Lexicon posted:Is Whistler still in bad shape, valuations wise? The upper end of the market (3 million plus) still seems to be doing ok, as do the lower end (studios in what are definitely 'second home winter property' buldings) but honestly I think everything in between that isn't doing so hot. I have a sneaking suspicion the USD has something to do with that. Of course you also have to factor in that there was already a major price correction here after the Olympics. Honestly, if I had the money and didn't want to spend the down payment money elsewhere right now, I would probably buy up here. I figure I'll stay in Whistler long term, and renting here sucks loving balls way more than anywhere else I've ever lived. But, whatever, I'm still going to wait it out a few years and see what the market does.
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# ? Jul 14, 2014 20:16 |
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# ? Jun 6, 2024 03:32 |
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Kafka Esq. posted:Cities encourage capitalist expansion, as shown by this very thread. Rural towns tend to limit it. Devising a sustainable future involves a lot of changes, but that's a good start. Do you mean that small town living would inhibit industrialization and/or population growth, even if it's less efficient per capita than big cities? Because even that is pretty questionable, especially since higher standards of living generally lead to lower population growth (though also longer lifetimes and lower mortality, I guess).
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# ? Jul 14, 2014 20:38 |
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Yeah, as someone with a keen interest and study into, marxism, urban planning, and environmental issues, this is one of the strangest things I've heard for a while.
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# ? Jul 14, 2014 20:44 |
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Franks Happy Place posted:When I was studying for my masters in Urban Studies (before I dropped out!), I read a shitload of papers that all point to increasing urbanization as a big driver of efficiencies and reduced environmental/carbon footprints. For instance, all of Krugman's important work, including stuff related to what got him a Nobel Prize, deals with interlinking externalities associated with urbanization and their massive economic advantages. Obviously you should build your cities like London and not like Dallas to get the most of those benefits, but I don't think a book about 19th century Europe really counters the massive overhanging glacier of evidence that bigger cities = a healthier planet. It's very pie in the sky, of course.
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# ? Jul 14, 2014 20:49 |
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Urban growth is completely reliant on cheap fuel to support the food supply. Maybe fifty years ago Vancouver could have fed itself when that supply chain breaks down, but we've spent a long time turning the most fertile delta on the continent into strip malls and condo towers. I should really make that thread about this topic.
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# ? Jul 14, 2014 21:41 |
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We've got a pretty ok energy thread (what's wrong with big efficient power plants vs a ton of expensive distributed stuff?) and every urban planning thread turns into two ridiculous suburban vs urban straw man fight without any actual data or urban planning being discussed. For instance did you know the only two forms of human land use patterns are Dallas/Calgary style sprawl or Yaletown? Kafka I think you're associating a lot of the really lovely land use policies and problems with capitalism with cities them selves. Cities don't have to sprawl, cities don't have to be car-centric, cities absolutely don't have to be capitalism, and if anything has a chance for greater self-sufficiency it's cities. Smaller towns just don't have the talent or potential industrial base to create the diversity of goods or services needed. Cities absolutely depend on all sorts of stuff from around the world coming in to feed them, but so do small towns, if anything more so per-capita. That's not a city problem, that's a globalization and cheap-transport problem. When transport costs make globalism less and less economical we'll see more local manufacturing, and that will happen in cities and larger towns, not villages and small towns. Of course not all cities are created equal. The less car-dependent cities will do better, and the cities with more adaptable planning will also do better. The real shame is that so much of our most fertile farmland has been basically destroyed by suburbia and it's extremely hard to turn it back. Even if say all of Delta was abandoned and food prices went up, we still wouldn't see the land return to farming because it's all cut up by roads and foundations and pipes and the soil has been stripped away or contaminated. People trying to reclaim abandoned suburbia in Detroit and turn it into farming are learning just how hard that process is. That's a real real shame. Detroit and other cities like it are really chilling examples on how bad urban planning combined with race issues and economic changes can just throw what was once a great world city into absolute free-fall. How will Vancouver fair when the condo speculation factories shut down? REALTORS falling into gangs and violence, shooting each other over scraps of granite countertop salvaged from the ruins of half-finished decaying condo towers? Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 22:04 on Jul 14, 2014 |
# ? Jul 14, 2014 21:59 |
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Kafka Esq. posted:the concentration of rent-seekers in cities Isn't this basically saying "people with money like nice places"?
