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Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

197 points by bvanvugt 11y ago

tdicola 11y ago
Get ready Seattleites, we're next. The housing market is already going a bit bonkers with no sign of slowing down.
- seanmcdirmid 11y ago
  Their salaries are much higher than Vancouver, they might be ok....especially in tech.
  - tostitos1979 11y 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.
    - bnastic 11y ago
      That is not the case in any city, period.
    - eitally 11y ago
      You're way off. 150k for 5yrs experience is pretty typical in big tech & unicorn companies, but not anywhere else. 250k base salaries are highly atypical anywhere (except for very senior engineers). Total comp will be more than that, but if that's what you meant you shouldn't have said salaries.
  - xer0x 11y ago
    Sorry, forget about moving to Vancouver for the salaries. Try Seattle or Calgary.
- ameen 11y ago
  How is Redmond & Bellevue?
- rozap 11y 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_ 11y 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.
- tostitos1979 11y 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.
  - tostitos1979 11y 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??).
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - epicureanideal 11y ago
      If it's like the US, 2 years in the same "line of work" should be sufficient.
    - taneq 11y ago
      It's counterintuitive, but making it harder to get mortgages will actually reduce housing prices in the long run, because it discourages real estate investment. In the same way, lowering interest rates appears to make it easier for first home buyers to get into the market but just results in investors snapping up more properties, driving up both mortgage amounts and rents.
Nickersf 11y ago
While we're moving south... Portland is next. Are we all trying to catch of up with SF cost of living?
Apocryphon 11y 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?
- jbarham 11y ago
  > Montreal? Calgary? Edmonton? Halifax? St. John's? Winter.
  - branchless 11y 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?
    - stormqloud 11y ago
      Montreal is great in some ways. In other ways you run into the regular overt hatred of non francophones. http://www.cjad.com/cjad-news-community/2016/03/16/elderly-patient-denied-service-in-english-at-verdun-hospital---again http://www.cjad.com/cjad-news-community/2016/03/16/elderly-p... ""My mom was laying in her bed, she turned over and I noticed she was crying," says Martin. "That's when she told me a nurse had just yelled at her for speaking in English."" Thats the kind of mean spirited people that work in the "civil service". Anyone who denies it, hasn't lived in Montreal long enough and needs to get out to Sherbrooke or Drummonville a little more often to see that natives in their full hatred. Fight Anglophobia.
    - jbarham 11y ago
      > 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? Neither. That's why I moved from California to Australia five years ago. Don't regret it.
- 11y ago
lewisl9029 11y 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 11y 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 ;)
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- drchiu 11y 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 11y 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!)
  - seanmcdirmid 11y 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.
yeukhon 11y 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 11y ago
Yep, Canadian tech salaries can't compete with Silicon Valley
- Wingman4l7 11y ago
  I'm curious -- can it compete with the PNW at all (i.e., tech jobs in Seattle)?
  - serge2k 11y ago
    Nope.
  - andromeduck 11y 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 11y ago
  To be fair, I don't think there are any places that can compete with SV tech salaries.
- mtberatwork 11y 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?
- Tistel 11y 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 11y 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.
johnm1019 11y 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?
raverbashing 11y 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.
- daemin 11y 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).
  - eru 11y 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.)
    - daemin 11y ago
      Yeah, funnily enough that's where I used to live, although in an old block of apartments, and I believe I know which place you are talking about. Granted the single family houses around those streets are not exactly 'low density' as they are packed in quite a bit.
      - eru 11y ago
