Warning for Vancouver real estate as 2,500 condos sit unsold

So prices will go down, right?

…Prices will go down, right?

Industry professionals say unbought condos could lead to big layoffs

Everything is unaffordable, workers are all being laid off, AI is replacing people, minimum wage isn’t enough to support a living wage…

What’s the capitalist end-game here? A world full of poor, unemployed, desperate people likely won’t make shareholders any richer, will it?

Nobody is at the wheel. Nobody ever was.

“The cost that is associated with policies at all three levels of government has made it that we can no longer build what people can afford,” she said.

I’m curious what she means by this exactly. Non-market housing and art is mentioned later on. Are they expected to pay for that themselves?

It’s not like they physically can’t build condos people can afford. With no regulations they could build South Korea-style coffin apartments. Nor are they making money from this situation.

Of course, who needs a house? /s

“I guess we’ll see what happens.”

~ Billionaire CEO who can support his family for the next 1,000 generations.

Historically big business wealth only lasts a few, actually. Nepobabies spend big, and each can have several children of their own to which the wealth has to be divided.

What a disingenuous rhetoric. Degrowth is centered on meeting people’s needs. No one needs a house. Everyone needs a home. Not everyone needs a home in Vancouver.

One central tenet of degrowth is accepting that nearly everything, at some point, will have to stop growing. This includes Vancouver, and a reasonable person could conclude that this headline is an econonic signal that now is probably the time.

Until absolute population declines, It’s a big country, medium density development in other areas can accomodate everyone more cost effectively than more unaffordable skytowers in earthquake vulnerable Vancouver.

What’s the capitalist end-game here?

That capitalists maximumize their wealth.

And ultimately that there can be only one, and they all believe that it’ll be them

Economics is only a pseudo-science for the rich. For the poor, it’s always an ineffable mystery.

Incorrect. Governments and corporation all have leaders who have steered us here, deliberately.

What the developer is saying is that their private industry can’t function anymore and it needs to be nationalized and social housing made a right.

Private industry where it can, social industry where it must.

The capitalists’ game is to pivot their wealth and influence to becoming the dictators of countries. It’s world domination.

I’m not kidding.

I’m curious what she means by this exactly. Non-market housing and art is mentioned later on. Are they expected to pay for that themselves?

Development fees are one example. When a new apartment building is constructed, it needs water and sewer connections. The municipality typically charges the builder a development fee (on the order of 100k) to build that stuff. That immediately means the developer needs to charge buyers the development fee to recoup their costs.

Every level of government is going to add restrictions and requirements. Some may be non-negotiable: building codes to ensure the building is up to safety standards. We may want to revisit others.

You can replace Vancouver for Montreal and you’d have the same thing.

In Montreal we laughed for years at the 1M$ shack or mansions in Vancouver, but now in Montreal an average house is also 1M, it was like 500k 5 years ago. There is something like 3000 empties condos too in Montreal, maybe 10000-12000 airbnb too, and 25-34yo people especially those with spouse/children are leaving Montreal en masse.

It is completely fucked up right now. Rent also doubled. People on minimum wage are making ~2k$/month, an average rent is 2k$/month.

Let’s not talk about an average new car at 65k$ and an average used car at 36k$

Note - I work in Ontario, and this is my experience as an engineering consultant working with dozens of municipalities.

We’re finally at the end of infrastructure lifespan point for a good chunk of the province. That means Water/Wastewater plants, as well as the hundreds of kilometers of pipes required to transmit those liquids are at the end of their life for the first time since being installed (50-70 years).

The cost to replace those is enormous, and IMO, should be covered primarily by property tax and/or useage fees. However those fees have not actually set aside the money required in many places, which means that municipalities have been propping up their old infrastructure costs by charging large development fees. Doug Ford, as much as I hate him, slashed development fees allowed, which forced property tax rates to rise. This more accurately reflects the ACTUAL cost of owning a home with services by the municipality. Given that I believe growth stagnation is required, this is the direction we need to head. We can’t keep running this ponzi scheme of funding old infrastructure with new infrastructure fees. Its unfair to new buyers and subsidizing older homeowners.

We also likely need to take a look at the actual fees and costs associated with maintaining our infrastructure. Stormwater ponds, seen typically in subdivisions, are HORRIBLY under-serviced, with a recent investigation in our area revealing 75% of them had never been cleaned out since being put into service ~30-50 years ago. They typically have a service life of 10-20 years, and have been leaking pollutants into our creeks and waterways since. The primary reason - you guessed it, budget. At 1+Mil/cleanout, they’re expensive.

We’ve skated by up till now by externalizing these costs and letting the damages build up for tomorrow’s solutions. We can’t keep putting off those costs.

You can decide to make a left turn without knowing whether you’re going to end up in Kamloops or Kapuskasing by doing so. That’s the level of steering that’s going on: no one is looking past, at most, the next couple of intersections, and the GPS is on the fritz.

Yeah, but development fees of that kind seem like they should only vary so much. Probably not to the degree of scuttling condos in Vancouver while they get made like sausages in Calgary.

Fire-prone slum construction isn’t the answer, that’s true. Regulations tend to wander into catering to nimby sensibilities in the West, though. Or into trying to externalise costs the government really should bear, like I’m kind of suspecting with the non-market housing mentioned.

It wouldn’t be any cheaper for the government, and the government itself has a limited amount of funding. (And that would be true regardless of the tax rate)

Deliberately, definitely not. Like OP said, why would anyone want this?

There’s leaders, but there’s a lot of leaders, they have interests at odds with each other, and none of them have a position that can’t be lost one way or the other (even dictators fear a coup). In the end, they end up part of the system, not controlling it.