Burned out house in the distant suburbs - ONLY $1.01M

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https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/burned- ... e2oVC9th1Q

Crazy, especially considering that the market is cooling w/ few transactions and lowering prices thanks to a few government interventions in our insane real estate, oops, I mean, money laundering market.

This is what happens when more than $5B in Chinese fentanyl money & other ill gotten gains get laundered in your local real estate market. Things are right f****d here for locals right now.

Here's an even better deal ...

Fire-destroyed Vancouver home listed for $3.99 million
https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/2573-we ... -kitsilano

Last edited by LoveNotHate on 09 Feb 2019, 12:35 am, edited 1 time in total.

Guess the land value is hot there...

Red Hot.

I live in the suburbs nearly an hour's drive from downtown. The ~11 year old house I live in on a very small lot is currently valued at approximately $1.1-1.2M along with every other house on the block. This is supposed to be a suburban neighbourhood for regular working class people. (Tradespeople, teachers, nurses etc.) Property values have skyrocketed to the point that high income earners can't afford to buy. It's affecting everything.. the labour market, quality of life/stress etc. The average Vancouverite is stretched beyond their means. We're still holding ranked as the world's second least affordable real estate market right behind Hong Kong... multimillion dollar houses & yet we have the 54th highest incomes on the continent.

I hope you inherit GoldFish.

I hope you have your inheritance setup in advance so don't lose a big chunk to taxes.

Presently, this is where I want to live. Florida oceanfront.

I hope not.. as that would mean my parents died before they had a chance to spend whatever money they may have.

My siblings and I have told our parents to spend what they have over their retirement vs. set any significant amounts of money aside for us to inherit. The sun will rise & set every day and we'll all make our way whether rich or poor.

In reality, like most people here, most of their net worth is in their home value. If real estate values stay sky high And they don't spend their savings/investments & the inheritance my mother will receive once her mother's estate is settled, then there will likely be a sizeable inheritance for each of us in ~30 years. I'd rather they lived a long time and spent their money than saved it for us, especially since I don't care if I ever own my own home anymore. There are other things more worth spending hard earned money on vs. slaving away just to make mortgage payments on an overpriced home.

I regularly watch a Macbook repair tech on YouTube who is based in NYC, and the same problem is going on there, heavily affecting businesses who want even a tiny little store front in NYC. He got his lease in 2013 and it is paying thousands for rent and now the space is supposedly worth double what he's paying on his 10 year lease. I highly recommend his channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCl2mFZ ... Lax4Yisf6w

This real estate nonsense is unsustainable, and as such won't continue for very long, it will crash down eventually. I don't think it will have as much of an effect on the economy next time, it seems to be rather localized to certain areas, like NYC, Silicon Valley and Vancouver. In my home town, for example, we have only seen our home value go up 50-75k to about 300k since the crash, not the ridiculous, drive the upper middle class onto the streets prices seen in the above mentioned places.

my tin can and land out in the woods is worth only about $30k. but we're in the process of being californicated and the property values are already soaring. I dread this.

Or perhaps this renovated mansion is more your style? It's in one of the most expensive neighbourhoods of Vancouver proper where I've worked on a couple of mansions in the last few years. Only $44M: https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/first-s ... ion-photos

just the blinkin' entryway here is bigger than my tin can. btw, what is the architectural term for this part of the building?

Foyer?

I seriously think there is major price gouging going on on the West Coast.

Could they do some sort of price ceiling for homes and apartments, like they did with gasoline in Hawaii a few years ago?

Probably "Foyer," but they may just call it the front entrance, or some realtor may adjective it up and call it the "Grand/Main Entrance," or "Grand/Main Foyer," or something. Doesn't change what it actually IS though.. the space inside the front door where the bottom of the staircase typically is.

It's mostly dirty Chinese money. Much of it from the fentanyl trade ($5B+) and more from other proceeds of crime, and some from legitimate Chinese businesses that have basically smuggled the money out of China since they have a $50K/year/person limit to what they can move out of the country.

Locals have responded by simply selling for the highest price they can get in a free market. Local developers, OTOH, should be lined up and shot for what they've done... they go hold marketing junket weekends in Asia and presell every unit in a condo building to investors over there, who then either just hold the properties and keep them vacant (because lived in homes are worth less money in their culture) Or flip them for a profit to locals who need housing.

Things are cooling, though, thanks to government interventions. Foreign buyers tax, rising interest rates, empty homes tax etc.. detached home prices are coming down now, but may never be truly affordable to locals (1/3 gross income per month for housing) but new condos priced under $1M or $750K or w/e the cutoff is don't have the same rules applied to them so the market is still super heated for foreign investors and flippers.. probably because developers have bought and paid for city hall & other levels of gov't, especially our previous gov't, and told the gov't they'd better not cutoff their cashflow entirely while they still have Billions of dollars worth of new inventory in the pipeline that they need to unload before any market corrections.

It's a shame to see restaurants and small businesses closing because they can't afford the increased property taxes, seniors, very low income, and disabled people becoming homeless.. even skilled tradespeople living in vans down by the river because they're sick of spending every penny on rent only to be evicted multiple times/year by landlords looking to either renovate & flip or increase the rent dramatically.

People, in general, are stressed & poor. Some newcomers come, try, and say "f**k this, it's impossible!" and leave. Hospitals are understaffed because Nurses are leaving because they can't afford to live here. Teachers, too. One city has a few way partnership to essentially build "projects," (negative connotation word, I know) for teachers to live in so that they even have any for their schools! The teachers union is trying to get some sort of public teachers housing in their contract.

There are no rent controls here besides the maximum amount landlords can increase rent by per year, but it's easily circumvented by renovicting tenants - kick 'em out due to extensive renovations that mean they can't occupy the space, then jack the rent to as high as the market will bear.

There's no easy solution to any of this... but at least we have a provincial gov't in power that's putting the brakes on things and investigating the MASSIVE money laundering that our previous gov't facilitated via our provincial casinos that became known internationally as "The Vancouver Model." Things could get a little better, but it's one of those things that once it's f****d you can't really unfuck it. Also, IF they were to lose control of gov't and another party is in, chances are that the floodgates for money laundering will open right up again and we'll be accepting dirty money from the Chinese, Persians, and others as fast as they can shovel it into our economy.

On the bright side, while many are in fact stressed, the locals who stay have a certain.. cohesiveness. People help each other out & respect the fact that nearly no one who works for a living or who has mouths to feed has very deep pockets. People stay for their friends, family, and the natural surroundings we're absolutely blessed by. We stay for the outdoor recreation, the mountains, forests, beaches, lakes, rivers etc. We're the most active, fittest, people in the country. More and more people are learning to truly enjoy spending time, not money, and in so many ways it's a nice chill West Coast culture that can only come from the birthplace of Greenpeace & Lululemon that's collided with the University of Beautiful Cars and opulent mansions. Somewhere amongst all the craziness we still have some very zenned out locals making our way calmly day to day one breath at a time, financial pressures be damned.

I think a good part of demand for West Coast housing is that people are trying to escape states that Trump won in 2016.

Maybe in California & Washington, but not so much North of the border here in Canada. There's maybe a few more high tech companies setting up office in Vancouver vs. Seattle because of it, though, but that's maybe a couple hundred people or so, not thousands.

Like London & Sydney, we've become a magnet for money laundering. Plus we're legit one of the best environments in the entire world.. it's no wonder Billionaires want to be here. It's beautiful.