        Oh, low density compared to what a place so close to the city centre should look like. Even eg by German standards. Not even comparing to Singapore. (Or in market terms, if you can raise a plot and build up higher and make a tidy profit, it was not dense enough before.)
cat-dev-null 11y 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 11y 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.
  - ameen 11y 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-best-value-destinations/ http://fundersandfounders.com/where-to-start-your-startup-be...
    - msvan 11y ago
      https://nomadlist.com/ https://nomadlist.com/
- pjc50 11y 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 11y 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.
tempestn 11y 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 11y 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.
  - tempestn 11y 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.
    - branchless 11y ago
      > renting is still much more affordable than buying Because rent is constrained by wages. Land prices are constrained by fiat issuance. Fiat issuance is constrained by credibility.
clessg 11y ago
What is currently the best way for a Canadian tech worker to get into the US? Still the same situation as usual?
- kspaans 11y 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 11y 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 11y 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.
tallanvor 11y 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.
- eru 11y ago
  Locally the people who own the land (and small houses on top) often obstruct that very planning process for higher density housing.
- zeemonkee3 11y 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.
  - sospep 11y 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.
- jakobegger 11y ago
vanthrow 11y 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 11y 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.
- emodendroket 11y ago
rdlecler1 11y 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.
Tistel 11y 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 11y 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 11y 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 11y 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 11y 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 11y ago
  I have the same belief, but for a different reason. I think autonomous vehicles will make city centers become less important.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- wcummings 11y 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 11y 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!
- justinhj 11y 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 11y ago
How the hell is autoplaying video still a thing in 2016?
- OldSchoolJohnny 11y 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$?
Tiktaalik 11y 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-changes-in-vancouvers-net-migration-profile-by-age/ 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.
illumin8 11y 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/u-s-treasury-cracks-down-on-luxury-home-money-laundering http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/13/462994857/... and http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/14/us/us-will-track-secret-buyers-of-luxury-real-estate.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/14/us/us-will-track-secret-bu...
- pkaler 11y 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 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.
  - illumin8 11y 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.
hokkos 11y 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.
ygmelnikova 11y ago
I've lived in Vancouver for over 50 years, and have been in tech here since the early 80s. The demand to live 'in the city' is what's driving up prices. We operate out of Maple Ridge, about 50 minutes by train to downtown Vancouver. Purchased a house last year with an acre of riverfront property for $337,00 USD. If you're willing to take an hour and 10 minute train, you can live in Mission where we recently purchased 2 acres of commercial/residential property with a 1600 sq foot commercial building for under $215,000 USD. You could buy a small detached house there for under $180,000 usd 90% of our work is performed remotely for US companies paying in US dollars. We typically charge $90/hr USD and have no problem finding projects. We could live in the city, but why?
nacho2sweet 11y 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-estate-technique-fuelling-vancouvers-housing-market/article28634868/ 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-frontline-kill-lowell-bergman-s-gambling-documentary.html 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.

