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Comment by mynameisvlad | Hacker News Reader

I wouldn’t use GVRD/Metro Vancouver as an estimate; things get quite a bit cheaper in the other cities.

This development is being built on the waterfront across False Creek from downtown; it is prime real estate. Given that + being brand new, units will sell far above the Vancouver average. As a guess, studio units in this complex will start at 750k, 1 beds at 1m and 2beds at 1.5m. Maybe higher.

Most people on HN always repeat the sentiment that if you build more housing, prices will fall. I think you're right, these will sell for far above average. We don't have a housing shortage problem, we have a housing turned into a financialized asset problem.

It’s an asset due to its scarcity. If you remove the scarcity, it won’t be an asset. Financial asset managers buy real estate because they trust that silly people who think the demand for real estate is infinite will block new development allowing them to make money.

the thing is that these being available frees up other units, and you need to build enough for this to actually result in falling house prices. Canada and the US are generationally behind on building housing and so this effect will take many projects like this to show up.

Rich people do not pack up and leave in the absence of luxury housing. They settle for the next best unit, and then the people who would've booked that unit settle for their next best unit, and the shit continues rolling downhill. You have people spending thousands of dollars a month to live in Manhattan in buildings originally built as tenements.

The newly developed housing isn’t meant to be the one that is cheap. What gets cheaper is the old housing people left behind to get into the new housing.

And if a city cannot build as fast as people flowing into the city, then there will never be “housing left behind”.

Sure, my point was that City of Vancouver averages are going to be higher than GVRD and that average condo cost doesn’t mean a lot when it includes condos from places like Port Moody, Port Coquitlam, Langley and even Surrey.

But isn't this development entirely within Metro Vancouver, and apparently in an expensive part of it too?

Sorry, I think I was unclear in that original comment once I read the replies and read it back.

GVRD/Metro Vancouver encompasses Vancouver and surrounding cities, as far east as Langley and Port Moody. The prices decrease quite a bit as you get further away from Downtown Vancouver and the city in general.

“Other cities” in my original comment meant these outlying ones, not ones outside of the GVRD. The prices in False Creek are going to be much higher than the GVRD average.

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