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I sold my Vancouver condo this week after having it listed for about a week. I got approximately the BC assessed value and I'm very happy to get out of the market -- this thread definitely influenced my decision to sell rather than rent it out (well, that and the terrible ratio of property 'value' to rental prices in Vancouver). I'm going to be leaving Vancouver for a few years, hopefully things are much saner when I return. But it looks like it could get really ugly in the meantime. blah_blah fucked around with this message at 06:37 on May 17, 2013 |
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May 17, 2013 06:35
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I had several people interested in renting my place at market value before I had fully committed to the decision to sell, but then I did the math and it made no sense at all -- the numbers didn't even come close to working out. Of course my buyer wants to turn around and rent it out. Vancouver! 
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May 17, 2013 21:19
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Fine-able Offense posted:You're forgetting a bunch of other expenses. Repairs and maintenance, for instance, run about 3-5% of the value of the home per year. That's an outrageous amount for any reasonably new condo (say, one built in the last 10 years), even if you rolled strata fees into that figure.
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Oct 11, 2013 03:44
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PT6A posted:It depends on special assessments, too. If a major building system needs replacing, like a pump for the basement, or an elevator, you're going to get a lovely, huge bill in the mail. Trust me, it happened to me last year. "You weren't gonna use that $1700 for anything, were ya? Welp, pay it by the end of the month." Well, 5% of a $400k condo is $20k, so you need a lot of $1700 pump repairs in a year to get to that point. Unless something goes catastrophically wrong in your building every year, 5% is a pretty crazy amount for a new-ish condo. That being said, I got pretty lucky in my old building (less than $200 in repairs over a 4 year period).
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Oct 13, 2013 07:14
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Fine-able Offense posted:When somebody says "about 3-5%", it is pretty dumb to immediately run out and cite the best-case edge scenario (a well-built new condo) and then pick the highest number in the range (5% instead of 3%) and then say "wow, that's too high!!1!". He's already factored in strata fees though -- you're saying that after owning for 10 years a reasonably likely outcome is that he's going to spend half the value of his property in repairs/maintenance on top of that?
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Oct 18, 2013 04:30
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PT6A posted:This is because a lot of the most expensive things in any apartment or house exist in basically the same form whether it's a tiny bachelor or a huge house. My intuition is that the kitchen is far and away the most expensive room in any dwelling, and there's only ever one of those in 99% of dwellings. Even if there's a separate wet bar or something, it probably won't have a range and a dishwasher and whatnot. Space itself is not terribly expensive in comparison. This is pretty clearly wrong since sale prices scale pretty much linearly with square footage in e.g. condos, and a much better explanation is: Lexicon posted:I posit that it's nothing to do with the relative expense of dwelling size, and everything to do with the actual market of people willing to pay $X for rent at a given price tier. This is also why the rental price/sale price ratio in Vancouver is so high compared to other places with expensive real estate in North America (because salaries in Vancouver are utter garbage).
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Oct 25, 2013 10:15
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Lexicon posted:I'm not saying it's not functional. But it is vastly more frustrating than using a car for most journeys: packed, infrequent buses are the norm. Even traversing Broadway at virtually any time of the week is a massive exercise in frustration compared to the same journey in a private vehicle, bad though the traffic may be. I used to live on the west side of Vancouver right on Broadway (owned a condo, didn't own a car) and live in SF now. Public transit in Vancouver was actually pretty great except for the lack of buses/Skytrain late at night. I guess the coverage and frequency of public transit in SF is marginally better but it's way more complicated and sketchy and generally unpleasant. And it certainly does suck to drive in SF but that's not related to public transit here -- there's simply no parking, the parking that does exist is obscenely expensive, and the roads are way too congested. For what it's worth, even though SF is awesome in a lot of ways and my earning potential is like 2-2.5x what it is in Vancouver, I'd far prefer to live in Vancouver.
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Nov 1, 2013 07:51
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Rents in SF are pretty unreal, I live in a 'luxury' building with pretty crazy amenities but I pay about 2700/mo for 600 sq ft and I've seen even more ridiculous numbers. I'm pretty sure that tech salaries in the Bay Area are better than Washington (I'm making substantially more than 100k fresh out of my Ph.D at least) but state income tax and general cost of living eats up a lot of that. On the other hand I think that job perks are generally better here (3 meals a day, shuttles/transportation paid for, etc) and SF is definitely a more fun place to live than, say, Redmond.
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Nov 5, 2013 06:32
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Pixelboy posted:I have less than half a PhD... and make... considerably more than that. Are you sure that you're reading my post correctly? Anyways, my Ph.D is in math, I'm a data scientist.
