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I've been to Vancouver once and I agree it's one of the worst cities in Canada, but then my question is why do you guys stay? What keeps you here, the rain? the HST? Uwe Boll? Move to Calgary and you can still fly back to Vancouver every month to do whatever the gently caress people in Vancouver do. I started working in real estate around 2005 and followed the US bubble blogs quite closely. What stood out in my mind was the number of people who endlessly gnashed their teeth and tore their hair about how they must must have a house and a yard and when are prices going to come down goddamit, many, maybe most of them eventually gave up and bought houses. You know what? Once those people bought houses, and very few people on the blogs were even talking about buying houses anymore, prices went down, because everyone who wants a house had one. It's a tautology. prices will come down when people don't want houses (at that price) anymore, and they'll come down to a price people want to pay. The fact that there are still people like BaronJutter and his wife around means prices are going to be sticky. The day when no one talks about this stuff anymore because everyone who wants a house in Vancouver has moved to Winnipeg, will be the day prices come down. Throatwarbler fucked around with this message at 08:51 on Mar 19, 2013 |
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Mar 19, 2013 08:49
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t3h z0r posted:Just wanna say thanks for this. In no rush to buy but my girlfriend sort of is, in TO no less, with neither of us having done any real research on how bad it is. I need to show her this. We just got a relatively good deal on a newish rent-controlled apartment attached to a condo with everything paid for, all appliances, close to work etc. Got ahead of the waitlist thanks to a friend and an admission process that took everything but a blood sample. Now I'm thinking of staying well beyond any crash. The problem with all those buy-vs-rent calculators is that they assume a perfectly linear growth in house prices and never take into account alpha/volatility which is absurd when you're dealing with a market that employs massive amounts of leverage. It might be true that over 50 years or something prices on average have gone up 5% p.a. but it doesn't tell you anything about the variability year over year. If prices go up 15% p.a. for 5 years and the drop down 60% in year 6, it makes a big difference whether you bought the house in year 1 or year 5, even though the average growth rate might still be positive (I think? I'm really terible at math sorry). It's like saying that because in the very long run the stock market always goes up (it has) then the best investment is always a 3x leveraged S&P 500 index ETF(yeah I know leveraged ETFs don't quite work that way but you get what I mean). What I'm getting at is that instead of trying to build some kind of spreadsheet to figure out down to the last penny how much money you'll spend buying/renting a house, while using unrealistic assumptions about your ability to predict the future, it's better to instead think of it in terms of risk and how much money you are risking when you try to time the market, and yes regardless of your intentions, buying the house is a game of timing the market. If you don't like it then don't buy a house.
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Mar 19, 2013 10:26
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SpaceMost posted:Not to split hairs but isn't the primitive expectation for communal living, with expectations of privacy and personal space largely enabled by central heating? The same principle applies, housing booms and busts can last decades, Japan's real estate bust was like 30 years, for example, Hong Kong's house prices fell 60% from 1997 to 2003. No one loving knows what's going to happen in 30 years. ocrumsprug posted:Alternative Theory: They stopped talking about buying a house because houses were losing 10-20% of their value year after year, and they lost their job at the cracker factory anyways. The other 30%? You can own more than 1 house? People will keep buying houses until they don't, It's hard to say that 70% is the right number either way.
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Mar 19, 2013 15:26
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ocrumsprug posted:Well the sales stats for the last year in Vancouver would seem to indicate that we have reached that point. Presumably we can just sit back and wait for the tautological obvious decline now. I'm not so sure we're there yet. You have to remember that they are comparing monthly sales volume year on year, the declines aren't cumulative. I don't think we've reached the kind of declines that we saw in 2008 yet, and it bounced back after 2008. That and the number of posters still complaining about not being desperate to buy a house I guess.
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Mar 19, 2013 16:58
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Mr. Wynand posted:Family? Friends? My wife and her family? Asking people to just uproot and move is pretty terrible. I say that as someone who has moved a lot growing up, and it's extremely taxing on the whole family. This is why newly-gentrified neighborhoods pricing out the existing locals is actually really really damaging to the community. But FY,GM amirite? No one is asking you to cross the Rio Grande or the Indian ocean. Everyone in Calgary speaks the same language and obey the same laws as you, somehow I think you'll manage. One of the things that makes Canada a nice place to live is the relative ease of internal mobility. It's literally a major reason why nation states exist, and lack of mobility is a reason why house prices in certain areas get run up - if wages in an area don't support prices, then either wages go up, or workers cash in their gains from house price appreciation and leave. I'm the furthest thing from a free-market fundamentalist and residential real estate is one of those things where the market should be allowed to set prices. In fact I would argue that instead of the government giving people free houses at public expense which only benefits incumbent landlords and property developers, while the workers are tied down to pieces of dirt like serfs. The money should instead be spent on making it as easy as possible for people to move from low-productivity areas like Vancouver to high-growth areas like Calgary. There's plenty of stuff that could be done, like allowing more tax breaks for moving expenses, or setting up information/assistance facilities for new arrivals, etc. just off the top of my head.
