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  #21  
Old Posted Apr 2, 2010, 6:27 PM
WarrenC12 WarrenC12 is offline
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Originally Posted by delboy View Post
As I said, I'm in the market, makes little difference to me, but makes a hell of difference as to what kind of city vancouver will be. Present prices have changed this city and not in a good way. When average earners can't afford average homes, there is a problem.

One thing i really hate about vancouver is it's obsession with real estate - it's nice but not 663,000 nice.
+2 Both of these points warrant repeating.

I just hope there isn't any massive drops. Although sometimes RE can move in opposition to the overall economy. I think the next 4-5 years will be something along those lines.
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  #22  
Old Posted Apr 2, 2010, 6:37 PM
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Originally Posted by Blake View Post
Why somebody would buy an 800,000K house they can barely afford?

Reminds me of our neighbours. They lived in a $350K condo, and walked into an open house of a $980K home. They loved it and wrote an offer on the spot. They offered $950 because they couldn't afford the extra $30K. Yikes.

There are plenty of affordable multi-family options and homes in the suburbs in line with most people's budget.

A place like Maple Ridge or Surrey may not be utopia for most people, but we need to get over this ideal that everyone deserves to live in the City of Vancouver.
Indeed. You couldn't pay me enough to live in Vancouver's souless burbs. Besides, they are may be more affordable but are still inflated.
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  #23  
Old Posted Apr 2, 2010, 8:29 PM
twoNeurons twoNeurons is offline
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Originally Posted by delboy View Post
Full tax will now be applied to private sales of used vehicles.
Correction. Used cars sales will now NOT be taxed unless bought through a dealer.

Private used car sales only had PST on them before.

Anything that didn't have GST on it before won't have HST on it. So, PST-only items ( very few things ) are now tax-free.

Personally, if they want to harmonize the taxes, the least they could do is lower the percentage.

%12 tax? Whoa.

And one more thing... MAKE IT BUILT IN TO THE PRICE!!!!
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  #24  
Old Posted Apr 2, 2010, 9:28 PM
zivan56 zivan56 is offline
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Originally Posted by twoNeurons View Post
Correction. Used cars sales will now NOT be taxed unless bought through a dealer.

Private used car sales only had PST on them before.

Anything that didn't have GST on it before won't have HST on it. So, PST-only items ( very few things ) are now tax-free.
All of that is incorrect. Used cars, planes, and boats will be charged full HST regardless of private seller or a dealer.
Second statement is not true either. Bycycles, gym memberships, and haircuts come to mind among many other things. Only a few have gained exemptions, but will have a duty equivalent to PST...I can't recall them ATM, but they don't include the above.
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  #25  
Old Posted Apr 2, 2010, 10:08 PM
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Originally Posted by delboy View Post
Yes - owners have had to find creative ways to pay the mortgage - shared ownership has also become common. Doesn't say much about the place when you have to resort to illegal rental accommodation in the basement to own a very average home - although I suppose it creates better density. As for laneway housing, I see this more of a case of the rich getting richer as they will require considerable investment to build the structure.

A friend of mine bought a house in east van for around 800,000 - he has a bst suite and a student in an attic conversion and he's still struggling.

Looking back if I was starting out in my early twenties making an average wage, I'd be looking at moving to some place more affordable. It was not like that at all in 1993 when I moved here.
There is no doubt that some of the suites are illegal. In 2008 the house next door to me sold. The new owner decided to build a suite in the basement and knocked out one of the side windows to install a door. Of course when they put the new door in. They did not reinforce the door frame as is required. Well someone in the neighbourhood must of phoned the city because suddenly the city came along and told them to stop. Of course the city does an investigation and sends me as one of the next door neighbours a letter asking what my thoughts were on this. All I basically said in the letter back to the city. Is I have no problem with the suite itself. My only problem is whether or not this door would alter the structural integrity of the building. If it does then I feel it should not be there. In the end the door was removed and the hole was filled back in.

