An exchange at RE Talks, 12 Sep 2011:
“There’s a battle for good workers. I cannot tell you how many resumes have passed my desk and how many interviews I’ve run for people who aren’t up to snuff.” – jesse1, 10:08am
“I have heard the same, for high tech companies in Vancouver – too few quality people for open positions. Could it be that the good ones are simply leaving town? I know I still see a very healthy number of quality resume’s in Toronto, and have had no problem with recent hiring.” – westcoastfella, 2:08pm
“Paying more doesn’t help; you need a specialist doctor’s salary to afford what you can get in other North American cities. This is always the thing: we have often had to hire from outside of the province for certain specialist roles and it’s very difficult to convince people to move to Vancouver, even after showing them all the province has to offer. It’s just not for everyone and not deemed a location they want to move to; this is in big part because they look at what they can afford to buy but also because they have to forgo their professional networks when moving to a small-time market like Vancouver’s; if they get cut loose by us they have nowhere else to turn and we can’t afford to make them an offer they can’t refuse. Telling them they can rent doesn’t go over too well.” – jesse1, 2:18pm
A speculative mania in housing prices is very, very bad for a society; it causes misallocation of resources that hobbles future economic and intellectual health. See the ‘Avoiding Vancouver‘ sidebar category for numerous examples of people either not coming to Vancouver, or deciding to leave, largely because of RE prices. – vreaa
Count me as one of those people who would not leave Toronto for Vancouver. When I’m done using this house and sell it, I’ll be retiring somewhere where the price of a house is less than what it costs to build it. There’s probably tons of places like that in BC too. Small towns up north full of retirees that have quite enough of city living, traffic and people unsuitable for communal living.
Affordable housing like my modest paid off house or even a cheap rental in a corporate building are essential to stability. As far as I’m concerned I have to live somewhere, the less I pay the better off I am as far as my security is concerned. I have variable income as a self employed person and I don’t want to have chest pains if I have to endure a period of time in which no one calls me to work. A few years ago I weathered a three month period with no phone calls, no work and no income.
Below I’ve copied in a reply I made on a thread yesterday, as it’s relevant to today’s discussion too.
VREAA host on the bubble causing “misallocation of resources” — right on.
In the neighbourhood where I”ve lived for 20 years, there used to be a real demographic mix of homeowners and renters — renters like elderly ladies in apartment buildings, young couples or young families renting bungalows. One couple at the end of our street, when we first moved in a dozen years ago, had stayed as renters in their tiny bungalow for nearly 20 years. ANother set of neighbours was an elderly couple from Zimbabwe; they stayed about eight years, moving only when they had to go into care. A number of homeowners had legal suites that they rented to students or young couples or young families. In the last few years, renting families with small children came and went from the small bungalows opposite — we finally realized that the turnover rate had started to get higher because the bungalows were available only till they were demolished. Then, much bigger houses were built in their places (supposedly as part of an “Ecodensity” plan!); there were eight built in the span of four years, on our street and in the alley behind us.
Now many FEWER people live on our street, despite their being 5 huge new houses (all with multiple-car garages) just at one end of it, only one of them occupied by as many as four people. And all the people who moved in must be extremely wealthy, because the houses sold for well over $2.4 million, $2.86 million — prices like that. (Isn’t it odd I say “must be extremely wealthy”? One wishes there were more interaction between neighbours here, but in nearly every case of the new arrivals, language barriers have created some difficulties.) So there’s a loss of economic diversity as well.
Jeff Murdock, thanks so much for giving us the link to those UBC websites on that thread yesterday. Very useful!
Interesting to hear from Aussies some specifics about what’s going on down under. Peter Ladner had also made reference to Sydney as a city that protects longtime residents. At least Sydney did *something*, though it sounds like there’s anger about not more being done.
Rachelle, right you are about housing needing to be stable.
And I keep wondering about the people with very few resources who really might wind up feeling like the Joads from The Grapes of Wrath — here we are in our truck and there’s noplace to go.
Copy of post from yesterday:
ams, there’s so much hype that doesn’t of course reflect certain very sobering realities in Vancouver. Yes, the setting is extremely beautiful (and the city didn’t ruin it by putting billboards around the harbour, for example — well done!), and there are many pleasant aspects to life here in general. Matt, who was posting a day or two ago about the quality of Vancouver schools, certainly had a point about their holding their own against urban schools in many US or UK cities. Vancouver’s crime rate is relatively low, there are so many lovely parks, etc. But so many people outside and, it sounds like, even inside Vancouver romanticize it. Due to the speculative mania (and other problems like a lack of transit solutions for the Lower Mainland), Vancouver is in the midst of a crisis that will send more people fleeing and attract less talent. I wonder when on earth politicians here are going to wake up to find this city irrevocably weakened.
Great point about the lowering of density going on in some parts. Bizarre, when you think about it.
Thanks, host! Yes, isn’t that bizarre? One thing that really gets me steamed is that apparently builders/owners/speculators were allowed to create much larger houses than they would otherwise under a special “Density Bonus” rule, a kind of “If you build a suite, renters will come, and voila, we have achieved Ecodensity.” Number of occupied basement suites in the 8 new luxury homes near us: 0. Not even grandparents or nannies, as far as we can tell. Of course, people able to afford these kinds of homes aren’t going to need renters! They don’t want strangers living in their basements!
I’ve noticed a serious drop off in resumes too. I hire positions at a prestigious government employer with an amazing benefit and pension package. 4 years ago I would see 40+ resumes for a professional IT position. The last post garnered 7. I didn’t necessarily connect it with the real estate market, but it does beg the question of where all these people clamouring to live in the “best place on earth” are.
I also perform stand up comedy on the side. There are 4 (soon to be 5) decent places to perform in Vancouver. I recently took a look at the scene in Toronto and there are dozens, you could do a different room every night for a month and never duplicate. You move to Vancouver, you make a lot of sacrifices to look at mountains and avoid a couple of months of snow. I still prefer it to any other city in Canada (I’ve lived in Toronto, Montreal and Calgary), but it’s far from a slam dunk.
Three times in the last month I’ve heard people say they like Vancouver BUT it’s too expensive to even contemplate owning a home and also the rain really gets you down from October-March. Two of these people have made moves out East where they realize that although it is COLD, you don’t mind so much because the sun is shining, even in the middle of January. It’s pretty fecking depressing around here in the middle of winter, I’m sure we can all agree on that.
It seems to me that because of high housing prices, people are starting to realize that hey, maybe it’s ISN’T so bad elsewhere in the country (instead of robotically repeating “this is the best place on earth”). Soon in cities all over the country there will be economic refugees from Vancouver.
My manager gets NO resumes for IT Security jobs we have open.
Workmates get hardly any offers from Vancouver when appliying for other jobs, its all calgary or toronto.
IT Security is a huge deal right now for big companies, govt, pretty much everyone. I guess Lululemon is pretty happy with their IT dept so thats it for work here.
UBC is more of a giant condo development. You can’t have an environment for higher learning when so few students or faculty are living on campus.
More learning are happening in coffee shops, student union and bars than classrooms.
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