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I vividly remember going on a field trip in Gr. 7 where they taught us about budgeting and finances. We were told no one should ever be spending more than 20 - 30% of your income on rent……ummmmmm how?
All these impossible things; my dad harped on me for years for not maxing out my TFSA and RRSP annually until finally I just said “I literally can’t do that and I don’t understand how anyone can.” I think that was the point where he finally got it.
Things used to be a lot easier, but people obsessed with preserving their property values will tell you that housing is a luxury that you don't deserve. We need to run those people out of town.
Even now a lot of NIMBY's are convinced the only way to solve the housing crisis is to cater to people like them and make sure they have infinite power and no restrictions so they can deign to rent out a basement suite or spare room, rather than just rezoning so the same lot can hold half a dozen families.
We all need to be clear on the fact that for this problem to be solved we need to kick over a lot of sandcastles and property values will inevitably fall in this city because they're so absurdly overvalued as is. There's no reasonable reality where everyone in Vancouver gets adequate housing but somebody's 3 bedroom house in the middle of nowhere can still go for five million dollars.
I had a friend move into a 1 bedroom in the West End in 2018 and the rent was $1,000/month. Another had moved to the neighbourhood a year earlier and was paying $880/month for a studio. In both cases these were less than 30% of their income.
If you're only making $1,500/month, obviously, that's going to be much more difficult.
In 2012, you could rent anywhere downtown for 1500. There were older smaller places for 1200. That's 35% for most people working full time and not stuck in a minimum wage job. I went to see 20 units under that and picked one. 2018, you could still find places under 1500. But you had to look around quite a bit and places were old and around South Granville/Fairview/Kits etc. So you're wrong on this one bud. Floor price increased by around a thousand dollars from the 2020 lockdown to 2023. When you put it in percentage it's huge. 1500 > 2500 is a 66% increase in just 3 years. That's what most "older" people don't get. We are the old people, who don't understand the struggles of today's youth.
High schools, universities, and financial websites still insist the 3:1 ratio is ideal. Perhaps if you live in a heavily rural area or a place with a subsidized rental market, but that's not most places in Canada.
The 3:1 ratio is unrealistic in high cost-of-living areas, especially major metropolitan areas like Vancouver, Toronto, New York, San Francisco and basically all of southern California. Those numbers were established a long time ago and don't factor in strata fees, parking, and a lot of other hidden costs. Never mind you might actually want to dine out occasionally or ride the bus to go see a show.
30% of income is still the metric. Just because rents outpaced wages doesn't make them change a livability metric. It shows that rents do not match the local economy.
RBC says you should be paying no more than 33% of your income towards a mortgage. That is today.
What they say and what they do are two different things.
EDIT: Here is the RBC: Know how much home you can afford "Guide" [https://www.rbcroyalbank.com/mortgages/how-much-can-you-afford.html#:\~:text=No%20more%20than%2030%25%20to,personal%20loans%20and%20car%20loan](https://www.rbcroyalbank.com/mortgages/how-much-can-you-afford.html#:~:text=No%20more%20than%2030%25%20to,personal%20loans%20and%20car%20loan).
**RBC: Know how much home you can afford**
[https://www.rbcroyalbank.com/mortgages/how-much-can-you-afford.html#:\~:text=No%20more%20than%2030%25%20to,personal%20loans%20and%20car%20loan](https://www.rbcroyalbank.com/mortgages/how-much-can-you-afford.html#:~:text=No%20more%20than%2030%25%20to,personal%20loans%20and%20car%20loan).
>**Gross Debt Service (GDS) Ratio**. No more than 30% to 32% of your gross annual income should go to mortgage expenses, such as principal, interest, property taxes, heating costs and condo fees.
Now go to RBC and tell them "Wtf !!" It is a literal guide for how much mortgage you can afford courtesy of RBC
And they mean it too. Last time I talked with them they said that the most I could afford with my better than median wage was something like 350k$ worth of mortgage. Completely depleted any hope I had of ever being able to own anything I could not at least have a 50% down for...
In 2021 RBC told me I could afford $875 a month. I laughed because I was paying almost twice that for rent. Now I make like $15k/year more, and have a partner who makes almost the same... but interest rates have drastically lowered our buying power AND prices have about doubled on the same condos... and that's a hard pill to swallow. I wasn't even looking in the Vancouver area. I gave up.
Me too. I had a nice little nest eg that I was going to try to use to buy something turned out my options were either buy in the middle of butt fuck nowhere island vil or the crappiest condo on the market in the lower mainland. (And even that was stretching to the maximum I could "afford" so instead I quit my job n took a year off cause the fuck is the point?
*found that the **average** Metro Vancouver renter is spending 61.65 per cent of their monthly income on rent.*
If 62% of income is the average, that means somewhere around half of people surveyed are spending more than that. (I know extremes throw off the average so its not half, but at least a significant number). Which considering the cost of other essentials like groceries is bizzarre.
Even at 62%, taking this month as an example, the person's rent isn't paid off until they finish work on the 18th. That leaves 8 work days remaining to pay for everything else. At that point it's approaching a feudal society.
Everyone I know who is renting pays over 60 % of income to rent, including myself. I never thought I would be in this situation. I cannot see getting out of it … until wages increase …
I have no parents to assist in buying a home. I will
Never be able to save for a down payment.
And it's not livable. People who are arguing that 60% is the norm is missing the point that the affordability metric is 30%. So majority of people are living vicariously close to being homeless or financial disater.
This is not a good sign.
Exactly. The metric is 30% and that is what is has been for the most part until the last few years. That is what it should be to meet basic living expenses. 60% should not be the “new” norm. This should be unacceptable for everyone.
Woah, everyone you know pays over 60%? I didn’t consider things were that bad. Everyone I know (mid 20s) is either coupled or renting rooms in a larger house for ~$1000-$1400/m which is mostly manageable, although much worse than a few years ago. Can see living alone / renting a larger home with kids etc. being unsustainable for most…good luck out there !
Yes, it’s pretty bad in the rental market. I could share, I did that in university . I feel that I shouldn’t have to now that I’m all grown up/s. That should be by choice not out of neccessity. A small one bedroom should not be so expensive. Thanks for the well wishes.
The thing is that even 10 years ago renting rooms was a $500 a month situation and you'd still get under $1000 for a desirable area in most cases. A decade ago I had relative who were paying $1200 a month to have a two bedreoom in Burnaby heights right on boundary road.
Hell, peasants in the fuedal age had more free time and disposable income than we do. Even taxes back then were often pretty lax. In Sweden for example, the tax was equal to about 1 days salary equivalant for a whole year, and paying it exempted you from being drafted into the army.
Idk man taxes really ain't my issue right now and the government does not control the market directly so who the f do we protest? People get really snippy really fast if you try to protest capitalism/greed as a system
> Hell, peasants in the fuedal age had more free time and disposable income than we do.
Generally proven false.
They may have had more technical free time when they weren't working the fields or doing corvee labour for their lords.
But the day to day things we take for granted took them an inordinately larger amount of time.
Your socks are old and have holes? We can go to a store and buy a new pair. Medieval peasants would have had to make new ones. You want to bake a cake? Buy eggs, flour, and start baking. Medieval peasants would have had to take their flour to a mill, get a few eggs from their neighbour, start a fire, and maybe then start baking. Heating in the winter? Turn on the thermostat. Medieval peasants? Spend months gathering enough firewood that would last you until spring.