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Nov 5, 2013 07:18
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Lexicon posted:Surely this sort of thing is troubling for the housing pumpers. They dismiss Canadian bears as being bitter or jealous or whatever... But that's now the FT, the Economist, and a big American news property recently also (Bloomberg?). Not really, it's been somewhat well-known for awhile that lots of hedge funds have or have had fairly significant short positions in the Canadian housing market.
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Nov 10, 2013 23:26
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Lexicon posted:Oh sure, I understand there are sometimes good deals like this out there, including ones that don't give a commensurate discount for an all-cash purchase. I'm just making the broader point that it's practically an immutable law of the world that financing is never free. Someone pays for it. My understanding is that some car dealerships hope to make it up on high-margin products like regular maintenance.
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Nov 22, 2013 22:41
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Lexicon posted:The transaction costs of real estate are bloody enormous. A few thousand here and there for ... realtor bastards - and pretty soon you're talking real money. Realtor fees were about 12k on my recently sold condo in BC (7% on first 100k, 2% thereafter -- and that was after negotiating). My realtor was awesome and super professional and got me more than I had hoped for in way less time than I had expected, but that plus closing costs basically wiped out the small amount of appreciation my place had accumulated over 3 years. Do never buy, etc.
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Jan 9, 2014 22:08
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Lexicon posted:If the transaction costs wiped out your capital gains, it presumably follows that the ownership was a net-negative financial decision, as you would have paid more in ownership costs than the equivalent rent for the place. Yes, it was a probably a net-negative if you consider the opportunity cost of all the money I used paying off my mortgage versus the returns I would have had in a balanced portfolio. That being said, with interest rates at historic lows, a large down payment, and paying down my mortgage aggressively, I think I only paid around 20-25k in interest+mortgage termination penalties in just under 4 years (plus another $250/mo for strata+property taxes), so that's certainly much less than rent would have been (my place probably would have rented for $1400-1500/mo). Realistically, I probably came out 'ahead' given that my four-year-younger-self definitely wouldnt've put all his spare money into investments. But a lot of things went my way and I still only approximately broke even -- the math is clearly against buying in Vancouver and I just got pretty lucky. The 'axiom' you mention is just bizarre, I bought my condo in my early 20s and I would be congratulated by every one of my parents' friends on being smart with my money when in reality almost all of my net worth was tied up in a single illiquid asset (and leveraged, at that). Now I rent (although living in SF makes that choice particularly easy) and am almost completely liquid and have much more financial peace of mind (especially now that I've gotten rid of most of my CAD as well). I still want to come back to Vancouver and own a (much more reasonably priced) house one day -- I just hope that the bubble bursting doesn't destroy the things I like about Vancouver/Canada in the process.
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Jan 10, 2014 08:03
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Yeah, Seattle and Vancouver aren't comparable in terms of bubbles. Salaries are way higher, industry is booming and they have a steady influx of external talent, cost of housing (especially buying) is lower, cost of living is lower, no state income tax, and the Seattle housing market already deflated much more during 2007-2009 than Vancouver.
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Jan 12, 2014 01:04
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etalian posted:Yes things like a REIT/ETF can tank just as bad if Canada gets into a US style real estate bubble meltdown. At least the REIT will be more liquid and you'll be less leveraged.
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Jan 12, 2014 22:14
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Baronjutter posted:It always seems so weird to me to build huge skyscrapers next to single family houses. Wouldn't it be way cheaper to just upgrade all the single family homes to 4-6 story dense wood frame? The cost per square foot goes up so quick once you get into concrete, let alone skyscrapers. It would indeed be pretty weird in that neighborhood, Oakridge mall is already the tallest thing in a 20+ block radius and plopping down towers that are like 8x the height would look pretty strange.
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Jan 12, 2014 22:22
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Well, my (Vancouver) buyer planned to rent the condo out for several years. This is basically the math. Let's assume a 5-year fixed mortgage on $300k at a rate of 3.3% amortized over 25 years, which is the best I can find in 5 seconds of googling, a 50k downpayment (questionable), and ignore the opportunity cost of the $50k (i.e., this math probably underestimates the cost to the buyer). Monthly costs: Monthly Mortgage payment: $1466 Strata fees: about $200 Property taxes: about $100 Monthly cash flow: Probable rent: $1450 (this might be hard to get, but not unreasonable -- $1400 would probably be more realistic) Not included: repairs, insurance, assessments, amount of time sitting un-rented, cost of employing a property rental company if you want to make your life easier, etc. So basically in the best case scenario the new landlord is probably going to be losing $300 per month. In reality, when you factor in everything, the landlord will probably be losing at least $500 per month. Better hope your condo appreciates by at least $6k per year indefinitely!
