Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-14/millennials-flee-vancouver-for-cities-with-more-affordable-homes

by bvanvugt • 10 years ago

197 260 10 years ago

bloomberg.com

tdicola• 10 years ago

Get ready Seattleites, we're next. The housing market is already going a bit bonkers with no sign of slowing down.

seanmcdirmid3• 10 years ago

Their salaries are much higher than Vancouver, they might be ok....especially in tech.

tostitos19794• 10 years ago

Canadian tech salaries are a pittance compared to US ones. In the Bay area, 150K to 250K are standard for people with 5 years of experience. This is not the case in any Canadian city. This neglects the lower exchange rate.

xer0x• 10 years ago

Sorry, forget about moving to Vancouver for the salaries. Try Seattle or Calgary.

ameen4• 10 years ago

How is Redmond & Bellevue?

rozap• 10 years ago

It's getting bad in Seattle, but there are a couple things Seattle has going for it that Vancouver doesn't. It actually has industry, and more people have jobs that pay living wages. The $15 minimum wage will go a long way for the bottom income bracket.

I grew up in Seattle, moved to Vancouver for school and worked there (software) for a year, and then came back to Seattle because Vancouver just wasn't going to be sustainable for me and my fiance. I'm going to throw numbers around for concrete-ness; I don't mean to offend anyone.

We were renting a 3 bed, 1 bath home with 2 roommates in Vancouver that had last sold in 2011 for $1.6 million that was falling apart. I was working at a very well funded startup (with ~120 people) making $60k CAD. After about 8 months I looked for other jobs (mostly because I just didn't like the work, but the money situation didn't help) in Vancouver, and it was really slim pickings. I interviewed at a few places and really wasn't a fan of what I saw, and was feeling bad about the situation. Then I sent an email to a company (with ~200 people) down in Seattle, and after a really reasonable interview process had an offer for more than twice (2.3x) what I was making in Canada (adjusted for exchange rate i was making 42k USD in Vancouver). My fiance and I talked a lot about it and agreed that the next year was going to be super shitty being apart, because she has a year left of school, but it was going to be a better long term bet. I moved down and it was indeed super shitty, but we're in a better place now going forward. Now we're actually looking at buying a place (because landlords are awful) and it's totally within our budget, when it never would have been possible in Vancouver. She's moving down in less than two months and there are more job prospects for her in Seattle, so the shittiness is almost over, and the future is looking great.

I know it's anecdotal evidence, but the economic differences between Seattle and Vancouver are worlds apart. When a financially stable, educated, white dude like me is having a hard time keeping up in Vancouver, you know it's bad. I can't imagine what it's like for everyone else. It makes sense that people that can leave are leaving, but being able to pick up and leave is a privilege. Vancouver is going to have some very serious problems in 5 or 10 years.

voltagex_• 10 years ago

I really like Victoria and I hope the town does well out of this. I'm sad that I may not be able to afford to live in Vancouver anytime soon, though.

tostitos19794• 10 years ago

Toronto is not much better. Million dollar homes in the boonies like Vaughan and Stouffville. It is a disaster for young people starting out. We deferred a home purchase since we were in grad school/there was general talk of a housing bubble since 2006. At this point, we're in the top 1% in terms of income and can barely afford a home.

Oh .. and homes are getting multiple offers, buyers are getting into bidding wars regularly. We are searching for a decent place since we just had a child. It is causing a lot of misery in our life.

tostitos19794• 10 years ago

As another datapoint, the govt decided to add to the misery by making it harder to get mortgages. This doesn't affect the people coming into the country with suitcases full of cash but hurts us a lot. The banks are giving us a hard time since we changed jobs in the last year (both my wife and myself improved our employment situation so a move was a good thing; banks want 2 years in the same job; WTF??).

breitling2• 10 years ago

Consider Durham region...it's a lot more affordable and connectivity to downtown is excellent.

bvanvugt• 10 years ago

There are actually some really interesting (and young!) startups in Victoria.

We have an office there and our team maintains a city-wide startup listing + job board:

https://github.com/sendwithus/vic-startup-jobs

throwawayUSA82• 10 years ago

Can you help somebody from USA relocate to Victoria for work?

I had visited Victoria several years ago, and it was a beautiful place.

sterl• 10 years ago

Very cool page, it's lacking salaries however that would improve the posts quite a lot. Have you heard of AngelList? Their best feature is likely the public salary data.

In BC, 'competitive salary' ranges from 40-160K for the same role :)

huhtenberg• 10 years ago

Victoria is nice, but it is a small city and being on the island it's pretty isolated.

While you do have direct access to the said island, there's a limit to how much "nature" activities one can do. Diversity Nanaimo (another city) is utterly unremarkable. Tofino is very nice, but it's 4-hour drive away. Everything else is even farther and unremarkable. Getting to anywhere outside of the island is a major hassle. Victoria International Airport provides fine selection of international flights, though to Seattle only. Ferries are slow and expensive. Floating plane taxis tend to crash now and then, so that's not very good either. So, yes, in theory you can get off the island on a whim, in practice though it's so much hassle that more often than not you simply won't bother. Hence the "isolated" remark.

YMMV, but my experience was that outside of work things get very boring very quickly.

seanmcdirmid3• 10 years ago

I've never been to Victoria before but remember seeing it from the Olympics @ Port Angelus. It didn't look that far from on top of one of those mountains.

jdpigeon• 10 years ago

Strathcona Park has some of the most remarkable backcountry skiing and ice climbing in the world, I'd say.

nbrempel• 10 years ago

Pretty accurate except YYJ does have direct flights to SF. It's been getting better in recent years.

Nickersf• 10 years ago

While we're moving south... Portland is next. Are we all trying to catch of up with SF cost of living?

Apocryphon• 10 years ago

"The vacancy rate of 0.8 percent is one of the lowest in the country, and the average monthly rent of C$937 for a bachelor suite is tied at highest with the cost in Toronto, according to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp."

Montreal? Calgary? Edmonton? Halifax? St. John's?

jbarham2• 10 years ago

Montreal? Calgary? Edmonton? Halifax? St. John's?

Winter.

branchless10• 10 years ago

Montreal is great. I recommend it. Yeah it's a bit cold but it's dry so not damp cold. Would you rather be a bit cold or working like a dog for some US company where your healthcare could vanish overnight because your boss was in a bad mood?