Although all the new homes being built have legal suites.

As for the laneway house. It is true that only a person with enough capital would be able to build a laneway house no their lot. But I also think you will see most of the laneway houses being built by developers who are building a new home at the same time. They are currently doing that 3 houses from mine.
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  #26  
Old Posted Apr 2, 2010, 10:19 PM
cabotp cabotp is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Blake View Post
Why somebody would buy an 800,000K house they can barely afford?

Reminds me of our neighbours. They lived in a $350K condo, and walked into an open house of a $980K home. They loved it and wrote an offer on the spot. They offered $950 because they couldn't afford the extra $30K. Yikes.

There are plenty of affordable multi-family options and homes in the suburbs in line with most people's budget.

A place like Maple Ridge or Surrey may not be utopia for most people, but we need to get over this ideal that everyone deserves to live in the City of Vancouver.
While I personally have nothing against the areas of Maple Ridge or Surrey. I just don't ever see myself living in those areas. If I ever were to move from Vancouver. It would most likely be to a place like Burnaby or New West or somewhere in the Tri-Cities. The Fraser river and the bridges gives a sense of a psychological barrier to me.
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  #27  
Old Posted Apr 3, 2010, 3:15 AM
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Originally Posted by Spoolmak View Post
why is this HST coming into affect, when minimum wage is 8 bucks n hr, avg house price in vancouver is $663,000 and its so effing hard to find a decent job. Absolutely ridiculous. I want to move but the only place in Canada other than BC I would consider moving to is Toronto and thats way to far.
A friend recently sold his house on the West Side. He said virtually all of the buyers who came to look were from Mainland China. Any large inflow of foreign money is going to distort prices. You can tell from the price escalation in the face of stagnant or declining real incomes in Metro.

Oh, before the usual suspects let fly the "racist" comment, my friend is CBC.
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  #28  
Old Posted Apr 15, 2010, 8:01 PM
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In light of all the sales figures coming out lately, its a good time to play everyone's favourite Vancouver real estate game:

http://www.crackshackormansion.com/

(apologies if it's been posted before)
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  #29  
Old Posted Apr 15, 2010, 8:10 PM
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Good game.

Although the look of the house really has nothing to do with what it is. Basically if a small run down house was on the west side of Vancouver it easily sells for over a million. If it is out in Langely it wouldn't.

So it is impossible to guess what the house may be without knowing where it is.
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  #30  
Old Posted Apr 15, 2010, 8:28 PM
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Haha amazing link, i got 16/16 on my first try!
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  #31  
Old Posted Apr 17, 2010, 2:14 PM
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in comparison to what;s going on here, check out this ominous Top 10 list:

U.S. Cities In Free Fall
Francesca Levy, Forbes.com Apr 13th, 2010

"Cities in the "Sand States" of Florida, California, Arizona and Nevada, where overbuilding was rampant, are also in trouble, claiming nine of the top 10 spots in our list of cities in free fall. In Las Vegas, Riverside, Calif., and Phoenix, median home prices have fallen 50%, 44% and 37% from their respective peaks. Jobs are vanishing. Though country-wide, employers added 162,00 jobs last month, Riverside gained 13% fewer jobs in February 2010 (the latest numbers available by metro) than it did the same month three years earlier. Tampa, Fla., saw a 10% drop, and Los Angeles added 9% fewer jobs over the same time period."

full article; http://realestate.yahoo.com/promo/us...s-in-free-fall
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  #32  
Old Posted Apr 17, 2010, 2:30 PM
cabotp cabotp is offline
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So what exactly is the comparison.

While some people would love to see a 50% drop in house prices. It isn't going to happen in this area. Not unless Metro Vancouver becomes a place that nobody wants to live in. Also our lack of land space will continually push for higher land prices. All those places in the US that were mentioned have so much land space that they can never run out. So there is no incentive for the price of land to rise.

