jesse at VREAA 1 may 2011 7:43am – “Anecdote: talking to friend of mine who lives in Taiwan. Was renting furnished apartment downtown to some guy in the film industry. Anyways the guy had to abruptly leave back to the US. My friend was having trouble finding another tenant so flew back to Vancouver (yes) to administer the tenant search. He says tenant quality has been challenging recently but doesn’t know why. Also, a few friends of mine have noticed a larger number of cooperative postings recently, from many cooperatives that are typically lined up with applicants. Maybe it is just randomness. Haven’t heard many anecdotes from the rental world recently.”
pricedoutfornow at VREAA 1 May 2011 9:14am – “I too, have noticed a lot more postings for co-ops, and also Metro Vancouver’s affordable housing. My friends who bought the Olympic condo to flip (didn’t happen) turned accidental landlords also had a hard time renting it out. They said they had NO calls, and finally rented it for $1200/month to some guy who only stayed 3 months. This is about $1000 less than the mortgage payment.
My guess is we’re at a point where everyone who could buy, did, in the past few years, leading to the bottom of the barrel left in the world of tenants (apart from those of us who think the bubble is going to burst). This is the point where it all collapses because there just aren’t any fools left to buy.”
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- 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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When I first bought a home in 2003, one of my requirements was a self-contained suite which I’d planned on renting out to supplement my income. Back then I found that the quality of tenants was horrible and left my suite unrented. A horrible underclass of losers has always dwelled in Vancouver.
Our Landlord desperate to sell and we have a 2 year lease. Now listed at about 700 K too high. Zero interest. She has 5 properties and is screwed. So many greedy idiots. I am going to enjoy these rinky dink, lazy punks get theirs.
What I’ve seen or heard:
Many apartment buildings have several vacancies (one vacancy sign, many vacancies).
Wicked deals on rent for mortgage helper suites. I know one case of someone who got a bargain and she said it like this…”keep this under your hat but you won’t believe my rent…” Why she wants it a secret, I don’t know.
I was recently offered a co-op townhouse. I turned it down despite the low rent. There is too much involved to co-op living. Lots of politics, eccentric trouble-makers, gossip etc. Same reasons I don’t want a condo, regardless of price. Renting on the market is the way to go right now.
@Mike the problem for many “renting on the market” is the lease is often short-term. For people who want some stability many landlords don’t want long-term leases. Professionally-managed large-scale developments and cooperatives offer more stability for people who want to shore up for a few years.
Others are OK with the ice floes of amateur landlordsville but that’s more in line with the dynamic nature of their lifestyles.
As for cooperative politics, well from my limited third-person experience with it yes there are issues but… I have more experience with douchebag neighbours that cause way more grief than some stick-in-the-mud in a cooperative. Thinktom over at Realestatetalks has a story of living across the street from lawyer who videotaped a renovation he was doing to formulate evidence of code/bylaw violations. That’s annoying westside neighbours for you; not always nice, and often very intelligent and ruthless if they want to be a pain.
Or remember the story of the west side treehouse that didn’t have permits that had to be torn down? Yes, that is SFH life if your neighbours are annoying. And these days it’s very hard to pull up your stakes and move somewhere else. Another risk to add to home ownership.
My landlord, who is small-time with a few dozen units, had to persuade me to sign a longer lease. A lot of landlords might be interested long leases right now with all the rental market instability.
For the first time I can remember, I regularly see houses with signs out front advertising suites. I know of signs that have been up for months, so I assume someone is losing rental income.
I get your point about SFH. I have one family member who is selling their house after their neighbour built an addition that oversees their yard. My own apartment deck (and other decks) oversee a SFH yard. I have more privacy on my deck than those SFH owners have.
The strength of the basement suite market is difficult to gauge as the market is mainly underground.
Joking aside, it is difficult to get a handle on the rental market. CMHC releases rental rate data but that’s only about 30% of the rental market; the rest is private dwelling rentals and secondary suites. CMHC has tried to get data from secondary suites but freely admits the data are suspect due to a relatively small sample size. The market is too disjointed to collect data without significant expense.
I just don’t know how the market is doing but generally no headline news indicates to me the market is somewhat distressed and nobody wants to talk about it. Given the recent outflow of temporary workers and the large volume of pulled listings in the past year, that shouldn’t be a surprise.
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Eventually the word will get around that one can rent a much nicer place for half the cost of a mortgage. That is persuasive even in a culture that is ownership crazy.
I think it is very hard to find good quality rentals, especially if you are looking for 3 bedrooms. Even good 2 bedrooms are hard to find, check in Surrey for example , you cant find a 2 bed (let alone 3 bed) other than basement suits.
I even visited some of those and to my surprise discovered that many of those detached hoses in Surrey have 2 to 4 basement suites and most of them are rented. Most of them rent in the 500 to 700 range , but when you have 3 or 4 of them in your basement , it makes for a nice mortgage helper I guess.
Otherwise, apartment buildings in Surrey and White Rock that I follow are close to being full. Other than a complete run down building, you cant find a nice 2 or 3 bed in this area, and yes rents are going up.
I have difficulty understanding it but that is the perception of things I have from my personal experience here. Check craigslist and other and seef or yourself, there is not much choice out there. Maybe in July things will be better, but so far people pretending that it is easy to find good rentals are completely out of touch with reality. And I am not talking about detached houses, they are very hard to come by as rentals, almost non-existent or at ridiculous prices (close to monthly mortgage payment).
What’s your price range? And are you only interested in apartments? I thought I’d check it out for Surrey, because I follow Vancouver and although, yes, in the 3 bed range you look at a lot of holes to find a nice space, there are definitely above-basement suites available for less than $1700.
Anyway, I checked out the Surrey tab. 680 3-beds at $1700- or below: sure, lots of basements and dupes in there, but there was a 1/2 duplex for $1350 I would check out in the top two returns and allows cats & dogs, which is Deeply Awesome and more challenging in Vancouver. Browsing, I see other places on the front page that are above-ground and look worth an appointment to check out. Of course, they may very well suck, but there’s some hope out there!
The reason they are hard to find is that they are rarely build.
Just look around Condo developments and you realize that most of the units are one bedrooms at best at around 700sqft.
Larger Apartments were broken down into smaller units to cram more people in (especially in Richmond I have been told). So they took, say, a two bedroom and split it and created a bachelor and one bedroom.
This is welcome news to me actually. I am considering moving to a larger place in the fall but was waiting for the market correction to start as I presume(d) that this would also affect the rental prices. Looks like I am right