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Mar 20, 2013 01:03
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Mr. Wynand posted:Are you single? Under 30? Just curious. I'm 30 this year, but I'm also a non-white immigrant, so on the one hand I understand better than you probably do about the importance of informal networks (that's another thing that makes Canada great, relatively it's easier for newcomers to succeed without relying on them too much), and on the other hand driving one day from Vancouver to Calgary just doesn't seem like a big deal to me. Also everyone in Calgary is from Saskachewan so V  V
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Mar 20, 2013 01:38
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Seriouspost: My mom really likes Victoria and wants to buy a house and retire there. She isn't going to start seriously looking until the latter half of this year at least though. Yes/No? I've been there but I'm not all that familiar, it doesn't really look like condos downtown are much more expensive than the suburbs, which isn't how things work in most other places.
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Mar 20, 2013 03:31
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Minister Robathan posted:I stopped reading here. You could have great, excellent points in the rest of it, but I don't care. gently caress you. This is some of the most bigoted poo poo I've ever seen in D&D. God drat I hate Alberta and French people so much, why won't the government give me more money to buy houses in BC 
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Mar 20, 2013 03:55
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ocrumsprug posted:Toronto isn't the center of the universe for this particular topic, now it's our turn to be popular. Not directed at you, but to determine if this is a trend at least you would have to look and see what the usually variation YoY is to see if a 30% variation is particularly out of the ordinary. Honestly the bear blogs are just as bad as anyone else when it comes to cherry picking numbers and presenting them out of context.
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Mar 20, 2013 04:58
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Eh, Someone paid money for all that poo poo to be built, so where did that money go? Unless all the construction workers and interior designers and condo developers move to China Vancouver is still ahead. EDIT: Man there's a lot of pretty thinly veiled racism in this thread. Throatwarbler fucked around with this message at 05:28 on Mar 21, 2013 |
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Mar 21, 2013 05:25
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Paper Mac posted:Uh, bulldozing viable low-rise neighbourhoods and replacing them with empty glass and concrete towers that destroy economic activity is a demonstrable economic disbenefit right now. I don't see how a bunch of contractors making bank mitigates that. I'm not sure what racism has to do with it. The low-rise owners weren't evicted at gunpoint, they got paid more than what they figure the property was worth to them. That money didn't just dissapear into a hole in the ground, the total amount of "stuff" (apartments and cash) in the economy has increased. If lovely 1970s low-rise apartment buildings were such a lucrative proposition they can build another one somewhere else.
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Mar 21, 2013 08:59
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So people who own apartment buildings shouldn't have to pay taxes like everyone else. Cool. That sure was a conversation worth having. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Mar 21, 2013 17:37
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Yes, instead of giving money to poor people we should just do what they do in China instead and funnel money and tax breaks into politically connected real estate developers and incumbent property owners. Tax breaks for the rich are literally the solution to everything.
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Mar 21, 2013 18:22
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Oh good more well considered government affordable housing initiatives that this thread has been calling for. http://business.financialpost.com/2012/12/21/feds-ok-another-50-billion-of-mortgage-guarantees-for-private-sector-players/ quote:Feds OK another $50-billion of mortgage guarantees for private-sector players I bet they have to pay taxes too, the horror.
