Long time reader of your blog. I wanted to reply to two issues – affordability for young professionals in the urban core & low income individuals.

For me, housing affordability means that the average middle income earner who works hard is able to live where they want to live – and for low income resident’s, there are enough RGI’s on the market for them as well.

I recently made the shift from Toronto to Vancouver. Real Estate prices here are through the roof. For the average young professional – you have poor employment prospects in the city, and on top of that, condominium prices and rental rates are through the roof. Most of my friends in Toronto were able to purchase or rent condo’s in Toronto’s core – In metro Van most are forced to live in the suburbs.

I’ve been helping a friend find a place in Van’s urban core, but there just doesn’t seem to be that many rental units on the market. There is a clear lack of supply. It seems to me that Nimbyism and protection of the “precious” views is stopping council from approving greater heights/density in the core. Most of the condo’s I’ve seen in Van are clearly lacking in amenities and common areas that young people love and i think part of the reason is developer’s can’t justify building these things when height limit’s are so low here.

I feel it’s ironic that BC claims on it’s license plates “Best place on Earth,” and Van claims greenest city in the world. If it truly is, then let developer’s build tall in the core, so that we can increase the housing stock and as you have aptly suggested. As is, It’s more like best place on Earth if your net worth is greater than $1.5 million. It’s the greenest city if you live in the core, if your living in Surrey, your still glued to the car.

Also, I feel that the province and municipalities can do much more in increasing the availability of social housing unit’s or RGI’s. Daniels Corp and TCHC are doing amazing things in Regent Park, and more of those large scale projects can be adopted here.

The City of Surrey owns large tracts of land in Whalley, i would love to see an attempt at urban regeneration with a social housing project on the scale of Regent Park in Surrey. I believe TCHC has the right formula with Regent Park and the model of development can be successfully adapted in Metro Van.

I agree that not all condos for sale in the lower price ranges are in locations that people want–that’s why they are priced lower (supply and demand dynamics around land). Some listings in those prices ranges are actually quite nice, but their small and not near transit and a ways out into suburbia.

My point is more about challenging what is meant when people say a a city or region is unaffordable.

Also, if demand growth is rapidly outpacing supply growth in certain locations, the question then comes as to whether a city can or should do anything to increase supply (re-zoning sights, allowing for extra density, etc.). Thus collecting data or analyzing it like this helps identify this very situation.

The exception is when they break out newer product in certain districts. Then my sense is that it’s fairly accurate (albeit at the point of time when they do their survey, usually around September each year).

It’s different from sale prices of owned homes because people pay rent every month but the rate is set when they lease the place; the sample size for data is therefore very large (CMHC can call a property manager and ask what people are paying in the building). By contrast since people only buy a home a few times in a lifetime (if that), the sample size of data on sale prices is much smaller.

I’d be curious what others think about using average rental rates though.