[CountSessine]

Is it so far fetched to assume some realtors may be juicing the bidding to...

Of course not, and I didn't say that I'm completely against reforming the real estate industry and the bidding process. But it won't fix expensive housing.

It's all bullsh*t if it doesn't address scarcity. In 2016 we had had 10 years of 2% population growth in Vancouver and 1.2% housing stock growth and we wanted to blame foreign investors, so we enacted the foreign-buyers tax. That was going to fix high housing prices.

In 2017 we all got angry about dirty money and our casinos being used as money-laundromats so we commissioned the German report to detail what was going on and surely that would show that real estate was expensive because of money-laundering. It said prices might have gone up by 6% because of money-laundering. So that's 6% of 400%.

In 2021 we started talking about investors driving up the cost of housing, ignoring the fact that investors typically become landlords and in cities with rental vacancy rates hovering around 1% (Vancouver's was 0.4% in 2017!!!), that sounds like a good thing.

It's all bullsh*t and it's all a distraction that let's us ignore scarcity. I've decided that no matter how justified that housing reform is (ie open-bidding), I refuse to support it before we deal with scarcity because we'll deal with open-bidding and then say, "Ok ... let's see where we are in 3 years time now that we've fixed that!"

Deal with scarcity or f*ck off with talk about housing prices. Don't expect me to validate your cognitive dissonance.

[standeven]

I agree that scarcity is the main issue, but how do you address it in a city like Vancouver? There’s no more land and downtown is dense. Make artificial islands? Deforest the mountainsides and build on 40 degree slopes? Replace local farms with subdivisions?

[CountSessine]

As a developer, why can't I buy 5 or 6 detached houses, tear them down, and build row-houses/town-houses on the site? I could house 3x as many families and charge a lot more than 1/3 the price for those homes. Why can't I do that? That is an unalloyed good in 2022 with the benchmark home price in Vancouver approaching $2 million. It would make me money and it would be a tremendous social good.

I can't do it because it's illegal, that's why. And I would have to go to city council to have them change the law (rezone the land). And the neighbors will campaign against me and argue against density. I own the land - I paid good money for it and it's mine in every sense of the word, but the neighbors will argue that their preferences and whims outweigh both my property rights and the rights of other Canadians to have a home.

[ska]

Unless things have changed radically since I was last there, downtown is mostly not dense.

But even if it were, it wouldn't solve the real problem in these north american cities, which is the "missing middle".

The model of small area of highly dense towers aimed at 20-something urbanites with no kids surrounded by spaced out single family homes with a yard is just fundamentally unworkable at any real scale.

If Vancouver wants to solve it's problem and not become a suburban/exurban sprawl (typical failure mode these days in north american growth) it's going to have to build a whole bunch of mid density housing near to downtown, and it's mostly going to have to build that on top of areas that are currently full of single family detached. This is not going to make current denizens of those "nice neighbourhoods" happy, naturally.

[vkou]

Vancouver downtown (In large part, thanks to the west end) is incredibly dense. 23,838 people/km2 - the same density as Manhattan.

Once you leave the penninsula, though, it's surrounded by a lot of suburban sprawl, with small pockets of density around the SkyTrain stations. Unlike most North American cities, though, at least it has those pockets of density!

[ska]

This map (https://maps.nicholsonroad.com/zones/) from another thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30960632), I think illustrates the problem.

If I understand "the pennisula" correctly, you are referring to something like 1/10th of the city proper (not the greater area, just the city of Vanc.). It is mostly zoned appropriately; outside of that it's a mess.

Everything in grey and yellow is part of the problem mentioned above.

[hello_moto]

> it's mostly going to have to build that on top of areas that are currently full of single family detached. This is not going to make current denizens of those "nice neighbourhoods" happy, naturally.

They're not happy with megatowers. They're ok with missing middle (townhouses).

There is a whole stretch of roads being bought out and converted to missing middle that leads to downtown. (Oak, Cambie).

[ska]

Small Townhouses aren’t really enough though , you need to go 4-5 stories at least in part. I’ve seen zoning fights about even duplexes, let alone anything bigger - not sure if Vancouver is more accepting of that than other places .

Is it the case there that people are ok/happy with mid rise places along busy corridors only , but want to maintain SFD on all the side streets? That really doesn’t work either , it’s just people making a noise etc. barrier on “their” neighborhood…

[hello_moto]

O ya, I agree with you that "small" townhouses aren't enough. Low rises helped though nobody wants to build "concrete" low risers (esp with the mandate from govt to set aside rental units, below market rental units, etc).

> I’ve seen zoning fights about even duplexes, let alone anything bigger - not sure if Vancouver is more accepting of that than other places .

Nobody has any issues with duplexes and townhouses.

It's a bunch of patch up jobs really.

I do agree that they should just bulldoze and start developing around Skytrain stations first. That way they have a starting point to sprawl a bit. It should be a give and take from both sides: govt and nimby. Govt needs to give nimby something to keep them happy (sad but what can you do) while telling them to F off when it comes to building towers around skytrain (first).

[LimaBearz]

Well I share your feelings toward the whole situation for sure but I'm not sure that just building more will do much of anything. As long as we have folks buying with the intention of parking money or using homes as an "investment" you're going to have competition with much deeper pockets.

This outside competition detaches local prices from the local economy. Likewise the speculation sets an anchor(comp) for neighboring homes when they go to sell. One investor overpaying by say 100K.. well now next month if Average Joe wants to sell he can now ask the same or more. Rinse and repeat just a few times and you get to where we are today.

