bats

One bedroom too small?!?
Also, try reading, libraries are free. Volunteer with an organisation, maybe a museum. Get a pencil and paper, try sketching.

scrubbedexpat091

The good, bad and ugly.

Anyone notice a theme to just about every city?

(hint: seems the more NIMBY a city the less likely rentals will get built, and the city governments through poor policy, red tape and taxes/fees are just making the problem worse)

Poor Maple Ridge though, 49% increase in 5 years of people applying to BC Housing, few of those people will ever get housing as well the government is also not buiding much of it, what they do build/buy is for homeless mostly, and Maple Ridge already basically has very little social housing to begin with. (looks like Maple Ridge has 141 social housing units for singles or couples who are not seniors and 222 units for families.) May not be exact as its just from a search of housing on the BC Housing website, of which some of those units would not be suitable for a single or couple or a family, but that is how many units total that group would be eligible for.)

Source: BC rental project report card. (they did not include the Langley's or I would have also included Langley's)

Richmond, BC

Good: They are trying to incoporate rental housing into new build condos.

Bad- The city keeps changing policy and goal posts and zoning which is driving rental developers out.

Ugly- Richmond, gained the fewest new rentals of any lower mainland city, the airport also limits ability to build due to flight paths, can't build large highrises in a lot of areas to airplanes landing and departing.

Policy Grade C

New Westminster

Good- The city recognizes there is a rental supply problem.

Bad- The city is still passing bylaws and downzoing that will drive out rental home providers in the long run.

Ugly- City thinks adding more regulations will fix the problem, and adding more regulations to rental home providers further driving out rental homes long term.

Policy Grade D

Maple Ridge-

The Good- Nothing

The Bad- City continues to reduce the scope of proposed rental projects, has a disproportionate number of renter households in need, from 2015 to 2020 applicants for BC Housing waitlist in Maple Ridge increased 49%.

The Ugly- City continues restrictive zoning policies, only 1 rental unit being built per 10 people expected to move to Maple Ridge over the next year.

Grade C-

Tri City's (Coquitlam, Port Moody, Port Coquitlam)

The Good- Coquitlam continues to be the leader of the Tri City area in rental housing, over 5,000 new rental units in planning as of 2020.

The Bad- Port Coquitlam continues to make building rental housing difficult through city planning and zoning, 4,900 people expected to move to Poco, only 350 new rental units added.

The Ugly- Transit routes in the tri city's is under utilized and mostly low density housing. Port Moody continues to focus on restrictive zoning rather than incentives to build rental housing.

Surrey-

The Good- City council seems to understand there is an issue.

The Bad- Vacancy rate is 1.4% which is an unhealthy rental market.

The Ugly- With only 226 new rental homes added in 2020 and nearly 15,000 people expected to move to the city in 2021, rental situation is likely to get worse.

Policy Grade- C+

Burnaby-

The Good- The city has some good policies in place that may lead to more rental units being built.

The Bad- Purpose built rentals are still difficult to get approval for.

The Ugly- City put a moratorium on new projects which has led to delayed building and as a result only 226 new rental units were added to the city in 2020.

City Of North Vancouver

The Good- City continues to incentivize new rental construction which helping to adding rentals. City incentives include density bonus for 100% rental buildings that also include mid-market rents in addition to market rents, and no community benefits contribution fees for 100% rental buildings.

The Bad- Rentals are still in short supply due to overflow demand from neighboring city's so lots of competition for tenants.

The Ugly- City council wants to explore adding more regulatory red tape similiar to New Westminster.

District Of North Vancouver

The Good- 283 new rental units added, the best ratio of new rental units to incoming new residents of any city, the city continues to do what it can to speed up development.

The Bad- Council has not implemented reccomendations to improve rental housing.

The Ugly- Council is working too slow and behind their own reccomendations, and little improvement for mid to moderate income housholds who rent.

City Of Wealth Vancouver-

The Good- Nothing

The Bad- No increase in rental homes, council is divided preventing rentals from being built.

Only city to lose residents in 2020.

City Of Vancouver- (those not familiar with BC, City of Vancouver is the Vancouver people talk about when they say Vancouver.)

The Good- Council is trying

The Bad- Nobody at the wheel at city hall, mayor, council and staff in chaos with not much getting done to fix the root causes of the problems. City downzoning commercial areas which is slowing development.

The Ugly- City gained almost 10,000 new residents last year, but only gained 896 new rentals, the population will continue to increase and with Amazon adding thousands of new tech jobs, immigration etc, demand will contunue to outstrip supply. The city is slow and requires too many council meetings just to get 1 building approved, NIMBY problems, city continues to add taxes and fees to rental projects driving developers out.

Grade D

British Columbia as a whole.

The Good- BC NDP government realizes there is a major housing problem in the province, set a target of 114,000 affordable homes over 10 years.

The Bad- 4 years into the 10 year goal of 114,000 affordable homes only 2,963 have been built and at this pace it will take a very long time to meet the 114,000 goal, far behind the 10 year goal. Province not providing enough incentives, adding too much red tape and taxes.

The Ugly- Province granted rental only zoning authority to the city's but provided city's with no guidelines, city's using new authority to downzone which is making things worse. Province has not found a way to prevent city's from piling on taxes, fees restricitve zoning, and regulations which is driving rental providers away.

Shard

Completely bogus ranking. Affordability is by nature a local measure. While it may be (semi) plausible to compare affordability between say Edinburgh and Victoria, comparing Canada, Britain, Syria and Ghana makes no sense at all. Too much variation for the stats/ranking to be meaningful.

Mordko

If affordability is a “local measure” then his point about global competitiveness is nonsense:

Which indeed it is.