I do see the possibility of a slight drop. Especially once the HST kicks in and the interest rates start to climb. Right now you are seeing a frenzy as people try and sell and buy before both happens. So come 3rd and 4th quarters. You will probably see less activity than the first and 2nd quarters. But the activity won't drop to the point that the house prices will crash. They will probably just stabilize and climb at the rate of inflation or just below.
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  #33  
Old Posted Apr 17, 2010, 4:16 PM
jsbertram jsbertram is offline
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And then there is what Detroit wants (has to?) do:
Detroit, the very symbol of American industrial might for most of the 20th century, is drawing up a radical renewal plan that calls for turning large swaths of this now-blighted, rusted-out city back into the fields and farmland that existed before the automobile.
Operating on a scale never before attempted in this country, the city would demolish houses in some of the most desolate sections of Detroit and move residents into stronger neighborhoods. Roughly a quarter of the 139-square-mile city could go from urban to semi-rural.
Near downtown, fruit trees and vegetable farms would replace neighborhoods that are an eerie landscape of empty buildings and vacant lots. Suburban commuters heading into the city center might pass through what looks like the countryside to get there. Surviving neighborhoods in the birthplace of the auto industry would become pockets in expanses of green.

Detroit to Bulldoze 40 Square Miles
http://www.wilx.com/news/headlines/87054002.html

The government looking at expanding a pioneering scheme in Flint, one of the poorest US cities, which involves razing entire districts and returning the land to nature.

Local politicians believe the city must contract by as much as 40 per cent, concentrating the dwindling population and local services into a more viable area.

US cities may have to be bulldozed in order to survive
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/f...o-survive.html

Living on the prairies it's not uncommon to see entire towns and villages abandoned, but to read that a city like Detroit has lost half its population in the last few decades (due to 'urban flight' of its population to the nearby suburbs) and the solution is to 'de-populate' entire neighborhoods, remove all the buildings, and let the land return back to urban farmland so the city doesn't have to provide services like street maintenance, lighting, police, fire & medical services, or water & power to the area.

I was also reading about another city (name escapes me right now) that decided the way to reverse their de-population problem (and gain more tax revenue) was to annex the surrounding suburbs that the people had fled to years ago. Which led to another round of de-population as people in the newly-annexed suburbs simply relocated even further away from the enlarged city to avoid the higher taxes and other urban issues.
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  #34  
Old Posted Apr 17, 2010, 4:30 PM
delboy delboy is offline
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Originally Posted by cabotp View Post
So what exactly is the comparison.

While some people would love to see a 50% drop in house prices. It isn't going to happen in this area. Not unless Metro Vancouver becomes a place that nobody wants to live in. Also our lack of land space will continually push for higher land prices. All those places in the US that were mentioned have so much land space that they can never run out. So there is no incentive for the price of land to rise.

I do see the possibility of a slight drop. Especially once the HST kicks in and the interest rates start to climb. Right now you are seeing a frenzy as people try and sell and buy before both happens. So come 3rd and 4th quarters. You will probably see less activity than the first and 2nd quarters. But the activity won't drop to the point that the house prices will crash. They will probably just stabilize and climb at the rate of inflation or just below.
I fear we may be approaching a day of reckoning in Vancouver. Consumer debt in Canada is out of control, it takes 70 percent of one's income to own here. We have the distinction of having one of the most severely unaffordable markets in the world.

Add on much stricter mortgage rules, 10 percent down, qualification based on 5 year closed term, less income recognition for rental income, and of course the hst.......

How quick we forget the micro collapse of 2008 with SFH homes in vancouver losing close to 25 percent of their value. Of course interest rates came in to save the day, and govenrment policy seems to perpetuate the bubble here indefinitely. Listings are already on the rise and sales seemed to have peaked.

I fear things may end badly, very badly.
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  #35  
Old Posted Apr 17, 2010, 8:03 PM
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Originally Posted by delboy View Post
I fear we may be approaching a day of reckoning in Vancouver. Consumer debt in Canada is out of control, it takes 70 percent of one's income to own here. We have the distinction of having one of the most severely unaffordable markets in the world.

