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As someone who just moved from Vancouver to the Bay Area, it's obvious the issue isn't housing. It's income. My apartment in trendy yaletown was $2350/month fo
by api_or_ipa 11y ago
As someone who just moved from Vancouver to the Bay Area, it's obvious the issue isn't housing. It's income. My apartment in trendy yaletown was $2350/month for a very nice 2 bed, 2 bath place within 10 mins of anything in downtown. Try finding something even remotely as nice around Silicon Valley.
The issue we should be tackling is the low wages seen in the area. The same developer who could make $100k USD in the valley makes $60k CAD in Vancouver.
- bonesmoses 11y agoIsn't that a housing issue, though? Paying for a $2350/mo place on $60k is... pretty ridiculous.
- gearoidoc 11y agoI'd argue its impossible since $2350 is almost half your monthly salary before tax!
- edwinnathaniel 11y agoThat's a lifestyle issue. No fresh grad ($60k) should live in "trendy" Yaletown district with 2 BR + 2 Bath.
- acrooks 11y agoA lot of fresh grads (from UBC) in Vancouver are living around Kitsilano where you can get a one bedroom place for <$1000/month. Right now I live in a two bedroom flat in the heart of Kits where I'm paying $825 and my flatmate $725. Previously to that in Vancouver I lived in the heart of Yaletown in a 550sqft studio costing about $1300/month, and started living there on a salary of about $62k. I've never had financial struggles living in Vancouver with salaries ranging from $42-85k, and have generally had enough disposable income to afford to travel quite a bit, ski at Whistler every weekend, and eat out and go out regularly. That said, it's totally a renter's market. It's unaffordable for me to buy anything that I'd want to live in for the longer term, unless I go to Surrey or somewhere else in greater Vancouver, which would completely take away or hinder a lot of the benefits I see to living in Vancouver.
- vehementi 11y agoFresh grads are making a lot more than $60k these days. But yes, you're spot on.
- api_or_ipa 11y agoI split it with a roommate. I lived 10 mins from my work, which vastly improved my quality of life and saved me money on transit. I estimated I was paying $100 more to live in downtown, but that was almost equivalent to the savings in transit fares.
- jimpick 11y agoThis! The tech salaries are absurdly low. The tech CEOs who pay poor wages and are complaining about their inability to retain talent are the same ones blaming real estate.
- pakled_engineer 11y agoThe taxes are also high https://simpletax.ca/calculator https://simpletax.ca/calculator Select BC and enter in the typical income for an experienced developer in Vancouver which is 75k. Your take home salary is $59,000 plus you aren't offered any options usually just straight pay. This doesn't include all the other deductions such as EI and CPP. Now convert CAD to USD and you're a professional experienced developer making $42,000 USD per year, in one of the highest cost cities on earth.
- jgh 11y agoAccording to that calculator my taxes would be less in Ontario, Canada than California. In reality they aren't because I do married filing jointly and my wife has no income. But were I a single person it seems that it's not true that the taxes are higher there. In fact I'd be paying $5,000 less in tax in Ontario than in California (assuming wages were the same). I don't know if EI and CPP would add up to $5,000, but certainly it would be much less if you throw Health Insurance into the the calculation.
- run4yourlives2 11y agoDon't forget to factor in health care. In BC, standard care that would be the bargain basement cost would likely cost you < $1500 a year. Better care not much more than $2500 tops.
- jgh 11y agoI don't really remember paying for health care separately in Ontario (where I'm from originally) anyway... At least there was an option for it but it was more like "In case you become disabled and can't work" or something like that
- rubiquity 11y agoDing ding ding. We have a winner. While I've never ever considered moving to Vancouver, I get recruiter emails several times a month for companies in Vancouver looking for Senior programmers to move there and only offering 80k to 110k CAD at the most. That is not nearly enough money to live in Vancouver. Enough to exist but not enough to live. The problem as I understand it is that a ton of Vancouver's housing is occupied by children of mega rich people from Asia (mostly China) who are rich enough to not care what rent costs which drives rent up for everyone else. There's such a huge l mismatch between housing costs and salaries in Vancouver.
- yarrel 11y agos/occupied/owned/
- rubiquity 11y agoAh yes that is an important distinction.
- gearoidoc 11y agoCAD 110k is definitely enough to get a decent place, live comfortably and save some money in Vancouver. But then again 'decent' and 'comfortably' are subjective.
- vkou 11y agoYes, it's enough to rent in a decent place, live comfortably, and save ~20K/year. A senior engineer in Seattle can do the same, and save ~100K/year.
- gearoidoc 11y agoI'd love to live in your world! How much do you think senior engineers earn? Most people would do well to save 20% but even assuming people save 33% then you reckon senior engineers earn over 300k?
