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That Slack money must be nice ;) With no intention of attacking the author, but as someone renting in Vancouver, I think excluding costs while regularly hintin

That Slack money must be nice ;) With no intention of attacking the author, but as someone renting in Vancouver, I think excluding costs while regularly hinting that they didn't have much of a budget seems a bit off, if not even just to add a transparent datapoint to the corpus of potential Canadian/Vancouver salaries that have been stagnating for years, while Johnny and his family likely saw massive appreciation on their duplex between what seems like 2014 and now. It's not easy to support a family in this city, so no matter how much you make, owning anything and having two children is going to be tight, and I wouldn't assume you're being disingenuous about that, but if you're cool, break down the actual overall costs. Not necessarily what the specific contractors charged you, but probably an approximation of what your take home salary is and what it cost to build. It wouldn't be terribly difficult to geogeuss the location and property assessment, but it would be slightly more charitable to be upfront. > A lot of people dream of building a modern home. Or rather, a lot of people dream of living in a modern home. A place of their own, with the people they love, surrounded by functional beauty and considerate form. A lot of people in this city, even in tech, couldn't dream of owning anything, but this article has the potential to be inspiring. The median salary earned in Vancouver at a tolerable savings rate would require 35 years to own a detached home. > I hope you’re able to fulfill your own dreams too. Well... Edit: It was trivial to track this information down, it's named in the article. I won't reveal the address, but I'll add the cost of land and current value of the property if the author doesn't. Overall the property gained at least 1.8M in taxable value as far as public records are concerned, but it would be awesome to get a sense of what it actually cost to build.

Mandatum 5y ago
This is the type of house that gets published in architecture and "Home" magazines as inspiration. The thing is most of those houses do a bit of media and advertising to help pay costs. It's partly sponsored and used by architects to sell their services. The "FU Money" emanating from this article is palpable. Good for OP - it's amazing, but boy sometimes the shit you read from tech folk is so detached from the regular every-day experience of regular people. "Building a modern home in the woods", really?
- brailsafe 5y ago
  Well.. it depends. I'm not making any uncharitable assumptions about the author's intentions. The entire article could say "I bought a house near Vancouver" and you'd be expecting the person to be extremely well-off, because it'll cost $1.5m anyway. It's obviously a little disingenuous to call it a "modern home in the woods" because it's definitely not a humble bungalow, but whatever. I just find it a little silly to keep implying budgetary constraints and keeping costs as low as possible, but not providing any context for what that really means. The house does look pretty nice, and while I don't care for Pemberton much, it's seems like a decent build.
  - prawn 5y ago
    "modern home in the woods" because it's definitely not a humble bungalow Why would a "modern home" in the woods need to be a humble bungalow? He hasn't termed it affordable or DIY. It could be a $100k tiny house and someone living in their car would gripe. This sort of thing seems to happen every time someone writes for their audience and an adjacent audience finds it; just doesn't seem like a very charitable reading of their intentions. It's more expensive than I could afford, but I liked reading about the process and seeing what they built. I also enjoy reading about tiny houses, people living in their vans, $100m mansions, chateau conversions, anything. I liked Architectural Digest's tour of JJ Redick's apartment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZDNGVmHxn4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZDNGVmHxn4 He has all that money yet the kids still fight about Lego, and neither kid can be convinced to sleep on the top bunk. And then their patio is near-unusable due to construction noise.
    - brailsafe 5y ago
      I also enjoyed reading it, and didn't mean to imply otherwise, but I think there's a few bits, particularly starting with "we could only afford the land and couldn't agree on a timeline for paying for a house" (paraphrase) that implies it's going to be a more gradual humble project, perhaps like Les Stroud's off grid home in the woods https://youtu.be/hWfgxxZl5Tg https://youtu.be/hWfgxxZl5Tg
brailsafe 5y ago
Minor edit: The median salary earned in Vancouver at a tolerable savings rate would require 35 years to pay for a minimum downpayment on a detached home, if not many other kinds of properties.
Kluny 5y ago
I think it's a cashflow vs capital thing. I'm in a similar situation - my wife and I aren't making much money at the moment, but our condo increased in value by so much that we were able to buy a million-dollar property. Granted it would have been a 300k property about ten years ago, but here we are. And due to the condo sale and the magic of financing, we have about 100k leftover to spend on renovating it and making it feel worth the money we spent. But we don't have much cashflow, so we need to spend that money as efficiently as possible, because once it's spent it will take a LONG time to build back up.
- moralestapia 5y ago
  Assuming, of course, that neither of you lose your income for the next 30+ years ...
  - Kluny 5y ago
    Well, there are backup plans :)

Mandatum 5y ago

This is the type of house that gets published in architecture and "Home" magazines as inspiration. The thing is most of those houses do a bit of media and advertising to help pay costs. It's partly sponsored and used by architects to sell their services. The "FU Money" emanating from this article is palpable. Good for OP - it's amazing, but boy sometimes the shit you read from tech folk is so detached from the regular every-day experience of regular people. "Building a modern home in the woods", really?

brailsafe 5y ago
Well.. it depends. I'm not making any uncharitable assumptions about the author's intentions. The entire article could say "I bought a house near Vancouver" and you'd be expecting the person to be extremely well-off, because it'll cost $1.5m anyway. It's obviously a little disingenuous to call it a "modern home in the woods" because it's definitely not a humble bungalow, but whatever. I just find it a little silly to keep implying budgetary constraints and keeping costs as low as possible, but not providing any context for what that really means. The house does look pretty nice, and while I don't care for Pemberton much, it's seems like a decent build.
- prawn 5y ago
  "modern home in the woods" because it's definitely not a humble bungalow Why would a "modern home" in the woods need to be a humble bungalow? He hasn't termed it affordable or DIY. It could be a $100k tiny house and someone living in their car would gripe. This sort of thing seems to happen every time someone writes for their audience and an adjacent audience finds it; just doesn't seem like a very charitable reading of their intentions. It's more expensive than I could afford, but I liked reading about the process and seeing what they built. I also enjoy reading about tiny houses, people living in their vans, $100m mansions, chateau conversions, anything. I liked Architectural Digest's tour of JJ Redick's apartment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZDNGVmHxn4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZDNGVmHxn4 He has all that money yet the kids still fight about Lego, and neither kid can be convinced to sleep on the top bunk. And then their patio is near-unusable due to construction noise.
  - brailsafe 5y ago
    I also enjoyed reading it, and didn't mean to imply otherwise, but I think there's a few bits, particularly starting with "we could only afford the land and couldn't agree on a timeline for paying for a house" (paraphrase) that implies it's going to be a more gradual humble project, perhaps like Les Stroud's off grid home in the woods https://youtu.be/hWfgxxZl5Tg https://youtu.be/hWfgxxZl5Tg

brailsafe 5y ago

Minor edit: The median salary earned in Vancouver at a tolerable savings rate would require 35 years to pay for a minimum downpayment on a detached home, if not many other kinds of properties.

Kluny 5y ago

I think it's a cashflow vs capital thing. I'm in a similar situation - my wife and I aren't making much money at the moment, but our condo increased in value by so much that we were able to buy a million-dollar property. Granted it would have been a 300k property about ten years ago, but here we are. And due to the condo sale and the magic of financing, we have about 100k leftover to spend on renovating it and making it feel worth the money we spent. But we don't have much cashflow, so we need to spend that money as efficiently as possible, because once it's spent it will take a LONG time to build back up.

moralestapia 5y ago
Assuming, of course, that neither of you lose your income for the next 30+ years ...
- Kluny 5y ago
  Well, there are backup plans :)