As someone who's lived in Vancouver for more than 10 years, then went to Waterloo for school (and lived in Toronto for most of my co-ops/internships), I think we Canadians should be more worried about highly educated millennials fleeing Canada entirely. Everybody I know from school who were offered the option to work in the US have picked up their Canadian degrees and left.<p>To the Canadian tech industry: How are you ever going to become competitive with the US if you keep offering these humiliatingly low salaries and letting the best and brightest of our own talent get leeched away?
I see this as a problem all over the world. - San Francisco, Seattle, New York, Vancouver, London, Oslo... Really the list could go on for quite a while.<p>So many of these cities feel like they have to retain their "identity" or the "feel" of the town, so they set restrictions that make it very hard to develop properties that can hold more people. The result is always the same: continually increasing prices in the center of the city whether you want to rent or buy, so you have to go further and further out to find something affordable, especially if you are young or if your parents can't help you finance a purchase.<p>This is going to continue until planning commissions start allowing the construction of higher density housing.
This seems to be a direct result of capital flight from China. Wealthy chinese who are able to get their money out (through corruption, money laundering, or otherwise) are looking for somewhere safe to park their money for the inevitable decline in value of the yuan. China can only artificially peg their money to the dollar for so long, until they run out of dollars, and they are drawing down their reserves at a record pace due to the appreciation of the dollar.<p>Wealthy chinese know this, and use real estate in markets such as Vancouver, SF, and NYC, because it's fairly low risk and likely to appreciate. See <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/13/462994857/u-s-treasury-cracks-down-on-luxury-home-money-laundering" rel="nofollow">http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/13/462994857/...</a> and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/14/us/us-will-track-secret-buyers-of-luxury-real-estate.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/14/us/us-will-track-secret-bu...</a>
The Chinese are parking their money there, that's what's happening<p>Hence people paying millions of dollars for a house that's falling apart<p>But I'm glad to hear about Victoria.
In the past year, I've had 3 colleagues quit their jobs at a Vancouver startup to work remotely for a US company (to get paid in USD). Tech salaries in Vancouver are too low for the cost of living.<p>Its especially discouraging to see an employer with offices in Seattle and Vancouver offer their Canadian employees salaries that are >30% lower than their American counterparts. I won't be surprised if Canadians working remotely becomes commonplace.
The USD median house price in Vancouver is misleading too, because it wasn't long ago that the dollar was at parity, and incomes certainly haven't changed much as the dollar has dropped by a third.<p>Anyway, so far the effect on Victoria seems to be our own mini (compared to Vancouver; still nuts for most of the world) housing boom. I have three couples of close friends all house-hunting right now, and it's not a fun time to be doing so. I can't imagine committing to pay the better part of a million dollars for something with less than a day's deliberation, no time for an inspection, and a need to offer over asking price to even have a hope of "winning".
I'm a millennial immigrant to Vancouver (came with my family when I was 10).<p>I'm a software developer by trade.<p>The problems are real, but the outcome is greatly exaggerated.<p>The fact is MOST millennials outside the most lucrative STEM/Law/Finance fields are in no position to be buying real estate anywhere in North America.<p>And the Vancouver rental market is actually not half bad. You can get a basement suite for under $1000 in the city proper. You can get a 2 bedroom downtown for $2000. Or at least you could a year ago, the Canadian dollar has plummeted.<p>Meanwhile people are weighing in with terrible salary stories. It's also not exactly true. Yes, I could make more in Seattle, and even MORE in Silicon Valley. But there are lifestyle costs to both. I value the Vancouver lifestyle quite highly. Now, full disclosure, I moved to Europe for a 2-3 year transfer with my company last year. But this was also a lifestyle based decision to allow me to travel more - I took a paycut.<p>The truth about salaries is Amazon pays very well (though not as well as in the States). Microsoft pays very well. So does Facebook, and Apple, and Salesforce pays the best (supposedly they are competitive with US salaries).
These big players are forcing the rest of the market to kick up. And all these players are also relatively new to the scene (most growth in the last 5 years). As a result, I foresee in the next few years a lot of ex-employees from these places going out on their own and doing great things in the startup community, or commanding similar salaries from local shops that want to get experienced engineers with big scale experience.<p>The problem with Vancouver is it's hard to find a city to compare it to. Yes, the economy isn't the strongest it can be, but the proximity to nature is unbelievable and very difficult to match. That intangible IS worth something despite people not taking advantage of it complaining that "that's all there is". If you don't care about world-class ocean and mountain sports in close proximity to outstanding international food options, this city is not for you. There are places with more vibrant art and culture and nightlife scenes, no doubt. But if you make the most of Vancouver's strengths, it is unbeatable.
I'll be honest. It's hard for me to hate on Vancouver too much as I truly think Urban planning is difficult.<p>I think people should move to lower costs cities if the situation makes sense for them. Vancouver might be at a disadvantage due to Brain Drain at this specific moment in time, but I believe there's an argument to be made that Vancouver has significantly been a beneficiary of Brain Drain from other countries in the past.<p>As the USA and Canada continues to transition to a knowledge based economy, our cities should emulate what made Vancouver a economic powerhouse, which is a world class research university, great public transportation, and effective immigration programs. Now, there are things you can't emulate like great weather or prestige, but we can make more cities like San Francisco or Vancouver.