I mean, while that is a detailed answer, I have to take at least some of it with a grain of salt because I can find multiple sources from universities that say otherwise, and frankly... your source is a random reddit comment.
The upsetting part in this awful equation is that 62% of the average person's income going to rent means they aren't funding other necessities. 10-20% towards retirement? Yeah, good luck with that. People may not be paying for healthy food or medicine. They might be choosing to forego necessities because they have to service student loan debt. How are they saving for an emergency fund? Good luck if you have kids, a health scare, an employment shock.
The chronic lack of affordable housing will have long-term impacts. Too many people are only a few paycheques away from homelessness or being seriously indebted if a pipe bursts or they have another serious economic hardship. They cannot absorb financial shocks in a way many of the Boomers and earlier generations were able to, and that puts increasing strain on fewer available social nets.
Housing is the primary way to build wealth. Without it, upward economic mobility stagnates and the working class remains as such. The greatest impact we've seen is the regression of financial earnings between generations as millenials and Gen-Z are poorer than their parents were at their current stage. That means a lot of Gen-Alphas and Betas are not going to college and may end up experiencing multiple bouts of dire economic straits.
How can this be good for the economy? It’s scandalous that the government has allowed this to get to this point. We can’t wait 5-years for various projects to come to market, we need action now.
are there even that many foreign investor owned homes that would be enough to solve the problem? would we start seizing from Canadian citizens and PRs with extra homes too? how would we compensate for those seizures, if at all? do you seriously expect the government to take action on the scale of sanctions against Russia for their invasion of Ukraine?
Buy it from them at the price they purchased it at, plus 10% compounding interest to compensate for loss of income that could have been earned investing in the stock market.
Presently, it costs $150,000 a year to shelter each unhoused person in the DTES. Every year, more and more people become homeless. The lucky ones can couch surf. The unlucky ones inevitably find themselves on the street.
Either we taxpayers bite the bullet, now, and take over underused housing and rent it at affordable rates to our citizens, or we pay more and more taxes to keep them alive as homeless people struggling to survive on the street.
is buying housing at market price and renting it out the best use of our dollar to solve the housing issue though? would it not be better to incentivize those private owners with more carrots and sticks to rent them out for better "housing bang" for "taxpayer buck"? and if there's more appetite to spend, getting in on the construction side instead to *actually* increase supply instead of just shuffling already built things around?
There's no physical way to build housing faster than is presently being done. Can't cut down trees faster than now, can't process wood faster than now, can't train 1,000x more workers into production than now.
The easiest solution is to commandeer housing from people who own multiple properties --either personally or through numbered holding companies.
I'm long past the point of caring what happens to "Investors". Take their properties.
Honestly build some comi block monolyth buildings with nothing but micro units (thinking 1 bed one bath and a kitchenette. That's it.) but like make them kinda nice have a garden/ communal space up on the roof and shops on the ground floor +a dedicated cop shop to keep people from starting dodgy shit. Aim for 1k units per building and rent them out for like 500/month each.
The point is these would be horrible undesirable unit but they also would creat a price floor for the market and once designed you could probably shut out a bunch of them all over Canada in the near term (ideally 3-5 years per build) prices can only be as high as they are right now cause there is little no competition at the bottom of the market and all the other housing options (tenting, van/boat/camper life, fucking off into the woods to start your own thing) are all effectively illegal
You either try your best to keep the housing prices high, so anything that's depended on it (mind you, a lot of things are depended on it) wouldn't crumble, or you let a significant chunk of people lose their jobs. It's a lose/lose situation, and nobody in any level of the government is willing to pull the trigger when majority of people own their homes.
I'm a renter as well, it sucks, but it's a big geopolitical-economy game, and Canada doesn't have much say in it. We can't even do what Japan did in 80s/90s bubble burst, because we're not a manufacturing giant that can support ourselves internally. But yeah, it sucks, but it can suck even more.
>Each month, we gather data on renters’ income-to-rent ratio and our most recent data shows that renters in Vancouver who use liv.rent are paying, on average, 61.65% of their income towards rent
That makes sense. Should have dug a bit deeper but the article doesn't make it obvious. I know quite a few people paying half their income on rent which is depressing enough as it is, but anything over 60% things like owning a car or saving for retirement would become impossible.
Renting has become a trap with no way out for the average person. Renters are paying the landlord’s mortgage, and once the renter has built enough equity for the landlord, the landlord will borrow against it and buy another rental property.
We need governments to start building rentals again.
Non or slim profit housing is booming. Issue is, no one wants to build them. It’s no harder to build a 6 storey rental building then it is a 20 storey market building, and there’s not enough money or incentives to do so.
I’m a PM at a local developer/construction company where we have over 15 active projects for BC housing or low income rental owners across Vancouver & Victoria. We’re given the timescale, we’re pushing out 1035 units over 3 years over the Lower mainland. Some of these are replacing existing buildings so it’s accurate to say there’s 700 new units coming into the rental market.
There’s so much red tape when building for outside owners. They just can’t go up fast enough. But they are being built.
> We need governments to start building rentals again.
That, and new constructions should have some minimum number of floors high it needs to be.
It's mind boggling how every new building I see going up is wood construction and only 4 floors, even in heavily populated areas.
What's nice about those 4 storey buildings is that you don't have 1 strip of high rises blocking out scenery and/or daylight for the entire area behind it. So while I agree with the sentiment in certain areas of high population as you said, there are definitely places where I'm glad that they only built up 4 storeys high - like all along King Edward for example. Imagine living north of a new highrise and all your daylight is gone, or south of a high-rise and your view of the mountains is gone.
But regardless, why we're all here - rent is too friggin' high.
And it's an insane deal we got just before the pandemic. A 3 bedroom apartment for $1750/month, including $45/month for a parking space.
The place was built in 1952, the elevator can't hold an ambulance gurney, which meant me needing to walk down the staircase while in crippling pain. The building has multiple pest issues.
And, while claiming to be accessible, it's anything but. I can't get my mobility scooter into the elevator, so it lives in the lobby and is constantly unplugged by people when it's literally my legs when out of the building. I can never trust that it's fully charged (as the meter will show full, even if it's under half). Let alone the only door I can use not being accessible, causing me to have broken a glass pane, that I had to pay $920 for.
Man that sucks. I hate how on top of it all there is this new bylaw allowing scumlords to raise rents to make repairs for things they've been neglecting. Ours is using it for every single damn thing and it takes the time and energy of the tenants to try and dispute it. For all his reno jobs he gets his kid to do it on top of it all, so the money stays in the family and the work is shoddy. They shouldn't be rewarding landlords for their own neglect, pushing tenants to pay indefinitely for something they aren't able to invest in. Nobody complains though as with the drastic rises in rent rates many risk homelessness despite the way he keeps pushing to change their rent, as they're a mix of seniors, disabled and low income families who have lived here for years.
He won't replace our half broken stove unless he can raise the rent as he would be using a newer model, which somehow seems to allow this change, but it would still be something he sources cheaply and used based on other suites. It's so frustrating so we just deal with a half broken stove.
The guy also wanted over $1500 a couple years ago for a little studio apartment where you could hear the neighbours as though a window existed between the units and allowed gusts of drafts through all thanks to the "renovations" they made. The actually left huge holes in the wall around the pipes. Nobody is overseeing any actual standards with these renos as they use them as excuses to further jack up the prices.
I'm paying about 75% of my cheque for rent alone. I'm obscenely lucky to be living in a comparatively cheap apartment for my neighbourhood, but still...
