“We live in Vancouver and frequent Seattle often. We look at real estate at times when we travel there. Although the median price may show $320,000 in Seattle you would be hard pressed to find anything for that price there unless it were a dump. Surely this figure is comprised of the many studio and one bedroom sales and is not a sole reflection of single family home prices only. To get a decent single family home anywhere in Seattle in a decent neighbourhood would easily cost upward of $500,000-$600,000.
Besides the numbers the graphs comparing Vancouver to Seattle are very concerning to us. We were lucky and sold our downtown Vancouver condo a year ago this March 15th. We took a $17,000 hit after fees. But we felt blessed to get out even though we lost a little cash on the deal. We look around now and it seems like nothing is selling downtown – nothing. We know the real estate downturn has arrived.
If we could find viable jobs in Seattle we would quickly move there. Compared to Vancouver the prices of real estate are much less there and so are the prices for most goods, services, and entertainment. Our quality of life would benefit in ways we cannot imagine here. Aside from the lack of a widespread rail system Seattle as a city is top notch and the people are great too. But getting around in a car is much easier in Seattle than in Vancouver. Tit for tat. I hear they are working on a comprehensive citywide rail system right now and also maybe even getting high speed rail connecting Seattle to Portland. But they are also building a trolly system too such as the one they have in Amsterdam. As an example they are building a brand new waterfront and it looks like it is going to be unlike anything anyone has ever seen. We enjoy living in Vancouver but this city is getting just too expensive for everything. My point is Seattle seems like it is putting money into its services and parks and we just keep building glass towers without care to how it affects living everyday.
Why pay more here when we could potentially live in a sister city that has so much more to offer? Seattle also has its amazing restaurants, we find it to have nicer and better shopping, without a doubt a better art and music scene, large parks, and bohemian culture. Not to mention it is a beautiful skyline and the architecture is not monotones. Overall we love it there and we would venture to say it is actually a much nicer city than Vancouver especially when you take a tour of it on foot.
So when we see median prices nearly triple here in Vancouver over what they are in Seattle then we know we are going to get nailed here in a crunch. It just doesn’t make any sense and most anyone of our friends would agree living in Seattle is a nicer experience in general. Personally we think all the hype as being the Best Place on Earth is nothing more than a ploy to make us all feel good about the ridiculous debt levels we now somehow stumbled upon. Anyone who believes it is the Best Place on Earth here needs to travel more frequently. You do not even need to get off the continent to know differently. All you need to do is drive two and one half hours South.”
- JoeJoe Bee at greaterfool.ca 9 Mar 2012 at 10:14pm
—
Funny I just had a conversation with a co-worker about this same topic and came to the exact same conclusion. Seattle and to add Portland have way more going for them than Vancouver. They have a soul….a vibe…sense of community which you can feel. Vancouver although now much more diverse lost this decades ago…
Quote of TheDay…
“This is a beautiful world class city,” rally organizer & actor Jennifer Clement told the crowd, standing on top of a white station wagon. “We hosted the Olympics and we can’t even host a professional theatre in our downtown core?”…
DearReaders will, accordingly, appreciate why ‘Nem’ sardonically ‘punished’ you all with that fallacious Vancouver aphorism, “World Class” yesterday (I knew, in the absolute, espistemological sense, that someone would trot it out)… Here’s the piece in today’s Mop&Pail…
[G&M] – In Vancouver, a storied troupe’s final curtain call
“The curtain came down on the Vancouver Playhouse Theatre Company Saturday night”….
http://tinyurl.com/7ptsac3
PS – Actually, I think Marsha Lederman got it wrong… the curtain didn’t go down on the PlayHouse – it went down on the city.
From the comment queue in the article abstracted above:
Bigdaddy3000 – 8:54 AM on March 11, 2012
“Vancouver, for all its pretensions, is still the World’s Biggest Fishing Village. All the scratching and clawing to become World Crass has not changed the fact that people in Vancouver will not pay money to support the Arts. A city obsessed with condo hunting and mortgages apparently is not interested in live theatre. Sad and pitiable for the few living there who do enjoy the Arts, but I suppose they can always drive down to Seattle for the weekend for a cultural fix and then come back to the Greatest Place in the World on Monday to work and pay those condo fees.”
I commented in a previous post, and I’ll say it again here… I would bet that on a per capita basis, the BC interior cities host more of the arts community than does Vancouver.
For one, artists can afford to live there.
And, second, for the most part those places aren’t filled with pretentious, wannabe hipster artistes who spen most of thei time in preening complementary self-congratulation. Instead, the artists in those places actually practice their craft.
