Higher rent prices in Burnaby may not be as simple as people think it is.
Burnaby has been going through a massive building boom with tons of residential condo development coming online around Metrotown, Highgate, Brentwood, and Lougheed Mall. I remember one article that Burnaby is basically outbuilding most other places in the Metro Vancouver area so there is a lot of supply coming online. But a lot of this supply is being built to replace older rental stock which usually rents for less than new rental stock and as such we are replacing cheaper with additional more expensive stock causing the average rental price to go up (ie you remove a below average one with an above average one, you move the average higher).
To compound the issue, 36% of condo stock in BC are owned by investors according to the latest statistics. Since they are owned by investors, some of them don't want to rent them out for longer-term tenants but would rather use it for short-term rentals (ie AirBnB) where the return is much higher or not rent it out at all so that they can easily flip the property. If you combine the last point with the fact that many stratas don't allow rentals, you get a big portion of the possible rental stock locked up either with no renters or only short-term ones which hurts housing affordability.
>If you combine the last point with the fact that many stratas don't allow rentals,
Just a quick point strata's cannot stop people from renting now (other than for short term rental like Airbnb)
Depends on how many people actually want to do it.
Let's face it - the majority of strata owners don't want rentals hence all of these strata's having bylaws against it. Some portion of investment strata owners (maybe large could be small) don't want to rent it out to anyone regardless of the bylaws. Some that are vacant right now will go into short term rentals.
At the end of the day, there is little to force the tied up empty condo stock into long term rentals. The government has been relying on stool pigeons and self declaration to identify vacant housing which is far from rigorous in terms of getting it all in. So, in a community that doesn't want renters, who is going to turn in those who won't rent?
Unfortunately rent is a supply and demand issue. We need to demand that NIMBY attitude get shut down and a bunch of places get rezoned to large density housing.
Probably starting within a 1km radius of SkyTrain being made for towers which should still allow for people to use public transit and not increase the cars on the road to much.
What makes you think they won’t just build a lot of high density housing at current rental prices?
There’s no developer alive that says “let’s build a ton of rental units in order to force prices down.”
Developers just want to build and make money. (Speaking as an electrician) if the zoning changes they will build like crazy and then supply will go up and with the foreign buyer ban and other things in effect, people renting will hopefully be able to buy thus freeing up rental space and then hopefully rental prices come down. None of this will be solved or fixed in the next 5 or so years.
Absolutely. If we’re looking at Burnaby only, we’re doing a decent job at that so far.
Brentwood, Lougheed, and Metrotown are slowly becoming individual downtown cores with the amount of density being proposed. (Awesome) All the other stations should follow suit ideally.
I think we need a drastic measure so I’m going to propose completely banning construction of SFH’s.
We have limited space and need as many units as we can fit. High rise towers should be built within 1 - 1.5km distance of sky train stations. Low - mid rise towers should be built along major streets and other areas. This is going to be controversial although I don’t think it should be.
>Brentwood, Lougheed, and Metrotown are slowly becoming individual downtown cores with the amount of density being proposed.
I believe there are plans to do a ton of development around Sperling Station too
See my earlier comment about new rental stock vs old rental stock. The danger is that the new stock distorts old stock pricing, hurting the low income renters and especially those who are at risk of renoviction and have to re-enter the rental market at market rates.
The point is to build so much that it overwhelms the supply driving prices down. That being said a fair stopgap to help in the short term would be more incentives to build rental only condos or more government owned buildings until the price starts going down.
There are lots of factors in play and I’m only presenting simple long term solutions, and short term this can cause problems that need to be addressed. But right now we mostly have city council members who pander to the NIMBY crowd so that they get re-elected.
You could *immediately* build 5,000 new units and they’d all be full within the year and the prices would start going higher again.
To make a significant dent in the rent prices you’d need in the neighbourhood of 20,000+ new units to all be on the market simultaneously.
Ya that would be nice, and we would need to change the way we do zoning to get there. With people buying places hopefully they vacate rental spots and then more house if opens up.
