Vancouver Condo Market

Hello from Vancouver BC, the most expensive city in Canada!

I run a blog with a satirical / humorous slant on our local market at Hello from Vancouver BC, the most expensive city in Canada! I run a blog with a satirical / humorous slant on our local market at Vancouver Condo Info. My real name is not ‘the pope’ but it’s a pseudonym that will work fine for our purposes here. David asked for a summary on what’s happening in our market, so here it is:

With the 2010 winter Olympics coming to Vancouver we’re all giddy about the limitless heights that our real estate prices can rise to. We’re particularly fond of our condos – prices are approaching double of what they were just four years ago in some areas. By my estimates a 450 sq ft. ‘garden level’ condo on a major road will be worth 3 Million dollars by 2010. Real estate is making us richer, and it’s a good thing since average family incomes in Vancouver actually dropped from 2000 – 2004 according to statcan and immigration has been flat. Clearly real estate here is a better investment than employment, so we’re all jumping into the debt-pool with lots of faith that ‘foreign investors’ will fish us out later.

When we see signs of a slowdown in the US, it just proves to us what a good investment Vancouver is. The local media is filled with warm and fuzzy quotes from realtors about how ‘it’s a great time to buy - things are different this time’ and reasons that ‘it can’t happen here’. We did see a minor dip in sales this last July –they were 28% lower than the previous July, but we also had the highest housing starts ever this July – everywhere you look there are new condo towers going up.

There was one negative report recently from PriceWaterhouseCoopers that warned of too much inventory in the condo market, but we’ve pretty much ignored that – we like to focus on the positive. And hey, what’s the worst that could happen? If we end up with two condos for every resident than we double our space from 450 to 900 sq feet and we’re already used to dining on Kraft Dinner to afford our housing cost. The futures so bright I’ve got to wear blinders!

-T.Pope . My real name is not ‘the pope’ but it’s a pseudonym that will work fine for our purposes here. David asked for a summary on what’s happening in our market, so here it is:

With the 2010 winter Olympics coming to Vancouver we’re all giddy about the limitless heights that our real estate prices can rise to. We’re particularly fond of our condos – prices are approaching double of what they were just four years ago in some areas. By my estimates a 450 sq ft. ‘garden level’ condo on a major road will be worth 3 Million dollars by 2010. Real estate is making us richer, and it’s a good thing since average family incomes in Vancouver actually dropped from 2000 – 2004 according to statcan and immigration has been flat. Clearly real estate here is a better investment than employment, so we’re all jumping into the debt-pool with lots of faith that ‘foreign investors’ will fish us out later.

When we see signs of a slowdown in the US, it just proves to us what a good investment Vancouver is. The local media is filled with warm and fuzzy quotes from realtors about how ‘it’s a great time to buy - things are different this time’ and reasons that ‘it can’t happen here’. We did see a minor dip in sales this last July –they were 28% lower than the previous July, but we also had the highest housing starts ever this July – everywhere you look there are new condo towers going up.

There was one negative report recently from PriceWaterhouseCoopers that warned of too much inventory in the condo market, but we’ve pretty much ignored that – we like to focus on the positive. And hey, what’s the worst that could happen? If we end up with two condos for every resident than we double our space from 450 to 900 sq feet and we’re already used to dining on Kraft Dinner to afford our housing cost. The futures so bright I’ve got to wear blinders!

-T.Pope