GnarlyWhale• 10 years ago

The job market is getting quite tight in Alberta, though Calgary's tech industry seems slightly less oil-centric, and is accordingly better insulated.

lewisl90294• 10 years ago

As someone who's lived in Vancouver for more than 10 years, then went to Waterloo for school (and lived in Toronto for most of my co-ops/internships), I think we Canadians should be more worried about highly educated millennials fleeing Canada entirely. Everybody I know from school who were offered the option to work in the US have picked up their Canadian degrees and left.

To the Canadian tech industry: How are you ever going to become competitive with the US if you keep offering these humiliatingly low salaries and letting the best and brightest of our own talent get leeched away?

kevindeasis• 10 years ago

The brain drain is definitely a big issue in Canada.

On the bright the cost of living will end up being cheaper in Canada if you can get my flow ;)

drchiu• 10 years ago

Agreed. It's just so easy to hire in Canada right now due to the strong USD Exchange Rate. Many startups make money in USD and hire in CAD.

imrehg• 10 years ago

I think that's an issue everywhere in the world. I'm living in Taiwan (not from here originally), and the tech scene is really being hollowed out for years if not decades. The really best, brightest, and most motivated people are already working abroad. "Humiliating" is a strong word, but the more I think about it, the more apt it feels, there should be a lot more reward for the good techies here (there are some left, miraculously!)

seanmcdirmid3• 10 years ago

It is sad when hire salaries for programmers are to be had in mainland China (e.g. Beijing) than Taiwan. There are just tech friendly places and those that are not, with the USA being at the top in terms of pay.

vehementi2• 10 years ago

There will always be people who work for unjustifiably lower salaries

tomjen3• 10 years ago

Why should there be a reward for staying? The market is screaming "leave" and you don't rich by laughing at what the market says.

lewisl90294• 10 years ago

Yes, this is definitely not a problem unique to Canada, but I feel the effects are felt a bit more strongly here due to the fact that the barrier to entry into the US for Canadian citizens is practically nonexistent (TN Visa) compared to elsewhere in the world (H-1B).

arvinsim• 10 years ago

This also happens in third world countries too. I think this is happens when one can easily compare salaries all over the world.

toomanybeersies2• 10 years ago

It's not that Canada or anywhere else in the world has humiliatingly low salaries, it's just that the USA has such strong regulations on skilled immigration, that the wages for developers are artificially inflated.

Most other countries, when faced with a shortage of workers in an industry, prioritise them over everyone else. In New Zealand, you need a certain amount of points to immigrate, and being in a high demand industry gives you a whole stack of points. Meanwhile, the USA still runs a lottery for immigration, as well as H1B, which is a lot more restricted than skilled immigration to a lot of other countries.

VLM• 10 years ago

"the wages for developers are artificially inflated"

The wages are reasonable given extremely strict "culture fit" requirements. Must be male, must be white, must be under 30 with precisely 1-3 years experience never more or less, must be an ivy grad or close equiv, must perform well in hazing rituals like the whiteboard interview, must tolerate sweatshop working conditions, etc etc etc.

I mean, if you want to hire developers, the USA currently has way too many. Regardless, if you require incredibly narrow "culture" criteria, then there is going to be a massive shortage and opening the floodgates will be useless.

Seriously, does anyone think a bro-filled startup would hire, for example, a middle aged black woman immigrated from Senegal with 6 years experience and a non-ivy degree? "Oh I'm sorry, you're overqualified". "I don't think you'd be a culture fit".

peanut_merchant3• 10 years ago

We have a similar problem in Scotland, I know a lot of people would love to have continued living in Scotland but can make >2 times the salary as a developer by making the move down to London. The cost of living in London is higher, but the increase in pay more than makes up for this. Granted, this is a move within the UK so it's not really a drain on the UK's economy but it leads to a more London-centric economy and, with an increasingly devolved Scottish parliament, is not good for Scotland.

mikekchar• 10 years ago

What's really crazy is that salaries in London aren't that high (unless you are in the financial sector). I am constantly astonished by the low salaries (for qualified programmers) offered in most parts of Britain. I suspect that you could actually get away with building a consulting firm in the country side and getting companies to offshore work from the US.

fiftyacorn• 10 years ago

Londons great when you are young, but in my experience people eventually leave when they realise they cant afford property even though they are well paid. Plus they realise quality of life is important too, and that the work centric culture in London isnt for them

branchless10• 10 years ago

London banks can pay more because whilst other companies have to make products banks make fiat money. This acts as a tax on the rest of the uk.

pjc504• 10 years ago

The cost of living in London is higher, but the increase in pay more than makes up for this

Are you sure? I made the opposite move for reduced cost of housing (and commuting).

cmdkeen• 10 years ago

Odd - I'm ~6 years out of a Scottish university with a CS degree. Everyone of my class who stayed in Scotland owns their own property and has a much higher disposable income than those in London. They're in Edinburgh mind you, why anyone would choose to live in Glasgow is beyond me...

Edinburgh recently topped the stakes for average disposable income in the UK - £800 per month compared to £300 in London.

zeemonkee35• 10 years ago

Is the question that Canadian companies genuinely can't pay more, or just that they won't, for whatever reason?

kspaans11• 10 years ago

Or maybe that Canadians are willing to work for less? (I remember reading an article that auto manufacturers charge more for the same cars in Canada simply because Canadians will pay more.)

josephdviviano• 10 years ago

Well, in the case of Toronto, I make a better salary relative to the cost of living (all things considered -- rent, health care, insurance) than I could make in SF or NY at the moment. Taxes in Cali aren't that different from Ontario, but the cost of living is nuts (and for the most part astonishingly suburban). Even if I could get slightly more money, I'd lose a lot of quality of life because my entire network is here. Personally, the idea of dropping my entire life for a pay cheque would necessitate a substantial increase in pay.

I think companies pay what the market will bear, and enough people feel the same way I do.

sospep8• 10 years ago

Why would they pay more?

As long as they can fill the seats they have open, paying "Canadian" rates, why not?

Sure, they are aware that some talent is leaving for greener pastures southward, but there is no "shortage" of talent available in the Vancouver market.

When/if enough of the developer supply has exited, that filling those seats becomes difficult, salaries will increase.

I wouldn't hold my breath.

mathattack• 10 years ago

According to the article real estate costs in Vancouver are half that of San Francisco. Are salaries half too?

sndean• 10 years ago

Based on some quick Googling and Glassdoor, it looks like average salaries are ~110k vs. ~80k. The cost of rent in San Francisco looks to be ~190% higher.

Not sure how well those figures line up with reality, though.

