Absurd Vancouver Property Realtor Challenge: how much house can $250k get you outside of Metro Vancouver?
Earlier this week, I brought you my latest post about Absurd Vancouver Property. In it, I discussed the average income for Vancouver families and what is affordable to them in terms of real estate. I challenged my friend, and Vancouver realtor, Larry Rahn*, to find properties that are within the price range of a family with Metro Vancouver’s median family income of $67, 550 (with a minimum 5% down payment). My specifications were that the homes (a) needed to be suitable for a family of 3-4 (b) needed to be a freehold – i.e. a house on land (c) must be close to rapid transit accessing downtown Vancouver and (d) must be under $350K
“ Having a young family of my own, I completely understand the challenges that face people today when trying to make the move towards home ownership. The way I approach this with my clients is to have a game plan early on, define what the goals are, then work towards them. I find this always works best. The following homes fit the specifications set out by Melissa, however, with a larger down payment, purchasing a home with a mortgage helper or a willingness to consider strata vs. free title, more possibilities would be available.”
Here are the options Larry found, fitting my specifications, at 3 price points:
Option 1 – house in Mission:
Price: $244,900 (has been on the market 57 days)
Description: 3 bedroom rancher on a large 50 by 122 lot. 5 blocks from the West Coast Express station. Updates include hardwood floors and crown moldings plus a 3 yr old roof. Prefect starter home for small family especially if the husband enjoys week-end projects to update this home slowly.
Option 2 – house in Surrey
Price: $229,900
Description: This is the lowest priced home in Surrey, just off King George blvd and 88th. You can take one bus to the King George skytrain station in under 10 min. 3 bedrooms, 2 bath, and over 1500 square feet of living space.
Option 3 – House in Squamish
Price: $350,000
Description: A little more budget can get you into this small starter home in downtown Squamish with recent upgrades including windows, furnace, roof, and appliances. On a 50 by 122 lot, it has 2 bedrooms and one bathroom over 850 square feet. Walking distance to shopping and transit. Currently, however, there is no rapid transit system between Squamish and downtown Vancouver. It is 45 minutes by car to Whistler and about an hour to Vancouver.
Larry notes that, “obviously, all of these homes will need some updating and minor repairs given their age and present condition, however, for the most part, they can be move in ready. Note, that there are currently no houses available for under $350,000 in New west, Burnaby, Vancouver east, west, west van, north van.”
However, there are a few nice apartments within this price range (i.e. rather than a house). They include:
MLS®: V943663 (New Westminster)
MLS®: V926532 (Coquitlam)
MLS®: V938153 (Port Moody)
Definitely a challenge to find a house at this price point even well outside Metro Vancouver. It is becoming clear that home-ownership is becoming less of an option for a large contingent of Vancouverites. Perhaps we truly are moving towards becoming a city like New York or London, where most people who own their homes live in suburbs well outside the downtown core, and those who live within city limits either own or rent small apartments. I am interested to hear your thoughts. If you know of more/better homes that are currently on the market, or any great affordable communities outside Vancouver Metro, I’m sure our readers would be interested in hearing about those, also! Thanks to Larry Rahn, for taking on this challenge. If you are looking for a knowledgeable, reliable and patient realtor – give him a call!
*LARRY RAHN – VANCOUVER’S DOWNTOWN REALTOR®
PHONE: (604) 760-6040 TOLL FREE: 1-888-960-6040
EMAIL: larry@larryrahn.ca FAX: (604) 608-9661
SUTTON GROUP – WEST COAST REALTY
AN INDEPENDENT BROKER
#301 – 1508 West Broadway
Vancouver, BC V6J 1W8
Don’t forget about the Sunshine Coast for potential affordable real estate. Many family-sized homes in Gibsons (close to the ferry) for under $300,000. That’s how I ended up being able to buy in Vancouver – several years of commuting from a more affordable community. The commute is no worse than that from Mission on the West Coast Express (about an hour and a half each way) and you can do it entirely via public transit which cuts the cost down. There are hundreds of people who do this commute every day – which I always thought was much better than sitting on the highway in a car from Abbotsford when I did it. When you take the ferry every day, you start to realize that it actually is pretty reliable and mostly on time. I would recommend this to anyone considering a commute anyway, and who is looking to get into family home-ownership in the lower mainland.
Great tip, Megan. I love the Sunshine Coast!
Only drawback – it does require getting up stupidly early in the morning. But huge lot sizes!
Is the sunshine coast close to rapid transit? I thought one of the criteria for the property search was that it must be close to rapid transit… I think the point of the search is to show that a regular family with a regular income is completely priced out of the vancouver house market… If the average family income is in the 60K region, and they were to try to buy a house, they would have to go to Mission, Squamish or Surrey. It makes me sick.
As to the question – are we permanently in an unaffordable market? My thoughts are yes unless we can put significant upward pressure on wages which is unlikely in this neo-con climate. Or unless a giant earthquake comes and exposes the real fault-line running under Vancouver which actually makes it a fairly undesirable place fo investment. But if this free trade with China deal goes ahead I wouldn’t expect real estate prices to come down anytime soon. Who knows though? I sure wish something would happen to make this city affordable for people again.
