|
So what exactly has caused the initial rise in prices in Vancouver anyway then? Was it just availability of credit? If so, why Vancouver? Or at least, why Vancouver so loving hard? Are the same credit terms not also available in Toronto and Montreal and so forth? AFAIK, Vancouver housing prices have gone up a full order of magnitude higher then any of those places. Also, is there any way to guess what the market might actually settle on assuming a bust does happen? For example, if we just look at rises in immigration and income or whatever the gently caress real estate economists normally look at to predict the cost of housing when they aren't getting loopy from the optimism fumes. Also the second, someone said earlier that if the wheels come off the economy rental prices may end up moving after all - but it wasn't clear which way. Well, first off, what would we realistically be talking about there? I am imagining a lot of people who planned on retired based on their real estate holdings are now hosed and banks getting stingy with loans (for housing or anything else) which means jobs down and generaly desperation up, but I'm not sure exactly what happens to the rental market... Possibly more people giving up on selling and instead putting houses up for rent (does that even affect rentals that much?) and way more people looking to rent instead of dreaming of ownership but also not being able to pay nearly as much, sooo... well I'm not sure - that's basically what I'm asking.
|
#
¿
Feb 22, 2013 05:27
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 19:55 |
|
|
Right, well, thanks, but I already get that sort of explanation around around my in-laws' christmas table. Can we see these sort of small-landlord rentals go up roughly in step with the rise in prices? (i've not heard of this) Is the splitting of single family homes into 5 lovely rentals a contributing cause to the rise in prices or simply a response to the rise in prices? (the latter seems far more plausible) Are people actually leaving so many apartments vacant while trying forever to sell them for a gazillion times their price? (a study from 2-3 years ago found this to be the case in less then 8% of apartments in downtown) I will accept that Vancouver probably started out with a slight advantage in its supply of rich idiots but it is surely not composed primarily of them, and we must also wonder why this all happened now and not before and not in many other places. This is most likely a combination of causes and conditions, but it would be nice go on more then the usual Vancouverite speculations and complaints at the pub.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 22, 2013 08:02
|
|
|
shots shots shots posted:Isn't rental yield still pretty good in Vancouver? It seems like rents are high, which combined with low vacancy rates would make renting pretty financially viable, especially if you bought 4-5 years ago. I dunno about the returns being comparable to Toronto - rent is a bit lower here then the Toronto figures as far as I can tell, and my experience is mostly from around Downtown which is the most ridiculous area. I do know for sure that rent has been going up faaaar slower then prices, so I really don't think the rental yield might have poo poo all to do with anything. It's also somewhat telling that development of rental apartment buildings has pretty much stopped over the last 10 years. If rental yields were especially high 10-15 years ago... well that might be more credible. Excess capital from Asia needing a safe place to go, combined with a recently favorable image of Vancouver as a "very livable city" (THE BEST PLACE ON EARTH) might have started a slight trend upwards that was then exaggerated by speculators. But this is just guesswork. How many purchases from 2000 onwards were actually made with Hong-Kong money? The popular belief is "LOTS", but that is driven by no small amount of not-too-subtly racist mistrust... I've certainly never seen hard numbers backing the claim. If all we're going with is anecdotes, well my own anecdotes are that most landlords I've met are people that have lived in Vancouver for a while now - most of them are immigrants but that's because of most of Vancouver's population is immigrants.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 23, 2013 01:07
|
|
|
Ender.uNF posted:I suspect the trigger events tend to be some sector of the city's economy starts booming or investors buy houses at depressed prices to flip, but I've never seen any legit research on it, just economist's pet theories dressed up as such. There must be some figures that can point out probable "speculative buyers". Vacant units of course, but also maybe also rental properties that just change hands a lot. If we see relatively sudden rises in these starting in the 2000s, I'd say that's pretty good evidence that this is basically what is to blame (together with cheap money).
