Real Estate Real Talk
Re: “The Dirty Truth about Vancouver Real Estate”, Vancouver Shakedown, Feb. 11, 2016.
I have said this many times – as a guy who started buying real estate in the late ‘80s – you start small and move up. It took me 26 years of ownership to finally get a house – an actual detached property. And I had to work hard over all those years to get it. I am amazed when people in their late 20s, early 30s cry foul that they can't afford a house in Vancouver – well, neither could I when I was first starting out. It's not a right, it's a thing you need to work towards. I bought my first place at 24 and am now 52 and now own a house. That's kinda how it works.
–BigRookieInc
The gap between rich and poor is as bad in Vancouver as any place in the world. Grant, why not talk about that? Where are the teachers, police and nurses going to live? Hell, doctors and lawyers can't even afford a house in Vancouver. City is losing it's soul, thanks to people like Gregor and his little friend Rennie.
–Steve Wilson
Thank you Grant for your common sense and straightforward article. In my opinion, you hit the nail on the head.
–Andrea
I actually made a similar point to this in an article I published a few years back, and I regret making it now – mostly because it's insulting and inaccurate.
Have land prices always been higher here than anywhere else in Canada? Yep. But those same prices, which were four or five times the annual average income 60 years ago, now outstrip those incomes by a factor of 11 or 12.
Have prices always risen? Yes. But never so sharply, and never as the result of such unethical (and sometimes criminal) practices as shadow-flipping (see last week's Globe and Mail for an article that pretty much puts your little piece in the ground) and overseas money-laundering.
Has much of that money come from outside of Canada? Yep. Europe, the US, China, you name it. But not at this rate, or in these kinds of quantities.
Have there been many times in city history when a “housing crisis” has been proposed, in panicky tones? Yes. But never in the face of a 0.6 per cent vacancy rate, a six per cent rise in residential rents (far outstripping rent control legislation by means of mass renovictions), and a rise in property values that hit close to 20 per cent just last year.
I'm not sure who you're planning on impressing with a piece like this. At best, it's snobby and out-of-touch, and too poorly-researched to constitute a real argument. At worst, it's wrong. Either way, for shame, sir.
This kind of pull-yourself-up-by-your bootstraps crap should have gone out with the baby-boomers.
–Jesse Donaldson
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