Krazy Kanuck at vancouvercondoinfo.com 12 May 2011 2:07 pm – “I’m working near Squamish temporarily, and one of the young electricians was telling me about his brother. They both work for BC Hydro, his brother as a lineman. Anyhow, he was telling me about the new house that his brother is building. $800K!!! I couldn’t believe it. I’m sure BC Hydro pays decent, and a lineman can make good cash, but I would think you need to make $200K a year to support that kind of mortgage, and I’m pretty sure linemen don’t make that.”
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Vancouver Real Estate Anecdote Archive 
well i have many friends that make around $48,000 a year who have bought one bedroom condos for between $350,000-$400,000, the condos are of course in Van West and downtown, even Gastown ….shoe-boxes really
Several cable splicers make over $200k, but that is with tons of overtime and travel. The ones who know how to leverage the union rules to their advantage do very well indeed. It’s all gravy until they crack down on overtime, then suddenly it’s hard to maintain the lifestyle.
No problem! I know a guy who has a mortgage for over $900k (no joke!) and he’s never made more than $50k per year in his life! (Though he does have to rent out 80% of the property to make the mortgage payments). Dear God….help us…..
When will you people learn that in Vancouver, size of the mortgage you can get is NOT tied to your income. It really depends on the “creativity” of your mortgage broker.
So what if his house is $800k. It doesn’t mean his mortgage is big. What if he put $600K down.
Maybe he had a good year investing. Maybe he:
– Put down $100K into silver, leveraged it up and earned 5X his money
– Hit it big on some options trade…
anything….just cuz its 800k doesnt mean his mortgage is huge
604serf -> Note how we are thinking, though — for people to buy RE, they have to have won the lottery, or gambled and won, or speculated and won, or knocked over a bank… it’s all very fast-and-loose frontier-type thinking…
This thinking is a symptom of how RE prices have become completely divorced from the idea of working, earning, and paying-off the mortgage via income.
The province is not made of linemen. Surprise –marginal buyers take on large debts. Whowouldathunk it.
Hope he dosn’t plan on selling it any time soon.
The MLS shows there are 63 houses in Squamish listed over $700k, most of them have been listed FOREVER.
The Squamish Chief Newspaper’s front cover this week said that house prices have gone DOWN 8.6% in the last year and a wopping 24.5% in the last 3 years. In the last 5 years prices are only up 8.4% for a annual return of 1.68%! That price appreciation could well be wiped out in the next year if the downward slide continues. From my observation it seems that the only places selling are the really low priced ones. Apparently there has been a pick up in the number of sales in the last month. It looks to me that the vultures are moving in, although I would say too soon.
Guess what the headline from the Chief was?
“Home prices, sales stabilizing: realtors”
It seem the Chief knows what side of its bread is buttered.
the best magazine cover to mark the top of the us bubble:
Great stuff, will sidebar.
Know of friend’s friend who has a 900K mortgage – a couple in their early 30s, likely make under 150K. first owned a surrey condo, and then managed to borrow another $700K to buy SFH in burnaby — therefore total mortgage of 900K. some of their thinkings: RE is the only way to get rich; it is cheap, only costs $3000+ per mth, subsided by renting out surrey condo & SFH basement, out of pocket is only $1,xxx!
Total net-worth likely a fraction of their RE holdings; will probably get completely wiped out in downturn; many like them.
Not sure how you inferred from the article that he had a $800k mortgage – perhaps he had a large downpayment?
Apparently details don’t matter …
There is a North American wide shortage of lineman and yes, they can easily make over $200,000 a year with overtime, which they get during storms. Lineman are offered signing bonuses as well. Electrical utilities compete against each other to hire lineman. Strange yes, but true.
you can’t get a 900K mortgage on 48K income. These comments come from people who have never applied for a mortgage and have no idea what it’s like to qualify. Very naive
“how RE prices have become completely divorced from the idea of working, earning, and paying-off the mortgage via income”.
poppycock vreaa. There are affordable listings at each level of income and wealth. If you’re expecting to squeeze avg income into elite housing (detached) then also expect square peg with round hole.
Well, sure, you can always afford something, right?
We are emphatically NOT “expecting to squeeze avg income into elite housing (detached)”.
We are simply expecting people to be able to afford a quality of housing that is commensurate with their income. In Vancouver, what people can ‘afford’ is way, way below what they can afford in other cities, doing comparable jobs, with comparable incomes. That principle applies to all income levels. That’s the point.
do you live in Vancouver vreaa? If so, you know full well that you need to adjusts your expectations to live here. This isn’t going to change no matter how long and often you bitch about it.