The world is in a housing bubble. It will soon burst, and people that bought in the last 15 years will be very upset. Hold on to your cash and wait, we will see late 1990′s prices within the next decade. Renting = investing.
I grew up in Vancouver and attended the original Mount Pleasant Elementary on Kingsway and Broadway and high schooled at Van Tech. I will always be a Vancouverite. Having said that, if you want another great place to raise your kids and you don’t mind a slightly (tongue-in-cheek) longer commute, there are lots of homes under $350,000 in my neck-of-the-woods. I am a White Rock Realtor who moved to Kamloops 5 years ago and I make the commute to Greater Vancouver quite often. From my house to the foot of Lonsdale is just less than 3 hours driving provided I leave before or after Vancouver rush-hour. (I seldom fly as it takes longer than driving.)
Your family and friends will love visiting you!
Thanks for the tip, Clive! Kamloops is another beautiful spot for sure!
OMG seriously people? Do we really have to move to KAMLOOPS to buy a house??(I agree Kamloops is lovely, don’t get me wrong). I grew up in Vancouver too, and I (luckily) got into the housing market. People say to me, “aren’t you happy that your house is now worth so much?”, the answer is NO! I am NOT happy about it! NONE of my friends (BTW successful and gainfully employed friends) can afford to live in the neighbourhoods we grew up in now. I’m sorry, but I would much prefer to have neighbours that actually live in their houses and contribute to the community than live in a ghost-town-neighbourhood where people never move in, and treat houses like a stock/commodity. When the average family income is 60k, house prices should not average in the millions of dollars. Come on people, can we not see the disconnect? This is wrong. Just plain wrong.
…just sayin…
As Larry alluded, if you’re willing start in a condo or townhouse (or buy a home with a mortgage helper), then your options widen significantly. I think it’s fair to say many people’s “first home” in the GVRD is usually not as detached home at all, but a condo or townhouse. One’s first home need not be a detached (especially if you have no kids or only one kid) and perhaps unrealistic for this area. Most people get into the market the way they can afford and eventually upgrade to a detached later.
For example, the benchmark price of townhouse in the Fraser Valley Real Estate Broad (FVREB) area was $315,000 in March 2012. FVREB’s area covers Surrey, White Rock, Langley, North Delta, Mission and Abbotsford. (http://www.fvreb.bc.ca/blog/index.php/2012/04/03/fraser-valley-house-hunters-looking-for-good-buys-keeping-prices-resilient). For condos, this is cheaper, of course.
For stats on suburbs like Maple Ridge/Pitt Meadows, Tri-Cities etc. (as well as Sunshine Coast), these are available from the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver (www.rebgv.org).
I think if you want to own in the Lower Mainland, then worse-case scenario, you’re first “home” is not a detached. While not many people’s ideal, it is a starting place.
Gah, sorry for the typos. Feel free to fix!
Thanks for pointing out that in big cities (dare I say “world class”?) and the major European cities, apartment living is the norm if you want to be anywhere central. As Pete Campbell said on the latest episode of Mad Men: “I’ve never lived on the ground floor before”.
An endless sprawl of SFHs is neither efficient nor sustainable, and the fact that Vancouver’s suburban-style zoning/sprawl starts just outside the downtown bridges is an anachronism.
In comparison, here’s what density looks like (Barcelona): http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/7629/bcnm.jpg
I love Barcelona…that photo really puts things into perspective. However, I would say that cities like NY, London and others took hundreds and hundreds of years to density like that. In Vancouver, I feel like the unaffordability is happening so rapidly. Interested to hear other people’s thoughts on this…
The area in that photo must have been planned well over a hundred years ago, optimized for the modes of transportation of that time. Once car ownership started to spread, the expectations of owning your own house must have spread as well, killing any desire to plan for density.
Yes, it is true, major cities like NY, Paris, London have lots of apartment dwellers. One of the issues I see in Vancouver is the lack of family sized condominiums and townhouses. Like the owner of this blog, I live in the Riley Park neighborhood and have done so for 18 years. This city, their planners and the developers seem to think everybody wants to live in a 1 or 2 bedroom apartment. That maybe fine for a young couple but in a few years, add a couple of kids and their hockey bags and it is way too small. That is one of the reasons people move to the suburbs. Take a look at the proposed development at Main Street and King Ed – once again, 1 and 2 bedrooms condos. The Majestic on Main at 30th is the same, 1 and 2 bedroom condos with a flex space the size of a small bathroom or closet. Are these built to live in or just for land speculation? For fun, I did a search of NYC and I was surprised at the number of 3 or bedroom condos and brownstones that exist. Vancouver needs to densify but the planners need to think about who is going to live in the units.
Cate, that is a great point. Considering how many young families are moving into our neighbourhood, one would think that wise developers would want to capitalize on that by building to accommodate families instead of singles or couples.
Also remember that NYC, Paris and London also have home-ownership rates that are a fraction what we have in big Canadian cities (including Vancouver).