Michael Geller (‘a Vancouver based architect, planner, real estate consultant and property developer with four decades’ experience in the public, private and institutional sectors‘) in a comment at Frances Bula’s blog, 24 Jun 2011 12:00am. Excerpts -
“I´m currently ´living´in Javea, on the Costa Blanca about 75 minutes from Valencia on another house exchange. …
Last night, my wife and I were discussing just how our house exchange partners are enjoying life in Vancouver, compared to how we are enjoying life here. [In Spain gas pricier; wine cheaper] From our modern villa we can walk to town, buy an incredible variety of fresh fish at a fraction of the price in Vancouver, or when eating out, enjoy a string of seafront restaurants where you can get a nice 3 course meal, with wine for 9 to 12 euros…no worry about drinking and driving… [In Vancouver drive to restaurant for meal at twice the price] Then again, unemployment is 22% in the Valencia region and although there seems to be so much more industrial activity than in Vancouver, the region is spending more than it takes in and is reportedly on the verge of bankruptcy. …
I would conclude by saying that one´s enjoyment of Vancouver as a place to live is obviously a function of where and how you live…whether you worry about money…and how satisfying your work/life balance is….
There is no doubt that Vancouver is beautiful to look at, but every time we do a house exchange we realize there are many plusses to life in other cities and countries…New Zealand and Australia both come to mind….But we don´t move because we are ‘established’ in Vancouver… our friends are there… etc.
However, if one could feel free to choose, I think there are many better places to live… where you are not worrying quite so much about whether you will ever be able to buy a home, or how to pay such large mortgage payments… and even whether you can afford to have kids… this one really troubles me whenever I hear it from young Vancouver couples…
I agree with [the opinion] that if you can resign yourself to renting, Vancouver may be a better place to live than for those struggling to buy…although those who bought homes for $100,000 that are now worth $2 million and can sell and move elsewhere and retire on their nest egg… would probably not think this way!
So my advice, start doing house exchanges as a way to enjoy relatively inexpensive holidays, and a way to experience life in other places…go to homelink.org to see what´s available.
I must admit that while I am tempted to move to another place, if only for half the year…I do always come back to Vancouver… but I´m not sure it´s because it´s better… just because it´s where I live and it might be too much effort to change!”
[Earlier comments by Michael Geller were headlined at VREAA 23 Mar 2011.]
Wow, Michael Geller. Those are some poignant words, and words with which I, for the most part, agree.
But notice the undertone of what Geller is stating. He sees what Vancouver could become with some decent city planning, adding in a mix of provocative and controversial plans aimed at eradicating speculation from the City once and for all. Probably not going to happen, but that’s why God invented airplanes and rentership.
Yeah, I was also fairly surprised to hear this ‘advice’ coming from Geller. He has previously been very Vancouver-promotional, justifying prices, etc. ( for instance: “While Vancouver prices are high by Canadian and North American standards, they are still less than some European and Asian cities.” – March 2011)
Perhaps he crossed some kind of threshold of realization…
If only more people followed his advice and traveled a bit. The ignorants chanting about Vancouver being the best place on Earth are really getting on my nerve.
Mere political posturing for this Autumn’s YVR CivicSeason I’m afraid,VREAA. More telling is ‘Fusty’s’ revelation (if true) about the WetCouver condo liquidation and subsequent DezRez aquisition in… CostaRica.
I am (almost) speechless. Does this [expletive deleted] know what has happened with Spain and their housing market in the last decade? Are all Vancouverites this ignorant?
matt -> We’d be almost certain that Geller is aware of the Spanish RE crash…
What point are you making?
I’d expect a developer, of all people, to have a better understanding of what has happened to Spain and what is in store for them, rather then express surprise that the country is in deep financial trouble. http://gellersworldtravel.blogspot.com/2011/06/valencia-new-friends-unemployment-and.html . Conspicuously absent from Geller’s commentary is the role that housing and profligate lending played in the downfall of Spain. Everyone and their dog had a mortgage and owned a house and now they are all declaring bankruptcy.
matt-> OK, understand your point.