And it’s not like you don’t have options.
You can;
a) accept buying a condo first and move up the property ladder
b) buy a detached home and bite off more mortgage than you can comfortably afford
c) move
d) rent and spend your free time whining and complaining on real estate bear blog sites
Rusty -> “you know full well that you need to adjust your expectations to live here”… I think what you’re saying is “it’s different here”, right?
This is a myth, perpetuated by the bulls, and accepted hook-line-and-sinker by those who buy. Just because the majority have joined the cult, and are chanting the chants, doesn’t mean that the beliefs are correct.
ALL the other RE bubbles around the globe looked exactly like this before they imploded. Stay tuned.
Lineman make serious cash and have great pensions. They could handle a $800k mortgage.
“This is a myth, perpetuated by the bulls, and accepted hook-line-and-sinker by those who buy. Just because the majority have joined the cult, and are chanting the chants, doesn’t mean that the beliefs are correct”.
@ vreaa
denial (de Nile) ain’t just a river in Africa.
[Thanks for spelling out the joke… we’d have missed it without that. -ed.]
Here are the myths I am aware of: house prices are not based on demand, there is no pressure from immigration, there is no shortage of land, Vancouver is not the “best place on earth” yadda yadda yadda…
As we’ve said: Stay tuned.
We must say, we really do find it amazing the stories that bulls like rusty have consumed, and the positions that they now inhabit:
“Vancouver is the Best Place on Earth” has gone from an optimistic cheerleading claim to a proven fact, and anybody who questions that ‘fact’ is ‘in denial’.
Cult, anyone?
this site is one big bear cult…or show I say circle jerk
[Uncouth. -ed.]
Rusty,
You should really take some vacations, you sound angry and tired. And take the opportunity to travel around and see what’s out there in the rest of the World. You’ll be surprised to see what you’ll see.
Vancouver Best Place on Earth? lol…
By the way, I do own Real Estate, just not in Vancouver where it is utterly over-priced. I’m coming to this blog not because I’m a bear, just because I found the Vancouver RE Market fascinating. It is so astonishing to me to see how people are willing to put on the line their entire future and freedom to buy, well, shacks. Interesting indeed.
If you have not gone through a bubble burst, you don’t know what it feels like, for yourself and for the people around you. This is ugly and unfortunately, this is what’s coming to Vancouver. If you are overly exposed in RE, I sincerely wish you good luck. And I would also advise you to reduce your exposure ASAP, you’ll sleep so much better at night, be in a better mood during the day and sound a lot less frustrated and angry…
i’m not from here, I’ve been here for a few years and will probably be somewhere else in another few years. So is my life, I can’t care less if the RE market crashes, I just feel bad for the people who are going through so much struggle in the future. I’ve been there, done that. I know how it feels…
Pingback: Couple in early 30′s; Income 150K; Own Surrey Condo and Burnaby SFH; Mortgage 900K; Renting Out Condo And Basement; Neg Cash Flow $1K+ p.m. | Vancouver Real Estate Anecdote Archive
“You should really take some vacations, you sound angry and tired.”
funny you should make this comment El Magnifico. I just arrived back in Vancouver from my winter home in Panama. Yet another bonus of the wealth Vancouver real estate has provided for me. So who’s angry?
“Yet another bonus of the wealth Vancouver real estate has provided for me”: glad to see that you believe your home(s) are generating revenue for you. This can only last as long as the RE market goes up.
As for me, I just got back from a five months assignment in London, UK, sent by my company as an ‘expat’. No housing, no food, no transportation and no tax to pay for, everything taken care of by the company… All the money made went straight into my investments. Oh, and I used the ‘expat premium’ to travel around Europe. The weather was great in April, I even went to the beach 🙂
Not angry at all indeed…
As a wife of a former lineman, there is NO way they make near $800,000 a yr, they dont get that many benefits LOL! They can make about $120-140 yr and thats not turning down trouble calls. So not sure who thinks they make $800,000 they would have to be working under the table alot!
Just throwing this in. How many of you writers would climb high poles and towers in the midst of storms, working with live electricity for a living! I grew up with my father, a lineman, going out in horrible stormy weather, for sometimes two to three days at a time, many days, every winter, risking his life so people can have power. Think of that when you are switching on your computer to complain about other people!