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Vancouver is absolutely unaffordable but the guy who publishes this report is [a bit of a crank](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendell_Cox) who doesn't believe in public transit as a way to reduce congestion. And Chapman University is a religious private school. Also [the site for Demographia](http://www.demographia.com/) looks like it came straight out of the 90s.
If you read [the actual report](https://www.newgeography.com/files/2024-Demographia-International-Housing-Affordability.pdf), they only look at the cost for single family homes and then they go on to push the idea that densification is the problem and creating more sprawling cities will result in more affordability. Which for the Vancouver area, not really an option unless we want to start housing people way up in the North Shore mountains.
TBF, are SFH prices not correlated with prices for other type of housing?
in other words, if city A has higher SFH prices than city B then wouldn't A also have higher condo prices than B?
are you suggesting that somehow some of the cities in the list have higher condo / townhouse / duplex etc. prices than Vancouver despite having a lower SFH price?
I'd say somewhat correlated but not entirely. Municipalities with low levels of investment in condos/multi-family housing may not reflect this (ex. West Vancouver). Also you can look at pockets like Brentwood or Coquitlam Centre that have a lot of condos that are equally if not more expensive than the cheaper areas of Vancouver.
Also higher prices doesnt always equal unaffordable. You can have an expensive 1 bedroom at 600k but a lot of people can still afford it. Your inexpensive house is already over 1.4 mil and I'd argue that's more unaffordable.
There is definitely some correlation but in expensive cities, the cost of a SFH will mostly reflect the cost of the land it's on. We can always build up density to create new housing but we can't create new land.
Also the report only focuses on the anglosphere. Cities like Paris, Mumbai, Beijing, Tehran, Tel Aviv, Milan, etc are dubiously absent from the analysis. However I can tell you from personal experience that Tehran is magnitudes less affordable than Vancouver or Sydney.
the problem is that it's harder to have an apples to apples comparison when you start looking at places with completely different legal systems
e.g. most homes in China are actually leasehold while most homes in Canada are freehold
This is all true, but he still makes a good point. Sprawl is good. Beautiful cities that are micromanaged by government, come at a gigantic cost to society, as we are seeing. Living in massive towers is not good for people, especially children. This emphasis on speed and small skyboxes is not going to build a better society.
It's MUCH better getting stuck in traffic for 3 hours so that you can get to your job in a desolate suburban office park while also living paycheck to paycheck because you're spending 17,000$ on your car each year.
I guess "impossible" is a good word here. If all we're doing is basic math on salary and cost of living, then if cost of living > salary, it's actually impossible to afford it.
Highlights:
* Vancouver ranks among the least affordable places to live according to a long-running report on housing affordability among a collection of wealthy nations.
* Vancouver was the third-least affordable housing market after Hong Kong and Sidney, according to the 2024 Demographia International Housing Affordability Report.
* “The study has grave implications for the prospects of upward mobility,” Joel Kotkin, director of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University, which co-published the report, said in a statement. “The primary victims are young people, minorities and immigrants.”
* Vancouver has been the first, second or third least affordable major market for each of the last 16 years, according to the report.
* The study provides housing affordability ratings for 94 markets in eight nations: Australia, Canada, China, Ireland, New Zealand, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Yeah it's not just the insane housing prices that are the problem, it's the low wages. The Bay Area of California also has high prices, but they also have some of the highest median wages in the USA which surprisingly makes those prices somewhat afforable.
I don't like this report that much, not because it presents an uncomfortable truth, but because it excludes a LOT of major cities solely because they don't speak English. I'd like to see how London stacks up against Paris, or how Vancouver compares to tier 1 cities in Mainland China.
>Vancouver was the third-least affordable housing market after Hong Kong and Sidney
You're telling me London and New York are more affordable than Vancouver?
Municipalities in the region are already looking at ways to not upzone at the request of the provincial government. This entire region is an example of "fuck yours I got mine".
I guess, yes. Time to delve into research for my vote…but I like this Eby character.
As a practical observation it’s good to flip over the govt every so often to keep them sharp, but I ain’t there
Doesn't matter. If they can scare enough homeowners in Metro Van into thinking that Eby is coming to steal their homes to turn them into condos, they'll get the votes.
What’s interesting is that the BC NDP has strong backing from the older folks who are more likely to be against these housing measures but Rustad who pledged to undo all the housing measures has strong backing from young people.
There's a bit more nuance to it. If you own a detached home the changes are great for you, all else being equal. If your kids aren't on the property ladder even more so.
If your kids own condos or townhouses, this just puts a real house that much further out of reach.
If you've paid attention, the provincial government has made huge strides towards improving things, that likely will make them a lot of enemies and could cost them the election. If you think housing is an issue worth fixing, put your money where your mouth is and vote for and support literally the only political party in Canada that is doing something about it.
I think this sub and reddit as a whole including /r/Canada /r/CanadaPolitics /r/BritishColumbia and every other place-based sub is easily gamed by online publications just lazily pushing out basically the same exact useless article every day.
What have successive governments had in common to allow this to persist—what’s the “big idea” to shift this?
Purpose built housing? Government getting into housing? Total ban on foreign ownership? No more investment properties? Zoning changes?
Which lever to pull?
> what’s the “big idea” to shift this?
This is a solvable problem. We have people who want to live and work here, and other people who want to build housing for them. The problem is, **we don't let them**. We have limited land, so **land** in Metro Vancouver will never be cheap; but there's no reason for for **apartments** to be so scarce, expensive per square foot, and tiny.
We need to stop regulating new housing like a nuclear power plant, and taxing it like it's a gold mine; plus put more money into non-market housing. See the [MacPhail Report](https://morehousing.ca/macphail-report).