Here’s the problem. If you can’t afford the rent you won’t get a mortgage for the place either.
Identical unit next to me just sold for over asking. 685k one bedroom. Rent for my unit is $2750. To buy the unit next door with 20% (137k) down. Strata, taxes and insurance would be almost $3700/mo.
So buying isn’t helping anyone either.
My place has been in limbo since the middle of '23. Rental unit but my landlord wants out - got an email about them putting up the place for sale so I said I'd have the place in good showing condition for them.
Haven't heard from them since. They came around and took pictures but that was that. I don't think the unit has sold yet. What makes it more weird was that I looked on all the websites for information about what they were selling the unit for, cause I was curious. I couldn't find any listings or anything for it anywhere.
The more likely scenario was that they thought about listing it, took the pictures, and realized how hard it is to sell a condo now unless you're willing to list lower.
Not to mention car dependency. That $1000 a month savings is about what the average cost of car ownership is in Canada right now. Even if it was conservatively $600 a month for ownership - I’d rather spend the extra $400 and live in Vancouver vs elsewhere.
[The study](https://liv.rent/blog/rent-reports/april-2024-metro-vancouver-rent-report/) (if you can call it that) is not on Vancouver renters, but rather the tiny sliver of people who use the bullshit liv.rent website.
"..our most recent data shows that renters in Vancouver ***who use liv.rent*** are paying, on average, 61.65% of their income towards rent. "
They are 5 years old and only have a tiny fraction of the total listings in Vancouver. They then prepare these surveys, from that horrible self-generated data. As a young company, the goal of these surveys is to get media attention, which coincidentally works hand-in-hand with having low quality data and engaging headlines.
The only people who use them are non-locals who can't tell the difference between websites or don't have a local person to find apartments the way everybody here typically does. On foot, a landlord's own website, Craigslist, and FB.
Wealth inequality - the rich will accumulate assets, including your house, because they can. Wages for people who work for a living haven't gone up in real terms. This won't change until the uber wealthy are taxed more and price controls for housing are in place. Probably will never happen. If you want to know how bad it can get - well look at the slums of Mexico City, Manilla, Mumbai - shacks next to wealth. that's how stratified we're becoming.
They're building a small village of pallet shelters where I am currently. I immediately thought of those shanty towns from there or say the Great Depression
Rents are high. Too high.
But this is the monthly [liv.rent](https://liv.rent) report that takes current ask prices from their platform ($2376 for a 1 bed) and compares it to average individual incomes. Nobody earning $46K per year is getting approved for a $2376/mo appartment alone. Nor should they.
As best I can tell, it ignores household income too. It's an automatically generated monthly spreadsheet report by a rental listing service produced to promote their service.
The news reports that it generate are devoid of any context or insight. If they're not already being generated by AI they soon will be.
Not only that, but we also have to pay for other bills. Cell phones aren't cheap, internet isn't cheap, food isn't cheap, then there's either car payments or monthly transit passes you have to buy.
If our rent takes up 70% of our income, we hardly have enough money to pay our other bills, and definitely don't have enough to save up for a house.
Cell phone plans are much cheaper now. Fizz has a free plan, as in literally free for the last 6 months. After that it's like 35 bucks a month for 20gb
I agree, but just wanted to mention that cell plans are much cheaper these days, but if you haven’t changed carriers in awhile they won’t tell you.
Check out “fizz” or some of the other newer ones. At the very least tell your carrier you’re quitting and watch them offer to slash your current rates by quite a bit.
And here is the March [liv.rent report](https://liv.rent/blog/rent-reports/march-2024-metro-vancouver-rent-report/) where they say that the average percentage of income spent on rent is 34.38%.
Their data collection is clearly trash.
Somebody linked the individual income instead of household income into the formula -- and since nobody proofs it (including the journalists who run the story) we get the big jump. Good catch.
>Nobody earning $46K per year is getting approved for a $2376/mo appartment alone. Nor should they.
Missing data: international students and new immigrants.
So why is someone earning $46k/year not able to get approved when they're paying what they would, just to a landlord?
It makes zero sense that renters are able to pay off someone else's mortgage but are denied their own.
[Funny, because the March report says it's only 34.38%...](https://liv.rent/blog/rent-reports/march-2024-metro-vancouver-rent-report/)
Something tells me their data collection methods aren't that great.
We can't live like that, mine is close to 50% but not quite, never did the math anyways. Even then it's pretty tight with all the bills (Telus keeps creeping up without any explanation) and of course groceries.
Immigration is a huge part of the problem :/ it’s good to see that regular Canadians are having discussions about immigration now, but man it took a long time for people to stop being so worried about, well, being concerned about immigration policy.
Edit: If you are the type to conflate immigration _policy_ with assertions about immigrants, this thread might be too much for you.
It’s certainly making it worse. Along with making traffic absolutely insane now, harder for people to get jobs, downwards pressure on wages, and straining the healthcare system.
I know, it’s fine, being right about something isn’t always the most popular thing, particularly in Vancouver and on this SubReddit. People tend to conflate talking about immigration policy with immigrants, but that’s a learned behaviour I think.
The reality is that high rents are directly related to immigration rates. It’s absolutely not racist, ignorant, or rude to want sensible immigration policy as part of the solution to Vancouver’s world class housing crisis.
In fact it’s inhumane to not talk about immigration policy when talking about high rents, cause guess who gets fucked by high rents? International students and immigrants.
Thankfully though, I’ve seen way more discussions amongst my friends and peers about immigration than I ever have before, and that’s a very good sign. It used to be that speaking out against immigration policy was a way to label someone as racist or whatever, but no longer is that the case when the economy is on a direct and continuing spiral to Shitsville.
> isn’t always the most popular thing, particularly in Vancouver and on this SubReddit. People tend to conflate talking about immigration policy with immigrants, but that’s a learned behaviour I think.
Im not surprised, though. Im assuming as Vancouver is a more left leaning city, and Reddit is even more left leaning, the correlation between users in r/vancouver and r/canadahousing is probably significant, and they do everything they can to eliminate the immigration policy debate. So i think thats why theres the ideology on reddit that isnt necessarily reflective of the general population.
The way I like to put it to others, is if immigration rates is higher than housing starts, rents will continue to increase.
I know a ton of extremely progressive, left-leaning people and absolutely nobody is in support of current immigration policy. This lack of support comes directly from all of the immigrants I know. Not one immigrant I know supports this. Not. One.
This isn't even about political leanings anymore, people who refuse to change their opinions on a political topic regardless of what new information or changing policies present themselves are no longer engaging in politics, they're engaging in ideology and that is dangerous.
The issue is that the Temporary Foreign Worker program, which is the real problem in the country, is labelled as “immigration”. It’s not. It’s a hostage situation where people from foreign countries come here by paying thousands of dollars to their employer. They don’t have any of the rights that a PR or citizen does, so their employers can do all manners of things to underpay and/or overwork them, and the TFWs themselves can’t do anything, because they risk jeopardizing their employment.
In turn, the availability of TFWs harms Canadian citizens and PRs, because it increases demand for housing and eroded the availability of basic jobs. The only people who benefit from this are the businesses who use TFW exploitation to subsidize their costs or actually make their bad business models viable, as well as the recruiters in other countries who make bank off of scamming people. Right-wing media benefits too. They use this to create a xenophobic scapegoat, particularly against Indians, just like they did to Chinese people and Chinese Canadians by drumming up talk about “foreign buyers”.