Yeah, we would expect ‘insiders’ to be more knowledgeable, but often they are not.
This is possibly the effect of them living day to day with people who are profiting generously from the mania, people who really believe that it’s all good; that it’s an unstoppable juggernaut. So, lots of insiders develop blinkers; and don’t have the perspective that even casual outside observers may acquire.
One of the absolutely jaw-dropping things about our mania is that so many deny it’s existence, and deny any possibility of a crash, despite the simultaneous examples of RE implosions in countries like Spain, Ireland, and the US. We can perhaps understand when people discount ancient history, but to ignore contemporary bubbles as most are doing is absolutely breathtaking.
expecting a developer to know what’s going on is one thing,
expecting him to acknowledge it is entirely another.
at the same time, it could just be he doesn’t give a shit?
One of the absolutely jaw-dropping things about our mania is that so many deny it’s existence, and deny any possibility of a crash, despite the simultaneous examples of RE implosions in countries like Spain, Ireland, and the US.
i had the same feeling watching shock and awe in march, 2003. there were enormously fat white people in the streets in DC wearing shirts that said “make war not love” and “give war a chance.”
yes, i am comparing the two situations, but only in terms of the overall lack of wisdom and celebration of stupidity and recklessness.
In May 2009 I walked the Camino Santiago in Spain all 800KM going through northern Spain, there were a couple spots where we went through ghost towns. One in particular was about 200 houses you could see the weeds growing in the concrete driveways and the insides of the houses were not finished and some very nice playgrounds with no children. There were only three families that we counted on the street we walked through. In Madrid on the way back to Vancouver, two cab drivers got in a fight trying to take us to the airport from our hotel. I sure hope the Spain situation does not come to Vancouver it won’t be fun to have 20% unemployment.
20% unemployment in vancouver?
well at least we’ve determined that they won’t mind – they only riot for no reason.
there’s been lots of reasons to be upset and in the street over policies and the economy over the last 20 years and yet we’ve rioted twice over a lost stanley cup. (though i think this last riot was a foregone conclusion, the kids were looking forward to it)
A digression; who else knew about this? A development company wants to build a new town in the Comox valley. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIaxhY0EU-g&feature=player_embedded
I don’t know about the efficacy (or otherwise) of introducing Opus ‘sensibilities’ to exurban FantasyIsland, Matt… but there’s definitely a Movie in there somewhere; i.e. FishOutOfWater/CultureKlash. Heck – maybe even a Series/Franchise!… I’m thinking PriscillaOfTheDesert meets TheBeachCombers/GreenAcres with cameo ‘WalkOns’ by the Rennies for DinnerPartayComicRelief!…
[PassPortMagazine Biopic] – John deCourcey Evans / OPUS Hotels founder, CEO, and President
http://tinyurl.com/5wc9rwc
Spain is an awesome country. People here read about the crisis there and think that it must be really bad, but my advice to them is – go there and see for your self. You wouldn’t notice that there is a crisis going on. The infrastructure is MUCH better than here, architecture is nice, weather is good, people look mostly happy. Sure, they had a property crash and prices are still going down. But that is a good thing. Housing is getting more affordable – real affordable, not orwellian affordable like here in Canada. (Madrid and BCN still need to go a long way though). The unemployment is officially 22%, but that is most likely overstated, because Spain has a large gray economy.
And the wine for 9 to 12 euros – only if you like expensive wine. You can also get a bottle for less than 2 euros that would sell here for 12 to 15 dollars.
My mind boggles. 45% youth unemployment must be a huge joke to you. The spanish me-generation can always work under the table sewing pants for Inditex right?
A large decline in the housing market doesn’t mean that all the conscientious savers are now diving into the housing market. No one is buying anything.