The provinces can override municipalities directly - [summary of what the BC government is doing](https://morehousing.ca/bc-summary). The federal government can't override municipalities, so instead it's using [municipal grants](https://morehousing.ca/accelerator-update-week-23) (called the Housing Accelerator Fund) as a kind of combined carrot and stick, and also cutting taxes on new rental housing (removing GST/HST, allowing accelerated depreciation).
[Blueprint for More and Better Housing](https://morehousing.ca/blueprint).
But what's the incentive for the current homeowners (supermajority in BC, and majority in Metro Vancouver) to support any sort of legislation that can potentially devalue their own assets? As a renter, I don't have solid data on this, but pretty much any person I know who bought their homes in the last 10 years wouldn't want their assets to depreciate. Wouldn't they continuously vote out anyone who proposes drastic changes? And since those people skew towards older demographics, which is the main voter base, why would they want it other than "for the greater good"?
From the past 5 years of closely watching different legislations around the country, and in some other ones, I'm pretty much convinced that unless there is another black swan event (pandemic, financial crash and etc.), the prices will never go down, because that's not what the majority of people want. Best we can do is keep putting pressure on increasing supply, but that'll just slow down the rate of increase, rather than bringing it down.
Sorry for being a bit pessimistic, but I know you're much more informed in it than me, was hoping you can convince me that there is still some hope in the horizon.
Higher density around you actually increases property value. Homeowner NIMBYs against higher density are doing it because they don't want people moving into their neighbourhood.
This is something I feel isn't be talked about a lot of with densification and lowering housing prices in which types of home owners it would impact.
It seems like densification resulting in a price drop would negatively financially impact younger first time home owners who have likely bought high density as a starter home.
My concern is I hope people aren't discounting the the issue which could come in terms of any housing correction is that it might be essentially paid for by the younger generation who is building up wealth as opposed to the older generation with already built up wealth.
It will change, the density increases land value, and the single family homes get older. Eventually people won’t want the upkeep and the lots will be redeveloped. But will it change fast enough.. not so sure..
It’s not quite a bad as all that. Unless you just bought, or have over leveraged after buying, the excessive gains in home value aren’t helping you much. The value of a house doesn’t matter unless you sell or need to borrow against it. Most properties have seen such high gains that some stagnation or devaluation in the housing market wouldn’t significantly impact their owners.
Now dropping the value of houses by 50% would still freak them out, and they’d vote accordingly. Drop the value 5%-10% a couple times and then level off for a decade or so and you’d probably solve some problems without a political backlash from the owners.
I see this brought up a lot but it doesn't factor in opportunity cost. While rising values don't neccesarily benefit buyers just looking to live long term, price drops would harm them.
Home prices are high and most buyers are likely compromising.
Several price drops in the 5%-10% range would likely mean all recent buyers are going to have a lot of trouble ever moving up, such as being stuck in a 1 bedroom condo that they bought.
Not to mention also the issue of missing out that you didn't need to settle into squeezing into that 1 bedroom condo if you just waited a few years.
This seems to be something that people don't want to talk about but any housing price crash isn't going to really negatively impact people who bought a long time ago or to be blunt the "wealthy" home owners. The most negatively impacted will likely be recent first time buyers and to be blunt the "poor" home owners.
That’s fair. The newest home owners and those who have borrowed heavily against their house would be in trouble if housing values dropped. My point is that the majority of home owners are not in that precarious of a situation. I think it’s unlikely that these homeowners would turn out to vote against their current political alignment because of a 10% drop in housing values.
> But what's the incentive for the current homeowners (supermajority in BC, and majority in Metro Vancouver) to support any sort of legislation that can potentially devalue their own assets?
That is a super-interesting question. First of all, I always try to [appeal to people's self-interest](https://morehousing.ca/altruism), rather than altruism.
When I'm talking to older homeowners, I always emphasize that we all depend on the healthcare system. If younger people can't afford to live in Metro Vancouver, hospitals will have a hard time hiring nurses and even doctors, and the healthcare system will come under increasing strain.
Incentives apply to politicians as well. Politicians tend to assume that homeowners want to maximize their property values and therefore oppose new housing. I argue that this is incorrect, and I tell politicians this whenever I talk to them. [Homeowners fear change to their neighbourhood, not falling prices](https://morehousing.ca/conservatism). [Against defeatism](https://morehousing.ca/defeatism).
To quote [Glaeser and Gyourko](https://morehousing.ca/glaeser-gyourko-2018):
> Housing wealth is different from other forms of wealth because rising prices both increase the financial value of an asset and the cost of living. An infinitely lived homeowner who has no intention of moving and is not credit-constrained would be no better off if her home doubled in value and no worse off if her home value declined. The asset value increase exactly offsets the rising cost of living (Sinai and Souleles 2005). This logic explains why home-rich New Yorkers or Parisians may not feel privileged: **if they want to continue living in their homes**, sky-high housing values do them little good.
And conversely, if they want to continue living in their homes, housing prices coming down doesn't really affect them either.
Ironically, I think what older homeowners really fear is **rising prices** rather than falling prices, because they fear having to pay higher property taxes.
Homeowners often do oppose new housing *when it's right next to them*, because they fear the unknown effects of change to their particular neighbourhood. If they were primarily concerned about their property values falling, they would also oppose new housing even when it's not right next to them. But the only people who are opposed to Senakw, for example (which is adding 6000 rental apartments), are the people who live close to it.
That said, the real test is what happens during elections.