197 points by bvanvugt 11y ago

tdicola 11y ago

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

seanmcdirmid 11y ago
Their salaries are much higher than Vancouver, they might be ok....especially in tech.
- tostitos1979 11y 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.
  - bnastic 11y ago
    That is not the case in any city, period.
  - eitally 11y ago
    You're way off. 150k for 5yrs experience is pretty typical in big tech & unicorn companies, but not anywhere else. 250k base salaries are highly atypical anywhere (except for very senior engineers). Total comp will be more than that, but if that's what you meant you shouldn't have said salaries.
- xer0x 11y ago
  Sorry, forget about moving to Vancouver for the salaries. Try Seattle or Calgary.
ameen 11y ago
How is Redmond & Bellevue?
rozap 11y 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_ 11y 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.

tostitos1979 11y 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.
- tostitos1979 11y 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??).
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - epicureanideal 11y ago
    If it's like the US, 2 years in the same "line of work" should be sufficient.
  - taneq 11y ago
    It's counterintuitive, but making it harder to get mortgages will actually reduce housing prices in the long run, because it discourages real estate investment. In the same way, lowering interest rates appears to make it easier for first home buyers to get into the market but just results in investors snapping up more properties, driving up both mortgage amounts and rents.

Nickersf 11y ago

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

Apocryphon 11y 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?

jbarham 11y ago
> Montreal? Calgary? Edmonton? Halifax? St. John's? Winter.
- branchless 11y 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?
  - stormqloud 11y ago
    Montreal is great in some ways. In other ways you run into the regular overt hatred of non francophones. http://www.cjad.com/cjad-news-community/2016/03/16/elderly-patient-denied-service-in-english-at-verdun-hospital---again http://www.cjad.com/cjad-news-community/2016/03/16/elderly-p... ""My mom was laying in her bed, she turned over and I noticed she was crying," says Martin. "That's when she told me a nurse had just yelled at her for speaking in English."" Thats the kind of mean spirited people that work in the "civil service". Anyone who denies it, hasn't lived in Montreal long enough and needs to get out to Sherbrooke or Drummonville a little more often to see that natives in their full hatred. Fight Anglophobia.
  - jbarham 11y ago
    > 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? Neither. That's why I moved from California to Australia five years ago. Don't regret it.
11y ago

lewisl9029 11y 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 11y 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 ;)
deleted 11y ago
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drchiu 11y 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 11y 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!)
- seanmcdirmid 11y 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.

yeukhon 11y 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 11y ago

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

Wingman4l7 11y ago
I'm curious -- can it compete with the PNW at all (i.e., tech jobs in Seattle)?
- serge2k 11y ago
  Nope.
- andromeduck 11y 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 11y ago
To be fair, I don't think there are any places that can compete with SV tech salaries.
mtberatwork 11y 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?
Tistel 11y 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 11y 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.

johnm1019 11y 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?

raverbashing 11y 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.

daemin 11y 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).
- eru 11y 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.)
  - daemin 11y ago
    Yeah, funnily enough that's where I used to live, although in an old block of apartments, and I believe I know which place you are talking about. Granted the single family houses around those streets are not exactly 'low density' as they are packed in quite a bit.
    - eru 11y ago
      Oh, low density compared to what a place so close to the city centre should look like. Even eg by German standards. Not even comparing to Singapore. (Or in market terms, if you can raise a plot and build up higher and make a tidy profit, it was not dense enough before.)

cat-dev-null 11y 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 11y 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.
- ameen 11y 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-best-value-destinations/ http://fundersandfounders.com/where-to-start-your-startup-be...
  - msvan 11y ago
    https://nomadlist.com/ https://nomadlist.com/
pjc50 11y 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 11y 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.

tempestn 11y 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 11y 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.
- tempestn 11y 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.
  - branchless 11y ago
    > renting is still much more affordable than buying Because rent is constrained by wages. Land prices are constrained by fiat issuance. Fiat issuance is constrained by credibility.

clessg 11y ago

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

kspaans 11y 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 11y 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 11y 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.

tallanvor 11y 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.

eru 11y ago
Locally the people who own the land (and small houses on top) often obstruct that very planning process for higher density housing.
zeemonkee3 11y 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.
- sospep 11y 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.
jakobegger 11y ago

vanthrow 11y 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 11y 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.
emodendroket 11y ago

rdlecler1 11y 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.

Tistel 11y 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 11y 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 11y 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 11y 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 11y 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 11y ago
I have the same belief, but for a different reason. I think autonomous vehicles will make city centers become less important.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
wcummings 11y 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 11y 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!

justinhj 11y 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 11y ago

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

OldSchoolJohnny 11y 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$?

Tiktaalik 11y 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-changes-in-vancouvers-net-migration-profile-by-age/ 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.

illumin8 11y 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/u-s-treasury-cracks-down-on-luxury-home-money-laundering http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/13/462994857/... and http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/14/us/us-will-track-secret-buyers-of-luxury-real-estate.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/14/us/us-will-track-secret-bu...

pkaler 11y 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 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.
- illumin8 11y 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.

hokkos 11y 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.

ygmelnikova 11y ago

I've lived in Vancouver for over 50 years, and have been in tech here since the early 80s. The demand to live 'in the city' is what's driving up prices. We operate out of Maple Ridge, about 50 minutes by train to downtown Vancouver. Purchased a house last year with an acre of riverfront property for $337,00 USD. If you're willing to take an hour and 10 minute train, you can live in Mission where we recently purchased 2 acres of commercial/residential property with a 1600 sq foot commercial building for under $215,000 USD. You could buy a small detached house there for under $180,000 usd 90% of our work is performed remotely for US companies paying in US dollars. We typically charge $90/hr USD and have no problem finding projects. We could live in the city, but why?

nacho2sweet 11y 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-estate-technique-fuelling-vancouvers-housing-market/article28634868/ 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-frontline-kill-lowell-bergman-s-gambling-documentary.html 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.