And for the love of god, I hope you’re not extolling virtue in an economy where people aren’t paying their taxes.
All I am asking is a little perspective. People who have never been there read a few articles in newspapers and think that they know it all.
Instead, go there and see for your self. You will be surprised.
45% youth unemployment – again, it’s bad, but not as bad as you may think. You may be surprised, but despite the high unemployment numbers, you would not see something like our DTES in Spain.
And for the love of god, don’t tell me that paying taxes is some sort of a virtue. You pay taxes, because if you would not, you would go to jail. If you believe that you have some more virtuous reasons to pay taxes, then maybe you should voluntarily pay more than the tax man asks to prove it.
And my point about gray economy was value free – I was just stating that the official numbers are not considering it and thus the numbers are skewed.
there is a great mini-documentary online about modern slavery in Spain
i will dig it up for you right now, but you had better damn well watch it..
ladies and gentlemen: i give you, MODERN SPAIN
Yes I do consider paying taxes to be a virtue. I’m not a von mises libertarian shithead and I like having government provide social services, healthcare and public education. I also like having public infrastructure that isn’t crumbling to shit, like roads, street lights and bridges. I think it’s rather hard to indulge in this new middle class conceit that is “community building”. I don’t think it’s possible to have a functional civil society if every is a fucking selfish asshole. Maybe you should talk to some Greeks to find out how cheating on taxes is working out for them. Or some californians.
OK. If you love taxes so much, then walk the walk – pay more than the government forces you to pay under the threat of force. It’s sooo virtuous, right? And don’t forget that taxes paid for the Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan, for the Olympic Village bailout and will pay for any bank bailouts caused by this housing bubble.
Agree with matt here and his previous comments above. Spain’s youth are getting shafted and their country’s economy has been lagging the EU for a while now, hidden by an asset price bubble and mis-allocation of capital. Now it’s margin call time and Spanish debt is creeping closer and closer to default. And we all know what happens to Eurozone countries in technical default…
Spain is a nice country to visit but does anyone think it’s possible to live there with a reasonable salary? I don’t know what the procedures are but with exorbitant youth unemployment I think it would be rather difficult.
So yeah Geller is a bit out of touch with what a horrible situation Spain is about to be in, but even through that, it will be a nice place to visit as long as one receives a paycheque from outside its borders. But hey they have cheap wine and you can walk to everything so it’s all good
The other one I like is people going to somewhere like Bali and commenting how everyone there seems so peaceful and happy. Yeah they’re happy but they prey every night they don’t get sick or injured. It’s all good when you’re making first world money with first world access to first world services.
To be fair, I have lived in 5 different countries and had some big ups and downs in my life, so my tolerance level is a bit different than for most people. I don’t even consider Greece that terrible. There are some riots in Athens and people are unhappy about the (criminal) bailouts and cuts. But that crisis will pass one day. The same applies to other PIIGS. Despite all their problems, they are still wealthy countries with high standards of living.
Oh, I am not disputing the effects of a housing crash. But you are making the same mistake as Matt. The newspaper make it look much worse than it really is.
And comparing Spain to Bali is like comparing Canada to Honduras. Try a little perspective for a change.
Geller’s world travels in my view misses a major point, that Spain has pockets of hardship that are facing cuts to standards of living. He enjoys walking to shopping and restaurants. Great, but I’m reasonably sure 45% youth unemployment indicates he isn’t dining with the under-24 crowd at the local eatery. We cannot state that we should seriously consider Spanish sensibilities without looking under the hood.
Geller makes some good points about Vancouver’s livability and how its residents should “get out more” to gain some perspective and ideas on how the city can improve. Using Spain as a shining example, however, is somewhat ironic for a Vancouverite.