|
|
#
¿
Feb 23, 2013 01:11
|
|
|
It really would be great to know what the vacant unit figures are city-wide just because that would give us a better picture of what the post-collapse market would look like. I do agree that all the properly urban areas are already pretty dense - so unless that figure is significant then prices will probably still be quite high (just not astronomically so). There is lots more land that isn't that dense (the middle of the triangle formed by broadway, grandville and marine for example), but I don't think it can actually be made more dense without transit. Really, I think the only hope for this city no matter how you turn it is more transit. There is just no other way to grow, not within nor without in the suburbs. Of course the recent political inclinations have instead been to spend all transportation budgets on that loving bridge I hate it so much, so now all skytrain expansion plans have been pushed back and they are still faffing around deciding on streetcars. But it's ok because we're going to have an influx of commuters over that loving bridge god I hate it who will now be able to get stall at the grandview exit 50% faster then before, will completely gridlock the distribution and then park their cars up in Burnaby or something because nobody seems to have noticed that you also need to increase the capacity of everything after that loving bridge loving gently caress to actually get anything out of it. But hey, you need another $1.3B to finish it? Sure, why the gently caress not, we'll just close some bike lane programs worth several HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of dollars. THAT loving BRIDGE
|
|
#
¿
Feb 23, 2013 01:23
|
|
|
moron posted:Speaking as someone who's moving immigrating to Vancouver from London (UK) this summer, this thread has provided interesting reading. Kits probably has enough rich people to support some very high prices for quite some time, collapse or not.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 23, 2013 19:17
|
|
|
Zeitgueist posted:I had a wonderful conversation with a Canadian coworker recently(in the US) about how this isn't really a housing bubble because Canada "has better laws about that type of thing". Whew, well that's good to know!
|
|
#
¿
Mar 8, 2013 00:23
|
|
|
Baronjutter posted:What's people like that author's excuse? "It would have been different if the GOVERNMENT didn't ruin things!" "It would have been different if those poors didn't buy houses they couldn't afford because that's 100% what caused the crash, poors!" "Alien bigfoot did it!" ??? Sure!
|
|
#
¿
Mar 8, 2013 00:23
|
|
|
Zeitgueist posted:Yes, 1 million dollar hovels are the natural order of things, apparently. Well it must be I mean if we have these better laws, right?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 8, 2013 01:01
|
|
|
Baronjutter posted:I just wonder when it's coming. Other than this thread, every other source keeps talking about STRONG MARKETS and ITS DIFFERENT HERE. My wife desperately wants to move NOW and I keep saying "let's wait a year, keep saving and prices will go down" but she isn't a goon and is absolutely surrounded by the media, friends, everyone saying prices are in fact going to go up soon and now is the time to buy. It's getting harder to keep her convinced and I'm starting to feel like some lone conspiracy theorist. You can't afford it "NOW", you just can't. Look at renting vs owning specifically - it's an insane proposition. Make a spreadsheet of the monthly savings you'd have from renting vs the mortgage payment for an equivalent place. Assume you invest this difference in a high-ish variability fund that has the same term as your mortgage - the returns will be pretty good, ~5% or so at least. See what that adds up to by the end of the mortgage term. Your property will have needed to appreciate in value by that amount to have been worth it. Don't forget to take into account property tax, cost of insurance and repairs (you don't have to repair poo poo when you rent) and changes in your interest rate. It's going to be a big number. You'd have to be extremely optimistic about the market over a very long term (your mortgage term) to believe you'll come out ahead. You have to remember that a home is a single investment you are holding, worth a good third or more of all the money you will ever make. Would you put a third of all your income (not savings, income) in a a single stock? I think most investment houses will outright prevent you from doing this unless you sign a series of liability wavers and "we told you this is the worst idea, but you are doing it anyway, it's on your head now (moron)"-statements. A big accident not quite covered by insurance? You're hosed. Developer hosed up your whole tower/strata? You're hosed. The interest rate is slightly higher then you planned for? You're hosed. The market doesn't go up quite as fast as you thought? You're hosed. We close down another mental hospital and all the homeless end up in your neighborhood? You're hosed. Your home represents a very big number of dollars, and even the smallest fluctuations in various rates and yields next to that number are going to be extremely noticeable. Rent has no such risks associated with it. The worst thing that can happen is, you have to move. Rent increases are capped. Tenant protections in BC are pretty good, you can't easily be kicked out as long as you didn't break your lease terms. You can move with your job (should you need to) to keep your commute reasonable. Whatever you decide to invest is a much smaller portion of your income then a mortgage payment, and you can choose far, far safer investments then a single home in Vancouver. The only real downside with renting is that you can't really renovate your place (well, you might be able to work out something with your landlord but it's tricky and rare). That's about it. In every other respect, it is far safer and cheaper to rent and invest your money elsewhere. Make that spreadsheet - have her look at the numbers and how they respond to any changes. It's frightening. It's even more frightening how many people have either forgone this process, or think it's an entirely reasonable proposition... Maybe prices will go up soon, who knows, but that won't change the fact that current prices are far too high to be worth pursuing.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 18, 2013 21:26
|
|
|
2% is just to account for inflation I think. So this effectively assumes 0 appreciation...