Serow225• 10 years ago

That estimate of real-estate/rent cost for Vancouver seems low to me.

sospep8• 10 years ago

The price of a typical Vancouver home rose 21 percent to C$775,300 ($584,290) in January from a year earlier, according to the city’s real estate board.

The costs quoted in the article are a bit vague. If one were to assume that by "Vancouver home", she was referring to a "house" located within the city of Vancouver, you would be in for a rude awakening. Average house price is pushing 2M and what that will buy you is a place to tear down in what was/is the less desirable part of the city.

If your talking a 1 bedroom condo in the city, 500k will get you started and the 775k quoted will get you something a bit above the basics.

When you can figure out how your going to pay that mortgage with your "Vancouver tech" salary, and still be able to afford to live, I'm all ears :)

Tiktaalik4• 10 years ago

The ~$700k number the article cites takes into account condos.

If you're only looking at detached houses then Vancouver is as expensive as SF if not more expensive. The median price is $1.3 million in the east side and $3.2 in the west side.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/ho...

Salaries are nowhere close to SF salaries. This is why Vancouver is one of the most unaffordable cities in the world.

potatolicious• 10 years ago

They can be. It's more accurate to say that Vancouver has a narrower range of salaries with a lower ceiling.

Right now I'm in NYC making about 4x what I would make in Vancouver for a similar job (disregarding exchange rate! It'd be ~5-6x if we include exchange rate), so yeah, still way ahead despite NYC's astronomical cost of living.

forgetsusername• 10 years ago

Everybody I know from school who were offered the option to work in the US have picked up their Canadian degrees and left.

This is what young people do; they adventure. Then, many times, they come back to their roots to settle down.

I'm sure there're a few people around these parts with anecdata regarding the joys of finding housing and raising a family in the SF Bay Area.

de_Selby• 10 years ago

Anecdata is my new favorite word.

st3v3r3• 10 years ago

How will they come back if there isn't a tech scene waiting for them?

lewisl90294• 10 years ago

This is what young people do; they adventure.

I think this is a rather unfair, and possibly dangerous, attitude, to simply dismiss this phenomenon as typical young people "adventuring". Is it really adventuring if it's a decision made after countless hours of carefully weighing different employment options and coming to the conclusion that the US offers far more opportunities and far better rewards for our careers?

I have nothing but anecdotes to support that the brain drain is actually happening at any significant scale, but it's certainly not difficult to imagine why young people who are offered a US position would come to these same conclusions, given the sorry state of the Canadian tech industry today.

RE: Settling down. Seattle, which is a 3 hour drive from Vancouver, offers about double the average Vancouver salary with comparable housing prices. Needless to say, I'm not planning on going back until the situation improves dramatically.

kspaans11• 10 years ago

Disclaimer: grew up in Ontario, studied at UWaterloo, then worked at BB, then worked in London, UK for 2 years, and now moving to Silicon Valley on a TN visa.

I wouldn't worry _too_ much about the brain drain. Sure the US is more lucrative for young people, but I would say Canada is more lucrative for families. Consider the public schools in Canada vs in the US, and cost of a UW degree vs a comparable university degree in the US. I don't think that most young Canadians who move to the US will stay there permanently.

restalis3• 10 years ago

So the consolation is what? That although people will flee to spend their best years elsewhere and sell their potential there at least they'll come back to Canada so their younglings will benefit as they did from the better formative conditions?

guyzero• 10 years ago

Nope. I left Canada 8 years ago with two school-age kids who are now finishing high school. They'll probably go back to Canada for university, but honestly higher pay solves a lot of problems.

wingsonfire• 10 years ago

Exactly same issue with India. India has tons of IT Company and Government invests a lot in education.. obviously pay is more in US but I think it is also environment.

That makes me wonder what has US done right to remain talent magnet

ameen4• 10 years ago

The issue in India is that our IT Companies are way overhyped. None of them are doing well financially, all of them barely scraping through each quarter given the Industry at-large stance on outsourcing.

restalis3• 10 years ago

"what has US done right to remain talent magnet"

It sells itself better. Given the same conditions, an US offer will sound better because the benefits (the pay) will be highlighted while the drawbacks will be presented in a lesser manner or even hidden from view entirely. This is more so when it's about foreigners for which the discrepancy of what's currently available to them and what can be promised is simply staggering. Here is less about the job offers in themselves as means to cover needs as it is with them as advertised goods that generate tremendous amounts of attraction. That's why so many foreign talented individuals are jumping through hops and work on mediocre conditions (which includes the payment) just to be able to dream about the advertised big rewards. I say "to dream" because it works like a lottery, it's a rat race not for a piece of cheese but for a chance to that piece.

There is a lot to talked about on this subject, but it's suffice to say that at its root the difference comes from what is a fair trade, which differs greatly from USA in comparison to other places.

rgawdzik• 10 years ago

Many Canadians return back to Canada; even Drake lives in Toronto :)

mabbo3• 10 years ago

Some do leave, yes. Many come back home later.

Amazon opened the Toronto office back in 2011 because there was demand- Canadians who didn't want to live in America anymore- often because of family, friends back home or because they wanted to have kids and not raise them as Americans, culturally.

It started with less than 10 people, plus the hiring they were able to do locally. It's now an office of over 300 people, maybe 100 of which transferred from Seattle. And the transfers back haven't slowed much- lots of folks simply want to come back home after a few years.

Lots of room here to grow. If Trump wins, I expect we'll need it.

coroutines• 10 years ago

Respectfully, I would not consider Amazon a champion of good working conditions. :>

nacho2sweet2• 10 years ago

Amazon already has an office on the low here in Vancouver that I heard has upwards of 200 employees and started out the same at 10. I heard it is also used as a staging ground to get people into the US office, and also easier to get foreign workers in Canada than the US.

ido3• 10 years ago

As an outsider, respectfully - what is "culturally American" compared to "culturally Canadian"?

I've been to both countries several times and I would not be able to tell if a person is American or Canadian unless they told me.

greggarious• 10 years ago

I agree as an American. I've met some super smart Canadians in SF and DC. They all say basically the same thing: most Canadian cities have a high cost of living, and salaries don't always keep up, so much so that even the Bay Area is attractive over Vancouver, since at least there's tons of jobs to choose from and they can optimize on salary with many offers.

mhkhung• 10 years ago

There is always (your) life cycles. Both myself and my brother Waterloo grads in the 90s. He is in the sv and I stayed in Toronto. My company sent me down to the valley to "help" for a few months (ie living and food all expensed) when I was still fresh. Hated it.. there is nothing at night. So I never have the urge to move there afterwards.

