Moses2013

I suppose one could argue about NZ having two on the list, so maybe Australians fleeing the extreme heat or people fleeing Norfolk Island will find Auckland more livable if they can afford it.
Maybe Perth is rated so highly because the rest of Western Australia would not really be livable, unless you are a snake of course.

abner

Not sure that I wouldn't, if I could make a comfortable income there. It was certainly exceedingly attractive as a vacation spot, in a couple of stints there. And the "well run yet well off the beaten path" angle only gets more attractive over time.

dbd33

What do you have in your garages?

Partially discharged

I've been to Zurich and Geneva and they are beautiful but eye wateringly expensive. In 1995, we had friends living there paying about $3500 per month in rent for a 2 bedroom apartment, maybe 90 m2 in size and in a three storey building 20 + km from the middle of Zurich. Drinks and meals were easily double the equivalent cost in Canada at the time. Lots of perks of living there but if you are into home ownership not very easy.

BristolUK

Yes, I wondered about their inclusion.

Supposedly 30 categories and I was interested to see where they scored highly to make up for low scores on costs. All I could find was a download of a report that may or may not have been what I wanted and it seemed to be for organisations and involved the mandatory giving of a phone number.

Moses2013

Exactly and apart from personal preferences, those not working for the UEFA might also struggle in Geneva. Lake setting is always nice but the average 20 year old person starting a career might find the place boring, won't have many opportunities and wouldn't consider it more livable. Personally I prefer Girona over Barcelona but there's no comparison (Population 100.000 vs 1.62 million). You just won't get the shopping, concerts, infrastructure, career opportunities/salaries etc. that most people look for when comparing cities.

JamesM

800,000 people moving to Ontario over the next 22 years isn't very much.

The real solution is just building some high speed rail lines in that time to link up the GTA properly and add a few places outside. Infrastructure that the province should already have.

But again this isn't spurring the boom in house prices. 40,000 immigrants a year is poultry in relation to the condo's going up in Downtown alone. Few of these immigrants are turning up with $100,000 in the bank or will get particularly good salaries.

Certainly none of them with have "Canadian" experience. Most won't be able to afford to return home after their first winter.

It might be good for the children though.

scrubbedexpat091

I am shocked I tell ya, just shocked.

Not really.

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/canadian...hind-1.1615865

"the data also show that windfalls are going largely to homeowners and older Canadians. Households that own their home accounted for almost all of the gains in the first quarter -- $730 billion. The wealth of renters was up just $43 billion. That disparity also comes as rising home values make owning increasingly out of reach for many Canadians."

scrubbedexpat091

What is wrong with New Zealand? Looks like a nice country to me, I think I'd live there if I could to give it a try, Australia too, maybe in another life.

dbd33

This week a new guy started at work. He was in another country when he was hired and he started on Monday. He's an expired H1B person. I didn't ask for him, didn't interview him and was slightly surprised to have him assigned to me. "He's your bitch" I was told. Well, there's loads of work so I took a quick butcher's at linkedin and saw what he'd claimed to be good at. On Monday I said I wanted a presentation today setting out how his skills could benefit us and outlined a specific task within his claimed expertise "this is how I would go at it, show me how you could do it better". I hoped for a spectacular presentation. Make or break really, if there was no presentation, I could make it a no job situation.

I got that presentation. Learned from it. "Alright" I thought, "it's worth putting some effort into this one, he can help us". So I talked to him, tried to find out what he's about, what would ring his bell. It was so nearly a great situation but he's young, newly wed, and from a culture that values family. He wants a house with space for six month visitors. Ten years ago he could have bought in Brampton and been set. Now I don't know how to retain him, he has a rented apartment that would cost a million to buy, I assume his wife works so they have a household income of $150,000 or better. Decent money but not enough to buy the apartment, not a start on a house. He'll go somewhere else and he'll be an immigrant talent lost to Canada.

CanadaJimmy

I like that technique of assessing his skills! But yep not just housing costs but also childcare. Canada is an expensive place to have a family, even with free healthcare.

scrubbedexpat091

Shows no level of government actually wants to do anything about housing issues, it's just smoke and mirrors, when they are presented with recommendations by a housing task for the government set up, they shoot the recommendations down.

Housing task for recommends BC scrap the homeowner grant that distributes nearly $1 billion in tax rebates to eligible home owners, the task force recommendation to scrap it and redirect that money to building social housing was shot down by the NDP Government as well as the opposition party less than an hour after the recommendations were released.

Feds did the same, less than an hour after the recommendations were released, the federal government shot down the recommendation of taxing capital gains on principal residences.

"The almost $1-billionthat it provides in property-tax rebates for residents with homes worth less than $1.625-million this year – “a huge expenditure given to people who are already better-housed in the province” – could be used for social housing, she said."

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/cana...kly-shot-down/

Article itself is paywalled.

caretaker

It wasn't paywalled for me.. "she" is not Selena:
"In a sign of what politicians see as an untouchable third rail in housing policy, B.C. Finance Minister Selina Robinson said less than an hour after the report was released on Thursday that her government is not contemplating any revision to the homeowner grant, which distributes almost a billion dollars of tax rebates to residential property owners."
When we had a residential grant program, what was awarded was predicated on the most pressing need, starting with drainage, roofing, a list of the most urgent requirements chosen by professionals after the house was inspected, then the work was inspected after completion and we got paid. Grant Devine's Conservatives brought in a "hot tub grant" in an election year that covered almost everything for a home-owning voter with a pulse. $1500 only, but it was a disgusting display of how easily people's stated ethics can be thrown aside.

scrubbedexpat091

I've never been able to get around the globe and mail paywall, so I was limited to the sections someone copied and pasted on reddit.

Globe & Mail seems hit and miss for people, not sure how they decide who and when to paywall and who to let through, unless you have a subscription then that would make sense......

Siouxie

Try putting the 'key' part of their byline /headline into a google search, then use the dropdown arrow to select "cache"
https://webcache.googleusercontent.c...nt=firefox-b-d