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JawKnee posted:I'm probably going to regret getting into this discussion, but why exactly? I've been using the transit system to get into Vancouver since grade 8 from loving Tsawwassen and it's always gotten me wherever I needed to go. Were you commuting from Langley or something? I'm not saying it's not functional. But it is vastly more frustrating than using a car for most journeys: packed, infrequent buses are the norm. Even traversing Broadway at virtually any time of the week is a massive exercise in frustration compared to the same journey in a private vehicle, bad though the traffic may be. Cities with really solid transit have the opposite property: it sucks way more to drive than to take transit. This is true in at least a handful of cities that I have high familiarity with: San Francisco, Montreal, NYC, Toronto, [real] London, and many dozens more around the world. I just don't think Vancouver rightly belongs in that group. I fully acknowledge that there's likely a funding problem, and a geography problem, and a NIMBY problem, and a political-willpower problem, and Translink probably does alright given all that baggage... but it remains the case that I'm annoyed as a user of Vancouver's transit.
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Oct 31, 2013 21:48
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I don't live in a Translink area but whenever I go to Vancouver I always park my car and take public transit because I almost always find it easier/faster than driving, especially if I'm on a skytrain route. And I drive a Prius so it's more expensive for me to take public transit since a tank of gas lasts forever.
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Oct 31, 2013 21:54
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Cultural Imperial posted:oh come on No one's retiring to the Okanagan to enjoy the Penticton Vineyards, ok. Meth labs maybe. I think the only time rich people actually head down into "the city" (oh god people there actually use this term) is to get on a plane or their yacht.
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Oct 31, 2013 22:29
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Eej posted:No one's retiring to the Okanagan to enjoy the Penticton Vineyards, ok. Meth labs maybe. The one saving grace of being from Kelowna is that you are not from Penticton (Shelbyville) or Vernon (Ogdenville). Also Naramata is not Penticton, even if it really looks like it should be. On topic: Is the south Okanagan months of inventory numbers as bad as I have heard (~36 months)? On the surface that seems crazy, but I am inclined to not discount it.
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Oct 31, 2013 22:41
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Lexicon posted:This is an oddly-defensive, reductive, and possibly-revealing sentence. Insofar as it is revealing, it is probably quite accurate. I'm a bitter IT worker tip-toeing on the verge of burnout (after which I'll just be hosed).
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Oct 31, 2013 22:57
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Fuzzy Mammal posted:Eh after growing up in Vancouver and living here for coming up on 10 years I have to disagree. Sure the boroughs suck, but so does living in Langley. Just compare these prices too. I even cross the lake each day and my commute is 25 minutes. Yes but all the jobs aren't in Langley. Nor is Vancouver criss-crossed with highways to support all those Langley commuters. Do you live and work outside the city core? 25 minutes is very reasonable.
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Oct 31, 2013 23:00
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Dusseldorf posted:I haven't spent too much time in Vancouver but doesn't it only have a bare skeleton of a public transit system? Goodness no, it is one of the main things it has going for it. I mean it's not the best or anything but it's up there, especially going by (the very low) North American standards. Translink as an organisation is pretty awesome, it just needs more funding 
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Oct 31, 2013 23:02
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Relative to cities outside of Canada the transit in Vancouver sucks, but within Canada it's one of the best. The westcoast express is great and the skytrain is pretty good with three lines . Bus system sucks hard.
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Nov 1, 2013 03:32
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I've been kind of semi-following this thing since it's kind of in the vicinity that the folks have been looking. http://www.vancouversun.com/news/national/Court+approves+million+sale+Barrie+mansion+Langford/8968595/story.html quote:VICTORIA -- The sale of Len Barrie's luxurious Compass Pointe Place home in Langford for $4.4 million was approved in a Victoria courthouse on Thursday.
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Nov 1, 2013 04:25
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You gotta be loving stupid to pay 4 mil for that. It's loving LANGFORD. Home of famous rappers moka only and prevail.
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Nov 1, 2013 04:56
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Well thread, I just closed on the sale of my Ottawa condo, and used the proceeds to wipe out 90% of my debt. Did I do good? Oh god, did I?
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Nov 1, 2013 05:26
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The Goon posted:Well thread, I just closed on the sale of my Ottawa condo, and used the proceeds to wipe out 90% of my debt. Did I do good? Oh god, did I? gently caress yes (congratulations!). Ottawa's housing market inventory is going through the proverbial roof.