|
|
#
¿
Mar 18, 2013 21:51
|
|
|
In the past ~8 years we've seen nominal appreciation as high as 5%. Of course you should buy if the rollercoaster can go nowhere but up for ever. But how much are you willing to bet it will? edit: nominal, not real Mrs. Wynand fucked around with this message at 21:58 on Mar 18, 2013 |
|
#
¿
Mar 18, 2013 21:53
|
|
|
Baronjutter posted:I'd love to rent but this isn't europe and renting is for lazy failed poors and students, who have to live in sub-standard old buildings with lovely shared-laundry and stinky elevators. I know buying is expensive but I don't look at it as an investment, it's a luxury, it's a thing to make one happy. I hate renting, I hate the uncertainty, the lack of any sense of ownership or control. quote:You go into a condo building and no one vandalizes poo poo because it's their own building, people have a sense of ownership and it shows. Something breaks, you can fix it and fix it right. quote:I looked at some not-shitbox apartments and town-houses for rent but the rents are insane, higher than mortage+strata+utilities. So it's either shared-laundry apartments where you have to do guard-duty or your clothes will all be stolen, or really high-end units marketed more towards rich professionals here for a season or two. Bullshit. I don't know where you are looking or how you are estimating mortgage+strata+utilities (and don't forget +taxes and +insurance), but you are doing it wrong. The apartment I am currently in was listed for 480K on MLS up to the day I rented it. That's $2396.50/mo for a 25 year mortgage, not including a single additional fee. I'm paying $1575 and I could have probably dragged it down further if I wasn't in a hurry. Previous to this I was renting a smaller 2 bedroom in the very middle of Downtown in the greenest, glassiest new investment development around. $550K or so at least (that's 2,745.99/mo @ 25yr). $1800/mo rent. And keep in mind rent in Downtown has gone up much faster then any other area. You can get excelent rent/price ratios outside of the Downtown core (anywhere along the skytrain and you might as well be Downtown IMO). Even better once you hit Burnaby or New West. quote:If I could find a 2 bedroom apartment with in-suite laundry, up to date fire safety equipment, decent sound-proofing, and a management company that doesn't take months to fix broken light switches and faucets (replacing them of course with the cheapest shittiest things they can) I'd probably jump on it. But there's like no middle-ground here. It's either 50 year old poo poo-boxes full of students and drug addicts, or super high-end luxury stuff. Again, I have no idea what it is you are doing, but you are definitely doing it wrong. This is absolutely not the case. Vancouver is lousy with rentals by owners, in nice strata buildings, in lovely neighborhoods. A friend of mine was renting a 3 floor (!) 2 bedroom townhouse with a patio and something that could pass for a garden, great for raising kids and a white loving picket fence for $2700 right off Robson, where the land value is astronomical. I.e. for the same price as the mortgage alone on a 850 square feet highrise in the same area. And yes, every singe place I've mentioned has had in-suite laundry and new appliances. And also those god-awful tacky fake fireplaces for some reason, I don't know what's with that.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 18, 2013 23:07
|
|
|
Baronjutter posted:And rentals, even the nicer ones, are never truly nice. Nice is subjective, and rentals don't let you make the changes you'd need to make a place nice. I want to buy a cheap place with good bones with a lovely kitchen/bathroom and gut the place and build-up my dream home. New kitchen, new bathroom, maybe even move some doors or even walls around. Get something with a good balcony and enclose it super nice and turn it into an office. Make a place nice and add a bit of value to it. I do actually agree with you here - I absolutely would love to do something similar (nobody ever gets the Kitchen or Bathroom right... though the place I rent now came darn close). That really is the only difference though man, and the premium you pay for it is sadly just unreasonable. quote:Anything that is remotely up to date is $1500+.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 18, 2013 23:11