I really like Victoria and I hope the town does well out of this. I'm sad that I may not be able to afford to live in Vancouver anytime soon, though.
I lived in Vancouver for 5 years. Beautiful spot. Met a lot of interesting people from all over the world. But, even by Canadian standards (which are much lower than the US) the salaries in Vancouver are notoriously low. A much better (2X) offer brought me to Toronto.<p>Staring to feel the same about Toronto too expense and hassle wise. Want to try remote work from the States and live in the country in Canada. Only interia prevents me.
I find it interesting that due to high rent prices the article hypothesizes that people are moving away from Vancouver and the next upcoming city is a peninsula on an island? What do you think is going to happen in the real-estate market there?
If millennial are fleeing Vancouver for London because they can't afford housing, as this article suggests, they're going to be very disappointed with our housing prices!
I think it's likely that tech in Vancouver is having trouble hiring and retaining as millenials flee to SF, where they can get paid dramatically more, but in general Vancouver is seeing net gains in millenials.<p>I have no idea how Bloomberg made their chart but using census and BC stats data no one has been able to reproduce it.<p>This UBC sociology prof crunched BCStats numbers and found that there is net positive millenial migration into Vancouver.<p><a href="https://homefreesociology.wordpress.com/2016/03/16/ch-ch-ch-changes-in-vancouvers-net-migration-profile-by-age/" rel="nofollow">https://homefreesociology.wordpress.com/2016/03/16/ch-ch-ch-...</a><p>This doesn't change the fact that the unaffordability situation in Vancouver is deeply problematic and is probably accelerating a brain drain to the USA.
This is a major issue everywhere. Take stagnant wage growth and stack that up against high housing costs and you have a double pinch. Prospects are extremely bleak.
There is a diaspora of Vancouverites in their late 20s, early 30s here in Toronto. They left home for better employment and housing opportunities. I think we all would love to move back but it's just not worth it. Vancouver is a better city than Toronto but not THAT much better.
Believe it or not, I have a number of coworkers come from Canada. I am not sure if they have all converted to US citizenship or not, but most of them have family or have a stable life here, and they blend in extremely well. And then there are a number of British coworkers too...
"The vacancy rate of 0.8 percent is one of the lowest in the country, and the average monthly rent of C$937 for a bachelor suite is tied at highest with the cost in Toronto, according to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp."<p>Montreal? Calgary? Edmonton? Halifax? St. John's?
Real-estate has been fucked up here since 2000, and no one has ever done anything about it. Our condo market was a money market for years. People would pay other people to camp out for pre-sales a week in advance in tents and a new development would be sold out opening day. It would be flipped 5 times before it was even built.<p>The "affordable housing" initiatives here mostly seem to be for homeless people or those on fixed incomes. There is a big resentment from middle class or the "working poor" here now. But young people don't vote or they vote on social issues that seem nice when they are 20 but not on something that is going to effect them when they are 28-40. People who own houses love it but know it is fucked up. My mom is an example basically, and just banked her retirement selling her downtown condo. Lots of you are talking about tech wages because that effects you, but I have lots of friends that grew up that are in the 40k-50k range that would at least like a shitty condo in east van. I wish we could go back to 10 years ago about DINKWAD jokes, but the Double Income No Kids With a Dogs can't even afford detached houses here anymore. It's $2-million for a tear down crack shack. It is fucking crazy. $2-million is a lot of money. $2-million used to be a beautiful water view mansion, and not that long ago.<p>Everyone should read this article as well: <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/investigations/the-real-estate-technique-fuelling-vancouvers-housing-market/article28634868/" rel="nofollow">http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/investigations/the-real-...</a><p>This is just one shady fucked up thing they know about. There is so much more to it. I really wish the Frontline about shady money laundering didn't get canned. <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/07/06/why-did-frontline-kill-lowell-bergman-s-gambling-documentary.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/07/06/why-did-fro...</a><p>At the same time we keep saying the "Chinese money laundering!" yea it is illegal to them. But we also don't live under laws that only allow us to move $50k a year out of the country. We have to imagine living under that ourselves I guess.
Assuming one has a really good heater and sleeping bag, it legal/possible/affordable to live in a VW bus in say south Vancouver? Renting in places like NYC, SF these days seems most people are lemmingly throwing money away in an unaffordable attempt to buy faux status while going into debt and gaining no balance sheet because "everyone else is doing it." Unless you've sold a series to HBO, living below one's means is smarter because hope isn't a strategy.
With online collaboration tools really taking off, especially with WebRTC currently on billions of devices, I have this unfounded belief that city centers will become less important over the next decade. There will always be work which is better suited to in-person setups.<p>Maybe it is more of a hope than a belief - but having a decentralized workforce has implications for cost of living and quality of life that are exciting. With (relatively) low-cost mortgages, home purchasing power increases at a non-linear rate, the more money you make. That is one reason why housing demand in cities can grow faster than wages.