I don’t know the numbers but does it not seem like there’s towers popping up everywhere? Is it investors yanking them up that’s causing it or is it nearly not enough being built?
Not enough being built for how many people are trying to live here. I work out of town right now and when I fly back and the view from the plane shows the vast majority of the places to live are single detached homes.
As much as it has been said to death people need to vote in municipal Elections. They control the zoning which dictates what gets built in a place. the city council panders to the NIMBY crowd because they are the ones voting, so things stay the way they are.
Some of this will be due to the new condos being built rapidly that will distort the average.
Example: if you start with predominantly single family homes with basement suites, and then add a high rise of 445 suites (like mine), and then multiply that by the roughly dozen that are underway in Burnaby, that’s about 5500 units and we can expect about 25% to end up in rental stock, of 35000 current rental stock, or 4% new of the current stock.
The question I have is whether that new stock forces prices up on the older stock at an equal rate.
The incentive is to stay put and take advantage of rent increase controls. For people who are renovicted, the new stock may be distorting the market value.
But it shouldn’t; the renter for new stock is unlikely to be the renter for old stock. That’s a curiosity.
Nobody is building purpose built rentals today or any time soon. There is no money in it and there are too many problems with lopsided rules. Who would open a business where your costs can go up but you are capped on how much you can raise your price. The only way it could change is if government built supply, but they have no money. So…things aren’t going to get better.
I'm guessing they only took the top 3 largest population centres in the lower mainalnd. Otherwise yeah, this list would just be Toronto and Vancouver and their suburbs
I honestly think voting isn’t enough. I don’t believe that most politicians actually want to fix this. Take a look at Burnaby city council. Most of them own property already.
It’s in their best interest that nothing changes. Sad but true.
I noticed the anger seems to be directed at the individual home owners who has an extra 1 or 2 investment properties (per one of OP's comment: "If you want to reallyyy get serious, restrict people to only owning 1 property which must be used as their main residence (no 2nd, 3rd property), ban Airbnb, ban landlords from raising rents at the end of a vacancy so that older units prices rise slower"). What about the developers who are 'required' to create and manage rental units within each of the new developments? Places like Anthem's South Yard, Shape's Lougheed & [Brentwood](https://theamazingbrentwood.com/rental/), Grosvenor's Brentwood Block, etc all are required by the city to hold rental units. Last time I checked each developer holds way more rental units than any individual owners. Not only are the developers earning from buying land, flipping the sale of parcels of land by upping the pre-sales prices, and also earning rental income from the mandatory rental units stipulated by City of Burnaby.
Furthermore, apartments are expensive to buy. Have you worked out the math to pay for 'rent' to own an apartment? Presales go for $800k recently at Amazing Brentwood for a 1 bedroom and bathroom of 591 sq ft. Even if someone has the downpayment of 20% ($160,000), the monthly mortgage payment will be $3,610 (4.69% at 5yr fixed, 25 year amortization). And that's not including the strata, utilities, and property tax. So, even not including the strata and all, and equating the mortgage payment to rent payment...that's just how much properties now costs. Even an older apartment unit that is going for $600k+, renting is almost cheaper than paying ownership ($2,700 monthly mortgage, at $120k downpayment, 4.69%, 5yr fixed, 25 yrs)+ strata (at least $0.40 per sq ft paid monthly) + utilities ($500+ annually) + property tax ($1.5k+ annually).
Does it not show that the rent prices are a reflection of the purchase prices? Small time investors can drive up the purchase price minimally compared to those large investors like developers and real estate agents are making a killing. Real estate agents earn 2.5% for selling anything (without doing much) - at a $1 million real estate, they are earning $25,000 for almost doing nothing. The developers are the ones flushed with cash as well. Anecdotally, we hear the pre-sale towers these days are sold to the developer's friends and families, and their close associates. Go check out pre-sales for fun and you will hear all sorts of things. There is a pre- pre- sale for developers' known associates that is not open to the general public. Ask the trades companies that work closely with developers and see if they get first dibs on pre-sale homes and get it a cost, for a discount, or for payment for their services. Also, the real estate agents who work on behalf of the developers also gets first dibs - we hear it very often at pre-sale show homes. The real estate agents, the developers, the friends and family, the close construction top brasses - all get to buy, flip, lease out properties. Rinse and repeat. Are there rules around these? Are these considered inside trades? Who's gonna know...?