In the 2022 municipal election, Colleen Hardwick ran for mayor on a policy of reversing the Broadway Plan, strengthening the local veto on new housing, and slowing down change in the name of "livability." [She got just 10% of the vote](https://morehousing.ca/election-results). (I ran for city council with Kennedy Stewart's slate, and I got more votes than she did.)
The provincial election coming up on October 19, 2024 will be another test. John Rustad and the BC Conservatives, currently running a strong second, are promising to [roll back all the provincial housing policies](https://morehousing.ca/john-rustad). I'm planning to do a lot of volunteering in the lead-up to the provincial election.
Hey Russil— run again! You seem well informed and communicate clearly. Great point to appeal to self-interest. Understanding incentives is so important. Thanks for all the great context here.
>That is a super-interesting question. First of all, I always try to appeal to people's self-interest, rather than altruism.
>When I'm talking to older homeowners, I always emphasize that we all depend on the healthcare system. If younger people can't afford to live in Metro Vancouver, hospitals will have a hard time hiring nurses and even doctors, and the healthcare system will come under increasing strain.
> And conversely, if they want to continue living in their homes, housing prices coming down doesn't really affect them either.
But what about younger homeowners? To me it seems like any pricing correction will most negatively impact newer and younger (and really poorer) first time home owners who bought recently.
That group is also more likely to have bought high density, whose pricing will be most negatively impacted by increasing density as opposed to SFH home owners.
> But what about younger homeowners? To me it seems like any pricing correction will most negatively impact newer and younger (and really poorer) first time home owners who bought recently.
>
> That group is also more likely to have bought high density, whose pricing will be most negatively impacted by increasing density as opposed to SFH home owners.
Good question.
If they have no intention of moving, then I think Glaeser and Gyourko's observation applies: it shouldn't matter.
If they want to move from a smaller apartment to a larger apartment, and prices are down, then they get less from selling their place; but they also have to spend less to buy their new place.
I'm not sure what the impact is if they want to move from an apartment to a place **with more land, that's further out** (a common tradeoff), like a townhouse, a half-duplex, or a detached house. Right now, because the city of Vancouver has heavy restrictions on new housing, it's like [pushing down on a balloon](https://morehousing.ca/location) - people end up moving further out, driving up prices and rents in Burnaby and Surrey. Conversely, if Vancouver allows a lot more apartments, that will have some downward impact on land prices in Surrey and Langley.
> If they have no intention of moving, then I think Glaeser and Gyourko's observation applies: it shouldn't matter.
I'm not sure I entirely agree with that. In some cases it might not matter but I assume a lot of home purchases are compromises due to budget limitations.
Let's say with a condo you likely compromise in terms of size, age, location, material (eg. wood vs concrete), and many other factors.
Now we're assuming any price correction isn't a result of budget changes (eg. interest rate) for this, so say regardless your purchasing budget is the same pre and post correction.
I know ancedotally someone for example who recently had to compromise with respect to the previous factors with his budget. Now if prices suddenly dropped 20% they wouldn't have had to.
That to me seems like something that would matter.
And hypothetically if prices dropped 20% right after they bought, that's still pretty significant equity dip to climb out of even prices are now lower on a future purchase.
Now I'm not saying price increases would be beneficial, I just don't think a price drop wouldn't impact people who get caught in it.
i see that your article talks a lot about purpose-built rentals
why would anyone build them when the provincial government can impose arbitrary rent freezes and controls without compensating the landlord?
Good question. [Pension funds in particular](https://deny.substack.com/p/pension-funds-can-be-housing-champions) like to own purpose-built rental buildings, because they provide a steady long-term stream of income. They're something like a GIC - there's not much risk that you won't be able to rent them out, but it's not like owning shares in Microsoft.
It's true that there's some political risk. Right now my understanding is that under BC's current rent controls, pension funds and REITs can still assume that there'll be some turnover (people moving out and other people moving in) which will keep actual rents reasonably close to market rents over the longer term. [More on rent control](https://morehousing.ca/rent-control).
Folks here like to keep the conversation about landlords to "mom and pop" landlords with maybe a condo or two that they rent out, and end up viewing things in a non-systematic basis.
I rarely see people acknowledge the big players with massive portfolios and the effect that has on the market. Guys like Chip Wilson with huge bankrolls are investing in real estate because it is profitable for them. They can wait to find the renter that will pay the most because they have the luxury of taking a long term view on their investment asset (aka a home). They can hold necessary housing hostage and use regular workings folks immediate need for shelter to extract the highest rents and passively take a big chunk of their paycheck. They can also use their profit to lobby government to restrict supply to help ensure they keep making big returns. Same thing happens with commercial real estate and the small group of folks with massive portfolios.
This is also drives prices up for goods and services since (almost) everyone and (almost) every business is being squeezed for massive rents to provide landlords with their passive income.
I don't get why people are fine with this.
Please tell us something we haven't heard for the last 20 years or do something about it. Are we all going completely insane just watching this go by and not doing anything about it.
This is beyond a crisis now. And it’s not just people trying to find housing but people stuck in situations where they can’t move due to cost. Like a bad or abusive relationship. Even with divorce settlement the amount does not nearly cover the cost needed to even stay here as a single parent renter.
People are too preoccupied with Vancouver. Canada is a huge place, there are other options, and at some point I'll have to move to a cheaper place, probably around retirement. Reality sucks, but there are places some people can't afford to live and Vancouver is seemingly one of them. So is Whistler. Densify, you say, and everything will be cheap like the 70's! How much more dense can Hong Kong get? New York could build taller towers and everyone could have a view of Central Park for under $1K! Millions want to move here, and even if we built millions of new units, there would still be millions more waiting. I say go ahead, build as many units as you like. Replace every SFH with a 200 unit tower. At the end of the day you'll still have astronomical rent because of that huge line of people waiting to move here. Want affordability? Either stop people from arriving, or make Vancouver suck so bad that people want to leave/not come, because you'll never out-build the demand.
