interested at VREAA 30 Dec 2010 4:49pm – “I grew up in this town and am old enough to remember when False Creek still had pulp mills surrounding it and working class people raised 4 kids in their East Side AND West Side bungalows. I’ve always hated the hubris of “the best place on earth” and see it as yet another bid to bragging rights for ex-pat Ontarians and Albertans. I’ve also lived in San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, Montreal, Toronto, London England and Glasgow and can decidedly attest that Vancouver is not the best place on earth. It may not even be the Best Place in Canada. In fact, Vancouver just gets uglier and more soul-less with every passing year, given the relentless tear-down culture here.”
Most Recent Comments:
- Ralph Cramdown on “The bank encouraged her to take the equity in her home to purchase another home. She bought a 2nd home at the peak.”
- Farmer on “The bank encouraged her to take the equity in her home to purchase another home. She bought a 2nd home at the peak.”
- kabloona on “The bank encouraged her to take the equity in her home to purchase another home. She bought a 2nd home at the peak.”
- James on “I had a work colleague approach me today to ask about buying a condo in New West. She had no idea about the economics of ownership and real estate.”
- Brian on “The bank encouraged her to take the equity in her home to purchase another home. She bought a 2nd home at the peak.”
- investigativezim.com on Consequences, Intended and Otherwise
- Nemesis on “The bank encouraged her to take the equity in her home to purchase another home. She bought a 2nd home at the peak.”
- dumpster diver on “The bank encouraged her to take the equity in her home to purchase another home. She bought a 2nd home at the peak.”
- Joe at Kits on “The bank encouraged her to take the equity in her home to purchase another home. She bought a 2nd home at the peak.”
- YVR Housing Analyst (@YVRHousing) on “The bank encouraged her to take the equity in her home to purchase another home. She bought a 2nd home at the peak.”
- tedeastside on “The bank encouraged her to take the equity in her home to purchase another home. She bought a 2nd home at the peak.”
- Nemesis on “The bank encouraged her to take the equity in her home to purchase another home. She bought a 2nd home at the peak.”
Type of Anecdote
- 01. He Said, She Said (247)
- 02. Profiting from the Boom (442)
- 03. Changed my Life (103)
- 04. Changed my Career (38)
- 05. Where do Buyers get the money? (962)
- 06. Held my Nose and Leapt (96)
- 07. Avoiding Vancouver (375)
- 08. Overextended Buyers (1189)
- 09. Delaying Buying (316)
- 10. Demoralized Renters? (366)
- 11. Regrets about Investing in RE (417)
- 12. Effects of Development (274)
- 13. 2010 Olympics Related (74)
- 14. Social Effects of the Boom (1257)
- 15. Misallocation of Resources (959)
- 16. Missed The Boat? (236)
- 17. The Froogle Scott Chronicles (27)
- 18. Spot The Speculator (171)
- 19. BlastRadiusPostCards (17)
- 20. The Limitless Demand Argument For Ongoing Market Strength (70)
- 21. Vancouver RE-Verse [Found Poems] (8)
- 22. RE References In Popular Culture (41)
- 23. Jumping The Shark (1)
- 24. Policies On Housing (10)
- 25. Epigrams For The Bubble (1)
- 26. Premature Calls Of "Bottom" (3)
- 27. Seller Panic (3)
- 28. Erroneous Causation Theories For Falling Prices (7)
- 29. Bubblespeak (1)
- Uncategorized (176)
Blogroll
- 01 Vancouver Condo Info
- 02 AmericaCanada [retired, no archive]
- 03 Housing Analysis
- 04 RealEstateTalks BC
- 05 Vancouver RE and then some
- 06 Whispers from the Village on the Edge of the Rainforest
- 07 Greater Fool
- 08 Canada Bubble
- 09 Rob Chipman's blog
- 10 YatterMatters
- 11 condohype [retired; archives available]
- 12 vancouver (un)real estate
- 13 Agent Will's Stats [retired]
- 14 Landlord Rescue
- 15 The Economic Analyst
- 16 Canadian Housing Price Charts
- 17 Hoodsurf [retired Jun 2011]
- 18 World Housing Bubble
- 19 Vancouver Price Drop
- 20 North American Economics
-
Latest Anecdotes:
- “The bank encouraged her to take the equity in her home to purchase another home. She bought a 2nd home at the peak.”
- “Let’s remember how we got here” – Looser and Looser CMHC Limits
- Don’t Worry, I’m Sure Somebody Will Sort This All Out – “Policymakers now know better and will be a lot more proactive in preventing a collapse.”
- “Things have changed, we are not doing that type of mortgage. We are not interested at all.”
- “We are noticing our target type of housing in price decline, albeit slow, as our money increases in value, slowly as well but outpacing housing.”
- Renter Buys In West Van – “For a few hundred more per month, you could own the place. Which is what I will be doing as my offer for a place down the street has been accepted. There is some value in staying in one place.”