But this irony is what makes the argument good. On one side you have “the best place on Earth” with “soundest banks”, new paradigm in real estate and “healthy” economy and on the other side is a country that had a massive housing bubble – now crashed, has high unemployment caused by a huge mis-allocation of resources and still lots of trouble ahead and YET life is possible there, perhaps even good life. You (not literally) don’t have to be scared to try some other place, because you would be giving up the only island of stability and prosperity in the World in crisis.
There is really more than just the newspaper titles and tourist brochures suggest.
@bubbly in any recession there will still be people making money and are gainfully employed. It’s not like a great depression with everyone eating baked beans and in food lines.
As I stated above, while we can look at the supposed lifestyle benefits of living in certain parts of the world, for those who actually live there the reality is different. Looking at Greece, emigration among youth is high as the prospects of earning a decent living to enjoy their country are hard. Their prospects moving to, say, Australia or Canada are much better and they are doing so, moreso than Canadians moving to Greece anyways. I live close to some Greek immigrants who moved back briefly to Greece only to quickly discover they cannot enjoy the standard of living they can get in Canada. My expectation is that Spain will start having similar pains in the years ahead.
I still think it’s valid to call out that if we travel to other cities and think, based on an outsider looking in, that Vancouver can learn from these places, scratching the surface yields some tales of woe that are equally as instructive. I’m sure the wine was great, and I would be one of the first to advocate for more relaxed pricing and import restrictions on European wine.
Jesse, I think we are talking from completely different perspectives. You keep turning it into the Bali/tourist argument and I am talking as someone who has lived in multiple countries and who has experience with Spain going beyond tourism. There is a lot more than the wine (although the cheap wine is a nice bonus). There are serious problems too, of course… but I made my point in a previous comment already.
“There is a lot more than the wine”
We are discussing Michael Geller’s take on Spain. I am stating he cannot see a full perspective on the city in which he is vacationing because he is, like me, a tourist. I don’t know much about Spain, not having lived there, but if they do follow the plight of the Greeks and the Irish, it will not be pleasant: negative GDP growth, high unemployment, reduced services, pension clawbacks, retirement age adjustments, etc. I just don’t see how those are anything but real and tangible reductions in standards of living and quality of life for most citizens in these countries. Many of these citizens will be taking it on the chin.
vreaa : see the story in the vancouver sun – vancouver is the nicest city. 95% of vancourites voted vancouver as the nicest city in canada…interesting. I am not sure of the factors involved
they must not have asked anyone who’s been here for more than 10 years.
I wonder how many of those surveyed live in an SRO in the DTES.
you can’t deny it, the DTES has gotten WORSE. there’s more people than ever – just have a look at the ‘market’ that operates across from pigeon park savings or a block or two easy of save on meats – holy shit, hell on earth – and we closed riverview! we have the worst leadership, and most of our citizens would rather not think about the DTES, it’s too depressing.
please note: Geller has found himself a housing exchange yet is speaking from a position of having sold his Vancouver home and purchased a Costan Rican principal residence. So he still chooses to keep a home in Vancouver…he’s just on vacation. I don’t see anywhere in the article where he advocates selling your Vancouver home and moving permanently to another country.
Well, he does say: “…if one could feel free to choose, I think there are many better places to live… where you are not worrying quite so much about whether you will ever be able to buy a home, or how to pay such large mortgage payments… and even whether you can afford to have kids.”