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Nov 1, 2013 05:32
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Cultural Imperial posted:gently caress yes (congratulations!). Ottawa's housing market inventory is going through the proverbial roof. Use the money to move to the promised land (aka Vancouver)
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Nov 1, 2013 05:35
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etalian posted:Use the money to move to the promised land (aka Vancouver) Ha, no. Like I said, every dollar is going to a massive debt-relief payoff. Once it goes through i'll be the closest to debt-free that i've been in literally a decade, with 100% debt free in a few months. It's funny, there's a part of me that still feels like i'm "missing out on hot investment" by having sold off the condo, and I feel somehow less...an adult now. The ingrained American dream of ownership is hard to shake off.
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Nov 1, 2013 05:41
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The Goon posted:Ha, no. Like I said, every dollar is going to a massive debt-relief payoff. Once it goes through i'll be the closest to debt-free that i've been in literally a decade, with 100% debt free in a few months. I know what you mean, I sold my house too this year and am now debt free.
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Nov 1, 2013 05:47
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The Goon posted:Well thread, I just closed on the sale of my Ottawa condo, and used the proceeds to wipe out 90% of my debt. Did I do good? Oh god, did I? You done great. Go rent something nice and buy something even nicer a few years from now.
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Nov 1, 2013 05:52
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The Goon posted:Well thread, I just closed on the sale of my Ottawa condo, and used the proceeds to wipe out 90% of my debt. Did I do good? Oh god, did I? Good god I did this with my house in Prince-loving-George in 2010 and I know exactly how you feel. One moment it's raining, you're under a rock and drowning in mud. One buyer's signature later, and the rock is gone, the rain is gone and the mud has turned to brandy wine.
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Nov 1, 2013 06:28
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Lexicon posted:I'm not saying it's not functional. But it is vastly more frustrating than using a car for most journeys: packed, infrequent buses are the norm. Even traversing Broadway at virtually any time of the week is a massive exercise in frustration compared to the same journey in a private vehicle, bad though the traffic may be. I used to live on the west side of Vancouver right on Broadway (owned a condo, didn't own a car) and live in SF now. Public transit in Vancouver was actually pretty great except for the lack of buses/Skytrain late at night. I guess the coverage and frequency of public transit in SF is marginally better but it's way more complicated and sketchy and generally unpleasant. And it certainly does suck to drive in SF but that's not related to public transit here -- there's simply no parking, the parking that does exist is obscenely expensive, and the roads are way too congested. For what it's worth, even though SF is awesome in a lot of ways and my earning potential is like 2-2.5x what it is in Vancouver, I'd far prefer to live in Vancouver.
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Nov 1, 2013 07:51
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blah_blah posted:I used to live on the west side of Vancouver right on Broadway (owned a condo, didn't own a car) and live in SF now. Public transit in Vancouver was actually pretty great except for the lack of buses/Skytrain late at night. I guess the coverage and frequency of public transit in SF is marginally better but it's way more complicated and sketchy and generally unpleasant. And it certainly does suck to drive in SF but that's not related to public transit here -- there's simply no parking, the parking that does exist is obscenely expensive, and the roads are way too congested. Somewhat off topic but in terms of ridership the Bay Area is number #2 for the US. Was a somewhat surprising statistic since I figured places like Chicago or Boston would be higher up on the list.
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Nov 1, 2013 16:53
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etalian posted:Somewhat off topic but in terms of ridership the Bay Area is number #2 for the US. Was a somewhat surprising statistic since I figured places like Chicago or Boston would be higher up on the list. Where'd you find that at? The % ridership vs overall number distinctions would be interesting, especially when you look at different modes of transit (like regular buses which barely even count as mass transit).
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Nov 1, 2013 17:04
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blah_blah posted:For what it's worth, even though SF is awesome in a lot of ways and my earning potential is like 2-2.5x what it is in Vancouver, I'd far prefer to live in Vancouver. Really? I'm an ex-resident of both, and I consider SF superior to Vancouver along virtually every dimension I can think of, other than 'access to cheap sushi' perhaps. Parking is truly horrendous though, I'll give you that. But you need your head examined if you own a car there.