Then once you have multiple kids, single income doesn't take you far in the valley even with Google scale salary and mortgage. Plus Amazon has dev centre in downtown Toronto that pays well (not silicon valley well, but Seattle well). (Yes, startups don't pay well in Toronto, but then there are lots of small and profitable sw firms that pays decently).

Or just convince google to move that Kitchener office to Toronto, when so many people are commuting anyway..

And then, Vancouver is always a retirement city..

bryanbuckley• 10 years ago

well, that's why so many people commute from SF to the valley, if they want a certain culture. Toronto suburbs seem to go on forever, so not fair to compare Toronto to SV (and not SF or OAK)

deepGem• 10 years ago

I always thought that Canada's low pay was balanced by their universal healthcare. No ?

dajohnson89• 10 years ago

Healthcare is often provided by the U.S. employer anyways, so I guess it's a wash in that case.

tonyarkles• 10 years ago

It's fascinating, in Saskatoon we've got a pretty neat little tech community. Some people leave, but there's a few companies that identified that people were leaving or contracting remotely and increased their salaries to be sufficiently enticing to keep people here.

There's still some people who leave (apparently there was a thing for a while at Apple where people would hang their Saskatchewan license plates on their cubes), but as a whole there's a lot of people staying and making good money here. In the last 10 years or so since I've graduated, entry-level salaries are up probably 50-70% and intermediate-experience salaries around $90-100k/yr aren't unheard of.

yeukhon• 10 years ago

Believe it or not, I have a number of coworkers come from Canada. I am not sure if they have all converted to US citizenship or not, but most of them have family or have a stable life here, and they blend in extremely well. And then there are a number of British coworkers too...

JackPoach• 10 years ago

Yep, Canadian tech salaries can't compete with Silicon Valley

Wingman4l7• 10 years ago

I'm curious -- can it compete with the PNW at all (i.e., tech jobs in Seattle)?

serge2k• 10 years ago

Nope.

andromeduck• 10 years ago

Even Microsoft internship in Vancouver was about 3.5k per month vs over 7 in Seattle

Hell I've received serious offers for ~70k salary here when that's lower than lots of Bay area internships before the exchange rate

It's absolutely ridiculous

distances• 10 years ago

To be fair, I don't think there are any places that can compete with SV tech salaries.

mtberatwork• 10 years ago

Well, to be fair, I'm not really sure any area can compete with SV in terms of raw salaries. But then again, how far does that salary really go given the absurd cost of living?

Tistel2• 10 years ago

I know a couple of people who did the move and both said it was a wash money wise once you factor all your costs (healthcare, rent, private school for the kids etc). Your job options are an order of magnitude better though.

tacoman• 10 years ago

I work for a boring company in Canada that requires significant IT skill and experience. The salaries at this company are decent. In the last ~6 years, I've lost coworkers to Cisco (2 people), Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Yelp.

They're leaving for the experience of working for those companies, not the money.

woud420• 10 years ago

Canadian tech salaries can't compete with pretty much any large-ish US city tech salaries.

johnm1019• 10 years ago

I find it interesting that due to high rent prices the article hypothesizes that people are moving away from Vancouver and the next upcoming city is a peninsula on an island? What do you think is going to happen in the real-estate market there?

raverbashing3• 10 years ago

The Chinese are parking their money there, that's what's happening

Hence people paying millions of dollars for a house that's falling apart

But I'm glad to hear about Victoria.

daemin2• 10 years ago

That's been a common theme among people talking about the rising house prices in Australia as well. That Chinese people just buy property to park their money overseas.

But when someone looked at the numbers the number of houses that were bought by Chinese people were in the low single digit percentages.

While this could create some upward pressure on prices it cannot be the only factor. For instance in Australia most of the blame lies of negative gearing (where any money paid in interest on a property can be claimed against all income).

eru4• 10 years ago

Negative gearing, and the low density allowed.

My own suburb, Glebe, is just ten minutes by bike from the central business district. Yet, single family dwellings prevail at low density.

(At the light rail, some NIMBYs were rallying against an eight storey building to be put up. Ha! Twenty to forty would be better.)

wycx• 10 years ago

Prices are set at the margin.

A single digit percentage of actors in the market with the objective of not losing 100% of their capital by turning it into a hard asset in another country is sufficient to move the market.

In Australia it is the combination of negative gearing AND the 50% capital gains tax concession on investment properties. Average rental losses per negative gearer were reasonably constant and small up until 2001 when the 'sound economic manager' Costello introduced the CGT discount, intially for a limited time only to make up for the introduction of the GST. From 2001 onwards, claimed net rental losses have blown out significantly, such that the annual forgone tax is greater than what the federal government spends on universities. This is because the gains permitted with such generous CGT concessions more than make up for year-on-year rental losses. This strategy only makes sense when house prices are rising, which has been the case for ~20 years in Australia. Given that Australians are at, or close to the limit of their ability to take on more credit, real standards of living (real net disposable income per capita) have been falling for the last five years, it seems that the bubble may not be sustainable. Unless you internationalise the housing market and make it a place for turning cash into hard assests, like London.

vehementi2• 10 years ago

The data has been notoriously unavailable - when did someone figure out the numbers?

But yeah as siblings said, even a small minority can move the market like that. Just hearing of these huge (successful) prices makes people list higher, etc.

branchless10• 10 years ago

HAM is not the only reason. Canadian banks are lending insane amounts. People always say Canada's banks are "sound". Every bank is sound until land prices go into reverse.

mtviewdave2• 10 years ago

Every bank is sound until land prices go into reverse.

Generalize that to building prices, and if true, that's going to make it very difficult to use construction to lower housing prices. Banks aren't going to lend for construction if they think making loans is going to threaten the bank's own soundness.

Or to put it another way, if falling housing prices add unacceptable risk to construction loans, then the banks efforts to mitigate that risk might include not lending if housing prices are in decline. Which means you could sweep away all zoning and NIMBY impediments, and you still wouldn't be able to use construction as a way to lower housing costs, because the banks wouldn't let that happen.

cat-dev-null2• 10 years ago

Assuming one has a really good heater and sleeping bag, it legal/possible/affordable to live in a VW bus in say south Vancouver? Renting in places like NYC, SF these days seems most people are lemmingly throwing money away in an unaffordable attempt to buy faux status while going into debt and gaining no balance sheet because "everyone else is doing it." Unless you've sold a series to HBO, living below one's means is smarter because hope isn't a strategy.

clickok• 10 years ago

If I'm going to be living in a van (down by the river), I would at least drive it to a river in a warmer climate. One with a higher exchange rate, lower taxes, and faster Internet, say.

ameen4• 10 years ago

Ideally, us tech workers should research such places. Anyone up for creating a Github repo with,

* Location

* Work Authorization (and/or Visa issues)

* Average weather throughout the year - Max temp - Min temp

* Exchange rate

* Avg. Internet Speed + Prices

* Language barriers (or lack of).

