 minutes away from the city is easy to make cheap, especially if the train is a commuter train that doesn't make many stops like a subway.
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Apr 12, 2013 01:31
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Baronjutter posted:A bit of wasted space though, not a huge fan of the layout. I'd have made the kitchen/hall/living room one large space. Yeah, having lived in both styles I prefer the open layout. Saying that it is a nice looking place. But what is up with the bathtub? Is it really raised that far off the ground or is it an optical illusion.
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Apr 12, 2013 02:17
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Lead out in cuffs posted:As for how it's so cheap, I really don't know. Someone who understands more about the economics should probably comment on that, but I get the impression that there is a fair degree of government fiscal policy management to regulate housing prices. I also think there may be something in your suggestion of goverment supplied standardized plans and materials, but I don't know for sure. Central planning is efficient and profit is the largest tax you will ever pay.   
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Apr 12, 2013 09:06
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The Globe and Mail has an article about a record drop in sales of land for development. TFA posted:The Greater Toronto Area has just posted a record decline in sales of land for future residential developments, suggesting that home and condo builders are reacting to the decrease in housing sales by tempering their appetite for new construction. Are they saying that the price of low-rise homes in the Toronto area has risen 10% in the last year alone? Given that we seem to be on the cusp of... something, I thought that it would be useful if posters put down their predictions for the coming five years. Also, it's not fair to just mock private sector economists. Got to give them something, too.  This is TeraNet's Housing Price Index, up until April 2013. Each vertical gridline corresponds to one year, each horizontal gridline corresponds to 50 points on the index. This makes predictions easily testable as new data comes in. It is likely all the predictions will be hideously wrong (mine more than most, probably), but what the hell, I'll throw myself out there. Remember: confidence intervals and error bars are for chumps. This is my prediction:  This miserable graph forecasts a two year long slump in which the index loses about 20-25% of its values, followed by a painfully slow recovery, marred by at least a couple false recoveries and in all likelihood, incredibly depressing politics. Overly pessimistic? Maybe! But given that many economists and real estate associations seem to be calling for a 'soft landing,' I thought I'd make a more daring prediction. Health Services fucked around with this message at 04:09 on Apr 23, 2013 |
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Apr 23, 2013 04:05
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So has the inventory in GVRD rebounded yet or what's happening now. Don't let me down bubble thread!
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Apr 26, 2013 02:07
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Sassafras fucked around with this message at 08:09 on Nov 26, 2013 |
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Apr 26, 2013 03:25
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*sad trombone*REBGV posted:The MLS® Home Price Index composite benchmark price for all residential properties in Greater Vancouver is currently $597,300. This represents a decline of 3.9 per cent compared to this time last year. Well, that's not an apocalypse (yet), but that's officially the start of a crash.
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May 2, 2013 20:32
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More like happiness trumpet! At the very least the tuba of schadenfreude...
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May 2, 2013 22:07
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In realted news, hey look, a literal lynch mob: How about that...
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May 2, 2013 22:16
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Mr. Wynand posted:In realted news, hey look, a literal lynch mob: It's hard being rich.
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May 2, 2013 22:23
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Mr. Wynand posted:In realted news, hey look, a literal lynch mob: I didn't know impotent grumbling counted as a lynch mob.
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May 3, 2013 02:18
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Have a look at this gem: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/repo...rticle11908008/ . My biggest question is that though obviously the prices are way over-inflated, what happens when interest rates inevitably go up? Double the fire sale? Or would the Canadian government just force them lower so everyone doesn't sell and make the crash worse? Either way, I just finished paying my OSAP on Friday and I am very excited to begin saving my downpayment for when the market because more rational.
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May 14, 2013 17:06
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Victoria check in! Houses keep going up in price all around me in my neighbourhood, bidding wars on condos. A realtor friend of the family was practically begging them to convince me to buy now because we're "due for another boom". I logically understand this is unsustainable but it's getting very hard to keep my wife convinced. I feel like the lone climate-change denying crackpot. They keep showing me market reports and articles and stuff saying we're at the bottom now, prices will only go up. I know though if I buy now there will be a crash, but if I don't buy and wait a year prices will be the same or go up (and then go down after I buy). In a way I'm sort of in control of the market.
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May 14, 2013 17:12
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