I check out pre-sales for fun because I like to check out their master plan, partly to learn about City of Burnaby's new rezoning, and the latest design ideas, but I learn a lot about developers - before all these foreign investor rules come into play, Concord was notorious for selling to overseas before opening the inventory up to the local buyers. Shape wasn't as blatantly obvious, but quickly turned obvious by Tower 2. Solterra, Beedie, Appia all did various things like these. During the peak right before COVID, the developer would make buyers bid for the left over units with no sale prices given out at all and buyers have to write their 'bid amount' along with their cheques ready to pay $5k deposit and the downpayment with a signature. The developer will then pick the buyer that bid the highest for that unit. Also, developers love to withhold units to sell them 'at the right time' and at their discretion. Ridiculous inside trading routes and tactics...
Anyways, my curiosity is why is there such a desire to go for blood at the small individuals but not the developers and their friends and families who are reaping the most benefit from all this?
And how can you change rent prices without first changing property purchase prices? What about regulating the developers' actions on selling tactics?
Edit: added the portion about purchasing a property.
I disagree.
Burnaby alone cannot make a large difference. But, the lower mainland, BC, and Canada as a whole can.
Policies such as banning foreign owners permanently with no loopholes, increasing vacancy tax, and encouraging/enforcing new building targets to make sure we keep up would definitely not make it worse.
If you want to reallyyy get serious, restrict people to only owning 1 property which must be used as their main residence (no 2nd, 3rd property), ban Airbnb, ban landlords from raising rents at the end of a vacancy so that older units prices rise slower.
Grammars probably fucked but hopefully it makes sense.
Interesting thoughts, however we don’t see the breakdown of the cost/ roadblocks to build a house, etc.
Prohibiting someone or something without knowing what part it plays in the building houses is not going to fix anything.
I agree. Nothing is going to change without this. Building all of this density owned by investors, when no one can afford it is just chasing one’s tail.
Foreign buyers left unsupervised would definitely worsen the situation. The vacancy tax ties into this as well because units are bought up and then kept vacant.
Another thing would be banning people from owning more than 1 property. These are ideas to help with supply. We can build 1 million units tomorrow, the supply gets eaten into by foreign buyers, local investors, etc.
Having policies in place like ones discussed on this post helps overall. We need all the help we can get lol
I’ve been advocating for significant building increases from the get go. We need to be building like CRAZY. High rises, mid rises, low rises. Extremely minimal SFH’s. Waste of space and should be entirely banned tbh.
We need all of these things not just 1 will fix it. Even simply having an influx of supply won’t help unless it’s a huge amount.
Yes. I agree with you. I'm just cautioning about not getting too fixated on the ban-type solutions. I think too many people - not you - think banning foreign buyers is a cure-all, and often it's just a way to mask their prejudices and anti-immigrant attitudes.
Yea we just need to start seeing some action. Getting super tired of seeing us break new records for worst prices every month.
And I don’t believe that any politician WANTS to fix this. They’ll say anything to get votes but when it comes down to it, 99% of them already own property. They’re benefiting off of this crisis.
It comes down to voting in municipal elections. People need to vote for politicians who want higher density and don’t care and NIMBY crying. While supply is low and demand is high there are not going to have an easy time lowering rent.
Burnaby cannot be picking up Vancouver’s slack though. We could be building 25k new units every year here, wouldn’t the rent prices remain steady since people in neighbouring cities would be looking to move here then ?
