“Just came back from Oregon. Portland is one heck of a beautiful place.
Houses? $250-$300 for lovely home.
Coast. Fishing. Skiing. Hiking. Hunting. Motorcycling. All close. Drive south to CA for beach long weekends. Drive up to Vancouver, pay 5x more for a house. Makes perfect sense, right?”
- Sebee at greaterfool.ca 16 Oct 2012 1:03pm
Most Recent Comments:
- lithium technologies on The Froogle Scott Chronicles: Mortgaging Our Souls In Paradise – Part 6: Renovation Nervosa
- J-F on The Stigma Of Renting In Vancouver – “Oh no, we would never rent”
- Real Estate Tsunami on Chat Thread
- Nemesis on Chat Thread
- Real Estate Tsunami on Chat Thread
- rod_jonsson on Chat Thread
- Nemesis on Chat Thread
- rod_jonsson on Chat Thread
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- rp1 on Chat Thread
- Farmer on Chat Thread
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Type of Anecdote
- 01. He Said, She Said (247)
- 02. Profiting from the Boom (441)
- 03. Changed my Life (103)
- 04. Changed my Career (38)
- 05. Where do Buyers get the money? (958)
- 06. Held my Nose and Leapt (96)
- 07. Avoiding Vancouver (375)
- 08. Overextended Buyers (1182)
- 09. Delaying Buying (315)
- 10. Demoralized Renters? (362)
- 11. Regrets about Investing in RE (417)
- 12. Effects of Development (274)
- 13. 2010 Olympics Related (74)
- 14. Social Effects of the Boom (1255)
- 15. Misallocation of Resources (958)
- 16. Missed The Boat? (236)
- 17. The Froogle Scott Chronicles (27)
- 18. Spot The Speculator (171)
- 19. BlastRadiusPostCards (17)
- 20. The Limitless Demand Argument For Ongoing Market Strength (70)
- 21. Vancouver RE-Verse [Found Poems] (8)
- 22. RE References In Popular Culture (41)
- 23. Jumping The Shark (1)
- 24. Policies On Housing (10)
- 25. Epigrams For The Bubble (1)
- 26. Premature Calls Of "Bottom" (3)
- 27. Seller Panic (3)
- 28. Erroneous Causation Theories For Falling Prices (7)
- 29. Bubblespeak (1)
- Uncategorized (176)
Blogroll
- 01 Vancouver Condo Info
- 02 AmericaCanada [retired, no archive]
- 03 Housing Analysis
- 04 RealEstateTalks BC
- 05 Vancouver RE and then some
- 06 Whispers from the Village on the Edge of the Rainforest
- 07 Greater Fool
- 08 Canada Bubble
- 09 Rob Chipman's blog
- 10 YatterMatters
- 11 condohype [retired; archives available]
- 12 vancouver (un)real estate
- 13 Agent Will's Stats [retired]
- 14 Landlord Rescue
- 15 The Economic Analyst
- 16 Canadian Housing Price Charts
- 17 Hoodsurf [retired Jun 2011]
- 18 World Housing Bubble
- 19 Vancouver Price Drop
- 20 North American Economics
-
Latest Anecdotes:
- Chat Thread
- Taking A Break
- “My best guess: this property is now an ‘investment hold’ and will be built ‘when prices recover’. Good luck on that!”
- Man Loses $745,000 Vancouver Condo Deposit
- 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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- Chat Thread wp.me/pcq1o-5vD 3 weeks ago
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And not just affordable homes in Portland: lots of funky neighbourhoods and each boasting their own movie theatre/community living room, while ours are making way for retails and -what else- residential.
“My God, Zbigniew… It’s full of stars!”
[NoteToEd/DearReaders: I ain't been there in so long... That I intend to remedy that sorry state of affairs this Spring. It will - naturally - be illustrated. And published, exclusively... Here. Any 'burg whose cultural ecology can still sustain neighbourhood PictureHouses is self evidently healthy... and civilized. FYI & TBT... 'Nem' is more closely affiliated to:]
papa haydn … maybe best panna_cotta on earth (bpoe the other)
Yikes!… Forgot obligatory subsidiary rights plug…
Yah but, then you have to call yourself……. an Oregonian. I’d rather be dead.
*Turns up nose and minces – and I do mean minces – away.*
“Could be worse.” SanFranciscan, anyone?…
“I’m a renter. Why are you selling the house?”
Don’t forget you come back to Vancouver to 300 sq foot condos too! I have always enjoyed Portland – tax free! Seems to have many nice neighbourhoods. I saw homes similar to character homes in Kerrisdale,and Dunbar that sold for 500-600K. Sorry it is not Vancouver – but Portland has Nike, Intel, and other head offices and don’t forget about the wonderful microbreweries. Now excuse me..I feel the need to plan a trip back to Portland!