Interesting discussion. I lived near the Valencia region back in 2000. It is a nice pace of life, but the construction boom was in evidence even back then (not that I had the eyes to see it for what it was) with new and half finished holiday condos sprouting from the earth everywhere you turned. I worked in a beach bar. Work was easy to find. I arrived alone with $40 bucks in my pocket and a few bags of belongings. I had enough funds in my account (read credit card) to get a flight out if it didn’t work out. By the end of my first afternoon at my chosen holiday town, I had two jobs and a rented apartment (with roommates). Work paid well enough to have fun, and as long as Germans, English, Swedes, Finns etc. etc continued coming for their beach holidays, I could see the local economy supporting a decent lifestyle for people who are there to realax, not pay off a Benz. From what I remember, locals were either in the hotel/bar/club/restaurant business, in construction, or servers. Tourism and construction was about it. Moroccans dealt Hashish on the seafront. Nice place. Many brits had moved or retired there to start bars, pubs and restaurants. The dark side? Practically the entire resident server population had serious drug habits. Cocaine, Heroin, ecstasy… my boss would show up glassy eyed and slurring and make no sense. Every night there were fights, baseball battings, stabbings… you can Youtube the town now and that’s what you see. Drunken holidaymakers and various factions of locals going at it every night. And that was in the good days. Oh, and every day you can watch bull torture on tv, if you like that kind of thing.
The discussion above also reminds me of Naples, Italy, circa 1999. I was there also. People look happy, wine is cheap, you can walk everywhere… but get talking to locals, and they told you – no jobs here. Unemployment was 30%. The big ambition for many less eductaed young men was to get to Florence, or Rome to “work”. When some locals we began drinking with in a piazza heard I was living in Firenze, they immediately began pestering me to let them come and stay at my apartment, so they can “work.” I said, “che tipo di lavoro vuoi fare?” and they replied “Rolex”. Then I received a watch thieving demonstration for how rich Americani were to be relieved of their Swiss burdens. Apparently, staying in my apartment would allow them to circumvent the risks inherent in presenting Neapolitan identity documents at the hotels. (Any idiot can tell who is Neapolitan, so fakes would be even worse). The local youth were clearly economically oppressed, and it was not a land of chocolate rivers bounded by candy trees. Nowhere is.
Thank you, TP. Regrettably, that’s the Spain that I also recall… So, I’m afraid I’m with you, TP… DerpDerp, AMS and Jesse on this. As for Espana’s DTES – it’s on the frontier, among other places (e.g. – E15/A9 near “el Limits”). To give Bubbly his due, these things can certainly seem benign at first glimpse – if your vantage is a chic seaside PaellaPalace… But it’s quite surprising, really… When you ‘flip on the lights’ the better to have “a good old look” at things – the ‘things’ that go scuttling towards the darkness/hidden crevices. ‘Underbelly’ was my speciality. Best forgotten, for the most part.
This is again the “Bali” argument. I was making the exact opposite argument. Go beyond the newspaper titles and tourist brochures.
Just googled Javea. The town I lived in, Torrevieja, was another 75kms south of Javea, which is 75 kms south of Valencia.
Repeat after me, Vancouver is the best place on Earth, Vancouver is the best place to live, Vancouver is the only place where one can enjoy a fulfilling live. Owning a house in Vancouver is the best way to secure financial security and life enjoyment. However even renting and living in a basement in Vancouver is better than living anywhere else in the world in a mansion.
and don’t forget,
the chinese will buy our house!
i love the party,
and the party loves me.
under the spreading chestnut tree
i sold you, and you sold me
Exactly. We live in paradise and everywhere else is hell.
People in Vancouver are pretty well conditioned.
On this note, we have headlined the poll that calguy linked yesterday.
I love Italy. Would love to visit Spain. I don’t understand why it’s so surprising that other place in the world might be kind of nice. Do people in Vancouver really buy the “best place on earth” stuff?
I find the Vancouver “best place on earth” thing bizarre. You’ve got three cities to the south — Seattle, Portland and San Fran — that are not that different in lifestyle, culture, environment, ect.
Yes they do. They actually buy the license plates.
wow. Hubris is never a good thing.
“In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster…”
lol you didn’t know about the license plates??
For Yank, link to sample plate image
the locals love to hype up the scenery they never have time to see (since they’re always at work, paying the mortgage n’shit – lol)
I have no words. This is on a license plate! And I thought Seattle was getting full of itself in the ’90s.
yank, didn’t you know that the best place on earth is a glacial ridge barren of all vegetation and life??