Vancouver strata ordered to stop collecting personal information from overnight guests
Stratas are perhaps the biggest scam ever created by the real estate industry
Wed, 2020-01-15 20:24
#1
Stratas are perhaps the biggest scam ever created by the real estate industry
Wed, 2020-01-22 19:05
#2
Pitiful!
Condo owner liable for damage to elevator forced open to free trapped passengers
Thu, 2020-02-06 21:08
#3
Cry me a river - rich people wnat the BC government to bail them out, again and again and again.
Warning of collapse in B.C. condo market
https://bc.ctvnews.ca/warning-of-collapse-in-b-c-condo-market-1.4800633
Fri, 2020-02-07 15:08
#4
Cry me a river - rich people wnat the BC government to bail them out, again and again and again.
Warning of collapse in B.C. condo market
https://bc.ctvnews.ca/warning-of-collapse-in-b-c-condo-market-1.4800633
A lot of condos are entry to the maket -- the cheapest thing you can finance (they cost more in the end). Some are rich waterfront condo owners but many are people trying to live somewhere. Rents are crap as well so I would not take this across the board attitude.
Fri, 2020-02-07 16:05
#5
This article highlights why we need to take the blood sucking finance companies out of the equation. We are in a period where insurance claims are going to continue to rise steeply because of climate chaos and insurance companies are just leeches on the system. We need regulatory mechanisms that would allow a condo association umbrella group the ability to self ensure through its own, not for profit, insurance system.
Fri, 2020-02-07 16:56
#6
Mostly we need to back to row housing where each person owns their own unit. Stratas make the strata management companies weathy at the expense of the homeowners. Stratas are legal scams, but scams nevertheless!
We are having some bold and progressive interventions by the current BC NDP Government in no-fault insurance for ICBC, and the construction industry with CBAs etc., so why the reticence in housing, eh!
Fri, 2020-02-07 20:04
#7
The reason strata corps where invented was so that if you paid good money for a townhouse its value could not be destroyed by having someone buy the place next door and turn it into a pig sty. Real estate management companies make big money because people in strata corps want someone else to do the work involved in maintaining a property over its lifespan. Since I am pushing 70 I don't have the same ability to do house repairs as I did 20 years and many people are not able to for other reasons not age related. Owning your own unit is fine but it also means owning all the expenses and headaches of hiring and overseeing trades people to do routine jobs that need doing on all units.
Fri, 2020-02-07 21:30
#8
BC needs to boost supply of public & non-profit assisted living
https://outlook.office.com/mail/deeplink?version=2020020301.13&popoutv2=1
Sun, 2020-02-09 16:12
#9
Get out while you can!
Condo Smarts: Building’s lack of insurance puts buyer in limbo
Mon, 2020-02-10 20:59
#10
Just another real estate scam
Vancouver is 'disappointed' by developer's actions but has no legal grounds to step in
Fri, 2020-02-14 11:39
#11
Inside the ‘Growth Machine’ that Made Vancouver World Class Unaffordable
Geographer David Ley diagrams how government and real estate meshed gears.
Activity like this led international agencies, such as Berlin’s Transparency International, to declare Canadian financial institutions “very weak,” as well as “highly vulnerable” to money laundering.
And just last year, it was revealed that there were no dedicated RCMP officers in B.C. investigating money laundering.
Meanwhile, the growth choir downplayed concerns.
Despite public outcry about a broken housing market, and various experts proposing many solutions, the growth machine dismissed the problem of unaffordability, Ley found.
At the suggestion of cooling the market, finance minister de Jong flatly said, “We’re not interested.”
Ley is currently researching a book on housing in the gateway cities of Hong Kong, Singapore, Sydney, Vancouver and London. Until the BC NDP came to power, there was less done in Vancouver than any of those cities to cool its hot market, he said.
“We tend to think of Singapore and Hong Kong as so friendly and so wide open to the market,” said Ley. “But they had done far, far more than Vancouver had. In hindsight, when you look comparatively, it’s extraordinary that nothing was being done. Of course, it was justified in part through a strong denial movement that there was a problem.”
In the 1990s, the province stopped collecting information on the citizenship of property purchasers, aiding the dismissal of foreign activity heating up Vancouver housing.
The growth machine also had rationales to help it along, such as former Vancouver mayor Sam Sullivan’s EcoDensity initiative, transit-oriented development or Yes In My Backyard, which all call for more urban density.
These growth strategies offer many “undoubtedly attractive” qualities such as walkability and less car use, said Ley, but often fail to address affordability.
“There doesn’t seem to be recognition of this contradiction: using green slogans to produce landscapes that are less affordable,” he said. “They are rationales for development, and of course developers are keen to support them.”
So, what finally slowed the growth machine?
Near the end of the BC Liberals’ tenure, scathing industry reports, journalistic investigations and the worsening housing crisis threw wrenches into the growth machine.
Watchdogs reacted. The CRA, in 2016, initiated a broad investigation into the filings of high-end buyers. That same year, the Real Estate Council of B.C. was reconstituted as a public entity, with disciplinary fines for individual brokers raised from maximum of $10,000 per infringement to $250,000.
Ley says he attended a number of round tables on the issue. At one, an experienced realtor declared that “There are not one or two bad apples among real estate agents in the Vancouver area, but hundreds, maybe a thousand.” (“He was not contradicted around the table,” Ley noted.)
Ley writes that while there may have been collusion between government and the property industry, their “common commitment to keep investment capital flowing may also have led to convergence without collusion.”
It was enough to keep the growth machine chugging along, fuelled by licit and illicit capital both local and global. The province, seeking to rejuvenate a declining resource economy in the 1980s, helped create a hot commodity out of Vancouver real estate.
Clark’s Failure on Housing Affordability Big Problem for BC Liberals
Only since the NDP was elected to power in 2017 have cooling measures been introduced.
“It’s good to maintain a historical vision when we’re talking about the present,” Ley advises. “There have been huge development cycles in the past.”
The city’s first boom was in the 1910s, fed by immigrants from various corners of the English-speaking world. Today, with fertility rates dropping and little migration within Canada itself, growth is, and almost certainly will be again, fed by newcomers.
“Immigration is the big story,” said Ley. “Undoubtedly, this is a growth region, and will continue to be.”
Today, the average price of a Metro Vancouver home is just over $1 million. ![[Tyee]](https://thetyee.ca/ui/img/ico_fishie.png)
https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2020/02/13/Gov-Real-Estate-Vancouver-Housing-Unaffordable/
Fri, 2020-02-14 15:13
#12
Just a comment on the thread title: I am not convinced that it is fair just to blame the industry. The govenrment and banks and the CMHC fails to take account fully of the impact of condo fees on affordability. For this reason condos appear more affordable and are easier to finance than a (in the long run) less expensive freehold option. The market is following and adapting to the stupid rules put in place by government and finance. I cannot see how the real estate industry itself is more to blame on this "scam" than government and finance (the banks).