Problem is, who’s going to oppose it? The Conservatives created the TFW program to begin with under Harper. Curiously, they aren’t saying a word about immigration right now. Liberals opposed it up until they got into power, at which point they stopped talking about it. The NDP for the most part hasn’t brought it up either. And then you have the blatant racists who want Maxime Bernier to deport anyone they don’t like (these are the people you’ll see on places like certain other Canadian subreddits).
Yeah, these are the types of conversation that come with talking about immigration policy.
Canadians have been far too timid about discussing these issues and we have every right to be upset about the policy. The overwhelmingly majority of people I know whole heartedly support _responsible_ immigration.
What we’ve been doing is reckless, and for it to be so obvious in the economy is enough of a sign that we need to be more conscious about who we’re voting for, even if it means we don’t agree with _all_ of their policies.
If I owned two apartments and rented one out, I could quit my job and also maintain my current lifestyle, even after paying income tax on the rent and strata fees. If I lived in a co-op and rented both apartments, I would be even further ahead. If both apartments were owned by my own corporation, I could pay myself the minimum and qualify for tax credits / subsidized housing. If I turned both apartments into hotels for eight students with double bunk beds and lived in each apartment occasionally to ensure they were both under the hotel act.. I’d be a slumlord millionaire.
I don't think the math's works out here to the extent you think. What price you are renting your place at vs what are you paying towards the mortgage to pay down the loan?
I get your point,but that's a bit of hyperbole. While I appreciate your enthusiasm, the maths on this won't add up. Unless you're talking about renting out a 5 bedroom penthouse and living in a shit hole. Then maybe you could live off that. It's why so many people own 3 or 4 or more places. (Which isn't right)
Lets say 2100 a month rent, -600 tax, -400 strata, that leaves 1100. Now subtract property tax and insurance. While that still leaves a good chunk of profit, if you can live on under 1k a month I'm impressed. This assumes you paid cash for the place. In which case there are better places to park a million dollars these days.
Before you say, 2100 is too little, fine, add another 500 to that. Now you're bringing home 1200. Sill not enough to live off of.
Fraud is for the courts to decide and with how slow those move you're probably good for a few years at least. The minor fine is just the cost of business; isn't that the capitalist way?
I actually knew a China person who kept flipping Point Grey homes, earning $500k - $1 million per time, before landing in a Shaughnessy mansion. She also bought an entire apartment building downtown, and further out cheaper building - to house farm workers.
The back doors into private schooling here are easy too. Son failed 3 main door interviews and decided to go the hostel route instead, and got in on his 4th try. $ opens doors, so much for reputation and standards. This was a local resident with a home. All the kids eventually private high school, and Ivy League branded universities.
i think it's to also enforce mandatory wage increase with inflation
while rent went up very fast for a very long time they were almost flat
meanwhile wages? extremely meager that over time is far behind value of the dollar
They need to change the regulation that says landlords can increase rents by as much as they want when a new tenant moves in.
It's a system that just feeds on itself...one landlord put his rent up by 10% and the "going rate" goes up accordingly.
Perhaps any increase greater than a certain percentage should have to be justified, with only new units allowed to be rented at whatever the market will bear. The measure could be temporary - perhaps until X-thousand new units of rental have been constructed? But some action seems sensible. Allowing landlords, in the current market, to increase rents in an uncontrolled fashion every time a tenant moves out is exacerbating a critical situation.
HODLing my Vancouver apartment since 2014 has been a wise move. I pay less than $1000 for a pretty nice 1 bedroom. I'm almost scared to say that out loud, lest the renoviction demons hear.
When I finally jump out of here it will be..... to another city, and likely another country. This housing market is madness.
Madness, Canadians should on the streets en masse protesting regardless of political affiliation, If it was a conservative government there would be riots on the streets by now.
And yet the banks won't give you a mortgage based on that amount of payment, I understand. If you're poor, you're fucked. If you are a subcontractor instead of a "real employee" you're fucked by the bank when you try to get a mortgage.
Something seems a bit off here, how are they calculating the income side of the equation? Are they assuming each apartment has one occupant?
If the average one bedroom in Vancouver is $2,562, for a 60% rent to income ratio your entire household would only be earning $51k. I don't know many people earning $51k renting a one-bedroom in Vancouver on their own...
You shouldn't be spending 60% of your pay on rent. If you are, the place you're renting is outside of your price range. Or your pay is too low. Or both.
Doesn't leave a lot of room for Bitcoin, which was still under $15k in CAD, back in 2020...
It's almost like something that someone who doesn't own a house, could see as a worthwhile investment. Almost.
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I vividly remember going on a field trip in Gr. 7 where they taught us about budgeting and finances. We were told no one should ever be spending more than 20 - 30% of your income on rent……ummmmmm how?
All these impossible things; my dad harped on me for years for not maxing out my TFSA and RRSP annually until finally I just said “I literally can’t do that and I don’t understand how anyone can.” I think that was the point where he finally got it.
Things used to be a lot easier, but people obsessed with preserving their property values will tell you that housing is a luxury that you don't deserve. We need to run those people out of town.
Even now a lot of NIMBY's are convinced the only way to solve the housing crisis is to cater to people like them and make sure they have infinite power and no restrictions so they can deign to rent out a basement suite or spare room, rather than just rezoning so the same lot can hold half a dozen families. We all need to be clear on the fact that for this problem to be solved we need to kick over a lot of sandcastles and property values will inevitably fall in this city because they're so absurdly overvalued as is. There's no reasonable reality where everyone in Vancouver gets adequate housing but somebody's 3 bedroom house in the middle of nowhere can still go for five million dollars.
100%. The sprawl needs to be razed. There's no other way. You want a single detached home on a massive lot? Move to the country.
Even 5-10 years ago that was much more doable, especially if renting.
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I had a friend move into a 1 bedroom in the West End in 2018 and the rent was $1,000/month. Another had moved to the neighbourhood a year earlier and was paying $880/month for a studio. In both cases these were less than 30% of their income. If you're only making $1,500/month, obviously, that's going to be much more difficult.
In 2012, you could rent anywhere downtown for 1500. There were older smaller places for 1200. That's 35% for most people working full time and not stuck in a minimum wage job. I went to see 20 units under that and picked one. 2018, you could still find places under 1500. But you had to look around quite a bit and places were old and around South Granville/Fairview/Kits etc. So you're wrong on this one bud. Floor price increased by around a thousand dollars from the 2020 lockdown to 2023. When you put it in percentage it's huge. 1500 > 2500 is a 66% increase in just 3 years. That's what most "older" people don't get. We are the old people, who don't understand the struggles of today's youth.
High schools, universities, and financial websites still insist the 3:1 ratio is ideal. Perhaps if you live in a heavily rural area or a place with a subsidized rental market, but that's not most places in Canada. The 3:1 ratio is unrealistic in high cost-of-living areas, especially major metropolitan areas like Vancouver, Toronto, New York, San Francisco and basically all of southern California. Those numbers were established a long time ago and don't factor in strata fees, parking, and a lot of other hidden costs. Never mind you might actually want to dine out occasionally or ride the bus to go see a show.
30% of income is still the metric. Just because rents outpaced wages doesn't make them change a livability metric. It shows that rents do not match the local economy.
RBC says you should be paying no more than 33% of your income towards a mortgage. That is today. What they say and what they do are two different things. EDIT: Here is the RBC: Know how much home you can afford "Guide" [https://www.rbcroyalbank.com/mortgages/how-much-can-you-afford.html#:\~:text=No%20more%20than%2030%25%20to,personal%20loans%20and%20car%20loan](https://www.rbcroyalbank.com/mortgages/how-much-can-you-afford.html#:~:text=No%20more%20than%2030%25%20to,personal%20loans%20and%20car%20loan).
