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Vancouver and Toronto isn’t a housing market in any real sense of the word. Supply is fixed by government, interest rates are fixed by government, etc. If you
by _3u10 5y ago
Vancouver and Toronto isn’t a housing market in any real sense of the word. Supply is fixed by government, interest rates are fixed by government, etc.
If you took government control out of the market prices would plummet. Any plank will do, supply, financial backing or interest rates and the whole thing comes crashing down. That’s the real problem, how to cause a 20% “correction” and not 80%.
My house is 8 hours from Vancouver, 8 hours from Calgary, 5 hours from Banff, it’s a town of 10,000 people, it was built in 1904 and is 2500 sqft. It’s been modestly renovated and is worth $950,000. The market is insane.
- worik 5y agoEverybody blaming zoning. What is happening in Dallas which has no zoning rules? (Or am I thinking of Austin Texas?) I do not know, but it would be useful for this debate
- bombcar 5y agoHouston is usually the one they point to, but is the equivalent of zoning in other ways such as covenants, etc. Houston is booming I hear.
- majormajor 5y agoRight, cities in Texas aren't cheaper because they don't have zoning (they either explicitly do, as well as HOAs in new developments and all sorts of other NIMBYism, or they do in indirect ways like you mention). They're cheaper because they can still expand outward more than SF, LA, NY, etc before hitting inconvenient geography. Lots of other places that benefit from this too, of course, not just Texas.
- xapata 5y agoThe housing crisis 15 years ago shrank the building industry and it hasn't recovered, yet. Further, construction has historically used a significant amount of immigrant labor, and immigration has shrank recently, increasing costs.
- throwaway0a5e 5y agoYou're probably thinking of Houston and Austin. In any case, all three have rampant HOAs which serve the same purpose as zoning.
- GFischer 5y agoI have coworkers in Dallas, and they bought for relatively cheap (about 1/3 of what is being mentioned for other places in the USA in this thread). So I guess it works.
- liketochill 5y agoRevelstoke? If so, revelstoke like Vancouver is actually pretty hemmed in by water and mountains. There isn’t an infinite amount of easy to build on land like the on the prairies. Quality of life in revelstoke is probably amazing! Small town, ski hill, mountains, biking, snowmobiling, fishing, lakes, rivers, airport, and lots of jobs Demand will always exceed supply in desirable locations, that is part of what makes them desirable. Would you spend 30% of you and your wife’s income to secure a plot in such a paradise? 40%? 50%? Lots of people will take the bet and risk. If you lose and go bankrupt well then you move to the easily affordable town in the equivalent of the fly over states. Odds are the million dollar mortgage will get inflated away you just have to tread water while interest rates are historically low until you can juice your income or hourly rate up enough to make the million dollars you are in debt seem trivial.
- _3u10 5y agoBetter than revvy :) Oh it’s already inflated away 30% in less than a year. It was 30% of my income.