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Mar 22, 2013 04:55
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It's racist because there is no other explanation for why you should think it is good policy. Everything else you talked about has at least a slightly plausible (even if rarely justifiable in reality) whiff of foreigners, i.e. people who are outside of the Canadian democratic political process, somehow benefitting unfairly on the backs of Canadians. The welfare and other benefits that come with citizenship and permanent residency, for example, or the implicit backing of the state and taxpayer behind the banks. Foreign ownership of property is where a foreigner gives a Canadian a shitload of money in return for something that he can't even carry back to China, and for which he actually still needs to pay taxes(which are impossible to avoid) for in Canada. What policy goal is being achieved here? Should we also ban exports of oil because why should a dirty foreigner be allowed to buy oil when TRUE CANADIANS still have to pay for gas? Or cars built in Ontario because there are REAL CANADIANS who need cars? How about we ban all foreign companies from employing Canadian workers, because they are driving up the price of labour for those poor REAL CANADIAN companies? The only way someone who advocating restrictions is if he straight up comes out and admits that his argument is entirely premised on the notion of "gently caress you, got mine". To be consistent you would also have to for example support restrictions on ownership of property by residents of other provinces, because why should those dirty Albertans be allowed to buy houses in BC when there are REAL BCers who want houses, and basically just says that I want this thing but other people are willing to pay more money for it than m, therefore the government should just ban other people from being allowed to own it so that I can buy it for a lower price. Actually the government should just seize that house and give it to me because gently caress the people who own the house for wanting so much money for it. At least you're not a racist. Pretty sure people don't actually believes that though, and are just uncomfortable with having to live next to the "wrong kind" of people.
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Apr 7, 2013 23:51
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Lexicon posted:
Well good, then your views are consistent with someone who is not a racist? quote:Actual people think all of these things (hell, I bet you could find instances of each in the Canadian Politics thread alone). Some are racist, some are stupid, some reject economics outright, some are motivated by other considerations. They are not, however, all racist. Eh, OK. I kind of addressed this in my third paragraph.
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Apr 8, 2013 00:19
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First of all, as already mentioned, I don't think it's good policy.
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Guy DeBorgore posted:It would reduce housing prices and make housing more affordable. I think everyone can agree that's a good thing. If people who already own houses(70% of households) thought that reducing housing prices was a good thing, what's stopping them from selling their houses for those reduced prices?
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Apr 8, 2013 15:29
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Guy DeBorgore posted:Are you new to this planet or something? Come on, this isn't "in depth economic analysis" here. 1 post above mine you said quote:I think everyone can agree that's a good thing. How do people who own houses already (which is most people) "agree that's a good thing"?
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Apr 8, 2013 22:13
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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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If you want a condo just buy one. Why do you need permission from anyone else. Once you and everyone else who wants a condo has bought one, then prices will come down. If you continue to hold out then you're part of the "problem", if you think high house prices are a problem to be solved.
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Jul 9, 2013 12:16
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Cultural Imperial posted:Will/can someone do the same in Canada? Because holy moly The key to the whole scam is that when the "loser" counterparty can't pay up, the government bails them out. Unless you yourself are literally John Paulson or Goldman Sachs it's not been a great thing public policy-wise.
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Jul 12, 2013 07:24
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Pretty much. No one (or very few people) are actually that interested in the petty details of their interior paint or the size of their windows or any of that House Hunters bullshit, not even women. They love houses because they see other successful and socially acceptable people buy houses so they must have one too and it helps that these other people are (so they say) actually making money off their house. Wait until prices go down and try to talk to people about drywall or whatever, and the response will be what the gently caress am I, a construction worker? Who gives a poo poo?
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Jul 12, 2013 23:12
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Mr. Wynand posted:
"live so far below what you expect"? Did you sign a contract coming out of high school that guarantees you a certain sq ft of gypsum board and granite countertops? There will always be some other guy who makes more money than you, and unless you start making his money you'll never be able to afford his house and your wife will never be as happy as his wife. It doesn't really matter if prices come down or go up, your relative position will be the same. Lexicon posted:This post is hilarious and I've just put it into Evernote with a reminder so I can have the lulz at this prescience again in two years time  20 years ago German lux cars were much more expensive relatively than they are now, and driving a Mercedes or Porsche was actually a Big Deal. Today anyone can lease an entry level Mercedes for $300/month. Note that this *hasn't* actually made anyone happier or improved their lives, because what they actually wanted wasn't a shoddily built uggo car, they wanted to be "like" those people who drove a Merc 20 years ago. Bringing down the prices of cars/condos/university education will never change anything. TL;DR Buy the loving condo. Throatwarbler fucked around with this message at 23:45 on Jul 12, 2013 |
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Jul 12, 2013 23:43
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This doesn't sound like a very ringing endorsement of his own policy, since generally both Swiss and Americans want to own houses, and yet, many more Americans than Swiss are actually able to realize their dream of house ownership. The goal of any public policy should be to maximize the standard of living of the average citizen, so how is this policy that leaves the majority of Swiss in a state of relative misery a good thing? In general I'm in favour of any policy that gives the average citizen the ability to take on more leverage, since that evens the playing field between them and the big financial institutions.