Something similar to this [1] but with a crowdsourced/community aspect with solid sources.

[1] http://fundersandfounders.com/where-to-start-your-startup-be...

pjc504• 10 years ago

This is no way to live for more than a few months, though. It's not really an environment in which you can raise a family.

Grishnakh• 10 years ago

Maybe he's single and has given up on the idea of finding a girlfriend. This is a site for programmers, is it not?

Just look at the Japanese: it's becoming popular over there with younger people to just not bother with relationships (or having families obviously), because they're too much trouble. Already in large cities here in the US, I'm noticing that a huge number of women in their 30s-40s are just bypassing the part about finding a husband and are becoming single moms on their own.

I predict that long-term relationships (including marriage) are going to become obsolete pretty soon in developed nations.

raverbashing3• 10 years ago

Sorry to be blunt, but why the f should anyone do that, especially if they have a job in tech (but even if they are not)

NYC and SF might be crammed, but there is a lot of space in the surroundings. In the topic we're talking about Canada, 2nd largest country in the world

And yes, working on nice companies is important, but quality of life is also important

cat-dev-null2• 10 years ago

Then you're a minority of one. Most people living in cities these days are irrationally pouring typically between 50% to sometimes as much as 75% of their income into rent, paying for the privilege of holding onto expensive real-estate they will never be able to afford rather than save money... they'll never be able to retire or have anything else more permanent.

You're making some very broad, self-centered assumptions about quality of life and perception of other people. Not everyone needs lattés or 3500 sq ft / 325 m^2.

No one cares to live in the Saskatchewan boondocks apart to get away from the city, so why did you bring that up irrelevant strawman?

Some people also value independence more than being perpetually-indebted to a company (non-single-payer health insurance / rent).

tempestn4• 10 years ago

The USD median house price in Vancouver is misleading too, because it wasn't long ago that the dollar was at parity, and incomes certainly haven't changed much as the dollar has dropped by a third.

Anyway, so far the effect on Victoria seems to be our own mini (compared to Vancouver; still nuts for most of the world) housing boom. I have three couples of close friends all house-hunting right now, and it's not a fun time to be doing so. I can't imagine committing to pay the better part of a million dollars for something with less than a day's deliberation, no time for an inspection, and a need to offer over asking price to even have a hope of "winning".

ironsides• 10 years ago

Honest question here - why not just rent and wait it out?

edit/from the article; Rentals are hard to come by, and just as unaffordable. The vacancy rate of 0.8 percent is one of the lowest in the country, and the average monthly rent of C$937 for a bachelor suite is tied at highest with the cost in Toronto, according to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. Rents for newly built units and renovated basement suites are pricier.

tempestn4• 10 years ago

You've pretty much got it. Still, while expensive, renting is still much more affordable than buying. The other problem is, decent SFH rentals are very difficult to come by. Here in Victoria, my friends who are looking for houses are all starting families and would like more space than most apartments offer. Many of them would be fine with renting as long as prices are unbalanced, but the rental market selection if you want something larger than a 2-bedroom apartment is really sparse. Plus, many of the places you can find are only there until the owners manage to sell them, which obviously isn't ideal if you're looking to settle down.

monkeywork• 10 years ago

dropped a quarter not a third... don't make it even worse than reality.

tempestn4• 10 years ago

I was thinking of the peak to trough drop of 1.05 -> 0.70 (exactly 1/3). But you're right, currently we're at 1/4 off of parity.

ameen4• 10 years ago

pay the better part of a million dollars for something with less than a day's deliberation
the effect on Victoria seems to be our own mini housing boom.

Sounds a bit confusing. Are houses in Victoria priced at a Million dollars?

tempestn4• 10 years ago

"The better part of" a million dollars. I believe the SFH median in Victoria is around $600,000 CAD. (Which of course means half of them cost more than that.) My point is that it's a lot of money to spend with no time to think it over or do due diligence.

clessg• 10 years ago

What is currently the best way for a Canadian tech worker to get into the US? Still the same situation as usual?

kspaans11• 10 years ago

Have a degree? Get a TN status (non-immigrant work permit). All you need is a job offer from an American company.

anuj_nm• 10 years ago

In the past year, I've had 3 colleagues quit their jobs at a Vancouver startup to work remotely for a US company (to get paid in USD). Tech salaries in Vancouver are too low for the cost of living.

Its especially discouraging to see an employer with offices in Seattle and Vancouver offer their Canadian employees salaries that are >30% lower than their American counterparts. I won't be surprised if Canadians working remotely becomes commonplace.

gavingmiller• 10 years ago

I'd agree 100% on this. As a Canadian, looking at our future career prospects it is in our best interest to learn how to work well as remote employees.

tallanvor2• 10 years ago

I see this as a problem all over the world. - San Francisco, Seattle, New York, Vancouver, London, Oslo... Really the list could go on for quite a while.

So many of these cities feel like they have to retain their "identity" or the "feel" of the town, so they set restrictions that make it very hard to develop properties that can hold more people. The result is always the same: continually increasing prices in the center of the city whether you want to rent or buy, so you have to go further and further out to find something affordable, especially if you are young or if your parents can't help you finance a purchase.

This is going to continue until planning commissions start allowing the construction of higher density housing.

eru4• 10 years ago

Locally the people who own the land (and small houses on top) often obstruct that very planning process for higher density housing.

zeemonkee35• 10 years ago

This is going to continue until planning commissions start allowing the construction of higher density housing.

Or we have more remote jobs, and/or satellite offices. For example in the UK why have your developers in London? Open an office in Newcastle or Glasgow, you're just a few hours away by train (an hour on the plane) and you'll save a fortune on salaries and office space (and probably a tax break or two). Or use remote workers where it makes sense.

sospep8• 10 years ago

Or we have more remote jobs, and/or satellite offices.

So much this. Especially for the "tech industry". A good portion of Vancouver's startups and tech companies are "downtown". Why not move out of the core? Why not add a satellite office somewhere affordable? Why not start to offer remote work options?