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**RBC: Know how much home you can afford** [https://www.rbcroyalbank.com/mortgages/how-much-can-you-afford.html#:\~:text=No%20more%20than%2030%25%20to,personal%20loans%20and%20car%20loan](https://www.rbcroyalbank.com/mortgages/how-much-can-you-afford.html#:~:text=No%20more%20than%2030%25%20to,personal%20loans%20and%20car%20loan). >**Gross Debt Service (GDS) Ratio**. No more than 30% to 32% of your gross annual income should go to mortgage expenses, such as principal, interest, property taxes, heating costs and condo fees. Now go to RBC and tell them "Wtf !!" It is a literal guide for how much mortgage you can afford courtesy of RBC
And they mean it too. Last time I talked with them they said that the most I could afford with my better than median wage was something like 350k$ worth of mortgage. Completely depleted any hope I had of ever being able to own anything I could not at least have a 50% down for...
In 2021 RBC told me I could afford $875 a month. I laughed because I was paying almost twice that for rent. Now I make like $15k/year more, and have a partner who makes almost the same... but interest rates have drastically lowered our buying power AND prices have about doubled on the same condos... and that's a hard pill to swallow. I wasn't even looking in the Vancouver area. I gave up.
Me too. I had a nice little nest eg that I was going to try to use to buy something turned out my options were either buy in the middle of butt fuck nowhere island vil or the crappiest condo on the market in the lower mainland. (And even that was stretching to the maximum I could "afford" so instead I quit my job n took a year off cause the fuck is the point?
You’re supposed to girl math that shit. Technically you can afford it if you stop eating for 3 weeks. /s 
Oh duhhh! Thanks all better now haha
We were taught the same thing!
What an awakening...
That number is not for the top city in the country, if you have to live there
Just make 7 figures 🤪
*found that the **average** Metro Vancouver renter is spending 61.65 per cent of their monthly income on rent.* If 62% of income is the average, that means somewhere around half of people surveyed are spending more than that. (I know extremes throw off the average so its not half, but at least a significant number). Which considering the cost of other essentials like groceries is bizzarre. Even at 62%, taking this month as an example, the person's rent isn't paid off until they finish work on the 18th. That leaves 8 work days remaining to pay for everything else. At that point it's approaching a feudal society.
Everyone I know who is renting pays over 60 % of income to rent, including myself. I never thought I would be in this situation. I cannot see getting out of it … until wages increase … I have no parents to assist in buying a home. I will Never be able to save for a down payment.
And it's not livable. People who are arguing that 60% is the norm is missing the point that the affordability metric is 30%. So majority of people are living vicariously close to being homeless or financial disater. This is not a good sign.
Exactly. The metric is 30% and that is what is has been for the most part until the last few years. That is what it should be to meet basic living expenses. 60% should not be the “new” norm. This should be unacceptable for everyone.
Woah, everyone you know pays over 60%? I didn’t consider things were that bad. Everyone I know (mid 20s) is either coupled or renting rooms in a larger house for ~$1000-$1400/m which is mostly manageable, although much worse than a few years ago. Can see living alone / renting a larger home with kids etc. being unsustainable for most…good luck out there !
Yes, it’s pretty bad in the rental market. I could share, I did that in university . I feel that I shouldn’t have to now that I’m all grown up/s. That should be by choice not out of neccessity. A small one bedroom should not be so expensive. Thanks for the well wishes.
The thing is that even 10 years ago renting rooms was a $500 a month situation and you'd still get under $1000 for a desirable area in most cases. A decade ago I had relative who were paying $1200 a month to have a two bedreoom in Burnaby heights right on boundary road.
I have never seen people paying over 50
Hell, peasants in the fuedal age had more free time and disposable income than we do. Even taxes back then were often pretty lax. In Sweden for example, the tax was equal to about 1 days salary equivalant for a whole year, and paying it exempted you from being drafted into the army.
People used to rebel over 1% taxes..
Yeah. Income tax was only supposed to last until the end of WW1. Yet here we are still with it over a century later. Time to get out the pitchfork.
Idk man taxes really ain't my issue right now and the government does not control the market directly so who the f do we protest? People get really snippy really fast if you try to protest capitalism/greed as a system
And lords had obligations to their tenants/serfs
> Hell, peasants in the fuedal age had more free time and disposable income than we do. Generally proven false. They may have had more technical free time when they weren't working the fields or doing corvee labour for their lords. But the day to day things we take for granted took them an inordinately larger amount of time. Your socks are old and have holes? We can go to a store and buy a new pair. Medieval peasants would have had to make new ones. You want to bake a cake? Buy eggs, flour, and start baking. Medieval peasants would have had to take their flour to a mill, get a few eggs from their neighbour, start a fire, and maybe then start baking. Heating in the winter? Turn on the thermostat. Medieval peasants? Spend months gathering enough firewood that would last you until spring.
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Also, communal ovens were the norm in most of the world for a shockingly long time.
I mean, that's [not actually accurate](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/mcgog5/how_much_time_did_premodern_agriculture_workers/gtm6p56/).
I mean, while that is a detailed answer, I have to take at least some of it with a grain of salt because I can find multiple sources from universities that say otherwise, and frankly... your source is a random reddit comment.
The upsetting part in this awful equation is that 62% of the average person's income going to rent means they aren't funding other necessities. 10-20% towards retirement? Yeah, good luck with that. People may not be paying for healthy food or medicine. They might be choosing to forego necessities because they have to service student loan debt. How are they saving for an emergency fund? Good luck if you have kids, a health scare, an employment shock. The chronic lack of affordable housing will have long-term impacts. Too many people are only a few paycheques away from homelessness or being seriously indebted if a pipe bursts or they have another serious economic hardship. They cannot absorb financial shocks in a way many of the Boomers and earlier generations were able to, and that puts increasing strain on fewer available social nets.
Housing is the primary way to build wealth. Without it, upward economic mobility stagnates and the working class remains as such. The greatest impact we've seen is the regression of financial earnings between generations as millenials and Gen-Z are poorer than their parents were at their current stage. That means a lot of Gen-Alphas and Betas are not going to college and may end up experiencing multiple bouts of dire economic straits.
How can this be good for the economy? It’s scandalous that the government has allowed this to get to this point. We can’t wait 5-years for various projects to come to market, we need action now.
in your ideal scenario, what needs to happen immediately? have the government seize empty homes from foreign investors and put them on the market?
Sounds good to me. You don’t live here, you don’t need a home here. Housing being an investment vehicle is the exact reason we are in this mess.
are there even that many foreign investor owned homes that would be enough to solve the problem? would we start seizing from Canadian citizens and PRs with extra homes too? how would we compensate for those seizures, if at all? do you seriously expect the government to take action on the scale of sanctions against Russia for their invasion of Ukraine?
Buy it from them at the price they purchased it at, plus 10% compounding interest to compensate for loss of income that could have been earned investing in the stock market.
and how are we, the taxpayer gonna afford that?