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Jul 15, 2013 06:35
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Counterpoint: Winnipeg is literally the worst place in Canada, even worse than Vancouver. Why would anyone willingly live there? Q.E.D. no bubble is possible. Anyway you guys sure are angry about other people buying things they like because it raises prices and reduces supply for yourself.
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Jul 31, 2013 19:19
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That's not a terribly compelling argument. Land isn't a fungible commodity, just because there's plenty of land in Fort Nelson doesn't mean land in downtown Vancouver should never get expensive?
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Aug 14, 2013 18:39
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So we (my parents) are shopping for building lots in Victoria, so far things are still overpriced IMO, right now they have their eye on a lot that the developer wants $389k for, which even compared to the current price of houses is worth closer to $300k.
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Aug 21, 2013 07:53
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Stop buying Impreza STis guys, you're driving up the price to unsustainable levels and now I can't afford one. The government needs to ban foreigners from buying STis and start taxing people who buy them and only drive the speed limit. 
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Aug 22, 2013 20:35
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Welp. Parents put in an offer for a place the other day and the developers seem receptive, they are probably going to meet with the buyer's agent today to hash out a counter offer. 
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Aug 26, 2013 17:14
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Calgary is also *really* not running out land. You'll notice that downtown Calgary is still pretty expensive even compared to BC, but the average and the SFH figures are somewhat more reasonable because people can(and are) build outwards more or less forever, and the transportation infrastructure is relatively decent making living in the far off suburbs slightly more tolerable. I was amazed at how difficult it was to get anywhere in Victoria, even though the place has 1/4 Calgary's population and no one there actually works.
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Aug 28, 2013 18:35
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etalian posted:To answer your specific questions the Vienna model does allow owner like rights such as tenants being able to remodel their home and also allows relatives such as children to inherit the lease from their parents. Is there some law in Canada that makes remodelling rental properties or children inheriting leases illegal?
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Aug 29, 2013 03:23
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Yes if some piece of the building needs fixing and you own a share of it you pay, even if you don't use it. How is this at all "unexpected"? What exactly was he expecting?
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Oct 12, 2013 05:21
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Haha saved as vancouver.jpg
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Oct 17, 2013 05:44
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Cultural Imperial posted:I sometimes think about what it might be like to buy a huge gently caress off house in the Fraser Valley. Then I realize my neighbors would be conservative Christian white trash motherfuckers and I snap out of it. Rime posted:This is why my goal is to buy 150-200 acres of land elsewhere in BC, as far from civilization as I can get while still having an internet connection of reasonable quality. Unfortunately, until the market in Vancouver crashes and burns it is going to continue driving up prices everywhere in the province as it has been for over a decade. Oh hey I saw you guys' house on Vancouver Price Drop. http://sothebysrealty.ca/en/property/british-columbia/fraser-valley/abbotsford/19103 Reduced from like $8m. It looked like a nice place but I have no idea what the neighbourhood is like. Hopefully there's enough land for me to zero in my rifle without having to deal with the neighbours?
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Oct 22, 2013 01:13
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Isn't Toronto really cold?
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Oct 22, 2013 01:20
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What the gently caress is a blueberry cannon? I googled it and still don't understand.
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Oct 22, 2013 03:11
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I thought Uwe Boll was still based in Vancouver but it seems that he's in Ontario now? What is happening to the Best Place On Earth? 
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Oct 23, 2013 18:17
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Maybe 1 bath in the living room for guests, and one in the basement which technically isn't a bedroom but you know... That would work out. In other news parents just closed on a land parcel in Victoria. 
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Oct 31, 2013 01:43
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Cultural Imperial posted:please tell me they paid cash It's land so yeah. Baronjutter posted:haha where abouts? Like actual Victoria? Highlands, just north of the Bear Mountain gold course.
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Oct 31, 2013 01:50
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Baronjutter posted:Awesome, way the gently caress out in the worst of the burbs. Those places are always the most resilient to market corrections. At least they didn't buy a Condo in Langford. Also holy poo poo at the amount of recent bankruptcies and cancelled major projects out there that the city was left holding the bag on like that loving overpass. They're retiring and like the country living, it's 5 acres, and honestly we drove the area and it's really not that "far out", you can get to all the shopping in Langford in 5 minutes and downtown in about 20, so no worse than most of Calgary in that regard.
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Oct 31, 2013 02:12
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