- merpnderp 11y agoVancouver salaries seem exceptionally low. I live in the middle of nowhere USA, and devs start out at from school over $60k USD, and I live on an acre in a 3 bed 3 bath, 6 minutes from downtown and 4 minutes from work. At $2350/month my house would have been paid off in 5 years.
- hoelle 11y agoI'm curious if dev salaries in Canada aren't competitive with the US due to more immigration. When I recently visited a large tech company in Canada, I was struck by how much of the team was from everywhere but US and Canada.
- merpnderp 11y agoMy theory is it seems like lots of people want to live in Vancouver, which makes salaries and housing much more competitive. Whereas where I live, people have to be enticed to move here.
- eigenvector 11y agoChicken and egg. Partially because of low/competitive salaries in Canada, all of the Canadians are in the US on TN visas, leaving the Canadian tech industry staffed with non-citizens.
- alwaysAttending 11y agoSan Francisco housing is expensive BECAUSE of the incomes. Vancouver housing is expensive DESPITE the incomes. It's more of a housing issue than an income one. If incomes were higher, rents would only go up as well.
- personjerry 11y agoI don't see why we have to separate the two. It sounds like Vancouver faces both increasingly high rent and abnormally low salary for tech jobs (although I recognize that we might not expect Silicon Valley level pay).
- ihsw 11y agoIt's not just Vancouver that's experiencing abnormally low salaries for tech jobs, all of Canada is. The brain drain is slow but inevitable.
- disgruntledphd2 11y agoAlternatively, SF/the US have extremely better salaries for tech jobs. I don't think this is a problem unique to Canada (but presumably its much worse because of easier access to visas).
- thinkdoge 11y agoslow? they're all flocking down south ASAP with TN, if they haven't already.
- newman314 11y agoI would argue the opposite, SF is expensive in spite of the incomes (consider across the board instead of just programmers). I'm willing to bet if you were to map the relative rate of increase of income vs. property values over time that you would see that property values are increasing at a much higher rate than income. I earn what could be considered a good salary, there's less than zero chance in hell that I could afford property in Marin today short of winning the lottery or massive liquidity event.
- fiblye 11y agoThe problem there is the >90% of people in Vancouver who aren't in high paying tech fields. It's pretty difficult to say "just triple their wages and they'll afford houses no problem." The real issue is property owners know someone will eventually come along and pay whatever they're asking. If wages were to dramatically increase, they'd never stop and think, "Yeah, I think I'll cap rent at $3000/month because I'm a nice guy." They'll gladly take $4000 if they can and never settle for less once they hit that point. Instead of considering lowering rents, they'll ask why you just don't get paid more.
- darryl42 11y ago"Eventually" Looked at three houses a couple of weekends ago, all sold by Monday. Two were unlivable, one nice, but way over budget, all out in the burbs.
- vehementi 11y agoEvery other post in this thread starts with "No, the real issue is..." Can you guys all start up a shared google doc and hash this out to figure out which one of you is right and why the others are all wrong?
- TragicJam 11y agoI've always considered Vancouver (tech) salaries to be fairly competitive compared to the rest of the Canada. (I'm a Vancouver dev)
- gabbo 11y agoIn other words they're quite low vs. comparable American cities :)
- jwomers 11y agoThose salaries are low and that's a problem, but a nice 2 bed place in SF 10 min from downtown is what - $5000-7000/mo? The rent relative to income seem similar/worse in SF?
- justinhj 11y agoI agree with your point in genera but in my experience as a developer who works in Vancouver, but has also worked in SF and NY, the salaries are about the same in number if not in currency. The CAD has dropped 30% in a couple of years though which does mean we effectively are getting less. I think Vancouver actually pays tech workers pretty well because there is a high demand, a few big companies and lots of smaller innovative ones. Vancouver doesn't have the typical jobs that pay for $1m houses and yachts though. Opportunities in finance and corporate HQ positions are minuscule compared to big US cities and Toronto.
- justinhj 11y agoI agree with your point in genera but in my experience as a developer who works in Vancouver, but has also worked in SF and NY, the salaries are about the same in number if not in currency. The CAD has dropped 30% in a couple of years though which does mean we effectively are getting less. I think Vancouver actually pays tech workers pretty well because there is a high demand, a few big companies and lots of smaller innovative ones. Vancouver doesn't have the typical jobs that pay for $1m houses and yachts though. Opportunities in finance and corporate HQ positions are minuscule compared to big US cities and Toronto.
- gearoidoc 11y agoAgreed - the last job offer I got was for 95k CAD and they would not budge higher. Currently working remotely for about 115k CAD with a number of other perks. I moved from Dublin, Ireland to Vancouver. Dublin rents are very high - probably as bad as Vancouver. The cost of living here is slightly lower though.
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- didip 11y agoThis is just anecdotal, but that price point at the quality you want is possible in downtown San Jose.