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# ? Jul 14, 2014 22:10 |
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Rural towns are more sustainable I guess if everyone goes back to living off the land with low intensity farming and we get rid of a couple billion people. However, in the real world, densely populated cities are much more efficient. Especially those on the coast between the tropical latitudes where rivers and oceans can be used for transport and solar can be used for power. The future will bring increased efficiency to cities such as these. The future will bring death to small rural towns. I bet a lot of the smaller BC towns are dying due to issues with marijuana production. Rural BC is supported almost entirely on the proceeds of pot and Canada is supplying less and less of it to the USA each year, never mind the effects of legalization. cowofwar fucked around with this message at 22:26 on Jul 14, 2014 |
# ? Jul 14, 2014 22:22 |
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cowofwar posted:I bet a lot of the smaller BC towns are dying due to issues with marijuana production. Rural BC is supported almost entirely on the proceeds of pot and Canada is supplying less and less of it to the USA each year, never mind the effects of legalization. It's quite a bit more complicated than that, I don't have time to troll back sixty pages to find the last time I posted my thesis on the economic decline of BC.
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# ? Jul 14, 2014 22:56 |
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Rime posted:It's quite a bit more complicated than that, I don't have time to troll back sixty pages to find the last time I posted my thesis on the economic decline of BC. Got a brief summary for us at least?
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# ? Jul 14, 2014 23:01 |
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Lexicon posted:Got a brief summary for us at least? Ah screw it. Rime posted:I'm not in a place where I can do a blog sized post about it right now, unfortunately. BJ hit most of the nail on the head quite succinctly with his second post up there, to be honest, but it misses the element which this entire thread is about : Real Estate Values.
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# ? Jul 14, 2014 23:05 |
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Hey yeah are you sure you're not conflating cities with like population growth? If we go back to 18th century global population levels we can probably go back to 18th century urbanization levels too, sure why not. Because yeah distributed systems generally just trade efficiency for robustness and certainly ultra-centralization is too precarious to be "sustainable" (though "survivable" might be a better term here), but unless you find some other way of force-lowering aggregate demand for more or less everything efficiency is going to be the top priority by a wide margin.
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# ? Jul 14, 2014 23:07 |
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Killing off the billions of people needed to go back to this sort of lifestyle would absolutely gently caress the housing market.
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# ? Jul 14, 2014 23:11 |
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It'd be great for pretty much everything else on the planet though. V: That's what I did, aye. Slightly faster, but I post in here and CanPol possibly too much. Rime fucked around with this message at 23:21 on Jul 14, 2014 |
# ? Jul 14, 2014 23:13 |
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Rime posted:It's quite a bit more complicated than that, I don't have time to troll back sixty pages to find the last time I posted my thesis on the economic decline of BC. For future reference, you can check your own thread-specific post history by clicking the [?] button at bottom left of your post.
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# ? Jul 14, 2014 23:15 |
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Baronjutter posted:Killing off the billions of people needed to go back to this sort of lifestyle would absolutely gently caress the housing market. Anyway, it's a bit of a derail.
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# ? Jul 14, 2014 23:18 |
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loving renters http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2014/07/11/bad_tenant_bad_boyfriend_reveals_his_methods_says_i_should_have_a_big_red_flag.html Also, no subprime in canada
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# ? Jul 15, 2014 04:54 |
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Mr. Wynand posted:(though "survivable" might be a better term here) "Resilient" is the buzzword you're looking for.
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# ? Jul 15, 2014 05:15 |
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Cultural Imperial posted:loving renters How is that 35 year possible? I thought CMHC won't insure it? So how can it be issued?
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# ? Jul 15, 2014 13:40 |
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Lexicon posted:How is that 35 year possible? I thought CMHC won't insure it? So how can it be issued? I would guess that some of the offered terms are mutually exclusive and the broker is just being deceptive in his marketing. There is also a small market for non-standard mortgages financed by wealthy individuals but it's usually more geared towards less risky rather than more risky structures to account for risk in someone's income stream. For example, a small business owner with highly variable income might get an alternative mortgage but it would probably require a 30% downpayment among other things.