|
|
|
OSI bean dip posted:Anyway, it's possible to rent decently but you need to look hard enough and be lucky. The place I presently live in is a 12-year old building in New Westminster not far from downtown that charges me $900/mo for a 1-bedroom that faces south towards the river on top of a hill, located on the top-floor of the 4-story building. It's around 600 sq. feet and has washer, dryer, and dishwasher. In addition, gas heat is included with the place.  I really think it's the best balance between price (renting of course), neighborhood character, commute options and walkable shopping. I also definitely enjoy being surrounded by a wider breadth of people then, say, Yaletown's mix of yuppies, cokeheads, trust-fund party assholes and trophy-wives/prostitutes who take their tiny, yappy, sickly looking fogs to one of the THREE (THREE!) dog stylists in downtown.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 18, 2013 23:19
|
|
|
Baronjutter posted:I guess my problem is that I'm a poor and expect moderately quality housing. I've looked at a lot of pretty good units in the $250k range though and all our math seems to point to us being able to afford that. I'm also not in metro-vancouver. I think this is your problem too - people that didn't get stupid-lucky with their jobs are simply being priced out of the city, and that's that. The only ones left are the type of people I described above. It is literally turning this city to poo poo and I would have left long long time ago were it not for family ties and friends. Whatever charm Vancouver may have had is quickly evaporating. The massive economic hit from a "wheels are off the wagon" type crash might actually improve this city. Barring that my only hope would be a concentrated effort by local government which would involve increasing the density of whatever's left (which is only possible with more rapid transit) as well as a ton of subsidized housing and cultural programs. Not a single one of those things is likely to happen with the current governments.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 18, 2013 23:26
|
|
|
Yes, clearly we must let go of our primitive expectations of privacy and personal space and move on to this sort of post-modern communal living arrangement as a response to the rising cost of housing. It is clearly the best choice. Well other then bringing the prices back down of course, but why don't you try to just sort of change the way you live before we start going crazy with exotic ideas about affordable housing. Urgh.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 19, 2013 08:24
|
|
|
Throatwarbler posted: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? (There is a way of doing this in a way that lets the community grow and improve without loving people over. It's more or less the opposite of what Vancouver does.)
|
|
#
¿
Mar 20, 2013 00:41
|
|
|
shots shots shots posted:As long as a significant block of people (typically unsophisticated investors who distrust other asset classes) view real estate as an investment rather than a consumption good, it's an almost unsolvable problem, especially if they have savings. Mrs. Wynand fucked around with this message at 00:46 on Mar 20, 2013 |
|
#
¿
Mar 20, 2013 00:43
|
|
|
Throatwarbler posted: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). The spreadsheet is valuable not because it helps you predict the actual outcome (you can plug in all sorts of far more pessimistic numbers in it and still come out ahead), but to see what a huge difference fiddling with numbers can make. You're right on the money when you say it's about volatility. That's exactly the point - people are putting a third of the money they don't even have yet into this single, actually really quite risky investment.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 20, 2013 00:47
|
|
|
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? Sure, and having to hunt for 2-for-1 DOUBLE AIRMILE DEALS for your food instead of mastodons was largely enabled by sedentary agriculture, irrigation, chemical fertilizer and fossil fuels (and the extinction of mastodons).