- A Bed in the Bathroom, Why Not? [Let Us Count The Reasons...]
- “My husband and kids are pretty happy in our rental house within cycling distance of work that we could never have afforded otherwise. We’re doin’ pretty dang well, thank you, for median income earners in this expensive city.”
- “I Wish Them Bad Luck.” – Jim Flaherty, on those who wish to profit from Canadian RE price drops
- “We asked why he doesn’t just rent the whole house. He said he can’t, it wouldn’t cover his mortgage – he’ll get more to rent it out as two suites. These new landlords are hilarious, thinking that rent will cover their mortgage!”
- “My neighbours, in their late 60s, just put their house on the market. They had said they would die in that house, but now they are worried that with the housing market going south they may be losing a lot of equity and they better sell now before it gets worse.”
- Chat Thread
- Taking A Break
- “My best guess: this property is now an ‘investment hold’ and will be built ‘when prices recover’. Good luck on that!”
- Man Loses $745,000 Vancouver Condo Deposit
- Graphic – Degrees of Housing Overvaluation in Canada
- The Rare Individual With A Negative Ownership Premium
- Advice Regarding Renting In Vancouver, Please – “Unfortunately, the Vancouver rental stock is absolutely atrocious. It just seems like every landlord is looking for someone to pay 100% of their mortgage on a crappy place through rental income.”
- “I just visited Manhattan for a week, and happened to snap some real estate ads on both the Upper West and Upper East sides of the island. Compare to Vancouver. It simply doesn’t compute.”
- Ben Rabidoux In Vancouver Next Week
- “The mortgage company told me they were calling in my 40-year, 0-down mortgage. I have paid nearly sixty thousand dollars towards it, but, nearly five years in, I have yet to touch the principal.”
- ‘Vancouver City Hall: Housing Report Card 2012′; Plus Revised Version
- “My folks find themselves at 65 still owing half the value of their home and recreation property to the bank. After almost 30 years of ownership in the BPOE and a number of boom markets, they have very little to show for it.”
- “Rent for $2,200 a month or buy and have a mortgage of $4,310 per month. Why would anyone buy?”
- “They were talking about two couples they knew who had recently bought a lot and planned to each build a house on it and live as neighbours.”
- Greater Vancouver Home Builders’ Association Annual First-Time Buyer Seminar Attendance Plummets
- Mom and Pop Get It Wrong In All Markets, Time And Again
- The average British Columbian homeowner is not going to pay off their mortgage by the time they retire.
- “He’s sold all his properties except his current one, which is now for sale. He explained that the market’s currently in crash mode, worst that he’s ever seen.”
- “One of my old high school buddies finally got her mother to sell the family home in Kitsilano – sold for over $1M, monies realized after debt paid off $185K.”
- “I know someone who just declared bankruptcy because her condo was assessed at $150k and she bought it presale north of $250k in 2005 or 2006.”
- Sturdy, With Views – “Calling Froogle Scott!… Is Dr. Scott ‘In The House’?” [Not In This One, Certainly]
- “She said the market was dead in Victoria and that it would remain so for a very long time. I asked how she knew. Her answer was fascinating and should scare the pants off the real estate crowd.”
- Kits Notes – “I’m pretty sure that this is the first 3+ bedroom property of any type that I’ve seen in the 5 years I’ve lived here that is priced below $700K.”
- “A beautiful Belfast home, in the equivalent of 1st Shaughnessy, bought at their RE peak in 2007 for £3.5 million, has now sold for £800K, almost 80%-off. The market didn’t suffer any significant economic shocks. Rates & unemployment didn’t skyrocket. They didn’t build more land. Sentiment just changed and the prices fell and fell.”
- “Two family members of hers are trapped, underwater, in condos on the East Side.”
- “Interprovincial migration is not saying good things about BC’s economy.”
- Vancouver RE: Not As Expensive Provided You Don’t Think – “It’s clear that our perception of affordability has been coloured by living on a continent where housing is unusually inexpensive.”
- More Undisclosed RE Industry Insiders Publicized As Clients – “In 1995, Allan and Karin Hoegg were mortgage-free. But no more. Today their Vancouver home is a valuable source of income as they plan for full retirement.”
- Rumor that some OV units will be reduced by 20%.
Follow vreaa on twitter
- "The bank encouraged her to take the equity in her home to purchase another home. She bought a 2nd home at the peak." wp.me/pcq1o-5wr 1 day ago
VREAArchives
- June 2013
- May 2013
- April 2013
- March 2013
- February 2013
- January 2013
- December 2012
- November 2012
- October 2012
- September 2012
- August 2012
- July 2012
- June 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- October 2008
- September 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
Tags
Anecdotes Banks Bears blogs British Columbia Bubble Bulls buyers Canada Capitulation China CMHC Construction Debt Economy Employment Fear Foreign buyers Fundamentals Government Housing Interest Rates Landlords Life Media Mortgage brokers Okanagan Olympics Ownership Prediction Real Estate Realtors Relationships Rent Retirement RE_ATM sellers Sentiment Speculators Toronto US Vancouver Victoria Visual Anecdote Whistler
I agree. Soulless and ugly.