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Jan 18, 2014 06:00
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Baronjutter posted:Entitled people thought they were entitled to fancy housing and it's all their fault for being so entitled. Well, this is partially true at least.
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Jan 28, 2014 09:26
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Throatwarbler posted:I guess I'm just not on board with calling them a "cartel' when there are so many actual horrible cartels out there. As far as industry associations go they're pretty harmless. As a seller, if you don't agree to pay the buying agent a certain %, then buying agents won't show your place (or at least will try their hardest not to) to their clients.
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Jan 31, 2014 04:52
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I actually don't understand why they haven't just raised the price tag. It's basically pay-for-citizenship as is, and the majority of these 'investors' don't actually generate any taxable income in Canada. So instead of loaning the government $800k interest-free, make them pay the government at least a flat, non-refundable $2m plus $500k for each family member that gets sponsored through the program (with additional penalties for age). There are obvious externalities generated by the existing policy so at least this would recover most of them. If there are really forty-five thousand people applying then this will almost certainly destroy a lot of the demand while still including enough of the top end to generate a decent amount of income.
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Feb 8, 2014 23:11
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Cultural Imperial posted:Some google exec is selling his hovel next door to Tim Cook's. Palo Alto is every bit as expensive as Vancouver housing-wise (and rents are way more than Vancouver). That's actually an awesome house, assuming that it's a really nice neighborhood I'd expect that it goes well over asking, in cash. e: there's apparently two houses mashed onto that lot so maybe not. Still, I spent a month in Palo Alto this summer in a property that has a Zillow estimate of nearly 5 million (was a friend of a friend deal) and it wasn't anywhere near as nice as that house -- but the lot was huge. blah_blah fucked around with this message at 10:38 on Feb 9, 2014 |
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Feb 9, 2014 10:16
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tagesschau posted:Tons and tons of people actually think this—that if you spend $10,000 on a renovation, the value of your house necessarily goes up by at least $10,000. They don't seem to comprehend that in a market that values these things correctly, you will see some, but not all of what you pay put back into the value of your house. The only time spending $10,000 renovating your bathroom and kitchen is going to make you $15,000, guaranteed, is when you're in the runup phase of an inflating bubble. Well, it's a little bit more subtle than that (although I think you are acknowledging that as well). Even in healthy markets, mostly-rational people value things very differently. I mean, you might have a buyer who is willing to pay a premium to live in a specific neighborhood, but only is interested in places that are 'move-in ready'. I'd also argue that in a deflating bubble spending money on renos also has a lot of value, as it can mean the difference between your place selling and sitting on the market for months.
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Feb 15, 2014 04:37
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Lexicon posted:Quite apart from the housing bubble implications, you're possibly losing out on some good tax shelter usage if you put as much cash as possible into the downpayment. Capital gains from the sale of a primary residence are not taxed, who needs a TFSA?
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Feb 19, 2014 21:38
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Lexicon posted:dear god I hope you are saying this in jest Is it possible to distinguish between trolling and realtor propaganda at this point?
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Feb 20, 2014 04:41
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Freakazoid_ posted:I don't have anything to back up this claim, but I was under the assumption that a lot of houses that went under in the US were basically bundled together and sold at auction. People who were already millionaires got some pretty sweet deals, buying up like a dozen houses at once for only 100k per house. These were private auctions too, so even if some schlub could come in to these auctions, you needed a million just to make a starting bid. "I don't know what actually happened, but here's what I think happened, and I assume that the same thing will happen in Canada"
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Mar 2, 2014 09:39
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PT6A posted:The obvious flaw with that article is that it treats the Canadian housing market as a whole, while clearly there are some very meaningful differences between cities. The Toronto and Vancouver markets are, in any realistic estimation, greatly overvalued compared to the markets in the rest of the country, and those markets probably make up a great portion of the Canadian housing market by any metric, but I don't think the situation is quite as dire as presented, if you're looking at the value of your property in most other areas of the country. I think that places like the outskirts of the Lower Mainland of BC or the interior of BC will get hit even harder than Toronto/Vancouver when the bubble starts to deflate. At least Toronto/Vancouver are still very desirable places to live (jokes aside) and will always have a certain amount of demand.
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Mar 5, 2014 23:09
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Lexicon posted:
Most decent Ph.D programs in economics require a course in real analysis. Of course your average BA graduate in economics is a very different matter. That being said, I've interviewed a lot of econ Ph.Ds recently and most of them tend to be fairly weak in math. Especially the ones who didn't go to top schools.
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Mar 13, 2014 07:07
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That'll be a short list, post-filter.