|
|
#
¿
Mar 20, 2013 00:51
|
|
|
Throatwarbler posted: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. Are you single? Under 30? Just curious. You can't just take your social support network with you to your new city. You can't make a new lifelong friend from a government support program. You can't even get someone to do something as simple as feeding your cat while you're on holiday or watch your kids on short notice because you're staying late for work. There is nothing quiet like the feeling of isolation from living in a city you barely know. Of course there's a limit to this, of course people should eventually move out of completely unproductive localities, of course it is possible to re-form that network given time and of course young unattached people especially can/should do this most often. But allowing people to live where they've always lived (assuming they were happy there to begin with) is something absolutely worth supporting, especially when it's only being threatened by something as arbitrary as speculative investors (even when most of those investors are locals themselves). Vancouver is a fine city (in the "I'm fine, thanks" sense, not the "my, what a fine young conservative you've raised" sense). It absolutely thinks far too highly of itself and too many people think it's something it's not. But there's nothing actually wrong with it. It can support a modest eco-tourism industry, it has 3 or so pretty good post-secondary institutions that provide a pool of educated professionals for film and research and software development, it's nice enough that those professionals to not mind living here, it has plenty of room for industrial growth in natural resource processing that can provide blue collar jobs. It could even grow a culture if given a chance. It's fine, ok? It should be able to support it's incumbent locals just fine. There's no real need for anyone to pack up and leave, this is almost an entirely a "market problem". It will fix itself ... one way or the other :/
|
|
#
¿
Mar 20, 2013 01:27
|
|
|
Cultural Imperial posted:I work in a large systems integrator with several contracts to outsource it from businesses around the vancouver area. There are a large number of employees in this company who come from brazil, china, india, south africa, australia and the uk. These people are not yospos gamer admins, they have highly specialized skills. On average, these people are in their mid to late 30s. On the other hand, every single life long vancouver resident working in this company is a baby boomer. Well like I said, your 20s are the time to do that. But really, this neither here nor there. The kind of uprooting stress inflicted on working professionals by awsome job offers abroad is not exactly the social problem I have in mind. Having jobs available in a wide variety of fields is, but having to leave town because the top of your field is centered elsewhere is more of a "lategame" type of urban social issue.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 20, 2013 04:44
|
|
|
Cultural Imperial posted:Having worked with a shitload of antipodeans in europe, I'm really distressed to learn that Canadians are such weak hearted pansies that they could never ever consider leaving home for better opportunities abroad. We should all just give up now and fold this country so we won't have to put up a fight when the russians and americans come for our natural resources. You seem to be taking this very personally. By all means, feel free to bootstraps yourself into a more productive and affluent community. From Fort McMurray all the way to Whistler Village!
|
|
#
¿
Mar 20, 2013 06:50
|
|
|
Cultural Imperial posted:You know those fabled chinese ghost cities? Woha woha woha - this is actually news. You can't just go and surprise me like that, thread! The only real study I was ever able to find on housing occupancy before this one was maybe from 2-3 years ago, was performed by a real estate consultancy firm and they used hydro usage to estimate the number of vacant apartments. Theirs frankly strikes me as a better methodology then adding up the census numbers, though I've not actually read this paper of course. At first glance however, it would seem Yan's approach might fail to account for the much higher rate of shared housing (roomies, or grown up kids not moving out, etc) brought on by the high prices to begin with. On the other hand no long-term empty apartment has any real reason to pay hydro, but who knows, maybe these dudes are trying to sell them until someone buys at their desired 450% return or whatever and need the heat up for open-houses. Anywho, so the previous study only found 8-9% vacancy rate in downtown alone. If it's gone up to 23% that's huge! It explains why rent in downtown proper has really shot up as well, to the point where it's catching up with ownership prices (which was sort of worrysome because it meant reality was actually beginning to catch up with lala-land prices, at least in downtown). That the vacancy rate outside downtown is as high as 7.7% is also worrying, although I can't imagine being 2.7% above the norm would actually be a contributing factor to home prices (mortgage availability is almost certainly still the primary culprit there). Again though, it would explain the rise in rents we've been seeing in "mainland" Greater Vancouver (is there a term for Vancouver, Burnaby, New West and maybe Port Moody, but excluding Poco and further, surrey + boonies and the north shore?). I've been attributing it to actual rise in population (which has been speeding up as well apparently), but certainly won't have helped. So I actually think this is a big deal. It's one thing to price out locals when you're just building up density (I love density! Never enough density!) - and by the by, poor neighborhoods are almost always full of renters, they don't get poo poo out of gentrification, they are simply to asked to leave their lives behind and go. You are at least building up supply which should of course put downward pressure on prices and making things more affordable for everyone. But if a quarter of all these developments just stay empty? Then that's extremely harmful! It disrupts neighborhoods, it pushes rents up, it pushes