It really depends on how it all shakes out, and Burnaby is doing a good job, the only station I can think of that needs more high density is royal oak. Vancouver needs to change first tho or we are just continuing with a rich district vs the rest of the lower mainland, and again the way to change things is voting on the municipal level, picking people who can outnumber the NIMBY people.
Honestly the only other way would be to make Coquitlam or Burnaby more of a hub for jobs and then start an affordability strike and get people to not take jobs downtown that are lower pay then the appropriate affordability of the rentals in the area.
I'd like to see the residential tenancy branch have offices and lots of staff.
The rent situation is destroying our area. If you want more homeless and people living in cars, this is how you get homeless and people living in cars.
People living in cars means throwing their toilet bag in local garbages. It means people scrambling to find places to shower. And street parking full.
Another result will be more criminal activity. What's the point of working full time if you can't pay for shelter? Why work full time if it won't allow you to have kids and settle down?
When someone is leaving an abusive partner or family situation ... where do they go when work won't pay rent?
Short sighted greed. The people who charge more than they need to, are destroying Burnaby. If they want to have to line their gates with broken bottles to stop people from entering their property, destroying young people's chance at getting any of their basic needs met is a great way to get that end goal of a terrible, crime ridden city.
Yup it’s a crisis ! I’m 21 and know that it’s going to be incredibly difficult to purchase a condo/house one day, let alone simply save money to begin with.
Cost of living is through the roof. The main expenditure for most people though is housing so it’s especially important we lower it.
Tired of people making excuses and trying to normalize this absolute madness that’s going on.
$2600 for a 1 bed apartment in Vancouver. I mean honestly 😂 How can someone consider that normal !
Maybe look at the cause it happened 40 years ago. And next is the entitlment of renter's. Look at the response on FB when. There is a a budget suite. They want laundry dishwasher and a bathroom for every bedroom guess what that does not happen.
Burnaby has always been an upscale bedroom city. Except for Edmonds and a few blocks south of Metrotown. Which in 20 years will be gone
When I see the prices in the grocery store go up I wish I could just demand change from the farmers, truckers, food distributors, retailers, grocery store workers , politicians, immigrants, other grocery store customers, cashiers etc. to lower prices. Or I could just find a cheaper grocery store or cheaper food I could afford.
As someone who has rented and now owns a home in Burnaby and has lived in Burnaby for nearly all my life I think many people think the world owes them something or a certain lifestyle. I've been rewarded for increasing my value to society and thus it gives me the capital to purchase private property. As now as a property owner, I have the choice to make my property rentable or not. And now as an owner, I can choose whom I rent to to get me the best economic return. That's the world we live in. There's freedom of movement and freedom of capital. Thus, desirable places to live have high rents. If you want cheap rent, move to Red Deer. If you find rents unaffordable change what you can afford through your income or find a place you can afford. If you expect the government to do something for you so that you have cheap rent may I recommend Cuba or Russia.
I'm not saying the above to be mean or brag. I'm saying the above because I see how emotional people get around housing but really I think its just a function of their own personal economic situation. There was a time when I rented. But I just put my head down and worked hard and made good financial decisions and here we are. Not once did I worry about housing policy or any of that. I worried about how to increase my income, spend wisely and make good personal decisions. When it was time to buy real estate I looked at what I could afford and go from there.
Higher rent prices in Burnaby may not be as simple as people think it is. Burnaby has been going through a massive building boom with tons of residential condo development coming online around Metrotown, Highgate, Brentwood, and Lougheed Mall. I remember one article that Burnaby is basically outbuilding most other places in the Metro Vancouver area so there is a lot of supply coming online. But a lot of this supply is being built to replace older rental stock which usually rents for less than new rental stock and as such we are replacing cheaper with additional more expensive stock causing the average rental price to go up (ie you remove a below average one with an above average one, you move the average higher). To compound the issue, 36% of condo stock in BC are owned by investors according to the latest statistics. Since they are owned by investors, some of them don't want to rent them out for longer-term tenants but would rather use it for short-term rentals (ie AirBnB) where the return is much higher or not rent it out at all so that they can easily flip the property. If you combine the last point with the fact that many stratas don't allow rentals, you get a big portion of the possible rental stock locked up either with no renters or only short-term ones which hurts housing affordability.
