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Femtosecond posted:Uhhhhh wtf I mean, part of it is explained in the text -- property values basically doubled over the last five years, so the replacement cost, and consequently the insured amount and the premiums doubled as well. Plus insurers are probably cottoning on to the terrible construction quality over the past decade, and adjusting their actuarial tables accordingly.
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Jan 4, 2020 07:10
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I went to go look at the floodplain maps because of course you can't expect Global to do any real research on any news story. Not much for Langley but  the entirety of Richmond is there.
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Jan 4, 2020 07:28
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Femtosecond posted:Uhhhhh wtf Who knows, but this is likely a function of the cost of most everything becoming prohibitive in the insurance business. Look at car insurance - the price of the vehicles and their repairs keeps going up, so premiums have to rise to keep up. I can't think that house/condo insurance is much different. A friend of mine is an actuary and in our conversations, it's clear that sustainability of insurance given the costs of claims will not continue unless there are significant premium increases. Either that, or costs start to go down, which seems unlikely.
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Jan 4, 2020 07:37
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People are shocked that property increasing in value at insane rates comes with additional expenses, and it's not just free money that they deserve because they "worked hard, and saved". See also: all the whining about property taxes
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Jan 4, 2020 07:44
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Lead out in cuffs posted:I mean, part of it is explained in the text -- property values basically doubled over the last five years, so the replacement cost, and consequently the insured amount and the premiums doubled as well. Right for sure what we're seeing is the impact of steadily increasing construction costs. YIMBYs like to handwave "just build more houses" as a solution to everything as if econ101 supply/demand curves don't have any real world costs but they do. As we build more housing (Vancouver currently building literally unprecedented amounts) the cost of labour construction increases. Accordingly the cost of rebuilding a condo increases as well and insurers under the strata property act are obligated to cover the costs of rebuilding the entire building. It all adds up. No surprise that with this recent round of BC Accessments that just came out people are noting that while their land values may have declined by some 15% their building values may have held steady or even appreciated. Pretty wild stuff since buildings are supposed to steadily depreciate, but if the costs of building construction are spiking, an existing building in fine shape will hold its value longer.
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Jan 4, 2020 08:09
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less than three posted:Not much for Langley but Even The Shadowrun RPG folks wrote it into the lore years ago that an earthquake would sink Richmond into the sea. NOTE: do not base real estate speculation on dragons or global matrix crashes. 
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Jan 4, 2020 08:29
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Femtosecond posted:Right for sure what we're seeing is the impact of steadily increasing construction costs. You seem to post quite a bit of content, which is good, but I can’t figure out what your position is. What is your position on the housing market? What is the solution to the problems you may outline in that position?
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Jan 4, 2020 09:22
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Femtosecond posted:Uhhhhh wtf It's not out of the blue, if you understand that insurance is pooled risk and that risk is increasing across the board due to climate events. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmo...rDzKORQDvYJIF1U
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Jan 4, 2020 10:14
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I'm surprised you guys think towards a flood, and not the much scarier prospect of an earthquake. Many buildings are built to be "survivable", which means the people can get out, but you have to destroy and rebuild the building afterwards. Times how many buildings you're insuring in that one place. Major example being Christchurch, where it's entire central business district became a demolition site.
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Jan 4, 2020 22:31
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$90k seems insanely cheap for a strata policy on a 181 unit condo building.
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Jan 5, 2020 03:14
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A policy covering what? What are the risks to the insurer?
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Jan 5, 2020 04:09
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Mantle posted:A policy covering what? What are the risks to the insurer? Well the strata insurance usually covers the entire structure itself except for the interior of the units, all common areas, and liability in all common areas, so quite a bit really?
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Jan 5, 2020 07:09
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Yeah when you put it that way, dividing between the 181 units, they went from paying ~$40 a month to ~$170. Proportionally this is a big increase, but lol if an extra $130 a month is going to bankrupt you. (TBF this isn't counting the massively increased deductible and whatever they have to pay to get insurance to cover that, but I still can't believe that would be all that much.)