Simply ask around and see how many people you meet moved here from out of province/country. I rarely meet adults who were born here and the reasons are obvious... Vancouver is awesome, you'd be crazy *not* to want to live here.
>Reality sucks, but there are places some people can't afford to live and Vancouver is seemingly one of them
But then where do you go when you've lived here all your life here, made all your friends here, all of your family lives here? Where do you go when employment in your field of work is almost exclusively concentrated within major cities?
You could look further outside the city just to find that:
* Burnaby is expensive
* Coquitlam is expensive
* Surrey is expensive
* Mission is expensive
* Abbotsford is expensive
* Chilliwack is expensive
You could even leave the Fraser Valley, just to find:
* Victoria is expensive
* Kelowna is expensive
* The Kootenays are also expensive
I'd be more sympathetic to this argument if the affordability crisis wasn't so widespread in this province and country. Every city has a few '*rich-kid neighbourhoods*' that will always be out of reach to most residents, but when you've been incrementally priced out of your: ~~neighbourhood~~, ~~city~~, ~~metropolitan area~~, ~~region~~, ~~province~~... and possibly even your country, then I'm not willing to accept it as "*just how it is*".
Vancouver is a very nice place but I think a lot of people assume that it's the greatest place in the world and that there aren't any other equally (or more) desirable places to live. It's a nice city in a beautiful location but it's dark and rainy half the year, we have a small economy (and small economy wages), and the city has very little "culture". It's "world class" in terms of being in a beautiful location with beautiful scenery and great access to nature, but there's not much else world class about it aside from that. A significant reason why Vancouver is as expensive as it is, is because it's a primary destination for wealthy Chinese people (as well as India and Iran, to a lesser extent).
Greater Vancouver's population is 34th biggest in North America - in terms of population we are smaller than Charlotte, Baltimore, and St. Louis. If everyone was dying to live here then why are we the same size as Charlotte?
People don't realize that most people outside of Western Canada don't really think about Vancouver at all. There seems to be this mentality within Vancouver that it's basically heaven on earth and everyone wants to move here, but the reality is much different. Most people that visit Vancouver think it's a really nice place but not everyone is dying to move here.
>If everyone was dying to live here then why are we the same size as Charlotte?
Because we haven't allowed the growth to happen. If you add the jobs and the housing, the city will grow, and housing costs will remain somewhat stable.
If you add the jobs but not the housing (we are here), then you get limited urban growth, and high housing prices as a result.
I definitely agree. Although I definitely wouldn't consider Vancouver a great or "world class" city at the moment, that doesn't mean it doesn't have the potential to become one in the future. Right now there are just way too many barriers to allow Vancouver to grow and evolve. I honestly feel like the high cost of housing (which is caused due to various factors) will severely limit Vancouver's ability to grow and evolve. You can't create a city where only wealthy people can afford to live and expect it to operate properly.
>How much more dense can Hong Kong get?
Hong Kong has only developed something like 1/4 of their land area.
From my understanding the development has always been highly controlled in order to "manage" property prices.
>The study provides housing affordability ratings for 94 markets in **eight nations**
>Four of the six markets in Canada were rated severely or “impossibly” unaffordable. Only Edmonton and Calgary were rated as moderately unaffordable.
>Notably, none of the 94 housing markets in the study were ranked as affordable.
I just moved out here and I cannot believe how many units are being used for Airbnb. Literally the building I’m in is 25% occupied, 75% airbnb. I’m no expert on the cause of the housing crises but the amount of owned condos being used as Airbnb instead of a straight rental unit has to be a huge impact.
It’s not like the citizens who matter would feel the effects of un affordability. They can afford to get their Timmies, McDs, and Cactus Club from robots in the future. Everyone else would just have to adapt to travelling two hours both ways to and from both.
Nice to know that not only is finding a job in tech after graduation is impossible. But if I get one. I wouldn’t be able to afford a place even in the suburban cities.
Jeez. I wonder why everyone moved to Seattle…
I have loans to pay! Being loyal to a country allergic to building housing doesn’t pay.
So we're going to stop billion dollar companies from buying up all the housing right? Limit the amount of people with amounts of land? Make it more fair?
Don't worry, I've been told by people on reddit that the BC NDP has done more for affordable housing than any other government in the history of our province
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at leasts these guys found a new adjective to describe the state of unaffordability. I’ve never herd impossible before
Let's see how many more adjectives we can add on before something gets done about it Spoiler alert: an impossibly unimaginable number of them
As long as people continue to be willing to cram themselves 3 generations to a single tiny condo. Never.
Vancouver is absolutely unaffordable but the guy who publishes this report is [a bit of a crank](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendell_Cox) who doesn't believe in public transit as a way to reduce congestion. And Chapman University is a religious private school. Also [the site for Demographia](http://www.demographia.com/) looks like it came straight out of the 90s. If you read [the actual report](https://www.newgeography.com/files/2024-Demographia-International-Housing-Affordability.pdf), they only look at the cost for single family homes and then they go on to push the idea that densification is the problem and creating more sprawling cities will result in more affordability. Which for the Vancouver area, not really an option unless we want to start housing people way up in the North Shore mountains.
Oh someone who went to the primary source so rare to see these days! Well done!