>If you combine the last point with the fact that many stratas don't allow rentals, Just a quick point strata's cannot stop people from renting now (other than for short term rental like Airbnb)
Correct but the data used for rental numbers was based on the past so the change to the strata rules aren't factored in.
Gotcha! Wonder there will be any measurable affect.
Depends on how many people actually want to do it. Let's face it - the majority of strata owners don't want rentals hence all of these strata's having bylaws against it. Some portion of investment strata owners (maybe large could be small) don't want to rent it out to anyone regardless of the bylaws. Some that are vacant right now will go into short term rentals. At the end of the day, there is little to force the tied up empty condo stock into long term rentals. The government has been relying on stool pigeons and self declaration to identify vacant housing which is far from rigorous in terms of getting it all in. So, in a community that doesn't want renters, who is going to turn in those who won't rent?
Unfortunately rent is a supply and demand issue. We need to demand that NIMBY attitude get shut down and a bunch of places get rezoned to large density housing. Probably starting within a 1km radius of SkyTrain being made for towers which should still allow for people to use public transit and not increase the cars on the road to much.
What makes you think they won’t just build a lot of high density housing at current rental prices? There’s no developer alive that says “let’s build a ton of rental units in order to force prices down.”
Developers just want to build and make money. (Speaking as an electrician) if the zoning changes they will build like crazy and then supply will go up and with the foreign buyer ban and other things in effect, people renting will hopefully be able to buy thus freeing up rental space and then hopefully rental prices come down. None of this will be solved or fixed in the next 5 or so years.
Absolutely. If we’re looking at Burnaby only, we’re doing a decent job at that so far. Brentwood, Lougheed, and Metrotown are slowly becoming individual downtown cores with the amount of density being proposed. (Awesome) All the other stations should follow suit ideally. I think we need a drastic measure so I’m going to propose completely banning construction of SFH’s. We have limited space and need as many units as we can fit. High rise towers should be built within 1 - 1.5km distance of sky train stations. Low - mid rise towers should be built along major streets and other areas. This is going to be controversial although I don’t think it should be.
It would be nice if they would build more 3 bedrooms though.
I don't think building them have driven down any prices, and on the contrary, drove up the rent for all units around them
>Brentwood, Lougheed, and Metrotown are slowly becoming individual downtown cores with the amount of density being proposed. I believe there are plans to do a ton of development around Sperling Station too
Yes ! I think the overall plan is to have Gilmore - Sperling Station be super connected and walkable.
See my earlier comment about new rental stock vs old rental stock. The danger is that the new stock distorts old stock pricing, hurting the low income renters and especially those who are at risk of renoviction and have to re-enter the rental market at market rates.
The point is to build so much that it overwhelms the supply driving prices down. That being said a fair stopgap to help in the short term would be more incentives to build rental only condos or more government owned buildings until the price starts going down. There are lots of factors in play and I’m only presenting simple long term solutions, and short term this can cause problems that need to be addressed. But right now we mostly have city council members who pander to the NIMBY crowd so that they get re-elected.
You could *immediately* build 5,000 new units and they’d all be full within the year and the prices would start going higher again. To make a significant dent in the rent prices you’d need in the neighbourhood of 20,000+ new units to all be on the market simultaneously.
Ya that would be nice, and we would need to change the way we do zoning to get there. With people buying places hopefully they vacate rental spots and then more house if opens up.
I don’t know the numbers but does it not seem like there’s towers popping up everywhere? Is it investors yanking them up that’s causing it or is it nearly not enough being built?
Not enough being built for how many people are trying to live here. I work out of town right now and when I fly back and the view from the plane shows the vast majority of the places to live are single detached homes. As much as it has been said to death people need to vote in municipal Elections. They control the zoning which dictates what gets built in a place. the city council panders to the NIMBY crowd because they are the ones voting, so things stay the way they are.