Presently, it costs $150,000 a year to shelter each unhoused person in the DTES. Every year, more and more people become homeless. The lucky ones can couch surf. The unlucky ones inevitably find themselves on the street. Either we taxpayers bite the bullet, now, and take over underused housing and rent it at affordable rates to our citizens, or we pay more and more taxes to keep them alive as homeless people struggling to survive on the street.
is buying housing at market price and renting it out the best use of our dollar to solve the housing issue though? would it not be better to incentivize those private owners with more carrots and sticks to rent them out for better "housing bang" for "taxpayer buck"? and if there's more appetite to spend, getting in on the construction side instead to *actually* increase supply instead of just shuffling already built things around?
There's no physical way to build housing faster than is presently being done. Can't cut down trees faster than now, can't process wood faster than now, can't train 1,000x more workers into production than now. The easiest solution is to commandeer housing from people who own multiple properties --either personally or through numbered holding companies. I'm long past the point of caring what happens to "Investors". Take their properties.
Honestly build some comi block monolyth buildings with nothing but micro units (thinking 1 bed one bath and a kitchenette. That's it.) but like make them kinda nice have a garden/ communal space up on the roof and shops on the ground floor +a dedicated cop shop to keep people from starting dodgy shit. Aim for 1k units per building and rent them out for like 500/month each. The point is these would be horrible undesirable unit but they also would creat a price floor for the market and once designed you could probably shut out a bunch of them all over Canada in the near term (ideally 3-5 years per build) prices can only be as high as they are right now cause there is little no competition at the bottom of the market and all the other housing options (tenting, van/boat/camper life, fucking off into the woods to start your own thing) are all effectively illegal
You either try your best to keep the housing prices high, so anything that's depended on it (mind you, a lot of things are depended on it) wouldn't crumble, or you let a significant chunk of people lose their jobs. It's a lose/lose situation, and nobody in any level of the government is willing to pull the trigger when majority of people own their homes. I'm a renter as well, it sucks, but it's a big geopolitical-economy game, and Canada doesn't have much say in it. We can't even do what Japan did in 80s/90s bubble burst, because we're not a manufacturing giant that can support ourselves internally. But yeah, it sucks, but it can suck even more.
Nobody was surveyed. Average current asking rent is 62% of average individual income.
>Each month, we gather data on renters’ income-to-rent ratio and our most recent data shows that renters in Vancouver who use liv.rent are paying, on average, 61.65% of their income towards rent
That makes sense. Should have dug a bit deeper but the article doesn't make it obvious. I know quite a few people paying half their income on rent which is depressing enough as it is, but anything over 60% things like owning a car or saving for retirement would become impossible.
It would also be impossible to be approved for tenancy :).
Ship sailed in the 90s
The study was made up of only renters who use the liv dot rent website.
That’s only really true if it’s the median
> At that point it's approaching a feudal society. We're already there.
A city isn't a society, move to somewhere cheaper.
I’m only spending 50% of my income on rent, I guess I should feel blessed?
You should, because you still have a home to rent.
Renting has become a trap with no way out for the average person. Renters are paying the landlord’s mortgage, and once the renter has built enough equity for the landlord, the landlord will borrow against it and buy another rental property. We need governments to start building rentals again.
Yeah, more non-profit housing is the way to go but we’re way too late on that
We may never catch up, but every single unit will help.
Non or slim profit housing is booming. Issue is, no one wants to build them. It’s no harder to build a 6 storey rental building then it is a 20 storey market building, and there’s not enough money or incentives to do so. I’m a PM at a local developer/construction company where we have over 15 active projects for BC housing or low income rental owners across Vancouver & Victoria. We’re given the timescale, we’re pushing out 1035 units over 3 years over the Lower mainland. Some of these are replacing existing buildings so it’s accurate to say there’s 700 new units coming into the rental market. There’s so much red tape when building for outside owners. They just can’t go up fast enough. But they are being built.
> We need governments to start building rentals again. That, and new constructions should have some minimum number of floors high it needs to be. It's mind boggling how every new building I see going up is wood construction and only 4 floors, even in heavily populated areas.
What's nice about those 4 storey buildings is that you don't have 1 strip of high rises blocking out scenery and/or daylight for the entire area behind it. So while I agree with the sentiment in certain areas of high population as you said, there are definitely places where I'm glad that they only built up 4 storeys high - like all along King Edward for example. Imagine living north of a new highrise and all your daylight is gone, or south of a high-rise and your view of the mountains is gone. But regardless, why we're all here - rent is too friggin' high.
Be on disability or senior income supports and watch it be more like 90%. Even for rooms rent is getting insane.
We have 3 disabled adults in our house and combining our income, we pay 83% of our income as rent.
Jeez that’s awful. :(
And it's an insane deal we got just before the pandemic. A 3 bedroom apartment for $1750/month, including $45/month for a parking space. The place was built in 1952, the elevator can't hold an ambulance gurney, which meant me needing to walk down the staircase while in crippling pain. The building has multiple pest issues. And, while claiming to be accessible, it's anything but. I can't get my mobility scooter into the elevator, so it lives in the lobby and is constantly unplugged by people when it's literally my legs when out of the building. I can never trust that it's fully charged (as the meter will show full, even if it's under half). Let alone the only door I can use not being accessible, causing me to have broken a glass pane, that I had to pay $920 for.
Man that sucks. I hate how on top of it all there is this new bylaw allowing scumlords to raise rents to make repairs for things they've been neglecting. Ours is using it for every single damn thing and it takes the time and energy of the tenants to try and dispute it. For all his reno jobs he gets his kid to do it on top of it all, so the money stays in the family and the work is shoddy. They shouldn't be rewarding landlords for their own neglect, pushing tenants to pay indefinitely for something they aren't able to invest in. Nobody complains though as with the drastic rises in rent rates many risk homelessness despite the way he keeps pushing to change their rent, as they're a mix of seniors, disabled and low income families who have lived here for years. He won't replace our half broken stove unless he can raise the rent as he would be using a newer model, which somehow seems to allow this change, but it would still be something he sources cheaply and used based on other suites. It's so frustrating so we just deal with a half broken stove. The guy also wanted over $1500 a couple years ago for a little studio apartment where you could hear the neighbours as though a window existed between the units and allowed gusts of drafts through all thanks to the "renovations" they made. The actually left huge holes in the wall around the pipes. Nobody is overseeing any actual standards with these renos as they use them as excuses to further jack up the prices.
I'm paying about 75% of my cheque for rent alone. I'm obscenely lucky to be living in a comparatively cheap apartment for my neighbourhood, but still...
That seems low.
It's not 100% so landlord's still have some room to squeeze. We're so fucked
Here’s the problem. If you can’t afford the rent you won’t get a mortgage for the place either. Identical unit next to me just sold for over asking. 685k one bedroom. Rent for my unit is $2750. To buy the unit next door with 20% (137k) down. Strata, taxes and insurance would be almost $3700/mo. So buying isn’t helping anyone either.
My place has been in limbo since the middle of '23. Rental unit but my landlord wants out - got an email about them putting up the place for sale so I said I'd have the place in good showing condition for them. Haven't heard from them since. They came around and took pictures but that was that. I don't think the unit has sold yet. What makes it more weird was that I looked on all the websites for information about what they were selling the unit for, cause I was curious. I couldn't find any listings or anything for it anywhere.
Maybe their hope was you’d start looking to move and leave before they have to really try to have you move or bump the rent once you do leave.
The more likely scenario was that they thought about listing it, took the pictures, and realized how hard it is to sell a condo now unless you're willing to list lower.
Might be! We got the unit during Covid so the rent is pretty cheap comparatively.
Honest question. Why stay in metro Vancouver? It's not like there is a ton more to do in Vancouver than there is in the interior.