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# ? Jul 15, 2014 16:44 |
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Rime posted:Urban growth is completely reliant on cheap fuel to support the food supply. Maybe fifty years ago Vancouver could have fed itself when that supply chain breaks down, but we've spent a long time turning the most fertile delta on the continent into strip malls and condo towers. It's not cheap fuel though, shipping (especially by boat which is where most of international trade occurs) is just cheap, period. You can ship a lot of things for a comparatively small amount of fuel, such that a small town that's inland may use more fuel per capita than a large city by the ocean.
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# ? Jul 15, 2014 16:53 |
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Kalenn Istarion posted:I would guess that some of the offered terms are mutually exclusive and the broker is just being deceptive in his marketing. There is also a small market for non-standard mortgages financed by wealthy individuals but it's usually more geared towards less risky rather than more risky structures to account for risk in someone's income stream. For example, a small business owner with highly variable income might get an alternative mortgage but it would probably require a 30% downpayment among other things. I did some digging and it looks like they require 20% down with it. https://www.facebook.com/naushy.saeed/posts/10201346775350778 Corrupt Cypher fucked around with this message at 17:09 on Jul 15, 2014 |
# ? Jul 15, 2014 17:05 |
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Rail (specially electric) and sea transport are orders of magnitude more efficient than trucking. There's been a lot of work lately into improving sea transport efficiency and environmental regulations for locomotives have gone wayyy up. Lots of crazy but totally practical ideas like putting sails back on cargo ships to save fuel are also being floated. This is a big reason why europe has been getting really serious about cargo rail lately, both to get trucks off the clogged roads, and to save on fuel. They've got the passenger angle covered but most goods in europe are shipped by truck. Meanwhile in North America we're sort of making noises about maybe finally developing some better passenger rail but we have an amazing freight system.
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# ? Jul 15, 2014 17:05 |
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Baronjutter posted:Meanwhile in North America we're sort of making noises about maybe finally developing some better passenger rail but we have an amazing freight system. We do? The vast majority of stuff is in the US (I'm less sure about Canada, but I bet it's not that much less) is shipped by truck. It comes down to the fact that you can't compete with a delivery method where you have to pay for your (extremely expensive) thing-you-drive-on by yourself (in the case of rail) or have the government do it for you (in the case of the highway system).
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# ? Jul 15, 2014 19:33 |
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Mr. Wynand posted:We do? The vast majority of stuff is in the US (I'm less sure about Canada, but I bet it's not that much less) is shipped by truck. That's not what this seems to indicate- https://www.fra.dot.gov/Page/P0362 e: it's ton-miles but basically that's saying that a large part of whatever goes long distance is shipped via freight.
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# ? Jul 15, 2014 19:36 |
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Well colour me surprised! I wonder where I picked up that bit of misinformation from then - I've certainly held the belief for quite some time.
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# ? Jul 15, 2014 19:44 |
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Mr. Wynand posted:Well colour me surprised! I wonder where I picked up that bit of misinformation from then - I've certainly held the belief for quite some time. It's fairly true for short term stuff but a lot of tonnage is done at long distances (which makes sense because the US is really big): from https://www.fra.dot.gov/eLib/Details/L02696
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# ? Jul 15, 2014 19:47 |
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Jesus, these chartmakers need to read some Tufte. I didn't know Excel was even capable of making charts that bad, and that's a strong statement.