There’s alot to love in Portland, “For a while now, Portland has claimed the title of most strips clubs per capita in the country.”
http://www.time.com/time/travel/cityguide/article/0,31489,1975826_1975753_1975585,00.html
I’m listening
$10 that rod_jonsson is chubster. Always posts after Nemesis and is completely incomprehensible.
I dont think what was a secret, Chubster said he changed his handle.
Obligatory:
It is also pretty damn hard to find a decent job in Portland.
I hear great things about living there but most people will complain the job situation.
I’ve heard it’s no worse for us late-20-to-early-30-somethings but the cost of living is essentially half even if you aren’t considering buying a place.
Probably depends on the field of expertise though. Some of the high tech and biotech prospects look much rosier there than in Vancouver.
Portland still embodies a lot of what made Vancouver so great, and such a perfect antithesis to Toronto.
http://money.cnn.com/gallery/retirement/2012/10/16/best-places-retire.moneymag/2.html
CNN profiled top cities in US to retire, and Portland came out #2. $272k average home price.
“No need to leave the city for outdoor adventures; Portland has one of the largest urban forests in the country (wine country and beaches are just a short drive away). It’s also home to several award-winning hospitals, including the Oregon Health & Sciences University, whose research center attracts experts and patients from around the country.” – CNN
Don’t think I’d up and move from where I had established roots, but if making a decision to do so and didn’t need an especially big representation of big employers, it’d be a nice place.
CanAmerican
Anyone who has watched “Portlandia” knows its an even loopier place than Vancouver under Gregor!
Best option would be to live in Vancouver Washington, just across the river from Portland. On the Washington side, you pay no state income tax. You can then do all your shopping in Portland and pay no sales tax.
One caveat. I have not checked, but there is likely a premium on housing prices in Vancouver WA for precisely this reason, negating any benefit from such a stategy.
Yeah…US is nice place to live until you get sick…unless of course ur rich then that’s not an issue, it will still be a nice place to live
Or you happen to be part of the vast majority of people with insurance.
Why is that most people seem to think there is absolutely no health care insurance in the US?
It’s not that there isn’t insurance nor healthcare, just that in the situation of falling deathly ill, there is more than a significant chance that you will never recover financially. (Because, you do read the fine print right? Insurance does not pay for EVERYTHING — they cap out.)
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/05/21/153028362/your-stories-of-being-sick-inside-the-u-s-health-care-system
Of course if you’re lucky and only need routine/comestic fixes, then you’re fine. But what may be considered “medically necessary” in say the Canadian Health Care system is often not lucrative enough to provide. Private hospitals and services have a history of only doing the “highly profitable” procedures — hey, if I was running a private practice, I wouldn’t take on risky procedures that didn’t generate gobs of money either. Because if I fail, it’s bad business. But if nothing goes wrong, I can win awards as “best hospital” (zero fatalities — kind of hard to have fatalities if I never admit anyone into ER). Why wouldn’t I?
Because those of us with relatives who had excellent health care but actually got sick find that their excellent health care turns to sewage if you change jobs to a company with a different provider. A family member’s “excellent” coverage with his employer pretty much covers if he breaks a leg, but the health condition diagnosed when at a different job/different employer? Not so much. The time spent on getting the two companies to talk: the rejections and then reluctant approvals: the hours upon hours upon hours dealing with paperwork, bureaucracy: the fact you can’t go outside HMO mandated providers – essentially, he has a part time job just dealing with the red-tape.
I also have a family member who is a doctor who won’t deal with HMOs and only takes very rich clients. (Different speciality, alas.) HMOs determine what health care paths they push based not on studies and performance of that treatment, but instead on optimizing their own profit. This doctor has some of the best success rates in the world because of all the fat dollars come rollin’ through the door.
HMOs are very much like the Future Shop salespersons, who (at least used to) make commissions based on the store profit – so were usually pushing the stuff with high mark-up, not necessarily the right system for the consumer.
So, yeah. It’s the best of all health care systems, it’s the worst of all health care systems. Just don’t get sick.
Sorry, those stories weren’t the ones I was looking for. Those are of people who are uninsured. But there are stories (a lot harder to find now because of the current state of Health Care in the US — basically the uninsured problem is a pretty large one at the moment) that talk about people who WERE insured and still basically lost all their money after being sick. So then, what was the point of being insured? To underwrite your allergy pills?
But this is probably OT. =b
Apropos the Portlandia thread… for all of you who may not independently have stumbled upon this excellent summation of AllThingsPresidential and TheStateOfTheUnion…
[NoteToEd: as I may have previously opined, it's a marvellous place to work... if sometimes an intolerably strange place to live. One thing's for sure... If they don't kill ya first... They'll show you the best time on the planet.]