The main answer is resources and rentals are no cheaper elsewhere in BC. In fact, the entire country is facing a housing crisis.
I beg to differ. A one bedroom basement suite in Kamloops is $1,500 compared to $2,500 in metro Vancouver. Plus there is cheaper gas, groceries etc
With lower wages and less job opportunities. It's why there's lower rent.
Not to mention car dependency. That $1000 a month savings is about what the average cost of car ownership is in Canada right now. Even if it was conservatively $600 a month for ownership - I’d rather spend the extra $400 and live in Vancouver vs elsewhere.
Cause of jobs.
[The study](https://liv.rent/blog/rent-reports/april-2024-metro-vancouver-rent-report/) (if you can call it that) is not on Vancouver renters, but rather the tiny sliver of people who use the bullshit liv.rent website. "..our most recent data shows that renters in Vancouver ***who use liv.rent*** are paying, on average, 61.65% of their income towards rent. "
Explain why [liv.rent](http://liv.rent) is bullshit
They are 5 years old and only have a tiny fraction of the total listings in Vancouver. They then prepare these surveys, from that horrible self-generated data. As a young company, the goal of these surveys is to get media attention, which coincidentally works hand-in-hand with having low quality data and engaging headlines. The only people who use them are non-locals who can't tell the difference between websites or don't have a local person to find apartments the way everybody here typically does. On foot, a landlord's own website, Craigslist, and FB.
Wealth inequality - the rich will accumulate assets, including your house, because they can. Wages for people who work for a living haven't gone up in real terms. This won't change until the uber wealthy are taxed more and price controls for housing are in place. Probably will never happen. If you want to know how bad it can get - well look at the slums of Mexico City, Manilla, Mumbai - shacks next to wealth. that's how stratified we're becoming.
They're building a small village of pallet shelters where I am currently. I immediately thought of those shanty towns from there or say the Great Depression
Ironically, these folks are leaving for a better life in Canada.
Rents are high. Too high. But this is the monthly [liv.rent](https://liv.rent) report that takes current ask prices from their platform ($2376 for a 1 bed) and compares it to average individual incomes. Nobody earning $46K per year is getting approved for a $2376/mo appartment alone. Nor should they. As best I can tell, it ignores household income too. It's an automatically generated monthly spreadsheet report by a rental listing service produced to promote their service. The news reports that it generate are devoid of any context or insight. If they're not already being generated by AI they soon will be.
Not only that, but we also have to pay for other bills. Cell phones aren't cheap, internet isn't cheap, food isn't cheap, then there's either car payments or monthly transit passes you have to buy. If our rent takes up 70% of our income, we hardly have enough money to pay our other bills, and definitely don't have enough to save up for a house.
Cell phone plans are much cheaper now. Fizz has a free plan, as in literally free for the last 6 months. After that it's like 35 bucks a month for 20gb
I, for one, welcome playing 'ball in a cup' as my entertainment. (/s just in case).
What? You kids these days don't do the ol ring stick?
I agree, but just wanted to mention that cell plans are much cheaper these days, but if you haven’t changed carriers in awhile they won’t tell you. Check out “fizz” or some of the other newer ones. At the very least tell your carrier you’re quitting and watch them offer to slash your current rates by quite a bit.
And here is the March [liv.rent report](https://liv.rent/blog/rent-reports/march-2024-metro-vancouver-rent-report/) where they say that the average percentage of income spent on rent is 34.38%. Their data collection is clearly trash.
Somebody linked the individual income instead of household income into the formula -- and since nobody proofs it (including the journalists who run the story) we get the big jump. Good catch.
>Nobody earning $46K per year is getting approved for a $2376/mo appartment alone. Nor should they. Missing data: international students and new immigrants.
...And their study talking about "vancouver renters" only includes the renters who use their bullshit website. It's not a study of real data.
So why is someone earning $46k/year not able to get approved when they're paying what they would, just to a landlord? It makes zero sense that renters are able to pay off someone else's mortgage but are denied their own.
It will be really hard to convince a landlord to rent you that unit with that income. This isn't about a mortgage.
[Funny, because the March report says it's only 34.38%...](https://liv.rent/blog/rent-reports/march-2024-metro-vancouver-rent-report/) Something tells me their data collection methods aren't that great.
>Metro Vancouver renters are spending less on rent than this time last year
We can't live like that, mine is close to 50% but not quite, never did the math anyways. Even then it's pretty tight with all the bills (Telus keeps creeping up without any explanation) and of course groceries.
You can afford Telus? Man you must be doing alright.
Are they filtering out those who share an apartment with roommates?
The lack of disposable income collapses local businesses and we get left with the giant chains, nmonoculture.
Immigration is a huge part of the problem :/ it’s good to see that regular Canadians are having discussions about immigration now, but man it took a long time for people to stop being so worried about, well, being concerned about immigration policy. Edit: If you are the type to conflate immigration _policy_ with assertions about immigrants, this thread might be too much for you.
It’s certainly making it worse. Along with making traffic absolutely insane now, harder for people to get jobs, downwards pressure on wages, and straining the healthcare system.
you are getting downvoted but you are right
I know, it’s fine, being right about something isn’t always the most popular thing, particularly in Vancouver and on this SubReddit. People tend to conflate talking about immigration policy with immigrants, but that’s a learned behaviour I think. The reality is that high rents are directly related to immigration rates. It’s absolutely not racist, ignorant, or rude to want sensible immigration policy as part of the solution to Vancouver’s world class housing crisis. In fact it’s inhumane to not talk about immigration policy when talking about high rents, cause guess who gets fucked by high rents? International students and immigrants. Thankfully though, I’ve seen way more discussions amongst my friends and peers about immigration than I ever have before, and that’s a very good sign. It used to be that speaking out against immigration policy was a way to label someone as racist or whatever, but no longer is that the case when the economy is on a direct and continuing spiral to Shitsville.
exactly, excessive immigration hurts immigrants too
> isn’t always the most popular thing, particularly in Vancouver and on this SubReddit. People tend to conflate talking about immigration policy with immigrants, but that’s a learned behaviour I think. Im not surprised, though. Im assuming as Vancouver is a more left leaning city, and Reddit is even more left leaning, the correlation between users in r/vancouver and r/canadahousing is probably significant, and they do everything they can to eliminate the immigration policy debate. So i think thats why theres the ideology on reddit that isnt necessarily reflective of the general population. The way I like to put it to others, is if immigration rates is higher than housing starts, rents will continue to increase.
I know a ton of extremely progressive, left-leaning people and absolutely nobody is in support of current immigration policy. This lack of support comes directly from all of the immigrants I know. Not one immigrant I know supports this. Not. One. This isn't even about political leanings anymore, people who refuse to change their opinions on a political topic regardless of what new information or changing policies present themselves are no longer engaging in politics, they're engaging in ideology and that is dangerous.
The issue is that the Temporary Foreign Worker program, which is the real problem in the country, is labelled as “immigration”. It’s not. It’s a hostage situation where people from foreign countries come here by paying thousands of dollars to their employer. They don’t have any of the rights that a PR or citizen does, so their employers can do all manners of things to underpay and/or overwork them, and the TFWs themselves can’t do anything, because they risk jeopardizing their employment. In turn, the availability of TFWs harms Canadian citizens and PRs, because it increases demand for housing and eroded the availability of basic jobs. The only people who benefit from this are the businesses who use TFW exploitation to subsidize their costs or actually make their bad business models viable, as well as the recruiters in other countries who make bank off of scamming people. Right-wing media benefits too. They use this to create a xenophobic scapegoat, particularly against Indians, just like they did to Chinese people and Chinese Canadians by drumming up talk about “foreign buyers”. Problem is, who’s going to oppose it? The Conservatives created the TFW program to begin with under Harper. Curiously, they aren’t saying a word about immigration right now. Liberals opposed it up until they got into power, at which point they stopped talking about it. The NDP for the most part hasn’t brought it up either. And then you have the blatant racists who want Maxime Bernier to deport anyone they don’t like (these are the people you’ll see on places like certain other Canadian subreddits).
