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A comment on /story/42583297. Parent comment

Re: by deepsun on Friday January 03, 2025 @06:34PM (#42590664)
Just a nitpick -- the "overheated property market" sounds like a bad thing, but I don't understand why it must be that way. In the end -- property developers are Canadian companies, and must bathe in money. "Younger Canadians" must be enjoying elevated salaries at these companies.

The only reason I see why it is that way is when other Canadians restrict the supply of real estate (NIMBY) to inflate their own property value. Same for most other democratic real estate markets in the world in the past years, not just Canada, regardless of immigration levels.

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Re: by brailsafe on Friday January 03, 2025 @08:03PM (#42591239)
That may be true, but money is still expensive, lead times are absurd, and we have a small number of companies who probably make most of their money jsut by owning the land regardless of whether it's developed or not. Likewise, even if you're making very good money in one of a scarce few highly specialized or senior positions, you'll need to be doing so for an extended period of time, and probably make much more than even that, along with your spouse, to buy a place.

Vancouver (the city) is a town where a 2 bedroom condo built in the last 20 years is likely going to run ~$1m, and where some 1 bedroom places go for that. The suburbs are a smidge better but not by much. A house, albeit probably a comically large and stupid one on the outskirts near nothing of flavor could be $1.5m-$2m

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Re: by deepsun on Saturday January 04, 2025 @01:02AM (#42592798)
Agree, but that is a problem created by locals, not immigrants. Why do they blame immigrants?
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Re: by brailsafe on Monday January 06, 2025 @02:34PM (#42614565)
It's not so much that we're blaming immigrants, anyone doing so isn't appreciating that something like the situation we're in is the result of multifaceted fuckery; an economic failure at some scale. Many types and waves of immigrants are involved—most recent ones being thrown under the bus unfortunately—but generally Canadians accept immigrants more than not, it's just that the rate was intentionally increased haphazardly to such a degree on top of an already abysmal outlook for anyone who wouldn't stand to profit off of increased population.

If you had a big house in Vancouver, if you are a developer, if you are a certain type of business owner, you were riding high. If you're anyone else, your resume is now one among a thousand for almost any low-med skilled position, and the most viable cities were already! sitting at a ~1% vacancy, which is a real life pressing problem. Immigration numbers are a part of this, but not remotely close to the whole picture.

In some cases the biggest development companies are also foreign and have been extremely present in shaping things https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/expo-86-chin...

For better and worse.

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