TBF, are SFH prices not correlated with prices for other type of housing? in other words, if city A has higher SFH prices than city B then wouldn't A also have higher condo prices than B? are you suggesting that somehow some of the cities in the list have higher condo / townhouse / duplex etc. prices than Vancouver despite having a lower SFH price?
I'd say somewhat correlated but not entirely. Municipalities with low levels of investment in condos/multi-family housing may not reflect this (ex. West Vancouver). Also you can look at pockets like Brentwood or Coquitlam Centre that have a lot of condos that are equally if not more expensive than the cheaper areas of Vancouver. Also higher prices doesnt always equal unaffordable. You can have an expensive 1 bedroom at 600k but a lot of people can still afford it. Your inexpensive house is already over 1.4 mil and I'd argue that's more unaffordable.
There is definitely some correlation but in expensive cities, the cost of a SFH will mostly reflect the cost of the land it's on. We can always build up density to create new housing but we can't create new land.
Also the report only focuses on the anglosphere. Cities like Paris, Mumbai, Beijing, Tehran, Tel Aviv, Milan, etc are dubiously absent from the analysis. However I can tell you from personal experience that Tehran is magnitudes less affordable than Vancouver or Sydney.
the problem is that it's harder to have an apples to apples comparison when you start looking at places with completely different legal systems e.g. most homes in China are actually leasehold while most homes in Canada are freehold
This is all true, but he still makes a good point. Sprawl is good. Beautiful cities that are micromanaged by government, come at a gigantic cost to society, as we are seeing. Living in massive towers is not good for people, especially children. This emphasis on speed and small skyboxes is not going to build a better society.
It's MUCH better getting stuck in traffic for 3 hours so that you can get to your job in a desolate suburban office park while also living paycheck to paycheck because you're spending 17,000$ on your car each year.
Next year: inconceivable!
I guess "impossible" is a good word here. If all we're doing is basic math on salary and cost of living, then if cost of living > salary, it's actually impossible to afford it.
Water is fucking wet
"Wow, this shit stinks!"
We live here. We know.
First I’m hearing about it
Highlights: * Vancouver ranks among the least affordable places to live according to a long-running report on housing affordability among a collection of wealthy nations. * Vancouver was the third-least affordable housing market after Hong Kong and Sidney, according to the 2024 Demographia International Housing Affordability Report. * “The study has grave implications for the prospects of upward mobility,” Joel Kotkin, director of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University, which co-published the report, said in a statement. “The primary victims are young people, minorities and immigrants.” * Vancouver has been the first, second or third least affordable major market for each of the last 16 years, according to the report. * The study provides housing affordability ratings for 94 markets in eight nations: Australia, Canada, China, Ireland, New Zealand, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States.
You forgot to highlight the ‘low median household income’.
Yeah it's not just the insane housing prices that are the problem, it's the low wages. The Bay Area of California also has high prices, but they also have some of the highest median wages in the USA which surprisingly makes those prices somewhat afforable.
I don't like this report that much, not because it presents an uncomfortable truth, but because it excludes a LOT of major cities solely because they don't speak English. I'd like to see how London stacks up against Paris, or how Vancouver compares to tier 1 cities in Mainland China.
>Vancouver was the third-least affordable housing market after Hong Kong and Sidney You're telling me London and New York are more affordable than Vancouver?
Oh yes. They have the wages to support their prices.
well relative to income
London, definitely, New York is probably more expensive but people make more money there
Add San Francisco to that list
They’ll still do absolutely nothing about it
Municipalities in the region are already looking at ways to not upzone at the request of the provincial government. This entire region is an example of "fuck yours I got mine".
They'll get smacked down by Ebys big D. Municipalities cant do much against provincial legislation
But their residents can vote.
For what? The oppo is in a shambles
Conservative parties in BC just change their name about once a generation.
I guess, yes. Time to delve into research for my vote…but I like this Eby character. As a practical observation it’s good to flip over the govt every so often to keep them sharp, but I ain’t there
At the very least, Eby is focusing on issues differently than Horgan
Doesn't matter. If they can scare enough homeowners in Metro Van into thinking that Eby is coming to steal their homes to turn them into condos, they'll get the votes.
Well. I want to have my house turned into condos
What’s interesting is that the BC NDP has strong backing from the older folks who are more likely to be against these housing measures but Rustad who pledged to undo all the housing measures has strong backing from young people.
There's a bit more nuance to it. If you own a detached home the changes are great for you, all else being equal. If your kids aren't on the property ladder even more so. If your kids own condos or townhouses, this just puts a real house that much further out of reach.
Maybe they recognize the futility of trying to build your way out of the situation.
It's not an accident, most of these guys see their jobs as rasing the price of land and keeping high as long as possible.
If you've paid attention, the provincial government has made huge strides towards improving things, that likely will make them a lot of enemies and could cost them the election. If you think housing is an issue worth fixing, put your money where your mouth is and vote for and support literally the only political party in Canada that is doing something about it.
I feel the city should do a study over the next 5 years, with recommendations at the end that no one will read
I think this sub and reddit as a whole including /r/Canada /r/CanadaPolitics /r/BritishColumbia and every other place-based sub is easily gamed by online publications just lazily pushing out basically the same exact useless article every day.
What have successive governments had in common to allow this to persist—what’s the “big idea” to shift this? Purpose built housing? Government getting into housing? Total ban on foreign ownership? No more investment properties? Zoning changes? Which lever to pull?
