“$2000 / 3br – 2000ft² – Renters Don’t Pay These Prices (North Shore)
Renters don’t pay these crazy prices. There is more rental inventory coming on every day, and there will be even more at lower prices next month. People are listing properties for CRAZY prices hoping uninformed renters will pay their crazy mortgage.
All Craiglist prices are very negotiable and in the North Shore about $1 per square foot is fair. Unless the place is amazing (which every landlord thinks their property is) don’t pay much above this rate!!!”
– from craiglist, 5 Jan 2012 [hat-tip edinacloud]
Vancouver Real Estate Anecdote Archive 
Do you have some examples of the “crazy prices” landlords are asking for?
Just look at craigslist in your area…. some of the prices are crazy and those properties sit for months sometimes.
I don’t think $2000 for 2000 SF is crazy at all in core metro van…
I think the point is the poster of this ‘ad’ was headlining an imagined fair value ($1 per sqft) rental. They’re saying many asking rents are twice as much.
rents are often computed based on bread winners per bedroom, double occupancy. $2000 is a deal. You can load up this place with 6 breadwinners, that’s only $333 per month rent.
That’s a great way to maximize vacancy loss and attract drug and crime related tenants, and tenants who skip/are a legal hassle/cause damage because of revolving door roommate situations.
Which is fine with me: keep those groups out of the hair of professional landlords. *g*
Ravi,
How many dependents per bread winner?
Have not heard the term “bread winner” for some time.
How much does he make at McDonalds?
minimum wage in B.C. is over $10.25 per hour
there is a lot of room in that wage to load up houses with Emerging Market labour, and leave plenty left over for pyramid remittance’s.
preferably all labour is dealing with their dependents ‘at arms length’ (they don’t interfere materially with the labour boilerhouse), extra bonus if they are sterilized.
A golf clap to you, good sir
Here’s a $3,000+ data set of Craigslist listings from 2012. List I’m not familiar with the areas so you guys can make more sense of it.
Funny that you headlined this. I’m looking in exactly that market. I even saw the posting myself on CL this week. I wrote back to the poster with the latest CMHC’s rental averages which were 1350 for 3+ bedrooms. I actually looked at three houses last week. 2500-3000 gets a whole house with yard. These are assessed at 900-1.2 for example. Versus buying I would say they are good deals. Since people don’t tend to rent on credit there is much less chance to overpay using easy credit.
On the other hand I personally decided 3k was a lot for a family budget to handle. Clearly others disagree, especially owners.
If we start really melting there could be more competition to rent, even as more places sit unsold. Shadow inventory isn’t really family housing, it’s just a real waste of resources.
There is an overabundance of offerings at this price point, which is affordable to those making over $108K or, the top 20%? 18%? of the population today? And how many of those numbers OWN?
If renters tend to be people making the median and below, then we do need some somewhat affordable housing, somewhere.
Homes are rented out for $2500-3000 everyday. 2 br apts can easily go for $1400-1500. Students will pay $600, 700 or more per month. In many cases the parents of those ESL dope smoking vacationers are footing the bill anyway. I agree that $3k is a big pill to swallow for a family with only one bread winner.
I moved to the north shore last April. At that time it was almost impossible to find a whole house to rent for under $3000 that wasn’t a dump. I found a really nice bungalow 1900 ft^2 plus finished basement for that price, jumped on it, and kept an eye out for a couple months and saw nothing comparable. I figured I got the place a bit below market. Now I am seeing several whole houses, more footage, maybe not quite as nice, but some cheaper in my area and others in more desireable areas like west van and edgemont for not much more. I think that the rental market is definitely loosening and furthers my resolve to wait at least 3 more years to buy. And you know what? If at that time prices aren’t more in line with reality, I’m gone. I love Van but there is no place on earth worth it to turn your mortgage into a prison sentence.
I forgot to say $1 a foot is a real stretch if you want a nice place on the north shore without other tenants I think $1.3 to $1.6 is more realistic. In April I looked at a total dump in edgemont with a little lipstick on it, rookie owner, 1500 ft^2 on a slab, nice lot but run down, wanted $3200 for it, told the guy he was too high he told me this is the best place in van to live and all the houses worth millions so the price was justified. Insanity, plain and simple.
If you love Van, why can’t you just keep renting?
Interesting that these Van rental prices are pretty similar to Toronto prices even though purchase prices in Vancouver are so much higher.
Why can’t I keep renting? Because in 3.25 years my company-subisdized housing allowance is up, and I’m not paying double rent what I could in Portland or Seattle. On top of that, I want to put down roots somewhere I can call home. Van is great, would like to stay here long term, but not worth paying compared to my other options double rent or becoming a slave to mortgage. Unless I can get a decent SFH on the north shore for 400-600K by 2016 or 2017 with an interest rate 5% or less I’m throwing in the towel and moving somewhere that has better value in housing. At the moment I don’t think that’s an unrealistic goal, especially if like me you believe this crash is going to be worse than most believe, but we’ll see, there are no guarantees and the insanity has gone on for here for over a decade.
This is the part the proponents of the out of whack, insane current RE market forget – now that buying has become ridiculously expensive, a lot of upper middle class people on the outside who have dreams to stay long term – at least the ones with brains who don’t buy the “buy now or be priced out forever” “they aren’t making more land” and “BPOE so you pay for what you get” BS story will say “f it” and leave. Who’s going to step up to the plate and pay $1.5 M for a fixer-upper SFH that’s not in the game? HAM?? Is there really that much HAM in the universe to keep this up for much longer?
Van needs people like me for its future – good income earner with salary well north of 100K, steady job, professional, educated, contributor to the community etc. Make it impossible for people like me to have a future and the only direction looking forward for this place is downward.
I’m with you! My partner and I are both lawyers making good incomes but can’t afford to buy (at least can’t afford to buy anything that meets our long term needs, we also aren’t willing to be “house-poor”). If Vancouver’s affordability doesn’t significantly improve in the next 3-4 years we intend to move. Victoria, while still inflated is much cheaper and we could earn similar salaries (both being government hacks).
I flagged it as miscategorized.
I agree with LV1 that vancouver is really giving its working professionals the middle finger.
Anyway, I am in the tricities and the glut of rentals is astonishing – especially in the 2/3 bedroom condo market. I have had landlords beg me to take their places. I decided to move into a professionally managed rental building than to put up with an amateur landlord. I consider myself a top tier tenant (top notch credit, solid profession with a fortune 500). The way these landlords were pestering me on whether I have made a decision shows the pickings were slim. The ideal tenant is a tenant who is in a position to get a mortgage but chooses not to for lifestyle, career, or financial freedom.