This is not an industry where you need to be physically present to get the job done, for the most part, yet the tech companies here(and elsewhere) aren't/don't seem to be looking at work options other than the status quo.

jakobegger2• 10 years ago

I'm not sure if a fix would be so easy. Housing prices have been rising everywhere, even in small cities like my home town, where a decent amount of construction is going on.

I think that the biggest reason for growing housing prices are the currently low interest rates.

There are two factors that cause rising prices (due to low interest rates):

1) It's more affordable than ever to borrow money, so people are willing to pay higher prices, and even people with little savings can afford to buy a home. At 8% interest rates nobody would be able to afford current prices. This means that sellers can ask much higher prices.

2) Since interest rates are so low, people are increasingly looking at the housing market as an investment opportunity. Aspiring homeowners now have to compete with deep-pocketed investors leading to a further increase in prices.

So I think that housing prices would naturally fall if interest rates went up. (Of course, for young people without savings this makes little difference; they would likely end up paying just as much due to higher financing costs.)

pjc504• 10 years ago

So I think that housing prices would naturally fall if interest rates went up.

The problem is that falling house prices put people "underwater", and rising interest rates put people on variable rate mortgages in arrears. This inflicts a huge amount of pain on middle class floating voters.

usaar333• 10 years ago

This is true, but this should have less effect on rents which the article notes are high in Vancouver.

maxsilver2• 10 years ago

I'm not sure if a fix would be so easy. Housing prices have been rising everywhere, even in small cities like my home town, where a decent amount of construction is going on.

Yeah, this doesn't get enough attention. Everyone's so focused on NYC / Boston / San Francisco / Seattle / Denver, that they're missing that this problem is happening almost universally, in the vast majority of markets across the US.

I live in a very small city in flyover Midwest that commonly hits the top ten "affordable places to live" lists, and has the lowest average incomes of any market in the entire US. Despite all of that, even here our costs have skyrocketed. Monthly rents have doubled over the past five years.

It's feels like another housing bubble, but this time everyone is refusing to let it pop.

hoorayimhelping• 10 years ago

This is going to continue until planning commissions start allowing the construction of higher density housing.

This is already happening here in New York City and has been for a few years. It's not solving the problem and honestly this seems like pretty a reductive way of stating the problem.

tallanvor2• 10 years ago

The key is that when construction is allowed to lag behind needs, prices will rice much more quickly than they otherwise might. But sure, I agree that there will always be multiple factors at play.

ceras• 10 years ago

New York City construction rates are extremely low. It only seems high because high density means you're always close to development, just like you always hear ambulance sirens even though heart attacks aren't more common.

Many Manhattan neighborhoods are classified as historic and don't easily allow tearing down old buildings for new ones. Many buildings in other Manhattan neighborhoods are landmarked and can't easily be improved. And though he upzoned some areas of the city, Bloomberg also downzoned large swaths of outer borough neighborhoods, preventing cheap multi-family home construction (to replace single-family homes). The outer boroughs also suffer from onerous parking minimums, limiting the amount of land used for housing.

De Blasio has been slow in pushing for any sort of upzoning. He's only recently made his first attempt with the relatively conservative East New York rezoning.

Some data: http://newyorkyimby.com/2014/08/new-york-citys-is-americas-s...

ZanyProgrammer• 10 years ago

There was an article a couple of months ago, shared all around urbanist social media, lamenting that rental prices in Seattle were declining because of an increased supply of housing (it was in one of those ubiquitous business insider journal type magazines). For a variety of reasons, it can be hard to increase supply, but that's the best way (barring a recession) to lower the cost of housing.

maxsilver2• 10 years ago

And it's not even that, rental prices in Seattle haven't declined, just the percent growth rate in rents year-over-year is declining.

Which makes it even more ridiculous to see them lamenting it. They seem to feel like they deserve double-digit rental growth rates every single year, and "falling" to a single-digit growth rate just won't cut it.

mcmatterson2• 10 years ago

It's telling that Toronto isn't on that list. It's taken me a decade of living here to really understand what makes this place tick, and one thing that's become clear is that a near universal friendliness to newcomers in both word and deed is a huge part of Toronto's identity. I've said it before in many conversations on the topic, but I think that this pervasive openness is going to do nothing but help Toronto's place on the world stage

gyardley• 10 years ago

I suspect Toronto's the most multicultural, international city on earth, and it's high on my list of places I'd live if I wasn't married to someone with zero tolerance for snow.

Unfortunately, Toronto still manages to suffer from a god-awful housing market made worse by insane NIMBYism in the most affluent and attractive neighborhoods. I think "I got mine, time to dig a moat around it" is a pretty universal phenomenon.

mimurchison• 10 years ago

Agreed. It would be nice to see Toronto build more of it's identity around this inclusiveness and openness. Surely the fact that Toronto is now the most diverse city in the world is worth trumpeting a little bit.

Tiktaalik4• 10 years ago

Vancouver has various restrictions just like any town, but in general it would be incorrect to state that they restrict construction or don't build high density buildings. Comparing a photo of 1990s downtown Vancouver to now it is shocking how many glassy residential towers there are now. Vancouver and its satellite cities are constantly building new condo buildings.

I suppose you can always argue that a city can build more, but I've seen more construction cranes in Vancouver than just about any city I've ever visited.

I think more dominant issues that have influenced the price of Vancouver housing is low interest rates, lax lending rules, government policies that promote home ownership and speculation, and the influx of foreign capital.

run4yourlives2• 10 years ago

Actually, we do restrict construction particularly in the "view corridor" that is downtown. It's not that we don't build buildings, it's that they are all under 40 stories, whereas a typical city of our size would have buildings of the same type pushing 100 stories easy.

For a sense of scale, here is Vancouver's tallest building compared to the world leaders: http://i.imgur.com/YcCozCE.png?1

emodendroket4• 10 years ago

That is, frankly, a very small part of the problem. The housing that does tend to get built in these cities is almost universally luxury housing.

ZenoArrow2• 10 years ago

Yes, and that won't change until we have something like a land value tax that is based on active use of the land. There needs to be a mechanism in place to stop wealthy investors buying up property they barely use. At the moment luxury property in a large city is seen as a safe investment (for the most part).

vanthrow• 10 years ago

I'm a millennial immigrant to Vancouver (came with my family when I was 10).

I'm a software developer by trade.

The problems are real, but the outcome is greatly exaggerated.

The fact is MOST millennials outside the most lucrative STEM/Law/Finance fields are in no position to be buying real estate anywhere in North America.