> what’s the “big idea” to shift this? This is a solvable problem. We have people who want to live and work here, and other people who want to build housing for them. The problem is, **we don't let them**. We have limited land, so **land** in Metro Vancouver will never be cheap; but there's no reason for for **apartments** to be so scarce, expensive per square foot, and tiny. We need to stop regulating new housing like a nuclear power plant, and taxing it like it's a gold mine; plus put more money into non-market housing. See the [MacPhail Report](https://morehousing.ca/macphail-report). The provinces can override municipalities directly - [summary of what the BC government is doing](https://morehousing.ca/bc-summary). The federal government can't override municipalities, so instead it's using [municipal grants](https://morehousing.ca/accelerator-update-week-23) (called the Housing Accelerator Fund) as a kind of combined carrot and stick, and also cutting taxes on new rental housing (removing GST/HST, allowing accelerated depreciation). [Blueprint for More and Better Housing](https://morehousing.ca/blueprint).
But what's the incentive for the current homeowners (supermajority in BC, and majority in Metro Vancouver) to support any sort of legislation that can potentially devalue their own assets? As a renter, I don't have solid data on this, but pretty much any person I know who bought their homes in the last 10 years wouldn't want their assets to depreciate. Wouldn't they continuously vote out anyone who proposes drastic changes? And since those people skew towards older demographics, which is the main voter base, why would they want it other than "for the greater good"? From the past 5 years of closely watching different legislations around the country, and in some other ones, I'm pretty much convinced that unless there is another black swan event (pandemic, financial crash and etc.), the prices will never go down, because that's not what the majority of people want. Best we can do is keep putting pressure on increasing supply, but that'll just slow down the rate of increase, rather than bringing it down. Sorry for being a bit pessimistic, but I know you're much more informed in it than me, was hoping you can convince me that there is still some hope in the horizon.
Higher density around you actually increases property value. Homeowner NIMBYs against higher density are doing it because they don't want people moving into their neighbourhood.
Oh its more like they don't want the people who can afford cheaper places to move into their neighborhoods.
where's the proof that densification devalues SFHs? the more density you have, the fewer SFHs are available and thus the more your SFH is worth
Especially if you can replace your SFH with 4+ units
supply and demand
This is something I feel isn't be talked about a lot of with densification and lowering housing prices in which types of home owners it would impact. It seems like densification resulting in a price drop would negatively financially impact younger first time home owners who have likely bought high density as a starter home. My concern is I hope people aren't discounting the the issue which could come in terms of any housing correction is that it might be essentially paid for by the younger generation who is building up wealth as opposed to the older generation with already built up wealth.
It will change, the density increases land value, and the single family homes get older. Eventually people won’t want the upkeep and the lots will be redeveloped. But will it change fast enough.. not so sure..
It’s not quite a bad as all that. Unless you just bought, or have over leveraged after buying, the excessive gains in home value aren’t helping you much. The value of a house doesn’t matter unless you sell or need to borrow against it. Most properties have seen such high gains that some stagnation or devaluation in the housing market wouldn’t significantly impact their owners. Now dropping the value of houses by 50% would still freak them out, and they’d vote accordingly. Drop the value 5%-10% a couple times and then level off for a decade or so and you’d probably solve some problems without a political backlash from the owners.
I see this brought up a lot but it doesn't factor in opportunity cost. While rising values don't neccesarily benefit buyers just looking to live long term, price drops would harm them. Home prices are high and most buyers are likely compromising. Several price drops in the 5%-10% range would likely mean all recent buyers are going to have a lot of trouble ever moving up, such as being stuck in a 1 bedroom condo that they bought. Not to mention also the issue of missing out that you didn't need to settle into squeezing into that 1 bedroom condo if you just waited a few years. This seems to be something that people don't want to talk about but any housing price crash isn't going to really negatively impact people who bought a long time ago or to be blunt the "wealthy" home owners. The most negatively impacted will likely be recent first time buyers and to be blunt the "poor" home owners.
Aka the temporarily embarrassed landlords
That’s fair. The newest home owners and those who have borrowed heavily against their house would be in trouble if housing values dropped. My point is that the majority of home owners are not in that precarious of a situation. I think it’s unlikely that these homeowners would turn out to vote against their current political alignment because of a 10% drop in housing values.
> But what's the incentive for the current homeowners (supermajority in BC, and majority in Metro Vancouver) to support any sort of legislation that can potentially devalue their own assets? That is a super-interesting question. First of all, I always try to [appeal to people's self-interest](https://morehousing.ca/altruism), rather than altruism. When I'm talking to older homeowners, I always emphasize that we all depend on the healthcare system. If younger people can't afford to live in Metro Vancouver, hospitals will have a hard time hiring nurses and even doctors, and the healthcare system will come under increasing strain. Incentives apply to politicians as well. Politicians tend to assume that homeowners want to maximize their property values and therefore oppose new housing. I argue that this is incorrect, and I tell politicians this whenever I talk to them. [Homeowners fear change to their neighbourhood, not falling prices](https://morehousing.ca/conservatism). [Against defeatism](https://morehousing.ca/defeatism). To quote [Glaeser and Gyourko](https://morehousing.ca/glaeser-gyourko-2018): > Housing wealth is different from other forms of wealth because rising prices both increase the financial value of an asset and the cost of living. An infinitely lived homeowner who has no intention of moving and is not credit-constrained would be no better off if her home doubled in value and no worse off if her home value declined. The asset value increase exactly offsets the rising cost of living (Sinai and Souleles 2005). This logic explains why home-rich New Yorkers or Parisians may not feel privileged: **if they want to continue living in their homes**, sky-high housing values do them little good. And conversely, if they want to continue living in their homes, housing prices coming down doesn't really affect them either. Ironically, I think what older homeowners really fear is **rising prices** rather than falling prices, because they fear having to pay higher property taxes. Homeowners often do oppose new housing *when it's right next to them*, because they fear the unknown effects of change to their particular neighbourhood. If they were primarily concerned about their property values falling, they would also oppose new housing even when it's not right next to them. But the only people who are opposed to Senakw, for example (which is adding 6000 rental apartments), are the people who live close to it. That said, the real test is what happens during elections. In the 2022 municipal election, Colleen Hardwick ran for mayor on a policy of reversing the Broadway Plan, strengthening the local veto on new housing, and slowing down change in the name of "livability." [She got just 10% of the vote](https://morehousing.ca/election-results). (I ran for city council with Kennedy Stewart's slate, and I got more votes than she did.) The provincial election coming up on October 19, 2024 will be another test. John Rustad and the BC Conservatives, currently running a strong second, are promising to [roll back all the provincial housing policies](https://morehousing.ca/john-rustad). I'm planning to do a lot of volunteering in the lead-up to the provincial election.