Add on much stricter mortgage rules, 10 percent down, qualification based on 5 year closed term, less income recognition for rental income, and of course the hst.......

How quick we forget the micro collapse of 2008 with SFH homes in vancouver losing close to 25 percent of their value. Of course interest rates came in to save the day, and govenrment policy seems to perpetuate the bubble here indefinitely. Listings are already on the rise and sales seemed to have peaked.

I fear things may end badly, very badly.
There's more than interest rates at play here, but you'll get pummelled by the politically correct crowd if you mention it.
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  #36  
Old Posted Apr 17, 2010, 9:37 PM
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Nothing lasts for ever and at some point things will collapse.
The only thing propping up Vancouver prices is foreign money, you have nearly 4 billion people in the world who live in countries where their economy is expanding double to quadruple the rate of ours, this in turn spews out literally millions of extremely wealthy people who where lucky enough to capitalize on the massive opportunities available in rapidly growing economies. Lots of these people then take their money and kids and move them to Vancouver where they have the safety and stability provided by a mature and slow growth economy. This in turn raises house prices above what they should be in a growing region such as Vancouver. There is money flowing like this in to Vancouver from all over the world, there are rich Russians, Brazilians, Mexicans, Indians, Iranians, and obviously Chinese, Taiwanese, etc. so on and so on living in this city or their kids living in their city or just owning empty properties in this city to work as a safe haven.

Personally I think the country and city is missing a really huge opportunity and needs to better milk these people out of more of their money, moving here should not be a right for the rich but a bought privilege. There should be a sliding investment dollar scale that is related to the wealth of people immigrating here, not a pitiful $250,000 investment or even cheaper a international school and a lawyer. There is lots of people who get their citizenship and buy their property but dont actually invest any real money in the economy, they buy their way in but their money is actually used outside of the country and Canada doesnt benefit at all while the locals get inflated housing prices.

Gotta milk these people more efficiently, not to discourage them from coming but to set the price to come at a more realistic level. And this has nothing to do with educated middle class immigrants. Really there should be a set amount each year of the number of educated workers with zero investment dollars who come in, and a separate amount of rich investors regardless of their education etc. to come in and pay(if you have money you fall in to category B and if you dont you fall in category A and try to keep everything a bit more balanced)

Another option that im not the bigest fan off is to take the American model and tax income outside of Canada, boy would that change things for the middle class out here, might even be able to halve the tax rate and still take in double the tax revenue. Our economy would surge instantly and lots of money would flow in, if you set a different and flexible tax rate for overseas income then you can keep the benefits going in to the long term.

Last edited by cornholio; Apr 17, 2010 at 9:51 PM.
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  #37  
Old Posted Apr 17, 2010, 9:48 PM
trofirhen trofirhen is offline
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Right on, Corholio !!
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  #38  
Old Posted Apr 17, 2010, 9:55 PM
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Wasn't the evil foreign buyer thing found to be a myth... like really only around 3% of buyers?
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  #39  
Old Posted Apr 17, 2010, 9:57 PM
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Ya it's not really foreign money except for the very top of the market. The multi-million dollar properties. Most buyers are local.
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  #40  
Old Posted Apr 17, 2010, 9:58 PM
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Ya it's not really foreign money except for the very top of the market. The multi-million dollar properties. Most buyers are local.
Stupid people pushing up the price of those $25 million penthouses. I bet they'd be only 750,000 if not for them !

Like I said in another thread, since you actually have to strictly *qualify* for a mortgage in Canada (which is why we are not having the economic problems of the USA)... I don't know where the money is coming from, but evidently it is there. And you can't even blame rich Chinese people, as I believe it was jlousa who posted the study that proved it to be a myth, that only 3% of buyers (or some other nominally low number) are actually foreign.

It is probably far more likely to say that evil wealthier Canadians are moving to the coast for its temperate climate.
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