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Comment by curiousjorge | Hacker News Reader

you dont know high cost of living with low salary if you haven't lived in vancouver, bc.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/1/d/18UwaThgGikSXzinn...

You can see based on that the average is around $45~50k CAD (if the salary field is blank assume $50k or less as these are less well known, smaller companies with tighter budgets)

rent for studio or 1 bedroom apartment in downtown area where lot of jobs are located is around $1300/month (nvm, it appears to have gone up in the past 3 years, $1700/month according to another users comment).

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Vancouver is bad, but nowhere close to that bad! (edit: his post was originally just the first line, to clarify.)

I could argue it anecdotally (I live in BC), but here are cold hard numbers instead:

> The median household income across New York City stands at $50,711[1]

> One bedroom apartments in New York rent for $3039 a month on average and two bedroom apartment rents average $3805.[2]

Compare:

> Vancouver Median household income of $73,390 [3] (~$55,877 USD)

> Vancouver, Average 1 bedroom rental $1561, 2 bedroom: $1972 [4]

1 http://project.wnyc.org/median-income-nabes/

2 https://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-new-york-rent-tre...

3 http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/f...

4 http://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/odpub/esub/64467/64467_2014_A01.p..., see Figure 7

Portland, OR is getting pretty bad as well. Average cost to own a home in 2015 is $313,000[1]. I can't find a current house hold income figure but I know it's pretty low. Definitely below the national average IIRC.

The thing to note is that many of those houses selling for ~$300k are very small (< 1000sqft). So the average housing cost for a family of 3 is probably much higher.

1. http://www.movingtoportland.net/wp-content/uploads/AverageMe...

$313k? That's a pittance compared to Vancouver where the average home is over $1M. Even in the shitty east side with drug-dealers and prostitutes hanging out on your street you still pay over $1M for a detached home.

Fair enough. Perhaps rental was a better comparison. They are very close, and Portland pays way less than Vancouver (in addition to the US not having healthcare) - I'd say it's more expensive to buy in Vancouver, more expensive to rent in Portland.

1. https://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-vancouver-bc-rent...

2. https://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-portland-or-rent-...

Houses in Vancouver are traded equities. They are more subject to external and speculative investors, rather than just local income and demand.

As a result, the price-to-rent ratio has been unreasonable in a similar way to Amazon's stock price.

its over $2.23M now apparently.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/ho...

Detached homes are really valuable (because you can tear it down). But there are spacious townhouses and condos which are not as expensive.

median salary of a San Francisco household is 75k.

http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/06075.html

rent for studio or 1 bedroom apartment in downtown area where lot of jobs are located is around $1300/month + utility and other costs.

I would kill for that, just moved into a studio in SF for 2300 plus utilities. A studio.

Why would you do that to yourself? If you think the prices are ridiculous, then don't move here. If you think they're worth paying, then you can't really complain, can you?

I'm saying this not to troll (I wouldn't move here today!), but to point out that until people come to their senses and say enough is enough, this insanity won't end.

What is the typical rent and the typical salary (For developers) in Vancouver?

Rent in the downtown core is about $1700 for a 1-bedroom.

Developers can do decently well in Vancouver, especially if you are employed by a foreign company. I am not sure about typical salary for developers, but I'm doing okay.

So, compared to San Francisco, for a good developer, Vancouver is slightly better. However, for everyone else in Vancouver, it's a disaster, since the median income is much lower. This is why Vancouver is actually less affordable than San Francisco, for the general population.

http://globalnews.ca/news/1098143/vancouvers-housing-prices-...

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