Bothsidesnow at vancouvercondo.info November 26th, 2010 at 5:22 pm- “We are renting two accommodations right now- a house in the American midwest and a condo in downtown Vancouver (long story). Both are necessary, but we don’t plan on taking possession for the long term on either (through rental or owning). The GDP of the US city is twice that of Vancouver. It is a much, much wealthier city. The cost of renting the house is about 25 percent more than buying. Similar houses would go for over a million in Vancouver. The cost of renting the condo in Vancouver is about 50 percent less than buying it. I have my feet in both an undervalued market and an overvalued market at the same time, and the difference is night and day.”
[Using the fundamental measure of the price:rent ratio, this would mean that the Vancouver property is 2.5 times overvalued, when compared with the US property. And the US property has very likely not yet bottomed in price for this RE cycle. -vreaa]
Here is an interesting link:
http://www.bcstats.gov.bc.ca/data/bus_stat/bcea/BCEAchnd.asp
It breaks down the GDP for the Province for the last 13 years or so.
The interesting thing is really when you look at the breakdown. The biggest part of the GDP is the Service industry.
In 2009 the overall GDP for BC was 148,101 million. Out of that the Service Sector contributed a whopping 116,223million. Biggest item in that sector? Owner Occupied Dwellings with 18,017 million or roughly HALF of the entire financial sector in BC (the total for the financial sector is 36,484 million or roughly a quarter of all economic activity in BC).
The banking sector is per GDP bigger than the Goods Sector, which only has 32,561 million. You know, the thing that actually produces something concrete and of value?
Let me repeat that. Roughly 1/8th of the Provinces GDP is produced by people getting mortgages to buy a house which must have a knockon effect in other industries (e.g. construction which comes in with a total of 9,053 million (of which 2,935 million are for Residential buildings).
BTW, the biggest ticket item after residential home financing? Health care and social assistance which clocks in at 10,136 million, up from the previous year.
The housing bust will cut a lot deeper than people realize.
WOW!
Any idea what “Millions of Chained 2002 Dollars” means in the link that you posted!
RE Chained data:
Oops, something got cut off there.
What chained means in this context is that it comes from a variety of sources and it then “chained together”. So the numbers aren’t really “valid” per-se as the underlying methodology may be different.
But it does give you a pretty good idea on what goes on in the Province.
it’s night and day all right. some of the US cities are in the verge of bk.