[CountSessine]

...but I'm not sure that just building more will do much of anything

<sigh>

As long as we have folks buying with the intention of parking money or using homes as an "investment" you're going to have competition with much deeper pockets

Why do you think foreign investors want to overpay for a Vancouver Special? And what do they do with it once they buy it?

Do they live in it? If so, what you're upset about is population growth. Sounds like scarcity!

Do they rent it out? If so, that's a social good in a city with a 1% rental vacancy rate and sky-high rents are as bad as high housing prices. Sacrificing the rental market to save home-buyers sounds like scarcity!

Do those foreign investors leave the house empty? Who cares if we can just build more? And we know (https://doodles.mountainmath.ca/blog/2022/02/14/unoccupied-c...) that Vancouver doesn't seem to have more empty homes than most cities it's size. But of course we can't "just build more". Scarcity!

The truth is that we've seen developers market condo pre-sales in China playing-up the region's dysfunctions - pointing out our 2% population growth rate and the difficulty in building new housing. Investors come to Vancouver because they know the game is rigged - they know that housing prices are mostly one-sided and hedged by political interference. Canada's real estate is "too-big-to-fail" and is mostly up-side.

Don't talk to me about housing prices unless you deal with scarcity.

[Majromax]

> Do those foreign investors leave the house empty? Who cares if we can just build more?

I'll note here that there is a legitimate complaint to vacant housing. Some expensive city infrastructure like transit is supported by people-density rather than house-density, so a community of empty homes doesn't justify a subway line in the way that a bustling, lived-in community would.

Municipal funding that comes from the provincial level is also supported implicitly by income and sales (value-added) taxes rather than property taxes, so empty homes can easily create an imbalance of cost and revenue. The same also goes for cases of alleged tax evasion, where one globe-trotting patriarch supports their live-in family without declaring and paying Canadian taxes on income as a resident.

[djbebs]

There is no legitimate complaint about empty housing, not just because empty houses pay the same tax as occupied ones, but because empty housing is a myth.

[pedalpete]

Is empty housing a myth? https://openhousing.ca/2020/12/30/vancouver-empty-homes-cros...

I used to live in Yaletown (Vancouver) and the building I lived in was this very tall, maybe 35 story two tower block which only had two elevators. It took me about 6 months to realize that I never saw anybody else in the building. There were only 3 occupied apartments on my floor (I think there were 8 units per floor). I was told the building was designed to be a "piggy bank in the sky" and that low occupancy was in the design.

This is just an anecdote, but I was under the impression low occupancy is an issue in Vancouver so much so that they tried to pass laws regarding empty homes.

[paulmd]

> not just because empty houses pay the same tax as occupied ones

you've literally just responded to a post demonstrating that this is not the case, please don't just do template rants off keywords

[voisin]

Empty housing is a myth? Please explain.

[voisin]

Jack up interest rates (or qualifying rates) and demand plummets, particularly among multi unit investors. That should help scarcity.

[FerociousTimes]

To summarize, you argue that it's a supply-side problem and not a demand-side one.

[darkwizard42]

It has always been but people who vote (homeowners) have a vested interest to shape the narrative to be a demand-side problem.

The only loss when building more dense housing in urban areas is the existing owners whose views are blocked. Otherwise it seems to generally increase the tax base, support more businesses (when mixed-use housing is built), and increase renter mobility.

[TuringNYC]

>> The only loss when building more dense housing in urban areas is the existing owners whose views are blocked.

It is a lot about more supply (and less price increase, or even decrease). Not about views being blocked. People who own homes feel the need to defend the price of their prized asset, for which they have used their life savings plus leverage. The system is designed to perpetuate itsself

[CountSessine]

To summarize, you argue that it's a supply-side problem and not a demand-side one.

That is not an accurate summary. Earlier...

Either we limit Canada's crazy-high immigration rate (1% of population every year) or we build more homes which is mostly gated by illiberal zoning laws passed by municipalities. But both of these policies are very popular so you'll be swimming upstream, politically

[bobkazamakis]

People love to talk about cutting back immigration and how it'll magically solve housing problems when it only slightly reduces the demand. You'll never see any kind of valuation thrown, just good fee fees about keeping our jobs.

[hello_popppet]

The people writing the laws are all about the scarcity, and they aren’t on HN and you can’t take any shots at them or tell them to f*ck off. They’ve gotten this far by diligently min maxing and if you think they are going to have a change of heart, you’re way off base.

[CountSessine]

You've mistaken me for someone who thinks there's a political needle that can be threaded here.

I completely agree with you - housing prices are high, mechanically, because of scarcity. But scarcity exists because voters like high housing prices. The truth is that most Canadians own property and are perfectly happy with their $1-3 million in equity. And regardless of their stated preferences for affordable housing, the revealed preference for scarcity and expensive housing is clear.

All I want is to shut down people looking for someone to validate their cognitive dissonance.

[Afton]

Having grown up poor, I was going to challenge the statement that 'most Canadians own property', but it looks like it's ~70%.

I mean, I think hanging 30% of your population out to dry is a bad idea, but I can't argue that this isn't a tyranny of the majority situation (or maybe tyranny of those in power, of which I expect closer to 100% are property owners).

[I-M-S]

This is an ad nauseam repeated false statistic. That number counts household members - meaning ~70% of population owns property when you account children in those households (and grandparents). And those children are definitely going to need homes of their own... Or I guess you'll have situation akin to one in my home country where >60% of 25-34 y.o. young adults live with their parents, with all the economic and psychological stunted development that entails.