home prices even higher and it's also a huge glowing red indicator towards high amounts of speculative investments which are likely to blow up in your face. I've never really taken part in discussion in these sort of solutions before because I didn't think the data actually supported the theory that they were much of a problem to begin with, but with this new study in mind: Is it possible for the municipal government to compel these vacancies to be filled? For example, can have one year (that's probably too generous even) to somehow occupy your apartment (rent it out, or move it, or sell it to someone who moves in - and fake "second homes" don't count), and after that, your property tax starts going up and keeps going up until you do something. Existing RTA regulations would prevent landlords simply rotating tenants out for no reason. I really don't think it's too much to ask of our beloved petit-bourgeois investor class, considering the massive loving problem Vancouver has. (not to mention their asses will almost certainly require some form of bailing out when the poo poo hits the ground)
|
|
#
¿
Mar 21, 2013 18:53
|
|
|
Baronjutter posted:Yep. Taxes, subsidies, direct investment, building codes, zoning, neighourhood, city, regional, national policies, economic conditions, banking and financial regulations, wages, workers rights, it all quite directly effects construction and prices. Add transit and infrastructure to that list. IMO transit is key. It defines the useful area of your city and what sort of density you can support. I would even argue that it's THE primary mechanism by which cities themselves can drive supply.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 21, 2013 22:11
|
|
|
Baronjutter posted:I'd love to hear some peoples ideas for solving or at least improving the housing situation in Canada though. - Eliminate all tax breaks and other home ownership assistance programs. - Continue tightening mortgage regulations, specifically with regard to a) the borrower's ability to afford it and b) the risk involved and who it falls on. - If long term vacancies really are as high as that article suggested, start to penalize them. - Transit transit transit - Density density density - Start building social housing again, distributed evenly regardless of surrounding land-value (or else you get ghettos and yaletown) - Subsidize housing for seniors - Socialized housing for disabled people - A sliding scale of partial housing assistance for the middle class - Increase property taxes to pay for all of this Mrs. Wynand fucked around with this message at 23:22 on Mar 21, 2013 |
|
#
¿
Mar 21, 2013 22:37
|
|
|
Cultural Imperial posted:Imagine if the money dumped into those stupid fast ferries had been used on transit instead? loving hell I'd much rather thank about the money dumped into the god drat Port Mann project, which is actually a whole order of magnitude worse then the fast ferries. The fast ferries cost a total $431 million and at the very least attempted (but failed) to jump start a local ship building industry. The Port Mann on the other hand costs $3.3 billion after the latest budget re-estimate, and it's money coming directly out of the transportation budget - i.e. transit. The bridge will alleviate traffic over the short term which will encourage more people to move out into the suburbs until the commute gets to exactly the same point it was at before. This is what has happened to literally every single highway expansion project in every city in the world since highways were invented. Nobody in Surrey et al will benefit from any of this, except over the very short term. Vancouver/Burnaby/NewWest on the other hand will experience far worse traffic then before no matter what because you have a much greater volume of commuters coming in that have to distribute themselves along the existing (and impossible to expand) local roads. It will also have to dedicate more space to parking which means less space for residences or jobs. The apparent solution will be to drive the highway all the way into the city at an astronomical cost, destroying or splitting up swaths of communities and absolutely murdering all the walkable neighborhoods that are one of Vancouver's few remaining endearing qualities. And all this is just on top of loving over everyone else for transit budgets, it is merely the corn-covered cherry on the poo poo frosting that is this loving bridge. I'd rather have 6 more fast ferry programs or just set fire to 3 billion dollars then this loving bridge. For $3.3 billion we could have put in a new tram system, including the very very badly needed one over Broadway to UBC, kicked the evergreen line into gear and we could even have stuck a bunch of park'n'rides and trams or just more and better buses all over Surrey and actually improve their commute over the long term while building up both cities, improving several local economies, defusing the housing price situation and increasing the city's permanent revenue base which can used to better schools, save puppies, house grandma and all that good stuff. But no, instead people who moved out to Surrey so they can have an 6 bedroom house with a "rumpus room" and 3 garages get to cut their commute by ~40 minutes for 9-18 months. Good deal.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 21, 2013 23:21
|
|
|
Fine-able Offense posted:-Institute a real loving building code Jesus loving christ...  I wonder if this is related to the fact that my current building clearly doesn't have enough elevators for how many floors it has (i'm guessing you work around a city hall? would you happen to know if that is actually in a code?), and that only a single door from the fire escape stairs actually opens from the inside and if the fire happens to be near that door, I guess we can all just burn alive safe from thieves?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 21, 2013 23:26
|
|
|
Isentropy posted:
You mean like, your standard suburban 1-family home? That might be too much of "banning the symptoms". There is nothing wrong with suburbs, I'm not actually against them, you can have your white picket fence and everything. Just don't drive into town is all (and there are several ways this can be done).