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Nov 1, 2013 17:32
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I had a friend live there for just a year doing some game-dev stuff. He loved the city-proper and his job payed crazy good but housing in the city was super expensive and his actual office was way the gently caress out where there wasn't any transit. The office had some little mini-bus that would pick people up but it was still a poo poo situation overall. But man have tech companies gotten all over this and realized no one wants to live and work way out in gross suburban "tech parks" so there's this boom of companies moving back into the city because that's where their workers want to live. Seattle is going nuts with this and is having a condo boom based on downtown jobs. Hell even little Victoria just got a downtown microsoft games office. Apparently they looked all over the region and found downtown vancouver too expensive, suburban vancouver too gross, but downtown Victoria just right. There's actually a surprising amount of tech stuff moving into Victoria's core. Apparently tech is now bigger than tourism. Of course the city seems to be doing everything it can to stifle construction in the city... Been a few big development players from Vancouver try to move into the Victoria market and then retreat in utter frustration. No one does insane red-tape and micro-management like Victoria does. You have to be a pretty dedicated to actually try to build something here. -The zoning is hosed and has barely changed since the 60's when the city had a stated goal of de-populating downtown and making it more suburban via harsh FSR, height and setback bylaws. So basically every single building needs a re-zoning or variance, which means public hearing. -Victoria has some of the strongest "neighbourhood associations" which are of course invariably a group of retired busy-bodies with nothing but free time to try to block or micro-manage every project in the city even if it's not in their neighbourhood and love to pretend they speak for the whole population because of the 5000 people living in their district 80 are members of the community association and those 50 of those bothered to vote in 5 angry old people. So before a project even gets to city hall it generally has to pass the local community association. -If the project isn't killed by a lack of community rear end. blessing or the developer is brave enough to continue without it it then gets reviewed by planning, which seem to recommend for or against projects based on reading goat entrails. They can make a big fuss about how we need more rentals downtown, more in-fill, and how they support parking-free projects then reject projects that match those criteria without any solid reasons. -If after jumping through a million hoops, paying your architect an extra 100k or so in constant re-designs and tweaks because the tasteless community association thought your roof line was too modern so you add a gross pitched roof but then planning said the roof was too tall so you reduced the pitch and lowered the floor ceiling heights a little but then the community association says you're an evil greedy liar who promised 10' ceilings and are now trying to force people to live in 8'6" rabbit hutches and suddenly they think despite being a modern building faux-shutters would look "nice" by the windows and they suddenly refuse to support the project unless you re-design again. After all that (which still paying interest on your lot that's been sitting there for a year while you do this) you manage to get to council you get a delightful crowd of NIMBY regulars who come to every single meeting to protest every single development even if it's not remotely close to their neighbourhood. Then you get a "socialist" council who will ramble on and on about housing prices and affordability and rentals then hem and haw and say every single project is too big or adds too many units or the units are too expensive or the units are too small maybe remove a couple floors, add more units, make the units bigger and cheaper, and make the architect more sensitive and respectful to local heritage and come back in 3 months. God drat I hate this city.
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Nov 1, 2013 17:57
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Lexicon posted:Really? I'm an ex-resident of both, and I consider SF superior to Vancouver along virtually every dimension I can think of, other than 'access to cheap sushi' perhaps. Well imagine Vancouver also dodged the SF tech boom which had the amusing demographic side of effect of having more guys than gals.
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Nov 1, 2013 18:07
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Baronjutter posted:Victoria I have a real soft spot for Victoria - used to live there and love visiting to this day - but goddamn does it ever have a lot of parochial, provincial tendencies. None of that surprises me.
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Nov 1, 2013 18:09
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Lexicon posted:^ I have a real soft spot for Victoria - used to live there and love visiting to this day - but goddamn does it ever have a lot of parochial, provincial tendencies. None of that surprises me. SF has similar problems with predictable rent price craziness and the NIMBY attitude towards new development, not having enough rental supply has predictable results.
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Nov 1, 2013 18:10
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etalian posted:Well imagine Vancouver also dodged the SF tech boom which had the amusing demographic side of effect of having more guys than gals. Having a hard time parsing this sentence. But yes, there is a gender imbalance in SF, which is definitely a strike against it.
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Nov 1, 2013 18:11
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etalian posted:SF has similar problems with predictable rent price craziness and the NIMBY attitude towards new development, not having enough rental supply has predictable results. Indeed. I paid well over $1300 a month for half an apartment back then... and my understanding is that it has only gotten more and more expensive. High salaries though, of course.