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Jan 5, 2020 08:11
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Lead out in cuffs posted:Yeah when you put it that way, dividing between the 181 units, they went from paying ~$40 a month to ~$170. Proportionally this is a big increase, but lol if an extra $130 a month is going to bankrupt you. 46% of Canadians $200 or less away from not being able to pay their bills
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Jan 5, 2020 09:35
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The only hope when living in strata property is that all the people who vote no to spending money on absolutely anything (because they can't afford it) eventually lose their votes by falling behind on strata fees/fines. (And I don't want to beat a dead horse, but tech salaries in Vancouver started going up again in 2018-2019 so it is a very recent thing.)
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Jan 5, 2020 09:57
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Here's a little money laundering primer that the writer apparently thought twitter was the appropriate medium for posting on. They were wrong. (Link)
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Jan 5, 2020 10:09
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James Baud posted:Here's a little money laundering primer that the writer apparently thought twitter was the appropriate medium for posting on. What are you talking about? The responses look very reasonable to me.
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Jan 5, 2020 19:34
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Mandibular Fiasco posted:What are you talking about? The responses look very reasonable to me. I'm talking about the several thousand word length not really being "yes, 160 chars at a time" friendly.
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Jan 5, 2020 20:22
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One of the worst parts of twitter is the way people who once would have maintained blogs will just do big tweet threads and they end up all chopped up and disjointed like something written for the Toronto Sun.
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Jan 5, 2020 20:51
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James Baud posted:I'm talking about the several thousand word length not really being "yes, 160 chars at a time" friendly. Oh, I understand. Yes, that was a bit much. I was confused by the mixed pronouns in your post which led me to think you were talking about the replies.
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Jan 5, 2020 21:08
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I don’t think I can look it up publicly, but I think I’m going to blame the re-insurance market for the spike in premiums. Anecdotally from family who work in re-insurance, the re-insurance industry has been taking a beating from climate change disasters and if they want to balance their books they needed to start charging much higher premiums to insurance companies who pass the cost on to the consumer. Why is your insurance going up? Because Fort Mac burned down. Because Australia is on fire. Because everywhere seems to be flooding. Now here comes the bill!
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Jan 6, 2020 02:52
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So blame the messenger instead of the root cause, which is risk actually increasing?
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Jan 6, 2020 05:24
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Mantle posted:So blame the messenger instead of the root cause, which is risk actually increasing? I'm reminded of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClvLp4vXJ5I Whose fault is it? I dunno, the bloke who built the wing nuts or something.
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Jan 6, 2020 06:54
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Of course, dumb finance stuff in Canada is not limited to Europeans in Canada. From A History of Interest Rates By Sidney Homer, Richard Eugene Sylla about the Kwakiutl natives of Vancouver Island.
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Jan 7, 2020 02:47
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I'm the guy trying to gently caress with 400 blankets piled on top of me.
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Jan 7, 2020 02:53
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You know what they say about a guy with a stack of four hundred blankets piled on top of eachother..
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Jan 7, 2020 02:56
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*HGTV Chat* https://twitter.com/mcmansionhell/status/1214252870473834498?s=20 loving lol HGTV influenced everyone think that it was always a good design move to 'blow out' every space and make it more 'open concept' and it was based on nothing but trying to pull in some more viewers and bump ratings. Who knows how many homes have been ruined by this dumb fad.
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Jan 7, 2020 04:34
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Femtosecond posted:*HGTV Chat* A bunch of whom decided to post photos of their own living rooms with some variation of, "Well I like it," in response.
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Jan 7, 2020 04:53
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https://globalnews.ca/news/6374159/abbotsford-strata-insurance-hike/amp/ Boo hoo I thought buying property was risk free bail me out what about the seniors????
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Jan 7, 2020 14:43
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It just seems to me like those 2019 rates were wildly low to begin with. A $5k deductible to insure a whole-rear end condo building?
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Jan 7, 2020 17:49
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I'm positive there's got to be a shady deal between developers and insurance companies to have artificially low premiums for the first year or two while the developer unloads the condos, to make the HOA fees more appealing to buyers, and then jack them up when those buyers are holding the bag. Nationalize the insurance industry. And the real estate developers, while we're at it.
