Mike at VREAA 27 Feb 2011 3:37pm -
“I grew up in a multi-ethnic, working/middle class part of Vancouver. Most people were immigrants but they mixed. Children were fluently English and parents were doing their best to learn. There was some sort of common understanding that is missing today. Racism was discouraged because people were just trying to get along, not because it was politically incorrect. Now there are cultural barriers everywhere I look.
People had real jobs back then, too. There was industry in this city even if it wasn’t globally important. Now if an industry tried to open, the condo owners would chase it away.
Children played on the block and parents knew each other to some extent. Now they ride in the SUV to school and back.
This is a cold city now. Even if prices come down, we will be surrounded by miserable, indebted fools. Unless you can somehow isolate yourself from the misery, you will feel it. And you don’t really want to isolate yourself. Time to leave…”
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Latest Anecdotes:
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- 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%.
- Downside Weights On The Vancouver RE Market – “One of the older guys (over 60) mention to the guy beside him that he and his wife were thinking about selling their family home, and renting, in order to get some of the money that was locked up in the house.”
- “My buddy was looking to upgrade to a house in the Coquitlam area. With 200k extra for a home, that’s half of lifetime saving between him and his wife.”
- “I was walking in the Fraser neighborhood yesterday, I noticed that the population, on average, seem to be composed of workers. I belong to the top 5 percent in terms of income. Nevertheless, I cannot afford any of the houses for sale in that neighbourhood.”
- “Vancouver is an urban resort whose value mostly resides in its real estate and not much else.”
- “Rogers Communications is expanding into RE; aiming to relaunch website; providing critical data that can help potential buyers assess the value of a property from the comfort of their home computer.”
- I’m only 50 and I can just about retire if I want to, all because of a single simple decision – “When prices rebounded to their former highs, then rocketed another 30% higher to what I considered to be totally unsustainable levels, I decided that only a fool would pass up a second opportunity to harvest such a massive non-taxable capital gain, and in 2011 I sold my place.”
- The Vacant Lot of Versailles, Richmond.
- “I don’t think that most people think things are going to crash, just that there is going to be a slight correction, but it was amazing to me how sentiment has changed, and the fact Vancouver RE is too high was just understood.”
- “The ‘investor’ who purchased our house put it up for sale two months later, in January 1981, but the bubble had burst.”
- For A City To Have That Kind Of Vacancy, It’s Like Cancer – “Downtown, the vacant unit rate is so high that it’s as though there were 35 towers at 20 storeys apiece – all empty.”
- “What’s the worst that can happen? You can’t pay your mortgage, so sell your house! No fear.”
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I love Dear John letters. There’s nothing more passive aggressive than screaming anonymously, ‘Hey, you suck, I’m going to leave!’. It has a much larger and positive impact than just leaving, devoting your time to building a new future and not looking back.
anonymous -> Yes, there is a aggressive quality, explicit or implied, to many of the ‘letters’ like this, some of which we have headlined (see the ‘Avoiding Vancouver’ category in the sidebar).
And, yes, it is fair advice for individuals who decide to leave to put the past behind them and get on with their futures.
So, your comment is fair.
At the same time, it is fair that people who are leaving Vancouver for specific reasons share those reasons with the general population. We may be able to learn something about our city from these ‘letters’.
We think it’d be a mistake if every one of the fairly large numbers of people who we’ve heard from who have ‘moved on’ were simply disregarded as discontents.
Many people are justifiably angry about what monetary policy, loose lending, and herd behaviour have done to local housing prices. It’s not surprising, nor is it unjustifiable, that they express that anger in a civil fashion.
[BTW, your comment's sarcasm has more than a touch of passive-aggression to it, too. Gotta love the layers of irony.]
“There’s nothing more passive aggressive than screaming anonymously” – Anonymous
Actually, you can assess the situation you left behind while building a new life in a new city (that multitasking thing, I guess). We have now discovered what it feels like to have two professional incomes in a city where houses cost much less than half what they cost in Vancouver. You travel, you eat out, you play golf/ski/sail, your kids can go to private school, you have the life you thought you would have when you got that extra degree. Contrast life in Vancouver where two professional incomes and a tenant in the basement allows you to be a homeowner of nothing special, with no money left over. Leaving was quite simply the best thing we have ever done.
It is just the way it goes