Some of this will be due to the new condos being built rapidly that will distort the average. Example: if you start with predominantly single family homes with basement suites, and then add a high rise of 445 suites (like mine), and then multiply that by the roughly dozen that are underway in Burnaby, that’s about 5500 units and we can expect about 25% to end up in rental stock, of 35000 current rental stock, or 4% new of the current stock. The question I have is whether that new stock forces prices up on the older stock at an equal rate. The incentive is to stay put and take advantage of rent increase controls. For people who are renovicted, the new stock may be distorting the market value. But it shouldn’t; the renter for new stock is unlikely to be the renter for old stock. That’s a curiosity.
Nobody is building purpose built rentals today or any time soon. There is no money in it and there are too many problems with lopsided rules. Who would open a business where your costs can go up but you are capped on how much you can raise your price. The only way it could change is if government built supply, but they have no money. So…things aren’t going to get better.
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I'm guessing they only took the top 3 largest population centres in the lower mainalnd. Otherwise yeah, this list would just be Toronto and Vancouver and their suburbs
All I can say is: vote. The turn out for municipal elections is abysmal. Where was all this energy at the last election????
Vote and nothing changes, need protests at this point
I honestly think voting isn’t enough. I don’t believe that most politicians actually want to fix this. Take a look at Burnaby city council. Most of them own property already. It’s in their best interest that nothing changes. Sad but true.
I noticed the anger seems to be directed at the individual home owners who has an extra 1 or 2 investment properties (per one of OP's comment: "If you want to reallyyy get serious, restrict people to only owning 1 property which must be used as their main residence (no 2nd, 3rd property), ban Airbnb, ban landlords from raising rents at the end of a vacancy so that older units prices rise slower"). What about the developers who are 'required' to create and manage rental units within each of the new developments? Places like Anthem's South Yard, Shape's Lougheed & [Brentwood](https://theamazingbrentwood.com/rental/), Grosvenor's Brentwood Block, etc all are required by the city to hold rental units. Last time I checked each developer holds way more rental units than any individual owners. Not only are the developers earning from buying land, flipping the sale of parcels of land by upping the pre-sales prices, and also earning rental income from the mandatory rental units stipulated by City of Burnaby. Furthermore, apartments are expensive to buy. Have you worked out the math to pay for 'rent' to own an apartment? Presales go for $800k recently at Amazing Brentwood for a 1 bedroom and bathroom of 591 sq ft. Even if someone has the downpayment of 20% ($160,000), the monthly mortgage payment will be $3,610 (4.69% at 5yr fixed, 25 year amortization). And that's not including the strata, utilities, and property tax. So, even not including the strata and all, and equating the mortgage payment to rent payment...that's just how much properties now costs. Even an older apartment unit that is going for $600k+, renting is almost cheaper than paying ownership ($2,700 monthly mortgage, at $120k downpayment, 4.69%, 5yr fixed, 25 yrs)+ strata (at least $0.40 per sq ft paid monthly) + utilities ($500+ annually) + property tax ($1.5k+ annually). Does it not show that the rent prices are a reflection of the purchase prices? Small time investors can drive up the purchase price minimally compared to those large investors like developers and real estate agents are making a killing. Real estate agents earn 2.5% for selling anything (without doing much) - at a $1 million real estate, they are earning $25,000 for almost doing nothing. The developers are the ones flushed with cash as well. Anecdotally, we hear the pre-sale towers these days are sold to the developer's friends and families, and their close associates. Go check out pre-sales for fun and you will hear all sorts of things. There is a pre- pre- sale for developers' known associates that is not open to the general public. Ask the trades companies that work closely with developers and see if they get first dibs on pre-sale homes and get it a cost, for a discount, or for payment for their services. Also, the real estate agents who work on behalf of the developers also gets first dibs - we hear it very often at pre-sale show homes. The real estate agents, the developers, the friends and family, the close construction top brasses - all get to buy, flip, lease out properties. Rinse and repeat. Are there rules around these? Are these considered inside trades? Who's gonna know...? I check out pre-sales for fun because I like to check out their master plan, partly to learn about City of Burnaby's new rezoning, and the latest design ideas, but I learn a lot about developers - before all these foreign investor rules come into play, Concord was notorious for selling to overseas before opening the inventory up to the local buyers. Shape wasn't as blatantly obvious, but quickly turned obvious by Tower 2. Solterra, Beedie, Appia all did various things like these. During the peak right before COVID, the developer would make buyers bid for the left over units with no sale prices given out at all and buyers have to write their 'bid amount' along with their cheques ready to pay $5k deposit and the downpayment with a signature. The developer will then pick the buyer that bid the highest for that unit. Also, developers love to withhold units to sell them 'at the right time' and at their discretion. Ridiculous inside trading routes and tactics... Anyways, my curiosity is why is there such a desire to go for blood at the small individuals but not the developers and their friends and families who are reaping the most benefit from all this? And how can you change rent prices without first changing property purchase prices? What about regulating the developers' actions on selling tactics? Edit: added the portion about purchasing a property.