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Nov 1, 2013 18:12
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To get back on topic for the bubble areas is it pretty much the lack of new rental supply driving things so that home debtorship makes more sense? Also fun little graphic: http://www.cbc.ca/news2/interactives/housing-canada/
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Nov 1, 2013 18:19
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Where did this whole idea of "Housing prices are going up! Rents are too high! BLOCK ALL NEW CONSTRUCTION!!" come from. It's like they think it's the new units that are raising prices rather than the economic forces that are making the new units profitable to build ? I hear this a lot, specially from my more ignorant of city planning/economic socialist/hippie friends. They'll go out and protest condos and housing because "We need housing for the poor not rich!" or "Prices are already too high we don't need more!!". When I try to explain to them that all these new condos are awesome because they're basically being subsidized by rich idiots and in 15-20 years will be fairly affordable, plus said rich idiots moving into "luxury" condos frees up other units. But they don't buy it, anything a rich person likes is bad and needs to be stopped. Like if this were communism and a central planning body was over-building "luxury" units and ignoring the working class that would be one thing, but these are private developers building what's in demand and what will actually make them a profit and it's impossible to make a profit in the current climate on "affordable" housing unless there's government intervention. But yeah, keep trying to stop every new project and keep complaining about housing prices guys. Personally I want them to over-build condos to ridiculous extremes, have rich idiots pay for it all, then after the bubble pops or lands or what ever, hey, we've got a ton of fairly affordable housing stock! Isn't rich people subsidizing poo poo for everyone else a pretty social-democratic idea? Recently a 750k condo (when built a few years ago) sold for under 500k. A building from just 3 years ago had it's penthouse go for 300k when it first sold for 450k. The high-end is already seeing some pretty major reductions and the middle-upper is already seeing similar trends. Do people not understand the housing cycle or basic economics?
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Nov 1, 2013 18:24
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Baronjutter posted:Personally I want them to over-build condos to ridiculous extremes, have rich idiots pay for it all, then after the bubble pops or lands or what ever, hey, we've got a ton of fairly affordable housing stock! Isn't rich people subsidizing poo poo for everyone else a pretty social-democratic idea? Recently a 750k condo (when built a few years ago) sold for under 500k. A building from just 3 years ago had it's penthouse go for 300k when it first sold for 450k. The high-end is already seeing some pretty major reductions and the middle-upper is already seeing similar trends. Do people not understand the housing cycle or basic economics? It's a somewhat horrible way to build affordable housing given all the dangerous entanglements created by home ownership and getting the government to underwrite private real estate debts.
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Nov 1, 2013 18:43
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Residential housing in the Anglo-world *is* essentially communist central planning. Remember how the Federal Reserve(through their guarantees to FNMA and such) owns >50% of all residential mortgages in the US? What's the percentage of Canadian mortgages that are CMHC insured? When you get a very low ratio mortgage from an institution that is backed in many ways by the sovereign like Canadian banks are, it's essentially the government giving you a free house.
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Nov 1, 2013 18:44
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Throatwarbler posted:Residential housing in the Anglo-world *is* essentially communist central planning. Remember how the Federal Reserve(through their guarantees to FNMA and such) owns >50% of all residential mortgages in the US? What's the percentage of Canadian mortgages that are CMHC insured? When you get a very low ratio mortgage from an institution that is backed in many ways by the sovereign like Canadian banks are, it's essentially the government giving you a free house. yeah pretty much in the US you wouldn't have things such as 30 year fixed rate mortgages if wasn't for the government subsidizing private home debtorship.