Heck, I lived much of my life in Calgary, and I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that even Cowtown outdoes Rainville in this respect.
Stranger than fiction… Culture? Fowgedaboutit, in ‘WorldClass’ YVR you can’t even sustain a…
TacoStand.
[G&M] – Vancouver devotees bemoan the end of the Coma Food Truck
http://tinyurl.com/7jhzqo3
vancouver is not world class nor will it ever be, the only people that say that are the locals. In the 7 cities I have lived in Vancouver is the only one that claims such as thing, and nobody ever outside of Vancouver thinks it’s world class they barely know where it is on a map.
very true. After living in 5 different major cities in the last 20 years I could not agree more.
Better cities (you do not really have to be “world class”) do not really care about labels and have a life of their own.
People who claim BPOE are mostly locals who have not traveled much outside or immigrants who are just thankful to be here (as they would be in any other city after leaving their hell-holes or avoiding persecution for fraud in their own countries).
Vancouver is really a 3rd tier city with great scenery. That’s all.
Not everyone has the option of moving to Seattle or Portland. They’s is stuck and, for many, stuck to the concept of being inelastic to riding the real estate rocket.
Wait until everyone owes more on their home than they can sell it for. Talk about stuck.
If I could somehow move to and live in the US, I’d find my self a nice place at least 800 miles south of the northwest rain forest. Just sayin’.
Yeah, too true. Why stop at Seattle!
[Insert all of the prejudices Seattleites have against southern California here.]
RE: moving. There are reasons not to move cities or countries. Moving is hard before you make new friends and get settled. But Vancouver and Seattle (or Portland) have similar cultures. And the climate is obviously the same.
I feel like I should receive credit, I have been saying for years that Vancouver is the Worlds Best Town.
Arts demise is a direct result of the costs of living. Its the same reason why all the mom and pop shops are closing down in favour of the chain stores. Its the sad reality of high property taxes, and high RE prices. Many of the people who would typically be into the art scene are too focused on making ends meet, or in my experience saving money to travel outside of Vancouver.
However, on the flip side, as dire as the arts scene seems. Take a walk by Lulu or Aritzia, tell me how many thousands are being rung through the tills. Its astonishing how much money Vancouverities spend on consumables.
Priorities have changed in this Town, sad but true. We have become everything Vancouverities used to loathe about Toronto, without any of the economic benefits.
“I feel like I should receive credit, I have been saying for years that Vancouver is the Worlds Best Town.”
Thousands of very nice towns will take you to task on this.
….
“Priorities have changed in this Town, sad but true.”
It does seem that way; for now.
When the housing bubble implodes, there may possibly be a revitalization of honest endeavours.
For intellectually stimulating live cultural entertainment, we have the Canucks. Despite the doom and gloom of high housing costs, our boys will always sell out all the games.
…. until they don’t, anymore.
How many productions did you go to?
If they keep playing like the way they are now, they’ll be bounced in the first round. If the twins keep up their poor play for another season, we’ll run them out of town like what we did with Naslund. And Rogers Arena will be dead like the late 90′s. Vancity just can’t accept a losing team like stupid Toronto fans.
There is nothing else for the people of Vancouver to justify the insane RE and mortgage slavery and proclaim BPOE status by:
Clinging to Canucks
Constant references to WINTER Olympics that most of the world does not participate or care about.
Mountains and sea (no mention of perpetual rain)
No arts, no industry, no infrastructure. A resort town with smug population who are living a lie
Well said pretzels.
I hope that is sarcasm, “For intellectually stimulating live cultural entertainment, we have the Canucks” if that is your idea of a cultural event you must be one of the morons that ripped apart the city when they lost in game seven. Vancouver is the most over rated city in the world.
“Anyone who believes it is the Best Place on Earth here needs to travel”
Vancouver is the new Seattle?
“Although the median price may show $320,000 in Seattle you would be hard pressed to find anything for that price there unless it were a dump…To get a decent single family home anywhere in Seattle in a decent neighbourhood would easily cost upward of $500,000-$600,000.”
Say what?
I guess I’d have to know how this person defines “decent”, but we’ve got family all over the Seattle area that we’ve visited dozens of times over the years and they live in perfectly nice houses in good neighbourhoods. We’re looking into moving there in the next year or so and we can easily buy something for under $320,000.
David Walker, the ex comptroller general of the US says he’ll move to Vancouver if things in the US don’t improve. That’s his Plan B. I don’t think Van is necessarily the best place on earth, but it does have a reputation for being clean and beautiful and offers a lot to the outdoor enthusiast. Asians obviously love it and are willing to pay top dollar. I don’t think Van’s appeal is endless, and the mad rush to buy will end at some point. Just a matter of time. But the cities appeal to many people is real. Who wants to move to the US anyways.