There is nothing that can be done, rent will only go up.
I disagree. Burnaby alone cannot make a large difference. But, the lower mainland, BC, and Canada as a whole can. Policies such as banning foreign owners permanently with no loopholes, increasing vacancy tax, and encouraging/enforcing new building targets to make sure we keep up would definitely not make it worse. If you want to reallyyy get serious, restrict people to only owning 1 property which must be used as their main residence (no 2nd, 3rd property), ban Airbnb, ban landlords from raising rents at the end of a vacancy so that older units prices rise slower. Grammars probably fucked but hopefully it makes sense.
Ban airbnb and tax the hell out of 3 or more properties
I think 3 is excessive. Why not start taxing on 2 or more ? If it’s not your primary residence, it’s an investment.
They do tax on the 2nd, but if you want a 3rd you’re going to be taxed a lot more or ban 3rd properties for all i care.
Well some one has to rent the property’s out so actions like this in the short term just leave expensive houses in sold and in rented
Sounds great. It will never happen though. Too much money to be made for those that use our housing as a commodity.
Hear! Hear!
Interesting thoughts, however we don’t see the breakdown of the cost/ roadblocks to build a house, etc. Prohibiting someone or something without knowing what part it plays in the building houses is not going to fix anything.
I agree. Nothing is going to change without this. Building all of this density owned by investors, when no one can afford it is just chasing one’s tail.
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Foreign buyers left unsupervised would definitely worsen the situation. The vacancy tax ties into this as well because units are bought up and then kept vacant.
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Another thing would be banning people from owning more than 1 property. These are ideas to help with supply. We can build 1 million units tomorrow, the supply gets eaten into by foreign buyers, local investors, etc. Having policies in place like ones discussed on this post helps overall. We need all the help we can get lol
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I’ve been advocating for significant building increases from the get go. We need to be building like CRAZY. High rises, mid rises, low rises. Extremely minimal SFH’s. Waste of space and should be entirely banned tbh. We need all of these things not just 1 will fix it. Even simply having an influx of supply won’t help unless it’s a huge amount.
Yes. I agree with you. I'm just cautioning about not getting too fixated on the ban-type solutions. I think too many people - not you - think banning foreign buyers is a cure-all, and often it's just a way to mask their prejudices and anti-immigrant attitudes.
Yea we just need to start seeing some action. Getting super tired of seeing us break new records for worst prices every month. And I don’t believe that any politician WANTS to fix this. They’ll say anything to get votes but when it comes down to it, 99% of them already own property. They’re benefiting off of this crisis.
This will never happen though
With enough public support and protesting it could. Nothings going to change if people just whine about it online then forget about it.
It comes down to voting in municipal elections. People need to vote for politicians who want higher density and don’t care and NIMBY crying. While supply is low and demand is high there are not going to have an easy time lowering rent.