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etalian posted:this is the investment mix I use right now: Wealthfront? Actually that's not even a question, because I also use Wealthfront, and have almost an identical allocation (mine is a bit more risk-averse).
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Apr 3, 2014 00:57
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ocrumsprug posted:He is much luckier than I in that he will not have to live through the coming train wreck that will result from his policies. He doesn't deserve a parade. Oh, come on. He certainly wasn't 'lucky' to die of a massive heart attack.
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Apr 11, 2014 21:48
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Rime posted:All I'm getting out of this is that there is $100B+ in imaginary equity floating around balance books, since "the market" cannot absorb all that property at its currently inflated prices once these elderly or their estates try to liquidate. That's mostly how I read it as well.
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May 16, 2014 20:19
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Death By The Blues posted:So my parents just bought a condo at Queen and Dovercourt. They have 9 days to retract their offer, what are some arguements I can use for either side? Also, this thread is truly depressing. My parents just bought a condo in Whistler this week, and I'm lending them money interest free! Do I win? Saltin posted:If you have a million in cash to invest in securities, it's almost impossible to do worse than 5-6%. The type of opportunities open to that amount of money are substantially better than those available to people with little cash. With a million I would not accept anything under 50k a year. Can you elaborate a bit on this? I'm pretty sure my investment plans would be the same from 50k to about 2.5M (I'd probably want to think pretty hard about various forms of tax sheltering and estate planning beyond that). Moreover I also don't think that having 1M gives you more 'opportunities' -- maybe some lovely mid-level investment advisors will try hard to get your assets under management but that's not useful. blah_blah fucked around with this message at 21:56 on May 20, 2014 |
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May 20, 2014 21:52
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Cultural Imperial posted:The quality of investment advisors are much better when you have more money. As in they're not just salesmen trying to get you to buy their lovely mutual funds. I agree that they get better, but I don't think they get substantially better until you have a lot more assets under management than 1M.
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May 20, 2014 22:40
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My parents have a financial advisor at a large personal wealth management company who only takes clients with at least 500k in liquid assets. They have a few interesting investment products in their portfolio (a hedge fund based in Vancouver, some flow-through shares in an energy company) but I'm not at all convinced that this produces any alpha relative to a balanced portfolio of low-cost ETFs. I'd certainly rather have [generic Vanguard ETFs] than the mutual fund component of their portfolio.
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May 21, 2014 01:34
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jot posted:I saw one in Mississauga recently advertising newly built semi-detached homes starting from the mid 600s. What a steal, better get in on that! When I lived in Vancouver I'd occasionally get flyers in the mail advertising townhomes in the Arbutus/Point Grey area starting at the low low price of 1.1 million.
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May 23, 2014 21:40
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e:nm
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Jun 9, 2014 20:35
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Math You posted:Fact is, immigrants come here, and face a massive culture clash. Many don't do well with that. But the vast, vast majority are forced to deal with people from all sorts of countries, and with time begin to understand that their prejudices are false. Even if they use their wealth to become insular poo poo bag shut ins, their kids learn and adapt in their stead. Their kids don't have to adapt or integrate at all because of their parents' wealth and the critical mass of other immigrants of similar means from the same cultural background.
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Jun 15, 2014 04:20
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Lead out in cuffs posted:You are both walking a very fine line between legitimately criticising aspects of traditional Chinese culture and outright racism. And I'm not 100% certain you haven't crossed that line. Hasn't Cultural Imperial referred to Chinese as 'coolies' in this thread?
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Jun 15, 2014 05:18
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Decoy Badger posted:So are Vancouverites hating on the Chinese this much a normal thing? Vancouver has a huge Chinese community and for the most part I think Chinese face a very small amount of racism/discrimination in Vancouver, compared to other races. There definitely has been more recent resentment towards mainland Chinese 'investors', but that's not just from whites, it's also from the earlier generation of Chinese immigrants from Hong Kong.
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Jun 16, 2014 00:15
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Makes me glad my family went to Toronto instead after escaping the war.
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Kalenn Istarion posted:Significant institutions not developed by the government which are best in class globally: Wait, what?
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Jun 17, 2014 01:02
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Cultural Imperial posted:So what in ever living gently caress is all that money from demolishing b-lot and all the rest of the endowment lands going towards at ubc? How the gently caress are they running a deficit? UBC has done a lot of development in recent years and their endowment is a lot larger than it used to be (it's over 1 billion now). Anecdotally, the campus looks a lot better than it did 10 years ago. Any sort of 'deficits' that they are running are probably illusory (but a good excuse for fundraising).
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Jun 21, 2014 03:31
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