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Nov 1, 2013 18:48
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Throatwarbler posted:Residential housing in the Anglo-world *is* essentially communist central planning. Remember how the Federal Reserve(through their guarantees to FNMA and such) owns >50% of all residential mortgages in the US? What's the percentage of Canadian mortgages that are CMHC insured? When you get a very low ratio mortgage from an institution that is backed in many ways by the sovereign like Canadian banks are, it's essentially the government giving you a free house. That's exactly true. Also if your strategy for affordable housing is "let a bubble create a bunch of housing then it will become affordable after the crash" you're hosed. But regardless of the problems or solutions, fighting every single condo tower or town-house or urban in-fill no taller than its neighbours is counter-productive. I'd love t see the CMHC die, the government completely pull out of both subsidizing mortgages/home ownership and favouring infrastructure that supports sprawl (which leads to artificially cheap houses today but disastrous upkeep costs tomorrow) while at the same time the government getting heavily involved in affordable housing. Not through "incentives" and complex tax breaks but just directly building and managing poo poo or at least directly funding non-profits that have proven track-records at efficiently building and maintaining affordable housing. Also I think that german idea of skipping developers all together by providing cheap subsidized and zoned land for people to work together to build their own housing is awesome and we need the legal/political framework to support it. It's been wildly successful in Germany and brings housing costs down by about 20-30% which is HUGE, and you end up with much better buildings as well. I'm not a legal or financial person but based on my understanding this is how it works: -A city will zone an area for this type of development, which lifts a lot of restrictions and red tape because they're no longer dealing with greedy lovely developers but just locals in the community. The land is reserved for this type of development. This step doesn't always have to happen, this type of funding works on any land. -Because there's an established legal and financial framework, it's very easy for people from the community to start a project and pool their money. A group of people might decide they have an idea to build a 20 unit condo on a lot, so they put the word out and find 20 people who meet and hash out what they want and what they can afford. Once everyone's more or less in agreement they officially start the project. -They pool their funds together, hire an experienced project manager that knows this type of funding well and they design their building with everyone having input. Since everyone is designing this to live in, not flip or make money it strongly tends to result in higher-quality buildings built with the long-term in mind. Better construction, better energy/heating efficiency, stuff like that. Everyone's got a normal construction mortgage now for their yet to be built unit and it's easy to get since the banks are totally used to and supportive of this type of development. -The thing gets built, everyone is happy. By avoiding tons of soft-costs like marketing and legal everyone gets a unit 20% cheaper than if a developer was involved. -Local development companies cry that the city is unfairly cutting them out but everyone tells them to go gently caress them selves because this way results in higher quality buildings for cheaper and happier residents.
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Nov 1, 2013 19:01
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If you are talking about the Vienna model it mainly works because the city owns a majority of land in the city, which gives the muni government a pretty strong bargaining position to motivate private developers. It also depends heavily on federal level subsidies for keeping the overall cost down. Either way it would be better if government housing policy would focus on affordability not american style casino appreciation above all else.
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Nov 1, 2013 19:05
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No it's nothing like the Vienna model. It's a way of funding actual developments, not city-owned rentals. It's basically just people skiping the middle-man of a developer and building buildings them selves and it being made easy because there's the legal framework to make it simple for the people involved plus the banks are also down with it too. So instead of a developer buying land, building a condo, marketing it and selling the units to people who then take over ownership of the building via a condo council or what ever the developer is skipped entirely and the people set up a council first to build the building them selves. God drat I can't find what it's called, some stupid-long german word. Was reading some great articles on it a while ago. Ah ha! http://bruteforcecollaborative.com/wordpress/2012/04/16/a-new-approach-to-affordable-urban-living/ http://grist.org/cities/i-want-to-live-in-a-baugruppe/ Private Baugruppe German wiki http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bautr%C3%A4ger#private_Baugruppe Cut out developers, save 20%, get better quality buildings. Seems like a way better way to finance most residential construction. Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 19:17 on Nov 1, 2013 |
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Nov 1, 2013 19:11
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etalian posted:If you are talking about the Vienna model it mainly works because the city owns a majority of land in the city, which gives the muni government a pretty strong bargaining position to motivate private developers. It's all The Crown's land baby, you're just leasing it from Her Majesty. It really would be very interesting if a city tried to appropriate land for such purposes and basically leased it out for free to its current owners for a set term as compensation, but enforcing these new housing development rules.
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Nov 1, 2013 19:17
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Baronjutter have you paid any attention to the opposition to the Cedar Hill clay tennis courts? It's a pretty hilarious example of the NIMBYism in Victoria that you describe. It's pretty funny to see a small group of people fight so hard to save two dismal gravel softball fields that nobody ever uses because... tennis is for rich people I guess.
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Nov 1, 2013 19:24
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Who's bright idea was it to make FIRE 30% of Canada's GDP?
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Nov 1, 2013 19:25
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Cultural Imperial posted:Who's bright idea was it to make FIRE 30% of Canada's GDP? This is the single most terrifying fact about the country's economy to me right now.
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Nov 1, 2013 19:51
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http://whispersfromtheedgeoftherainforest.blogspot.ca/2013/11/bc-foreclosure-update.html From the internet. quote:At the end of the first month of daily data. Vancouver stayed running at a fairly steady pace of six filings per working day. So big picture, what is going on with British Columbia foreclosures? First, I think one needs to understand the data. Courts aren’t located in every municipality, so “New Westminster” foreclosures probably include Port Moody or Coquitlam, while “Nanaimo” might include Qualicum Beach etc. That being said we can get a pretty good look at what is going on regionally.
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Nov 1, 2013 20:01
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