4 ms·

The significant takeaway for me as a Vancouverite is that these are apartments and they're reaching renters and rental vacancy is increasing. In contrast Vanco

The significant takeaway for me as a Vancouverite is that these are apartments and they're reaching renters and rental vacancy is increasing. In contrast Vancouver is also building more substantially more multi-unit residences than ever before, but somehow Vancouver's vacancy rate remains sub 1%. In a reverse from Seattle, Vancouver predominantly builds condos, and this could be a factor. Vancouver, likely needing the assistance of the provincial and federal government for legislative changes, needs to start doing things differently, and Canadian governments need to find a way to incentivize developers to build rental apartments instead of condos.

zbobet2012 9y ago
More likely they simply need to authorize them to do so...
goodcanadian 9y ago
The condos usually end up on the rental market assuming they are not sitting vacant simply as a place for rich foreigners to stash their money.
- wvenable 9y ago
  Condo's also sit empty in Vancouver because they appreciate fast enough that it simply isn't worth the hassle to have renters.
nikanj 9y ago
Vancouver likes to talk a lot about 10-20% of new condos sitting empty. For some reason, they completely ignore the 80-90% that do get tenants.
baybal2 9y ago
As a former Vancouverite myself, I want to bring to attention of people that there are a lot of cities in the world with both very high vacancy rates, and high housing price, despite progressively growing housing stock. You can say that a lot of those cities fall under the category of "fancy towns" where people come not to earn money, but to spend them. There, markets can remain irrational for a loooong time: Sydney, Dubai city, Hongkong, Shenzhen On my memory, Shenzhen had an astronomic ~20% vacancy rate 5 to 6 years ago while already being the most expensive city in China. Rentier and property investors decided to wait out, expecting prices to go up even further, and they did!
- TulliusCicero 9y ago
  Yes, it's possible for the market to remain irrational for a while, but eventually prices have to come down if supply continues to outpace demand. That said, according to a quick Google search, Sydney -- which is going to be the most similar of the cities you mentioned to American/Canadian ones, for obvious reasons -- apparently only has a 1.9% vacancy rate, which is very low.
  - baybal2 9y ago
    Today, it does
b4lancesh33t 9y ago
Then they just aren't building enough. To be sure, if Vancouver added ten million units, vacancy rates would go up. If vacancy rates are staying flat now, that just means the number of units being added now is insufficiently close to ten million to effectively meet the demand for housing
- Tiktaalik 9y ago
  The problem with the "simple" solution of "just add more supply" is that supply creation is physically restrained by real world factors. It's not lines on a chart like in econ 101 class. New development is constrained by available trades, construction times, design time, and city review time. Already the City of Vancouver has increased development application fees in order to hire more persons to review development applications faster. In my neighbourhood there is a high rise under construction that is still not completed but already one year over due. The development industry is continuously stating that more supply is required, but they can't even finish building their own buildings.
  - TulliusCicero 9y ago
    > supply creation is physically restrained by real world factors. Yes, but regulatory factors usually dominate those in these high-cost markets. Like in Seattle's case, it's literally illegal to add to housing supply in most of the city; a majority of land is zoned exclusively for detached single-family homes. What new density there is comes in little strips, which means it tends to come in larger buildings, which have higher base costs to build. It's impossible to make "affordable housing" in a skyscraper. If more cities allowed more "missing middle" type housing throughout their area, they could make a serious dent in housing prices. But, SFH areas are sacred cows in America (and I'm guessing much of Canada too).
    - Tiktaalik 9y ago
      Vancouver multi-unit under construction is about 33k units, which is 10k above the 23k Seattle had under construction in July of 2017 (the first figure I found on google). Vancouver is seriously building wildly more units than the historical norm. https://twitter.com/YVRHousing/status/950813525403774976 https://twitter.com/YVRHousing/status/950813525403774976 At some point if this isn't working we have to stop saying well let's add even more supply" and start looking to other solutions.

zbobet2012 9y ago

More likely they simply need to authorize them to do so...

goodcanadian 9y ago

The condos usually end up on the rental market assuming they are not sitting vacant simply as a place for rich foreigners to stash their money.

wvenable 9y ago
Condo's also sit empty in Vancouver because they appreciate fast enough that it simply isn't worth the hassle to have renters.

nikanj 9y ago

Vancouver likes to talk a lot about 10-20% of new condos sitting empty. For some reason, they completely ignore the 80-90% that do get tenants.

baybal2 9y ago

As a former Vancouverite myself, I want to bring to attention of people that there are a lot of cities in the world with both very high vacancy rates, and high housing price, despite progressively growing housing stock. You can say that a lot of those cities fall under the category of "fancy towns" where people come not to earn money, but to spend them. There, markets can remain irrational for a loooong time: Sydney, Dubai city, Hongkong, Shenzhen On my memory, Shenzhen had an astronomic ~20% vacancy rate 5 to 6 years ago while already being the most expensive city in China. Rentier and property investors decided to wait out, expecting prices to go up even further, and they did!

TulliusCicero 9y ago
Yes, it's possible for the market to remain irrational for a while, but eventually prices have to come down if supply continues to outpace demand. That said, according to a quick Google search, Sydney -- which is going to be the most similar of the cities you mentioned to American/Canadian ones, for obvious reasons -- apparently only has a 1.9% vacancy rate, which is very low.
- baybal2 9y ago
  Today, it does

b4lancesh33t 9y ago

Then they just aren't building enough. To be sure, if Vancouver added ten million units, vacancy rates would go up. If vacancy rates are staying flat now, that just means the number of units being added now is insufficiently close to ten million to effectively meet the demand for housing

Tiktaalik 9y ago
The problem with the "simple" solution of "just add more supply" is that supply creation is physically restrained by real world factors. It's not lines on a chart like in econ 101 class. New development is constrained by available trades, construction times, design time, and city review time. Already the City of Vancouver has increased development application fees in order to hire more persons to review development applications faster. In my neighbourhood there is a high rise under construction that is still not completed but already one year over due. The development industry is continuously stating that more supply is required, but they can't even finish building their own buildings.
- TulliusCicero 9y ago
  > supply creation is physically restrained by real world factors. Yes, but regulatory factors usually dominate those in these high-cost markets. Like in Seattle's case, it's literally illegal to add to housing supply in most of the city; a majority of land is zoned exclusively for detached single-family homes. What new density there is comes in little strips, which means it tends to come in larger buildings, which have higher base costs to build. It's impossible to make "affordable housing" in a skyscraper. If more cities allowed more "missing middle" type housing throughout their area, they could make a serious dent in housing prices. But, SFH areas are sacred cows in America (and I'm guessing much of Canada too).
  - Tiktaalik 9y ago
    Vancouver multi-unit under construction is about 33k units, which is 10k above the 23k Seattle had under construction in July of 2017 (the first figure I found on google). Vancouver is seriously building wildly more units than the historical norm. https://twitter.com/YVRHousing/status/950813525403774976 https://twitter.com/YVRHousing/status/950813525403774976 At some point if this isn't working we have to stop saying well let's add even more supply" and start looking to other solutions.