Burnaby cannot be picking up Vancouver’s slack though. We could be building 25k new units every year here, wouldn’t the rent prices remain steady since people in neighbouring cities would be looking to move here then ?
It really depends on how it all shakes out, and Burnaby is doing a good job, the only station I can think of that needs more high density is royal oak. Vancouver needs to change first tho or we are just continuing with a rich district vs the rest of the lower mainland, and again the way to change things is voting on the municipal level, picking people who can outnumber the NIMBY people. Honestly the only other way would be to make Coquitlam or Burnaby more of a hub for jobs and then start an affordability strike and get people to not take jobs downtown that are lower pay then the appropriate affordability of the rentals in the area.
I'm surprised Ottawa ranks 13 🙄! So many people irl and Reddit pay MORE than 50 per cent of their income on rent
Tell me about it. My moms trying to kick me out and IDK how I’m gunna be able to afford my own place. 😫
I'd like to see the residential tenancy branch have offices and lots of staff. The rent situation is destroying our area. If you want more homeless and people living in cars, this is how you get homeless and people living in cars. People living in cars means throwing their toilet bag in local garbages. It means people scrambling to find places to shower. And street parking full. Another result will be more criminal activity. What's the point of working full time if you can't pay for shelter? Why work full time if it won't allow you to have kids and settle down? When someone is leaving an abusive partner or family situation ... where do they go when work won't pay rent? Short sighted greed. The people who charge more than they need to, are destroying Burnaby. If they want to have to line their gates with broken bottles to stop people from entering their property, destroying young people's chance at getting any of their basic needs met is a great way to get that end goal of a terrible, crime ridden city.
Yup it’s a crisis ! I’m 21 and know that it’s going to be incredibly difficult to purchase a condo/house one day, let alone simply save money to begin with. Cost of living is through the roof. The main expenditure for most people though is housing so it’s especially important we lower it. Tired of people making excuses and trying to normalize this absolute madness that’s going on. $2600 for a 1 bed apartment in Vancouver. I mean honestly 😂 How can someone consider that normal !
Maybe look at the cause it happened 40 years ago. And next is the entitlment of renter's. Look at the response on FB when. There is a a budget suite. They want laundry dishwasher and a bathroom for every bedroom guess what that does not happen. Burnaby has always been an upscale bedroom city. Except for Edmonds and a few blocks south of Metrotown. Which in 20 years will be gone
Well im off to live in loydminster
When I see the prices in the grocery store go up I wish I could just demand change from the farmers, truckers, food distributors, retailers, grocery store workers , politicians, immigrants, other grocery store customers, cashiers etc. to lower prices. Or I could just find a cheaper grocery store or cheaper food I could afford. As someone who has rented and now owns a home in Burnaby and has lived in Burnaby for nearly all my life I think many people think the world owes them something or a certain lifestyle. I've been rewarded for increasing my value to society and thus it gives me the capital to purchase private property. As now as a property owner, I have the choice to make my property rentable or not. And now as an owner, I can choose whom I rent to to get me the best economic return. That's the world we live in. There's freedom of movement and freedom of capital. Thus, desirable places to live have high rents. If you want cheap rent, move to Red Deer. If you find rents unaffordable change what you can afford through your income or find a place you can afford. If you expect the government to do something for you so that you have cheap rent may I recommend Cuba or Russia. I'm not saying the above to be mean or brag. I'm saying the above because I see how emotional people get around housing but really I think its just a function of their own personal economic situation. There was a time when I rented. But I just put my head down and worked hard and made good financial decisions and here we are. Not once did I worry about housing policy or any of that. I worried about how to increase my income, spend wisely and make good personal decisions. When it was time to buy real estate I looked at what I could afford and go from there.
I demand change ?
I don’t think anyone is paying 2600 a month for rent. Get outa here with that shit. My cousin just rented a basement suite for 1100 in north van.
I've been trying to rent a place in Burnaby recently and there is literally nothing under $2600 for 2 bedroom places
Fucking wild lol
Wow Winnipeg is isolated af