Vancouver’s reputation is more than just “being clean and beautiful”. The city appeals to specific groups.
http://insidechina.onehotspots.com/to-carry-80000-watches-back-to-canada-undeclared-ethnic-chinese-fined-15300/16161/
What an asinine comment.
Same ad-nauseum arguments as before by many other posters, with the name of a high ranking official thrown in to lend credibility.
I’ll tell you who wants to move to the US – just about every Canadian Phd graduate I’ve ever met regardless of origin. Why do you think that might be? Just about any professional with ambition considers moving to the US at some point based on my experience.
That’s what I did. BA, B.Sc MBA, UBC. Old friends from high school went right down to the USA became surgeons and live in real world class cities(NYC) and aren’t coming back. They only people left in BC, are slum lords or at literally the same job for 20 years selling appliances in a department store and getting older. Others teach at the same BC high school they went to and their kids are now going to. Some went to Toronto and rest went to Europe.It’s simply not worth it to pay a million dollars for a dump to live in the rain act like the only thing in the world is Canucks games, hating Americans, doing the grind and Starbucks. Most of the time you can’t even see the so called scenery.I bought years ago and sold all my properties.
Hunh? What’s not to love about the US? Travel around there awhile and it really grows on you. Maybe it is just because it is so varied everywhere you go. Almost like visiting different countries as you go from state to state. The food is familiar (and a lot cheaper as are the beer and cigs), folks are friendly, there are lots of warm places to stay and the sights are terrific. I could give up the cold on ten seconds notice.
There’s a reason 90% of Canadians live within 90 minutes of the US border.
That’s pretty funny. Three near instantaneous responses to the “who wants to live in the US” comment. You must have hit a nerve Tiberius. Secretly we all want to go there! Affordable housing is just one of the reasons.
He has probably never lived there.
I have, for 15 years.
No doubt – many of us wait around until the snowbird years to spend 4 to 6 months enjoying the great weather in the southern states.
“…To get a decent single family home anywhere in Seattle in a decent neighbourhood would easily cost upward of $500,000-$600,000.”
I have to agree with ‘nobody you know’. Clearly, if “decent neighbourhood” means next door to Bill Gates, than prices are expensive, but there are affordable and well located places in Seattle and area. EG: The Tim from Seattle Bubble bought a reno’ed Edwardian in Everett for $240,000 and there are none comparable even in Maple Ridge that cheap. Zillow lists Seattle proper as having hundreds of houses $320K and under. I spun through some of them and some look pretty good … for median stock, which is of course not high end.
@Pretzels It isn’t even 3rd tier.Maybe 3rd tier would be Dallas, Chicago,Montreal,Melbourne and Seattle.
Vancouver is about 5th tier maybe 6th or ” some evidence” category
Just an outsider’s 2 cents:
I’m from Romania, a country which used to supply thousands upon thousands (Mostly Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver). I think Canada even paid people to imigrate, to the tune of $5000 CAD or more, in the early nineties. However, since about 2004, nobody sees it as an emigration target anymore. Our education system was a bit above what F1 imagines about the US one, yet Vancouver was never seen as an important city, everybody was talking about Montreal more often than not.
To be frank, the prices seem a bit asinine. I mean, yes, eastern Europe has a climate similar to inland Canada, fairly extreme, from -20C to + 40C, but few people would exchange it for something Ireland-like + even more rain.We also had a good sized bubble, with condos going from 13000$ US to 200 000$ US. I realize we were very underdeveloped, but now they’re . I’ve heard each and every point F1 makes here too, to the point of me suspecting he’s Romanian.
Mark my words, this is going to crash, people can’t make exactly the same mistakes and F1 can’t sound like a Romanian cca 2007 without the situation being similar. Besides, we at least had world-class… callcenters, there was bread to be earned, you seem to be getting by on Bucharest IT salaries with 10x the home price – I don’t know how you do it…
I’ll write up something more detailed later on. As of now, I’m just too shocked.
PS: Sorry about the gaps in sentences, something weird happened when I pasted the text… I’ll elaborate later, as I promised.
Regarding Nem’s posts on the ‘Playhouse’ shut-down:
Remember that the intended ‘new VAG’ (Vancouver Art Gallery) is looking for $500MM (some say more), at a time when it can’t even get by on its annual budget.
Since comparing the NW cities, I would also point out that Seattle’s economy is roughly twice the size of Vancouver or Portland. It is really second only to Silicon Valley in terms of the tech industry. In terms of jobs, pay, and opportunities it is in a whole different class.