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# ? Jul 15, 2014 19:51 |
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Mr. Wynand posted:Well colour me surprised! I wonder where I picked up that bit of misinformation from then - I've certainly held the belief for quite some time. There's a general idea in north america that we do everything wrong and that the railways died post-war. Rail transport is absolutely booming, we're building new lines, we can't build locomotives or rolling stock fast enough to meet demand. Freight rail is so ridiculously efficient companies do everything they can to avoid trucking, trucking is what you do to get your cargo to a train or from a train, but there's almost always going to be a train involved if its possible. Containers have played a huge role in this too. Everything is containers now. From cargo ship, to train, to truck, to delivery all in the same container. It's not just international either, in north america there is a huge volume of "domestic" containers, containers just used to ship poo poo around the continent. These containers are often over-sized, too long to fit on most container ships. People in cities see abandoned warehouses, rail docks not used anymore, and think rail transport is dying. Small local deliveries are dying for sure. That factory that used to get a single boxcar of stuff every couple days is probably shipping via truck now. But what's happened is that the routes have just sort of consolidated. Trucks have replaced the small local feeder trains and routes due to their flexibility, but they still all feed into some huge train. At the same time though there's tons of short-lines and local railways that were assumed to be dead that are coming back to life. Fuel is expensive, labour is expensive (a single truck driver can move about 1 container worth of stuff while on the clock, a 2 man crew can move thousands via rail). Trucking keeps getting more expensive but at the same time diesel locomotives keep getting more efficient and more "green". And, for some housing related content, this rebirth of a lot of smaller previously assumed abandoned rail lines have pissed off a lot of people. REALTORS sell people a house saying "Oh don't worry that rail line is abandoned" then 5 years later there's 4 trains a day, then 10. The home owners try to sue the railway for damaging their property values but lol at any mortal or worldly power trying to win any sort of fight with a railway.
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# ? Jul 15, 2014 19:55 |
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https://businessincanada.com/2014/07/15/canada-housing-market-labour-market-diverging-real-estate-values-bubble/quote:In spite of the weakness in Canada’s labour market, home values continue to fly high.
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# ? Jul 15, 2014 20:17 |
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An awful lot of housing-bubble denial going around these days in a country which categorically has no housing bubble
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# ? Jul 15, 2014 20:31 |
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Baronjutter posted:There's a general idea in north america that we do everything wrong and that the railways died post-war. Rail transport is absolutely booming, we're building new lines, we can't build locomotives or rolling stock fast enough to meet demand. Freight rail is so ridiculously efficient companies do everything they can to avoid trucking, trucking is what you do to get your cargo to a train or from a train, but there's almost always going to be a train involved if its possible. Containers have played a huge role in this too. Everything is containers now. From cargo ship, to train, to truck, to delivery all in the same container. It's not just international either, in north america there is a huge volume of "domestic" containers, containers just used to ship poo poo around the continent. These containers are often over-sized, too long to fit on most container ships. This is exactly why Warren Buffett put $5B into railways during the downturn . http://www.investmentu.com/content/detail/warren-buffetts-railroad
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# ? Jul 15, 2014 20:46 |
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I don't think I'll ever not think of Jimmy Buffett first whenever I see the name Warren Buffett.
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# ? Jul 15, 2014 21:00 |
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Forget housing and "building equity", invest in Cheeseburgers.
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# ? Jul 15, 2014 22:33 |
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Saltin posted:This is exactly why Warren Buffett put $5B into railways during the downturn .
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# ? Jul 15, 2014 22:41 |
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I visited Calgary at last week and found a massive Railway Depot had opened up near where my parents live. There is a constant line of trucks going to and coming from that facility at all hours . Rail is totes alive.
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# ? Jul 16, 2014 01:00 |
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Baronjutter posted:Forget housing and "building equity", invest in Cheeseburgers. open liquor stores, society will never stop drinking
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# ? Jul 16, 2014 01:02 |
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Mr. Wynand posted:We do? The vast majority of stuff is in the US (I'm less sure about Canada, but I bet it's not that much less) is shipped by truck. It comes down to the fact that you can't compete with a delivery method where you have to pay for your (extremely expensive) thing-you-drive-on by yourself (in the case of rail) or have the government do it for you (in the case of the highway system). A large reason stuff is shipped by truck instead of trains is the large money and time costs of getting a shipping container on and off a train. It's speculated that when self-driving cars become a thing, this issue will become heavily mitigated, because you can ship the entire truck with not too much trouble, or other schemes where you don't have to pay hundreds of drivers to sit around doing nothing for a while.
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# ? Jul 16, 2014 01:06 |
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnlRw7ytyIc Did someone say driveless container trucks???
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# ? Jul 16, 2014 02:16 |
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# ? Jun 6, 2024 03:32 |
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I'm surprised none of you marxist sjws have said anything about the erosion of labour rights as supply chains move away from trucking to rail.
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# ? Jul 16, 2014 02:19 |