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Jan 7, 2020 18:15
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This all goes hand in hand with the strata fees being absurdly low on new developments as well. Part of the idea is that a strata should take in quite a bit more money than it spends in a given year to have a contingency fund on hand to avoid special levies. A brand new strata should have decently high fees to build up the contingency fund quickly while the maintenance costs of the development are low. The developer is supposed to seed in some money as part of the strata creation but I'd make a solid guess that they aren't seeding nearly enough and that is also a part of the problem buyers of new developments are facing. When I bought a place before my divorce we required a full review of the strata financials and we passed on a place that had fees that were too low and not enough contingency built up. Even for the place with good enough financials there was was roofing project a year after we moved in that required a levy. The good news was that there was enough in the contingency that they were able to do a three part levy over time instead of hitting everyone with it at once which would have been hard on the owners. Everyone resisted that levy, and then resisted a proposed raise in fees to avoid the situation again. By the time I left the roofing was done and there was no contingency left and all fee raises were voted down. People never learn.
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Jan 7, 2020 18:46
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Square Peg posted:I'm positive there's got to be a shady deal between developers and insurance companies to have artificially low premiums for the first year or two while the developer unloads the condos, to make the HOA fees more appealing to buyers, and then jack them up when those buyers are holding the bag. I'm sure there are plenty of shady deals going on but these rate increases are pretty universal. I don't think there's anything more shady going on than underwriters attempting to recoup the real cost of insuring these lovely rear end buildings built in flood plains. Also I notice the strata fees on that first building are $300 lol. That is low as hell. Number19 posted:This all goes hand in hand with the strata fees being absurdly low on new developments as well. Part of the idea is that a strata should take in quite a bit more money than it spends in a given year to have a contingency fund on hand to avoid special levies. A brand new strata should have decently high fees to build up the contingency fund quickly while the maintenance costs of the development are low. The developer is supposed to seed in some money as part of the strata creation but I'd make a solid guess that they aren't seeding nearly enough and that is also a part of the problem buyers of new developments are facing. This isn't that much different than how people maintain their houses though. Just YOLO it and then use a HELOC for repairs.
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Jan 7, 2020 19:08
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Square Peg posted:I'm positive there's got to be a shady deal between developers and insurance companies to have artificially low premiums for the first year or two while the developer unloads the condos, to make the HOA fees more appealing to buyers, and then jack them up when those buyers are holding the bag. As others have pointed out, also nationalize or more heavily regulate strata councils. Increasing insurance premiums is just an incredibly convoluted way of getting people to actually pay enough in strata fees to maintain their building.
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Jan 7, 2020 20:22
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Square Peg posted:I'm positive there's got to be a shady deal between developers and insurance companies to have artificially low premiums for the first year or two while the developer unloads the condos, to make the HOA fees more appealing to buyers, and then jack them up when those buyers are holding the bag. More like so much of a building is still under "warranty" when it's new, there's very little in terms of payouts/claims made in those first years. A couple of years in, the developer has folded/bankrupted the shell company involved and suddenly the insurer is holding the money bag for repairs.
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Jan 7, 2020 21:20
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Developer also responsible for seeding the contingency fund of a new building based on estimated strata fees, responsible for strata fees for any remaining unsold units. No incentive on either front to low-ball, nope. (Both as per a friend who was first strata president of a new build, strata property is a no go for me... Like leased land!)
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Jan 7, 2020 21:24
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Mantle posted:https://globalnews.ca/news/6374159/abbotsford-strata-insurance-hike/amp/ Wild man. The remarkable thing to me is that when I first started hearing about these stories, there were a few things that you could use to brush aside the issue, such as the fact that it was a wood frame building, or that it was older, but this has none of these issues. Brand new building. Concrete. quote:... The only takeaway at this point: Buy in a cheap to replace building?
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Jan 8, 2020 03:44
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Femtosecond posted:The building features concrete construction and has all the latest safety measures. So did that Langford rental that's uninhabitable. When new construction from even "good" builders like BOSA etc. are having issues right away it's our cheap, rushed construction finally coming home to roost.
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Jan 8, 2020 03:54
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lol if you think nationalization will somehow result in less corruption and price fixing
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Jan 11, 2020 10:47
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can't think of any other examples in BC where provincially managed insurance has resulted in sky high prices and gross financial mismanagement, a real headscratcher there
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Jan 11, 2020 10:48
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