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Comment by paulsutter | Hacker News Reader

Vancouver, anyone?

I live in Seattle and I'm about ready to drive two hours north for my next startup. To hire the Russian programmers I'm already working with, or the folks on Kaggle I'd love to hire. The US has a completely broken scheme for visas.

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That's just trading one problem for another. Vancouver has a very serious affordability problem. Not only are you going to be paying a lot more for office and living space, you're going to have far fewer opportunities for funding.

I wonder if there is an arbitrage opportunity: invest in real estate and office space north of Seattle and south of Vancouver, just over the border.

Those who can go back and forth and take meetings on both sides. People are within commuting distance of these large metro areas.

Real estate on the Washington side of the border is insanely cheaper. As soon as you cross the border, prices skyrocket and just keep going up until you hit downtown Vancouver.

Seriously, our affordability problem is pretty much at crisis levels. People who argue that we should increase density aren't wrong, but we're already building towers as fast as we can. And the majority of those suffer from substandard, shoddy construction. We call it 'leaky condo syndrome'. And even those are selling for $750k+ for under 500sqft.

Vancouver is a wonderful city so I can really understand why you want to keep everyone from finding out :)

But go see San Francisco if you want to understand an affordability crisis. Vancouver is reasonable in comparison.

Yes, the cost of living in San Francisco is about twice that of Vancouver. But salaries in Vancouver less than half that of San Francisco, so affordability is worse overall.

Don't get me wrong, I'd LOVE a stronger tech sector here (especially as a developer). We desperately need an industry other than real estate and film. But I just don't see how that can happen without a fundamental shift that just isn't happening anytime soon.

Indeed; look how well that's worked for Manhattan. /s

Realistically, density doesn't seem to ever drive down housing prices in the long term. All it does is increase the value of land tremendously, and thus push local home ownership out of reach of everyone but the ultra-wealthy.

I think that cause and effect might be backwards - people only ever lay out the large upfront expense to build density when the land becomes valuable enough. And that only happens when people are clamoring to live in the same area.

If you then refuse to build up, it makes the affordability much, much worse.

> If you then refuse to build up, it makes the affordability much, much worse.

How? If you've balanced jobs/wages against housing supply via standard planning practices, then you should be able to tweak demand.

If demand is still high, density just drives prices higher, and shifts the entire housing economy to a rent-seeking one.

Furthermore, the real-estate market is global, but the housing market is local. My parents own homes in another state that they've never even seen, and merely rent out via a property management company.

As land prices get driven up through density, how do people participating in the local housing market compete with those in the real estate market?

> just keep going up until you hit downtown Vancouver

And it doesn't stop there. West Van is one of the most expensive neighborhoods in Canada.

It's a 3 hour drive from Seattle-Vancouver so even if you're halfway that's a 1.5 hour commute.

Still cheaper than SF

Here's an analysis of residential rental prices: http://quantitativerhetoric.com/monthly-rental-report-may-20...

Yes but at least the local economy in SF can support absurd housing prices. Unless you plan on making or paying much higher than average salaries in Vancouver it's going to be very different attracting talent there.

Well if you can't get a US visa your wage there is zero, so I'm not seeing your point

Is Vancouver more expensive than Seattle?

Yep.

This video tour takes you through a $980k USD condo in downtown Vancouver:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0j3SChqp51Y

Please note that the shoddy construction is not an outlier, it's normal in Vancouver.

Whereas this much nicer condo in downtown Seattle a 5 minute walk from Pike Place Market is a relative bargain at $810k USD:

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1519-3rd-Ave-APT-204-Seat...

Last time I checked, Canada is still much stricter when it comes to work visas than the US, though I suppose much less of their capacity is getting eaten up by Infosys-like operations.

It depends on the work category, salary level, and the province. Canada is making a real effort to lead in AI and that helps.

I keep hearing the opposite.

When was the last time you checked (no sarcasm), and how did you check?

Around the US election, by asking a Canadian friend (I'm technically a citizen, but by birth and have only been there a handful of times). He said work visas were harder to get but that other visas were much easier, and that obtaining permanent residency was almost a shoo-in once you had a visa for a few years.

You're hearing the opposite from people who are trying hard to be negative about the Trump presidency, instead of thinking for themselves.

We typically require people to prove that the job they're going to do can not be feasibly offered to a citizen. Typically exemptions can apply if you're applying for a work visa for a transfer within a multinational company, and for a small number of other more niche roles. In order to be exempt as a professional you need to be a citizen of Mexico or the U.S. and provably belong to a profession which is specifically exempted (there are a bit over 60) according to a list.

I know MIT grad lisp hacker types who couldn't pass the entrance points requirements. The trick is you have to learn French. No matter what - Learn French.

don't they still use the point system? that always seemed so refreshing compared the the huge mass of subjective rules that is the US immigration system.

french gets you lots of points, but as i recall even modest savings and a college degree got you most of the way there.

I've recently started investigating the options for moving from the US to Canada as a current H1B holder, and what you are claiming couldn't be further from my experience at all.

The Canadian visa system for skilled workers is so much simpler than the USA I almost couldn't believe it. No quotas, entirely points based, your score is easy to calculate and the minimum number of points needed published at regular intervals, much more personal control and far fewer vexing employer sponsorship issues as is so frequently the case with US green cards. It's almost meritocratic...

The French requirement for permanent residency visas generally only applies in certain provinces as well, especially the eastern ones like Quebec. Not speaking French isn't an issue for visas to work in most major cities in Canada, including Vancouver, assuming you speak English, aren't ancient (age is a factor in scoring), have a reasonable degree and a small amount of savings.

Victoria is nice and much cheaper.

If you're actually building a business (rather than a get-rich-quick startup) people will welcome you with open arms. You'll find good QOL and great livability here. Though we are just starting to get traffic problems.

why bring them programmers here, why not move yourself to russia and do your startup there...

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