Pulp mills surrounding False Creek doesn’t sound particularly appealing. I have lived in pulp mill towns and they are ugly and stinky. Once cities pass a certain size they all become ‘soul-less’ that is the downside. the upside is better restaurants, culture, and less nosy judgemental neighbours.
Just trying to be balanced here. Being a bear doesn’t (always) mean being twisted and bitter.
True, but the culture part has not happened in Vancouver. Mainly because people here really have been indoctrinated to believe that this IS the best place on earth.
By all accounts False Creek was a pretty dirty and horrible place before it was gentrified beginning in the 80s but honestly I still think I would have liked Vancouver better back in the 60s and 70s. Not because it would have been better, but because it would have been more honest about itself.
Does anybody here really think that someone even in the mid 80s would have considered Vancouver the “Best place on earth”, or BC for that matter?
Authenticity is a great amenity. And very hard to get back once it is gone. My US city (Portland, Oregon) has squeezed out industry, low-cost housing, any old retailers or bars that don’t offer kitch value. And now we wonder why no one in the lower social strata, or even the twenty-somethings that keep moving here, can find decent-paying jobs.
Mills are a good sign. They are a sign that something real is being produced. Banking, real estate, law, retail, consulting. These can be fine industries with well-paying jobs, but they are the froth on top of the productive economy. Without blue-collar production jobs, you end up with a starkly two-tier city. Those in these well-paying froth industries, and those making tips and minimum wage to serve them.
The old, rickty Cambie Bridge… and the pulp mills. Transit busses used to have to travel on the outside lanes across that bridge and you just stared straight down.
Downtown is certainly more visually appeasing now than it was back then. But I know what the poster means… you could also get around without being trapped in traffic everywhere.
And the fog in Fall. People used to burn their leaves and we used to get the thickest fog in Autumn.
well, instead if building modern buildings, just keep all the pulp mills and the old memories then!
Yeah, when out-of-towners talk about how beautiful Vancouver is, they are obviously talking about the surroundings. The domestic architecture (which is what 90% of what any city consists of) is a disgrace.
It’s pretty amazing the uniformity of the condo towers being built. The same whitish color with blue/green windows. It was really striking the last time I drove in from the south after not being there a couple of years. Surprised the city doesn’t have more design review during the approval process, or if they do that they don’t try to encourage/require some more variety in the skyline.
I spent my teen years in Victoria during the 1970s, but the family would come over to Vancouver from time to time, and I still have a mental image of looking out the car window from the Granville Bridge, and being fascinated and compelled by the grimy industry of False Creek. I don’t know if a beehive burner was still there, but in my mind it is.
I don’t think many of us would want a return to the spewing smoke and ash associated with sawmilling in the center of the city. However, industry gives a texture and an atmosphere to a place — both literal and figurative. There’s often a specificity and localness associated with industry that forms part of the identity of the inhabitants. The pea soup fogs that older Vancouverites remember had a particular quality because they were a mix of wood smoke and fog. They gave a mysterious, haunted quality to the old city, captured in some of Fred Herzog’s photographs from the 1950s and 60s. Strip away the industry and you strip away part of who people are.
Herzog laments the passing of the old Vancouver, and the rise of the generic streetscape that could as easily be Singapore or Toronto or LA. He’s also said something interesting about this unfortunate notion of Vancouver being ‘world class’. He felt that when he first arrived in Vancouver in the early 1950s (from post-war Germany, via Toronto) Vancouver was in fact world class. Because in his view, the inhabitants were completely unselfconscious, and had an absolute sense of who they were as people, without any reference to outside cultural authority. (Essentially Michael’s point above, about a place being honest with itself.) For Herzog, the emblem of this unselfconsciousness was Vancouver’s exuberant neon signs. Thankfully, he photographed many of them before they were lost, after Vancouver city council passed its sign bylaw in 1974 — ironically, destroying a huge collection of urban neon signage that was legitimately world class.
Herzog’s message, exemplified by the way he’s lived his own life and pursued his photographic practice, is that you become world class by being most yourself, not by imitating others, or seeking their praise.
A selection of Herzog’s photographs: equinoxgallery dot com
Some vintage Vancouver neon: vancouverneon dot com
Thanks, Froogle.
I grew up in Kitsilano and remember being a traffic patroller when I attended General Gordon Elementary – we had to use bells instead of stop signs on many mornings because the smog was so dense. It wasn’t only the pulp mills and industry that caused it – most people in the neighbourhood used coal furnaces to heat their houses. (This was the 50s into the 60s) . False Creek used to be the “secret” place Kitsies would go to drink and cause trouble in because it was not patrolled by the city police, only the (now non-existent) harbour patrol – ah, good times!