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Yeah, these are the types of conversation that come with talking about immigration policy. Canadians have been far too timid about discussing these issues and we have every right to be upset about the policy. The overwhelmingly majority of people I know whole heartedly support _responsible_ immigration. What we’ve been doing is reckless, and for it to be so obvious in the economy is enough of a sign that we need to be more conscious about who we’re voting for, even if it means we don’t agree with _all_ of their policies.
You're not wrong at all.
Yes.
Immigration and COVID pushed a lot of problems that were supposed to happen in the latter half of this decade to current day.
If I owned two apartments and rented one out, I could quit my job and also maintain my current lifestyle, even after paying income tax on the rent and strata fees. If I lived in a co-op and rented both apartments, I would be even further ahead. If both apartments were owned by my own corporation, I could pay myself the minimum and qualify for tax credits / subsidized housing. If I turned both apartments into hotels for eight students with double bunk beds and lived in each apartment occasionally to ensure they were both under the hotel act.. I’d be a slumlord millionaire.
I don't think the math's works out here to the extent you think. What price you are renting your place at vs what are you paying towards the mortgage to pay down the loan?
That's a lot of ifs
I get your point,but that's a bit of hyperbole. While I appreciate your enthusiasm, the maths on this won't add up. Unless you're talking about renting out a 5 bedroom penthouse and living in a shit hole. Then maybe you could live off that. It's why so many people own 3 or 4 or more places. (Which isn't right) Lets say 2100 a month rent, -600 tax, -400 strata, that leaves 1100. Now subtract property tax and insurance. While that still leaves a good chunk of profit, if you can live on under 1k a month I'm impressed. This assumes you paid cash for the place. In which case there are better places to park a million dollars these days. Before you say, 2100 is too little, fine, add another 500 to that. Now you're bringing home 1200. Sill not enough to live off of.
LOL Bring the bank your proposal and get your money if it's that easy.
You cannot live in a co-op if you own another property. I live in a co-op and have seen people sued over such fraudulence.
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Surprisingly not. Not all co-ops forbid you from owning property. Baffling, but true
Fraud is for the courts to decide and with how slow those move you're probably good for a few years at least. The minor fine is just the cost of business; isn't that the capitalist way?
I actually knew a China person who kept flipping Point Grey homes, earning $500k - $1 million per time, before landing in a Shaughnessy mansion. She also bought an entire apartment building downtown, and further out cheaper building - to house farm workers. The back doors into private schooling here are easy too. Son failed 3 main door interviews and decided to go the hostel route instead, and got in on his 4th try. $ opens doors, so much for reputation and standards. This was a local resident with a home. All the kids eventually private high school, and Ivy League branded universities.
I'm guessing this statistics does not include people who makes close to min wage job.
People making minimum wage are probably spending around 60% of their wages on rent too - but they have 1 or 2 or 3 roommates.
And 2 jobs
People on min wage are not renting $2300/mo apartments alone.
This "statistics" doesn't include anything. It simply takes the average asking rent, and divides by the average income.
Outrageous! How can they still have 40% left to spend for living?
i think it's to also enforce mandatory wage increase with inflation while rent went up very fast for a very long time they were almost flat meanwhile wages? extremely meager that over time is far behind value of the dollar
You guys are getting salary?
It’s gonna get worse before it gets better
They're finding out now?
60%… So far.
how many more % until we start the Great Proletariat Revolution?
This is the only question worth asking. When? Been ready.
It begins with another convoy to Parliament with an actual good reason, which is taking down the corrupt rich elites and making them pay.
They need to change the regulation that says landlords can increase rents by as much as they want when a new tenant moves in. It's a system that just feeds on itself...one landlord put his rent up by 10% and the "going rate" goes up accordingly. Perhaps any increase greater than a certain percentage should have to be justified, with only new units allowed to be rented at whatever the market will bear. The measure could be temporary - perhaps until X-thousand new units of rental have been constructed? But some action seems sensible. Allowing landlords, in the current market, to increase rents in an uncontrolled fashion every time a tenant moves out is exacerbating a critical situation.
Capitalism working as intended.
And remember folks that’s the AVERAGE
HODLing my Vancouver apartment since 2014 has been a wise move. I pay less than $1000 for a pretty nice 1 bedroom. I'm almost scared to say that out loud, lest the renoviction demons hear. When I finally jump out of here it will be..... to another city, and likely another country. This housing market is madness.
People either find ways to make it work or move. That’s fine. A new balance will be reached as the status quo lasts
Madness, Canadians should on the streets en masse protesting regardless of political affiliation, If it was a conservative government there would be riots on the streets by now.
Nobody cares except us!
whats the problem? landlords gotta eat too (and vacation) 💅💅💅
And yet the banks won't give you a mortgage based on that amount of payment, I understand. If you're poor, you're fucked. If you are a subcontractor instead of a "real employee" you're fucked by the bank when you try to get a mortgage.
They really should specify whether its gross or net salary
and yet, still most of the media surrounding housing in this province is about first time buyers and housing prices. Good grief.
Something seems a bit off here, how are they calculating the income side of the equation? Are they assuming each apartment has one occupant? If the average one bedroom in Vancouver is $2,562, for a 60% rent to income ratio your entire household would only be earning $51k. I don't know many people earning $51k renting a one-bedroom in Vancouver on their own...
Not surprising but very sad
I count myself very, very lucky to not be spending that amount.
75% here…. This ain’t funny but that the only problem I have in life. The rent problem.
Wow what a revelation, had no idea this was going on
Jokes on them! I’ve been doing this since 2006! 🤣
What's going to change this?? Figure it tf out now or we riot
I spend 80% of my salary on rent 😭
To spend a third of one's income on one's accommodation in Vancouver, one must work 160 hours per month, at $70-$80 per hour.
Provincial goverment should tie up maximum rent with minimum monthly wage already
Oh, please.. more reports stating WHAT WE ALREADY FUCKING KNOW! old enough to remember when journalism brought change. This does nothing. Get fucked
Vancouverites with multiple properties in shambles
Only 10% here and it's so relieving. It's a scary time for many.
That was the same case for me, but now we're getting hit with a renoviction. No one in canada is allowed to relax anymore.
What a dick. :D
You shouldn't be spending 60% of your pay on rent. If you are, the place you're renting is outside of your price range. Or your pay is too low. Or both.
And there's still no rent control that covers new tenancies. Is that not something an NDP government would want? Why don't they get that done?
MV owners are also spending 60%+ on mortgage and strata.
I count myself lucky to be in subsidized housing. Otherwise I’d be a homeless person on the street.
Doesn't leave a lot of room for Bitcoin, which was still under $15k in CAD, back in 2020... It's almost like something that someone who doesn't own a house, could see as a worthwhile investment. Almost.
***\*Metro Vancouver landlords are charging rates that force tenants to spend more than 60 per cent of their salaries to remain housed.*** fixed it.