Quote:
Originally Posted by casper
Vancouver and Toronto are basically land-locked. In the case of Vancouver it is because of the ocean, mountains, agricultural land reserve and US boarder.
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I think commute times are a huge part of it. Toronto and Vancouver are pretty difficult cities to get around in, and if they are able to many people will spend a lot of money to save themselves an hour of commuting every day. Nice neighbourhoods also fetch a huge premium because not many new ones are being built.
The other simple reality is just that detached houses don't scale well in larger cities, particularly if there's limited public investment in highways and if employment is centralized. As a city like Vancouver grows, it's perfectly natural to expect the price of detached houses to skyrocket because well-located detached houses are very limited in supply. Some US cities like Dallas are large and mostly cheap detached housing but they have tons of land, tons of highways, and don't seem very attractive.
Condos are a bit different, but expensive neighbourhoods like Vancouver's West Side have restrictions on what can be built. If there were zero restrictions on condo and apartment highrises we would see lots of construction in desirable neighbourhoods and the prices of condos would plummet (houses would probably go up since they'd become scarcer and would be priced for developers).
None of the simplified views of the housing market are correct. The reality is that a whole bunch of factors are coming together to make the situation what it is.