And the Vancouver rental market is actually not half bad. You can get a basement suite for under $1000 in the city proper. You can get a 2 bedroom downtown for $2000. Or at least you could a year ago, the Canadian dollar has plummeted.

Meanwhile people are weighing in with terrible salary stories. It's also not exactly true. Yes, I could make more in Seattle, and even MORE in Silicon Valley. But there are lifestyle costs to both. I value the Vancouver lifestyle quite highly. Now, full disclosure, I moved to Europe for a 2-3 year transfer with my company last year. But this was also a lifestyle based decision to allow me to travel more - I took a paycut.

The truth about salaries is Amazon pays very well (though not as well as in the States). Microsoft pays very well. So does Facebook, and Apple, and Salesforce pays the best (supposedly they are competitive with US salaries). These big players are forcing the rest of the market to kick up. And all these players are also relatively new to the scene (most growth in the last 5 years). As a result, I foresee in the next few years a lot of ex-employees from these places going out on their own and doing great things in the startup community, or commanding similar salaries from local shops that want to get experienced engineers with big scale experience.

The problem with Vancouver is it's hard to find a city to compare it to. Yes, the economy isn't the strongest it can be, but the proximity to nature is unbelievable and very difficult to match. That intangible IS worth something despite people not taking advantage of it complaining that "that's all there is". If you don't care about world-class ocean and mountain sports in close proximity to outstanding international food options, this city is not for you. There are places with more vibrant art and culture and nightlife scenes, no doubt. But if you make the most of Vancouver's strengths, it is unbeatable.

atwebb• 10 years ago

buying real estate anywhere in North America

Maybe major major cities, but it's not unreasonable to get a 3-4k sq ft house for less than $1400-1500 a month all in in "B" cities or outlying areas of major cities.

emodendroket4• 10 years ago

The problems are real, but the outcome is greatly exaggerated.
The fact is MOST millennials outside the most lucrative STEM/Law/Finance fields are in no position to be buying real estate anywhere in North America.

Well then it sounds to me like the problem is not overstated but understated.

rdlecler1• 10 years ago

This is a major issue everywhere. Take stagnant wage growth and stack that up against high housing costs and you have a double pinch. Prospects are extremely bleak.

Tistel2• 10 years ago

I lived in Vancouver for 5 years. Beautiful spot. Met a lot of interesting people from all over the world. But, even by Canadian standards (which are much lower than the US) the salaries in Vancouver are notoriously low. A much better (2X) offer brought me to Toronto.

Staring to feel the same about Toronto too expense and hassle wise. Want to try remote work from the States and live in the country in Canada. Only interia prevents me.

rgoldade• 10 years ago

There is a diaspora of Vancouverites in their late 20s, early 30s here in Toronto. They left home for better employment and housing opportunities. I think we all would love to move back but it's just not worth it. Vancouver is a better city than Toronto but not THAT much better.

tinduck• 10 years ago

I'll be honest. It's hard for me to hate on Vancouver too much as I truly think Urban planning is difficult.

I think people should move to lower costs cities if the situation makes sense for them. Vancouver might be at a disadvantage due to Brain Drain at this specific moment in time, but I believe there's an argument to be made that Vancouver has significantly been a beneficiary of Brain Drain from other countries in the past.

As the USA and Canada continues to transition to a knowledge based economy, our cities should emulate what made Vancouver a economic powerhouse, which is a world class research university, great public transportation, and effective immigration programs. Now, there are things you can't emulate like great weather or prestige, but we can make more cities like San Francisco or Vancouver.

ruffrey• 10 years ago

With online collaboration tools really taking off, especially with WebRTC currently on billions of devices, I have this unfounded belief that city centers will become less important over the next decade. There will always be work which is better suited to in-person setups.

Maybe it is more of a hope than a belief - but having a decentralized workforce has implications for cost of living and quality of life that are exciting. With (relatively) low-cost mortgages, home purchasing power increases at a non-linear rate, the more money you make. That is one reason why housing demand in cities can grow faster than wages.

rm_-rf_slash• 10 years ago

Unfounded all right. Cyclical, more like it. People's tastes change over time. Grandparents liked cities, parents like suburbs, I like cities, and I can't imagine how my kids will feel. Maybe high housing costs will inspire people to live rurally or in exquisite mobile homes driven by computers. Or it will result in a global densification the likes of which we have never truly seen.

In Neuromancer, the Sprawl spanned the entire eastern seaboard and yet the only place with real distinction was Zion - the Rastafarian space station far away from the regular bustle. Things are always in flux.

TimCinel• 10 years ago

I have the same belief, but for a different reason. I think autonomous vehicles will make city centers become less important.

wcummings• 10 years ago

I have this unfounded belief that city centers will become less important over the next decade.

People have been saying this for years and the opposite seems to be true.

Reason077• 10 years ago

If millennial are fleeing Vancouver for London because they can't afford housing, as this article suggests, they're going to be very disappointed with our housing prices!

justinhj2• 10 years ago

Ha. That's true but as a Londoner living in Vancouver I can tell you that for young people here moving to London would be exciting and educational compared to staying at home for the same money, so many would leave for that reason.

wmeredith• 10 years ago

How the hell is autoplaying video still a thing in 2016?

OldSchoolJohnny• 10 years ago

spend some time on that page and it gets worse, in the middle of reading the article it just refreshes the page losing your place for no apparent reason and then starts autoplaying the video again.

Maybe they do it to fake more views for more ad$?

Tiktaalik4• 10 years ago

I think it's likely that tech in Vancouver is having trouble hiring and retaining as millenials flee to SF, where they can get paid dramatically more, but in general Vancouver is seeing net gains in millenials.

I have no idea how Bloomberg made their chart but using census and BC stats data no one has been able to reproduce it.

This UBC sociology prof crunched BCStats numbers and found that there is net positive millenial migration into Vancouver.

https://homefreesociology.wordpress.com/2016/03/16/ch-ch-ch-...

This doesn't change the fact that the unaffordability situation in Vancouver is deeply problematic and is probably accelerating a brain drain to the USA.

illumin85• 10 years ago

This seems to be a direct result of capital flight from China. Wealthy chinese who are able to get their money out (through corruption, money laundering, or otherwise) are looking for somewhere safe to park their money for the inevitable decline in value of the yuan. China can only artificially peg their money to the dollar for so long, until they run out of dollars, and they are drawing down their reserves at a record pace due to the appreciation of the dollar.