Mordko

While global competitiveness is determined by completely different factors (such as productivity, availability and cost of qualified labour), the numbeo ranking isn’t bogus. It does show that countries can and do exist with much higher ratios of house prices to salaries.

Shard

International comparisons of national real estate affordability across the globe are meaningless. Their ranking is entirely bogus. You might be able to make a very broad case amongst G7 nations plus a handful of other homogeneous economies, but when dozens of developing and underdeveloped countries are included the ranking becomes nonsense. Garbage in, garbage out.

Mordko

Again, the point is that his claim is wrong which you appear to be vehemently agreeing with. House prices and competitiveness are not related.

Canada has cheaper real estate than Germany, Luxembourg, South Korea or Singapore. Reasonably well developed and competitive.

Siouxie

Possibly cheaper in some areas - but not necessarily more affordable (or affordable at all!). It really depends on your personal circumstances.

Mordko

On average ratio of house prices to salaries in Canada is lower than in the countries I listed, in some cases by a huge margin.

Obviously there will be variation depending on individuals and locations but the ranter from Reddit was talking about “Canada”.

scrubbedexpat091

If Vancouver area had NYC (maybe Lodnon as well?) commuting options, it wouldn't be as bad if people had viable commuting options from the outer burbs, sure rent is cheaper in Abbotsford or Chilliwack but there is no viable commuting options except car, add in gas costs of commuting from those outer burbs, and you may just end up paying more per month once you account for the rent + gas (plus added maintenance of car).

NYC might be expensive sure, but there is a crap ton more commuting options, and hell you can even commute from entirely different states, something Vancouver doesn't have, and well the burbs around Vancouver are not exactly cheap anymore, or even affordable, and some burbs are on par with Vancouver cost of rent wise.

It's a domino effect, city gets expensive, people move outward, but eventually all the outward areas are now expensive too.

You can realistically commute from say New Haven, CT by Amtrak and get a house as low as 220,000. Only a 90 minute train ride, wont work for low income workers since its $26 each way for the cheap tickets, but for higher income workers its certainly doable, 90 minute commute to Vancouver is Chilliwck but only option is by car, and well 90 minutes by train is comfortable where 90 minutes driving in traffic sucks rat butt.

Want a shorter commute, Trenton NJ is only a 58 minute train ride into NYC and can get a nice house there for only $275,000 or a mansion for 650,000

This is why those who say just commute like they do in NYC for those in Vancouver is so not viable advice, its not the same level at all, the commute options just don't exist for Vancouver like they do for NYC, the burbs are not 275,000 houses with a 58 minute train ride.

NYC isn't that expensive anyway, Manhattan might be, but Queens, Brooklyn look pretty comparable to Vancouver rents, but Vancouver is no NYC and never will be.

Vancouver is also a much much smaller city than NYC, and as such offers far less opportunity because its not a very big city compared to big city's south of the border, look at even Seattle, way more opportunity there compared to Vancouver, although Seattle is a bit bigger, but Vancouver has nothing comparable to Boeing, Amazon, Microsoft, Costco HQ, Alaska Airlines HQ to name a few major companies based or with major operations in Seattle area.

scrubbedexpat091

In 1996 this house sold for $231,000 in 1996, flashfoward to September 2021 and sold for $2,250,000.

In 1996 house price to income ratio was 4 times the annual income where in 2021 its 12 times the annual income.

Good for those who were old enough in the 1990's to buy a home, good return, apparently even better than investing into the S&P over the same time period.

https://www.straight.com/news/east-v...10-times-since


Unfortunantly the typical households income now is well below what is needed, the downpayment alone on a 2 million + house is huge, and this house while not in a horrible area is also not in the greatest area either, so so middle of the road area.

I have walked passed this house more than once, its a nice house and would have certainly if I had been old enough and able to buy in 1996, type of home I wouldn't mind having....but I was still in high school in 1996.

scrubbedexpat091

It's like Kelowna is cheaper than Vancouver but if your making $15.20 to $20 its not really affordable, cheaper does not equal affordable, you probably know this from the insane increases in rents and home prices in Hamilton, which was I beleive previous one of the affordable alternatives to Toronto?

CanadaJimmy

In 1996 people would have probably scoffed at a quarter of a million dollars just for a regular house and said the market in Vancouver was crazy back then, even though it's nothing compared to now.

scrubbedexpat091

You are probably right, in 1989 when the median price of a house in San Diego hit 205,000 headlines in archives are things like "home prices continue to rise, shocking buyers."

My home region is pretty close to the same affordability problems as Vancouver is, median house price today is close to 11 times the median household income.

1977 median home there was 2.2 times the household median income by 1990 homes had climbed to 7 times the median household income.

Maybe the actual problem is incomes have grown too little. Seems from 1940 to late 1970's home prices pretty much stayed in the 2 times median income bracket, then something happened nd everything went insane in the 1980's and prices there skyrocketed, then 1990's saw almost an entire decade of decline in price but the declines were too small to offset the huge increases of the 80's, then 2000 came and rocket blast until the crash of 2008 which did bring prices down to 1988 levels for a short time, but now prices have surpassed 2007 level highs.

Need a time machine to go back to 1998 and start over with the knowledge that I have now of course.

Siouxie

I found this article from May 2021 of interest.. showing household income and down payment requirements for the major cities in Canada.. https://www.moneyaftergraduation.com...argest-cities/

Hamilton is/was a blue collar worker city - industrial, with the main employment coming from steel works.. (hence the nickname of Steel City) with low to medium (i.e. affordable) house purchase prices. The household income needed now is around $176,000 - higher than Toronto and beyond many average workers ability to pay. This has mainly been caused by people from Toronto and the GTA moving here to take advantage of those same prices, pushing the prices up.