|
|
#
¿
Mar 21, 2013 23:29
|
|
|
The Dark One posted:Building codes can be used as offensive weapons, too, mandating things like brick/masonry walls, copper piping, etc, to push the price of reno work up out of the reach of the plebs. ok so, don't do that maybe
|
|
#
¿
Mar 21, 2013 23:30
|
|
|
Dreylad posted:Does rent control figure into a sustainable housing strategy plan, or is that sort of a band-aid on a gushing wound? It makes developers skittish about building new inventory and existing owners less likely to maintain their property (because you are effectively putting a ceiling on their revenue). It would actually make the current problem of vacancies waaaay worse. It would not be my first choice for Vancouver.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 21, 2013 23:37
|
|
|
Fine-able Offense posted:You want page 34, I think. Also, I don't work for city hall, I work for a provincial crown corporation now. Beh, the only hard minimum is 2. They want you to work out the demand yourself to hit some target average waiting time (ours has certainly missed their target of 70 seconds by about 200). There also seem to be like 20 move-ins per months and then your wait time is ~5 minutes. Oh well, really not much they can do about it now. Well, suing the developer might make me feel better.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 21, 2013 23:44
|
|
|
Fine-able Offense posted:Rent control in it's current form in B.C. also doesn't actually really impact rents, because you can raise rents once a tenant leaves, and last I saw the stats the average length of tenancy in B.C. was sub-2 years. Doesn't work like that. Under the standard RTA lease agreement a fixed term lease automatically becomes a month-to-month lease at the end. I know this in great detail because I once had a landlord demand that we agree to cross out that part of the lease agreement, which is definitely a non-optional part of the RTA itself, although neither the RTA board nor a lawyer were 100% certain about what would happen if this came up and I contested it. (we decided to pass) The fixed lease term is actually for the benefit of the landlord so they can have an assurance that they won't have to do the work of renting out the place for at least that term. You are always protected from eviction however, both fixed term and month-to-month, indefinitely. The few (but notable) exceptions are: 1) The landlord or an immediate family member (parents, spouses or children only) wants to move in. They actually have to live there, I think there's even a minimum term during which they cannot rent or sell the place at all (since they are supposed to be living in it) should they go this route. 2) The landlord wants to perform "material" renovations (i.e. tear down the place). In both situation, you also get a generous notice and a whole month of rent for free. (i.e. if you move out immediately, they have to give you a month's worth of rent, and if you take a month to move out, you don't pay for that month). Simply selling the property does NOT allow you to get rid of tenants - the lease simply changes titles from your old landlord to the new one. When they buy the place they automatically inherit all terms of the existing agreement. The new owner has to either tear the place up or lie in it if they want you out. Basically once you take on tenants you can't get rid of them unless they break their lease agreement (illegal pets, damage to property, don't pay rent etc) or they choose to move out. It's actually pretty solid protection. The rate itself however is 4.3% for 2012, which is actually quite high and basically on par with rent increases for new units. Like I said, it seems to just track demand.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 22, 2013 00:06
|
|
|
Cultural Imperial posted:The Canada Line cost 2 billion. With that 3.3 the billion, how would you expand transit in the lower mainland, such replacing non-earthquake proof overpasses, creating extra lane capacity, improved on-ramps etc would be unnecessary? How is rapid transit supposed to fix all these deficiencies? We can fix the overpasses with plenty left for transit. Lane capacity and on-ramp improvements are also worthwhile (as long as they don't include rebuilding a massive loving bridge), provided there is underutilized capacity down the line (otherwise all you're doing is helping people get stuck in traffic faster). Again, I'm not against suburbs (and neither is BFF Jane). I outlined what I would do for surrey in that post: park'n'rides, improved local transit (tram or buses or those gimpy suburb buses, or relaxing taxi permits, depending on their density requirements and plans - I'm not very familiar with Surrey's inner workings). The p-man isn't very far from the existing sky-train crossover, so you don't even need some fancy new rapid-transit bridge, just bring them to the old one. I know the expo line is straining a bit too, but there is yet more that can be done. Finish replacing the old cars with the new high capacity ones. You can also make them longer then the stations in a pinch (something that will simply have to happen for the Canada line, having those dinky short stations was a criminal oversight), and have 2-phase boarding if things really go crazy, though at that