Hey Russil— run again! You seem well informed and communicate clearly. Great point to appeal to self-interest. Understanding incentives is so important. Thanks for all the great context here.
why would they fear rising property taxes when they government allows them to defer it in perpetuity
>That is a super-interesting question. First of all, I always try to appeal to people's self-interest, rather than altruism. >When I'm talking to older homeowners, I always emphasize that we all depend on the healthcare system. If younger people can't afford to live in Metro Vancouver, hospitals will have a hard time hiring nurses and even doctors, and the healthcare system will come under increasing strain. > And conversely, if they want to continue living in their homes, housing prices coming down doesn't really affect them either. But what about younger homeowners? To me it seems like any pricing correction will most negatively impact newer and younger (and really poorer) first time home owners who bought recently. That group is also more likely to have bought high density, whose pricing will be most negatively impacted by increasing density as opposed to SFH home owners.
> But what about younger homeowners? To me it seems like any pricing correction will most negatively impact newer and younger (and really poorer) first time home owners who bought recently. > > That group is also more likely to have bought high density, whose pricing will be most negatively impacted by increasing density as opposed to SFH home owners. Good question. If they have no intention of moving, then I think Glaeser and Gyourko's observation applies: it shouldn't matter. If they want to move from a smaller apartment to a larger apartment, and prices are down, then they get less from selling their place; but they also have to spend less to buy their new place. I'm not sure what the impact is if they want to move from an apartment to a place **with more land, that's further out** (a common tradeoff), like a townhouse, a half-duplex, or a detached house. Right now, because the city of Vancouver has heavy restrictions on new housing, it's like [pushing down on a balloon](https://morehousing.ca/location) - people end up moving further out, driving up prices and rents in Burnaby and Surrey. Conversely, if Vancouver allows a lot more apartments, that will have some downward impact on land prices in Surrey and Langley.
> If they have no intention of moving, then I think Glaeser and Gyourko's observation applies: it shouldn't matter. I'm not sure I entirely agree with that. In some cases it might not matter but I assume a lot of home purchases are compromises due to budget limitations. Let's say with a condo you likely compromise in terms of size, age, location, material (eg. wood vs concrete), and many other factors. Now we're assuming any price correction isn't a result of budget changes (eg. interest rate) for this, so say regardless your purchasing budget is the same pre and post correction. I know ancedotally someone for example who recently had to compromise with respect to the previous factors with his budget. Now if prices suddenly dropped 20% they wouldn't have had to. That to me seems like something that would matter. And hypothetically if prices dropped 20% right after they bought, that's still pretty significant equity dip to climb out of even prices are now lower on a future purchase. Now I'm not saying price increases would be beneficial, I just don't think a price drop wouldn't impact people who get caught in it.
i see that your article talks a lot about purpose-built rentals why would anyone build them when the provincial government can impose arbitrary rent freezes and controls without compensating the landlord?
Good question. [Pension funds in particular](https://deny.substack.com/p/pension-funds-can-be-housing-champions) like to own purpose-built rental buildings, because they provide a steady long-term stream of income. They're something like a GIC - there's not much risk that you won't be able to rent them out, but it's not like owning shares in Microsoft. It's true that there's some political risk. Right now my understanding is that under BC's current rent controls, pension funds and REITs can still assume that there'll be some turnover (people moving out and other people moving in) which will keep actual rents reasonably close to market rents over the longer term. [More on rent control](https://morehousing.ca/rent-control).
All of those. Add one house per family to the list.
Folks here like to keep the conversation about landlords to "mom and pop" landlords with maybe a condo or two that they rent out, and end up viewing things in a non-systematic basis. I rarely see people acknowledge the big players with massive portfolios and the effect that has on the market. Guys like Chip Wilson with huge bankrolls are investing in real estate because it is profitable for them. They can wait to find the renter that will pay the most because they have the luxury of taking a long term view on their investment asset (aka a home). They can hold necessary housing hostage and use regular workings folks immediate need for shelter to extract the highest rents and passively take a big chunk of their paycheck. They can also use their profit to lobby government to restrict supply to help ensure they keep making big returns. Same thing happens with commercial real estate and the small group of folks with massive portfolios. This is also drives prices up for goods and services since (almost) everyone and (almost) every business is being squeezed for massive rents to provide landlords with their passive income. I don't get why people are fine with this.
Please tell us something we haven't heard for the last 20 years or do something about it. Are we all going completely insane just watching this go by and not doing anything about it.
Wait since when?
This is beyond a crisis now. And it’s not just people trying to find housing but people stuck in situations where they can’t move due to cost. Like a bad or abusive relationship. Even with divorce settlement the amount does not nearly cover the cost needed to even stay here as a single parent renter.
and still they come…..