Wealthy chinese know this, and use real estate in markets such as Vancouver, SF, and NYC, because it's fairly low risk and likely to appreciate. See http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/13/462994857/... and http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/14/us/us-will-track-secret-bu...

pkaler3• 10 years ago

I'm standing at my desk in my apartment that I pay $1589/month for. An equivalent apartment in SF or NYC would be $3500 or higher.

The problems are two-fold.

1) Vancouver hasn't created a single-family detached home lot since the 1970s. There is an ocean to the west, the US border to the south, Burrard Inlet and mountains to the north. There just isn't any land. The only way to expand is east into the Fraser Valley.

The single-family detached home is dead. Live in a condo. Everyone gets a view. Everyone gets sunshine. Everyone gets services. Everyone gets a park a block away. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vancouverism

2) Vancouver companies pay dick-all for salaries because Vancouver companies make dick-all for revenue. Everyone that lives here and can afford works or consults for a company that is not from Vancouver. A tech company that can't afford to pay an employee to rent a $1589/month apartment is not a tech company.

illumin85• 10 years ago

If property values were tied directly to incomes, as they are in any normal market, and what you are saying is true about salaries being low, the Vancouver market would not be as hot as it is right now.

The market is being artificially inflated by foreign buyers. Don't forget that Vancouver is a very attractive destination for wealthy Chinese multi-nationals. This is the same phenomenon that has wealthy Chinese buying $5 million luxury apartments in Manhattan through shell companies to hide their identity.

jb6132• 10 years ago

"A tech company that can't afford to pay an employee to rent a $1589/month apartment is not a tech company."

Tech companies don't have to be in Vancouver. The fundamental component that a tech company requires is talent. There's relatively little distinguishing talent in Vancouver that can't be found in several other comparable jurisdictions within Canada. A tech company that pays higher wages simply because the employee lives in a high-cost jurisdiction is a tech company that is less competitive.

That's the from the company view, now to address to your personal view:

"I'm standing at my desk in my apartment that I pay $1589/month for."

and:

"The single-family detached home is dead. Live in a condo. Everyone gets a view. Everyone gets sunshine. Everyone gets services. Everyone gets a park a block away. "

Yikes! That rent adds up to $381,000 over 20 years. You can easily find single-family detached homes for that price in places like Waterloo, Ottawa, or Montreal suburbs and in 20 years have it paid off and own an asset while Vancouver renter will have no asset and more rent to pay. Those 3 locations have comparable tech job prospects as Vancouver with a whole lot more sunshine in the winter.

dghughes2• 10 years ago

This seems to be a direct result of capital flight from China.

It's even happening to tiny PEI in the east we have seen a massive surge of Chinese people (to clarify yes from China) investing in and living in the province.

Five years ago you could walk down the street and it was typical small town Canada last summer I went to a Starbucks and every single person was Chinese. There are now at least two if not three Buddhist monasteries too.

I'm not complaining I like the new investment and more people living here I'm saying it's not just a Vancouver or Toronto thing. Although here it's more business investing here not so much speculative condo buying.

illumin85• 10 years ago

I wouldn't even say it's speculative condo buying - it's more like treating the condo as a piggy bank. It's considered a safer investment because it can be purchased through a shell company (LLC), hiding the true identity of the buyer, and unlike the funds in a bank account, can't easily be seized.

There was a well known phenomenon: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/29/business/international/chi...

"In London, Chinese investors are purchasing high-end apartments in wealthy neighborhoods and big skyscrapers in the financial district. In Canada, they are paying $1 million for modest Vancouver bungalows. In Australia, a Chinese sovereign wealth fund bought nine office towers, one of the biggest real estate transactions in that nation’s history."

mkaziz• 10 years ago

PEI of Anne of Green Gables fame? Man, now I wish I had visited it earlier ... it's been a life dream of mine to go see it!

emodendroket4• 10 years ago

I mean, yes, but who says cities have to allow Chinese investment to dominate the market rather than the people who live in these cities? Maybe that is the best political choice, but it is a political choice and we all pretend it's a neutral and inexorable natural law.

sospep8• 10 years ago

who says cities have to allow Chinese investment to dominate the market rather than the people who live in these cities?

Vancouver's dirty little secret is that the real estate market IS the economy.

If restrictions were placed on foreign investment and this RE bubble burst, the city/region would be in for a world of hurt.

If you know what $30 oil is doing to our neighboring provinces, you would get an idea of what the future holds for Vancouver without it's "foreign investment" fix.

pnathan• 10 years ago

This is anecdoteally part of the reason for the Seattle area house price rise.

ConfuciusSay02• 10 years ago

You're right, but the implication of your post is that there's nothing Canada could do about the problem.

The correct response is that Canada should implement Australian-style restrictions on foreign ownership of real estate. This problem has been solved before, it's not that hard.

It would suck for those who bought into the game late, those in the high-end RE business, but the benefits of having a real estate market that has actual price discovery based on the population who could actually live in the properties is definitely worth it, because housing would become more affordable, disposable income would increase, and consumer debt would decrease.

hokkos• 10 years ago

When the forced reload timeout of the page (to gather more fake views) is less than the video duration of your article you know your site is broken.

nacho2sweet2• 10 years ago

Real-estate has been fucked up here since 2000, and no one has ever done anything about it. Our condo market was a money market for years. People would pay other people to camp out for pre-sales a week in advance in tents and a new development would be sold out opening day. It would be flipped 5 times before it was even built.

The "affordable housing" initiatives here mostly seem to be for homeless people or those on fixed incomes. There is a big resentment from middle class or the "working poor" here now. But young people don't vote or they vote on social issues that seem nice when they are 20 but not on something that is going to effect them when they are 28-40. People who own houses love it but know it is fucked up. My mom is an example basically, and just banked her retirement selling her downtown condo. Lots of you are talking about tech wages because that effects you, but I have lots of friends that grew up that are in the 40k-50k range that would at least like a shitty condo in east van. I wish we could go back to 10 years ago about DINKWAD jokes, but the Double Income No Kids With a Dogs can't even afford detached houses here anymore. It's $2-million for a tear down crack shack. It is fucking crazy. $2-million is a lot of money. $2-million used to be a beautiful water view mansion, and not that long ago.

Everyone should read this article as well: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/investigations/the-real-...

This is just one shady fucked up thing they know about. There is so much more to it. I really wish the Frontline about shady money laundering didn't get canned. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/07/06/why-did-fro...

At the same time we keep saying the "Chinese money laundering!" yea it is illegal to them. But we also don't live under laws that only allow us to move $50k a year out of the country. We have to imagine living under that ourselves I guess.

Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

Related Stories