point we should probably look at a second sky-train crossing. There is also a traditional rail line that could maybe support a West-Coast-Express type commuter train, but rail lines in Vancouver are governed by all sorts of really strange arrangements and authorities, plus all the existing freight will have time around the commute times. There is nothing wrong with suburbs. We do need more high-density mixed use hipsterrific new-urbanized development as well, and there is certainly no lack of people wanting to live in them, but we can absolutely also have enough single family, 6 bedroom, 3 bathrooms, deadly quiet after 8 pm, white picket fence communities for everyone who is into that sort of thing. No 3 car garage though. Drop the kids off to school, drive 10 minutes to the train, ride it for 50 minutes, and walk to the office. If it's good enough for Don Draper, it's good enough for you.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 22, 2013 00:32
|
|
|
Baronjutter posted:Because "more roads" doesn't work. It just leads to more suburbs which fill up that capacity. You fix things by a: stop building more suburbs, they don't work, they are urban planning, social, environmental, and economic disasters. Build transit, encourage density and the slow transformation from highway-served suburbs to transit served suburbs. Yes those exist and are quite possible, you can have your house and your train too. I want to distance myself from this: I disagree. People do want suburbs. They can absolutely be sustainable, they just need to look/work a little different from the current model. They will still be perfectly recognizable. I do not in any way think of them as a necessary evil that has to be contained. We can and should keep building them, just not the way we have been.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 22, 2013 00:36
|
|
|
Fine-able Offense posted:I'm not entirely sure what you are talking about, but none of your post addressed what I was talking about, which is the fact that most people move out of their apartments on a voluntary basis often enough that the aggregate impact of rent control is negligible. Bah. I misread. Yes, you are entirely right. Excuse my rambling.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 22, 2013 00:38
|
|
|
Cultural Imperial posted:But having experienced european suburbs where public transit isn't available/and or reliable and the residents are too poor to buy cars, I urge you to consider that your exposure to this particular gospel of sustainable planning is not sufficient. What, so we fix this by spending the money we could have spent on making transit available and reliable on fixing roads for the poor to not drive on with the cars they can't afford? Nobody is arguing roads should be left to rot and gently caress up your car. Cars ain't going away any time soon, you have nothing to worry about.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 22, 2013 00:41
|
|
|
Cultural Imperial posted:My point is that spending 3.3 billion on rapid transit isn't going to solve the problems that the gateway project was meant to fix and the problem of building a strong, sustainable city requires a more holistic solution than urbanization. How many transit lines will 3.3 billion buy you? 1.5? Yes, about 1.5 for skytrain type lines. So suppose we do that, we build a second skytrain to Surrey, and use the remainder to improve bus service to the new line (as well as the old one), and bring the tunnels/bridges up to code. Then we will actually have improved their commute, without loving over Vancouver. Or better yet, let's not do that, let's just build 2 main tram lines (or BRT or something)and connect those to the expo line, and improve bus service and we will probably have enough left to put the tram up to UBC. Then we will have improved the commute in both surrey AND vancouver, taken cars off the road and increased the catchment area for ubc students that can't afford to live anywhere near a reasonable commute atm). Tah-loving-dah. Is transit just part of a more holistic solution? Yes of course it loving is. Drop more commercial zones inside the surrey suburbs. Build up some mixed-use high-density zoning along the new transit lines. This increases local employment which improves the commute even further and also saves low income households' gas use for day to day shopping, banking etc., which, because we also have commuter transit, means they can probably get by without a car at all! In surrey, in an affordable neighborhood. ... or we can bulild a giant bridge. Maybe that will do all those things too somehow.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 22, 2013 01:12
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 19:55 |
|
|
Baronjutter posted:http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/empty-condo-myths-untrue-research-shows/article1151247/ "Published Sunday, May. 24 2009," This is actually exactly the study I was referring to earlier. And I just noticed it's the same Mr. Yan (now Professor Yan) as the earlier article. So, surely he was aware of his older methodology when he made his newer study. We can be quite certain that the newer numbers (27%) are the more accurate ones.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 22, 2013 17:53
|
|