“As part of the work being done by the Mayor’s Task Force on Housing Affordability, re:THINK HOUSING, an open ideas competition, is being launched to generate a broader discussion of possibilities for Vancouver’s affordable housing crisis. Aimed at everyone who has an interest in affordable housing, from the general public, to designers, planners and architects, to philanthropists, non profits and financial institutions, the Ideas Competition seeks to create the space for provocative, bold new ideas that address Vancouver’s affordability challenge head-on. It’s a chance to get new perspective on how we build an affordable city in Vancouver, and to garner ideas and possibilities for neighbourhood belonging and better connections across the City.”
…
“Vancouver is a growing and diverse city with significant housing challenges. Whether it’s homelessness, a lack of new rental homes, or high prices for single-family homes, Vancouver residents face housing pressures across the financial spectrum.”
…
- from re:THINK HOUSING Competition, City Of Vancouver
[Thanks to terminalcitygirl for bringing this to our attention, and who adds "Have you checked out this COV initiative? It seems unnecessarily complicated to me but at least they are asking for input from beyond the usual suspects..."]
—
We’d encourage all readers to take a look at the re:THINK HOUSING website, and to enter proposals if they see fit. We’re considering possibly submitting one ourselves.
Submissions close 29 Jun 2012.
- vreaa
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- 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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“bold new ideas that address Vancouver’s affordability challenge head-on”
The ideas that would solve Vancouver’s affordability problem happen to be impractical and unpopular.
It really is as simple as lower land prices, but the biggest “idea” is that affordability isn’t much worse than it was 15 years ago. Nobody wants to hear that, because there is a “problem”,
“but the biggest “idea” is that affordability isn’t much worse than it was 15 years ago”
What do you mean by this?
In real terms rents are about the same as the late 1990s.
Or does affordability mean ownership? Doesn’t look like it.
“In real terms rents are about the same as the late 1990s.”
Ah, I see.
I wonder what ICBC and BC Ferries rates are in real terms. It feels like they’ve gone through the roof.
With the municipalities it is often not what it seems (or what they want it to seem). If you check their election campaign contributors, the money almost 100% come from the big developers abd assosiated companies, so they are primarily charged to provide a return on their investment and multiple studies and public opinion surveys are comissioned to back up their needs. Now the idea they are trying to promote are higher density pockets in the traditionally single dwelling areas (condos are much more lucrative for developers than the single housing), higher lumber based condo floors allowance (up to 5-6 floors – much cheaper for them to build than the concrete but they also burn as fast as matches and non-stable bu who cares if the goal is to win an affordability challenge?), and the most important one and desirable for them is to get public to agree to reduce the parks and open space norms (top roof gardens, vertical green space etc) and to kill the ALR idea (cheaper source of the land for the developer). All these initiatives are given to a public as an ideas from assosiated architecs etc. during the discussion like the proposed one under the affordability challenge disguise. The developer gets the cheaper way to build with the promise that the savings is going to be traslated to a customer. Never happens as the developers just keep earning the sky high margins and beside, the condo overbuilding is already happening and is going to be brightly seen sooner than they finish the study.
Actually I had an epiphany! Why not… drastically increase the number of units under construction and flood the market with housing. More supply means… if I remember my ECON101 teachings… lower prices!
Will it work? I refer readers to the sh!tshows in San Diego, Las Vegas, Atlanta, and Phoenix, where there was massive overbuilding and builders still haven’t cleared the inventory they built up 5 years ago and prices drastically, in the case of Las Vegas close to 60%.
So go for it, Vancouver. Do it. Just don’t ask the difficult questions, like how Royally F*cked those economies became in the inevitable fallout.
Vancouver already has a flooded home market. Most of the lights in Yaletown never go on at night. When the bubble pops we will find out just how overbuilt we are.
Take a look at the Olympic Village as well some evening…sometimes I think there are entire buildings uninhabited.
I have found that most problems in life are due to a lack of condos.
I often catch myself saying “what this situation needs is more condos”.
Exactly what I was thinking. The missing element. Free money, fear, over-leveraged speculation, foreign speculation, overly high debt ratios, overvalued property, just one thing missing hmmmm….
I guess if we allow all the philanthropist developers to hand off fairly priced units out of the goodness of their hearts, we could allow the regular mid income earner to get into the market.
This seems like the Mayans praying for rain. Silly Mayans, the seasons control the weather.
Silly bureaucrats, money controls affordability.
Bring it on, I guess….
vreaa host – would you be so kind as to pm, there’s some thing I wanted to point out to you that you may find of interest. I apologize if this is not the correct way to ask for a private discussion. thanks
R&HIslander-> e-mail at:
vreaa(at)hotmail.com
Land Value Tax.