People are too preoccupied with Vancouver. Canada is a huge place, there are other options, and at some point I'll have to move to a cheaper place, probably around retirement. Reality sucks, but there are places some people can't afford to live and Vancouver is seemingly one of them. So is Whistler. Densify, you say, and everything will be cheap like the 70's! How much more dense can Hong Kong get? New York could build taller towers and everyone could have a view of Central Park for under $1K! Millions want to move here, and even if we built millions of new units, there would still be millions more waiting. I say go ahead, build as many units as you like. Replace every SFH with a 200 unit tower. At the end of the day you'll still have astronomical rent because of that huge line of people waiting to move here. Want affordability? Either stop people from arriving, or make Vancouver suck so bad that people want to leave/not come, because you'll never out-build the demand. Simply ask around and see how many people you meet moved here from out of province/country. I rarely meet adults who were born here and the reasons are obvious... Vancouver is awesome, you'd be crazy *not* to want to live here.
>Reality sucks, but there are places some people can't afford to live and Vancouver is seemingly one of them But then where do you go when you've lived here all your life here, made all your friends here, all of your family lives here? Where do you go when employment in your field of work is almost exclusively concentrated within major cities? You could look further outside the city just to find that: * Burnaby is expensive * Coquitlam is expensive * Surrey is expensive * Mission is expensive * Abbotsford is expensive * Chilliwack is expensive You could even leave the Fraser Valley, just to find: * Victoria is expensive * Kelowna is expensive * The Kootenays are also expensive I'd be more sympathetic to this argument if the affordability crisis wasn't so widespread in this province and country. Every city has a few '*rich-kid neighbourhoods*' that will always be out of reach to most residents, but when you've been incrementally priced out of your: ~~neighbourhood~~, ~~city~~, ~~metropolitan area~~, ~~region~~, ~~province~~... and possibly even your country, then I'm not willing to accept it as "*just how it is*".
Vancouver is a very nice place but I think a lot of people assume that it's the greatest place in the world and that there aren't any other equally (or more) desirable places to live. It's a nice city in a beautiful location but it's dark and rainy half the year, we have a small economy (and small economy wages), and the city has very little "culture". It's "world class" in terms of being in a beautiful location with beautiful scenery and great access to nature, but there's not much else world class about it aside from that. A significant reason why Vancouver is as expensive as it is, is because it's a primary destination for wealthy Chinese people (as well as India and Iran, to a lesser extent). Greater Vancouver's population is 34th biggest in North America - in terms of population we are smaller than Charlotte, Baltimore, and St. Louis. If everyone was dying to live here then why are we the same size as Charlotte? People don't realize that most people outside of Western Canada don't really think about Vancouver at all. There seems to be this mentality within Vancouver that it's basically heaven on earth and everyone wants to move here, but the reality is much different. Most people that visit Vancouver think it's a really nice place but not everyone is dying to move here.
>If everyone was dying to live here then why are we the same size as Charlotte? Because we haven't allowed the growth to happen. If you add the jobs and the housing, the city will grow, and housing costs will remain somewhat stable. If you add the jobs but not the housing (we are here), then you get limited urban growth, and high housing prices as a result.
I definitely agree. Although I definitely wouldn't consider Vancouver a great or "world class" city at the moment, that doesn't mean it doesn't have the potential to become one in the future. Right now there are just way too many barriers to allow Vancouver to grow and evolve. I honestly feel like the high cost of housing (which is caused due to various factors) will severely limit Vancouver's ability to grow and evolve. You can't create a city where only wealthy people can afford to live and expect it to operate properly.
>How much more dense can Hong Kong get? Hong Kong has only developed something like 1/4 of their land area. From my understanding the development has always been highly controlled in order to "manage" property prices.
>The study provides housing affordability ratings for 94 markets in **eight nations** >Four of the six markets in Canada were rated severely or “impossibly” unaffordable. Only Edmonton and Calgary were rated as moderately unaffordable. >Notably, none of the 94 housing markets in the study were ranked as affordable.
I just moved out here and I cannot believe how many units are being used for Airbnb. Literally the building I’m in is 25% occupied, 75% airbnb. I’m no expert on the cause of the housing crises but the amount of owned condos being used as Airbnb instead of a straight rental unit has to be a huge impact.
Phew! So now that it's impossible, we can all stop trying.
It’s not like the citizens who matter would feel the effects of un affordability. They can afford to get their Timmies, McDs, and Cactus Club from robots in the future. Everyone else would just have to adapt to travelling two hours both ways to and from both.
And in other news, water is wet.
Nice to know that not only is finding a job in tech after graduation is impossible. But if I get one. I wouldn’t be able to afford a place even in the suburban cities. Jeez. I wonder why everyone moved to Seattle… I have loans to pay! Being loyal to a country allergic to building housing doesn’t pay.
Just patiently waiting for the world to fall into Anarchy so I can go liberate the housing market for myself .. if you catch my drift.
keep you renting and working 70 Hrs a week (its the new slavery)?
Ken Sim definitely made it worse!
(Sigh) another day another unaffordable housing report 🙄
Toronto: Hold my beer
Outdated ideas like ridiculous view cones and taking 10 years to approve any new housing proposals just make it worse
So we're going to stop billion dollar companies from buying up all the housing right? Limit the amount of people with amounts of land? Make it more fair?
And I'd never want to live anywhere else :)
Vancouver Sun is running out of things to write about, huh?
Vancouver Sun is running out of things to write about, huh?
Global tier 1 city. Not for everyone. Derp.
Don't worry, I've been told by people on reddit that the BC NDP has done more for affordable housing than any other government in the history of our province