“An alternate solution for communities is to impose low tax rates on structures and high tax rates on land. This approach will raise the cost of holding land vacant (or leaving structures on the land unrehabilitated), will not penalize land development, and can result in more efficient land use, including increased affordable housing opportunities.”
http://www.progress.org/housing4.htm
Pinko!
Seriously, though, such a tax would involve ripping the shirts of more than a few residents who will be more than a bit vocal with the perceived injustice of increased taxation.
It’s a tough nut to crack. We can talk about the benefits of such a tax structure — and I’m not against fully accounting for low density land use externalities close to economic cores — but a fair question to ask is how much such a tax would need to be to markedly change behaviour and all but eliminate the chances of future asset price bubbles. I think it’s more than we might think.
Nonetheless the extra cash would be good, if properly earmarked into some longer-term planning and development of adequate housing forms.
And of course the big question, would a higher land tax improve affordability? I’m not so sure. It might more optimally use existing land to improve the types of dwellings available but that doesn’t mean rents will come down.
Yeah, probably unworkable because west-enders would scream bloody murder.
I don’t understand on the hand-wringing about ‘affordable housing’ at the municipal level in Vancouver- there’s a huge oversupply of it and always will be. The problem is most is extremely poor quality (damp basements and beater buildings with mold and bedbugs) and a huge number of people who have fallen thru the cracks since the advent of credit checks and property management companies.
One of the reasons I am leaving Vancouver is there’s nowhere nice to live at *any* price. This place is just hideous!
I am dismayed the City fathers seem to view (as always) the developers as the Solution. Obviously they are not the solution. The old saw about Vancouver being a magnet for all the poor and homeless etc because of the weather doesn’t wash either, Vancouver’s had that reputation since before the Great Depression. Given that we’ve has about a hundred years to think about it, why hasn’t there been acceptance that this will happen and some solution contrived to address it?
whiteshoes
my idea for this competition is to look at today’s Partial/Annular Solar Eclipse, beginning at 4.49 pm Vancouver time, and using it as a map for the next 6 months. I’ve posted my ideas on my Facebook. Anyone interested please take a look. If Vreaa would like to use this intelligence for their submittal, send me an email.
OT … time to check in on value creation-fest … at cost of a few $10Ms to congregate spokesleaders …
http://tinyurl.com/bur96cn
… hmmm … they’ve decided to replace the word ‘stimulus’ with ‘growth’ … seems too many serfs are catching on … yes, this will certainly fool all those radicals and ensure much continued milkshake suckage …
I say do whatever it takes to get even more oversupply built. 1) It’s not like they’re going to build them any more cheaply than they are now — it’s pretty crappy work they’re doing already. 2) This way, when the crash comes, we’ll have YEARS of very affordable living (due to over supply). I figure you can’t solve today’s problems (because they’re here already), just anticipate tomorrow’s.
Also, I say they need to flip the developer tax credit on it’s head and give some to the corporate renters. Rental units are more “affordable”.
And finally, there needs to be a clause (or maybe to structure multi-units as a lease) that allows the city to “buy-back” at any time, given sufficient justification, so that we can recycle the land that these junk condos sit on sooner. Or maybe it should just allow the city to sell it (sorry, there’ll pricing abuses I know, but it’s better to get rid of the crap than to leave it half empty and rotting just because a few people want to stay).
If people don’t listen or anticipate the problems, then the sooner the problems manifest, the better it is for everyone. Blindly turning an eye on anything has never amounted to anything good in my experience.
My idea is to fire the director of planning for the city, not name a replacement for months, remove the role completely, form a committee full of developers to study affordability, revise the Secured Market Rental Housing Policy for the city without public consultation, and then run a feel good contest to “engage” the public.
Not going to hap… oh.
Ok Penny
Hey VREAA
Not sure if this is helpful/relevant, but I’m working with some Chinese guys at the moment who have an interesting perspective on HAM:
1. They say the one-child policy encourages families to “invest” in their children on marriage and buy the children a place either in a major Chinese conurbation or abroad
2. Because much of rural China is still pretty undeveloped and the big cities aren’t that pleasant, the natural place to look is abroad
These guys seemed pretty sure that China’s economy was going to decelerate over the next few years and that, yes, this would have a negative effect on the less-than-billionaire classes’ investment decisions: ie they would rein in their horns and look to invest in China itself.
Craig
Here in Toronto there is a rule that any property tax decrease over 2.5% gets an automatic rent reduction. This city can choose to create as much affordable housing as they want any time they want by reducing the mill rate on multiresidential buildings. The mill rate on rental multiunit buildings is currently 2.5 times higher than “owned” identical buildings. (condos & SFH)
You may have the same law in Vancouver.
Would require changes at the provincial level I believe. Assessments and mill rates are set by the province.
The city did institute a 3 year moving average to knock out the peaks but I think there are problems segmenting the residential market. Besides, in Vancouver “multiunit” is all over the freaking place, even in the “SFHs”!