I saw a lady almost die this morning.

[Joe in PNG]

It's something I noticed myself in Vancouver at the end of my Alaskan cruse in 2019- junkies, homeless, traffic, and a general dinginess.
We took a city tour from the cruise ship to our airport hotel, and it's the first time I've ever seen people shooting up in public during the day.

I was shocked, and remember I've spent decades in a third world country and work with homeless people when in the USA.

Heck, I'll take the bad, narrow roads and half drunk, half exhausted PNG traffic, or even the aged, nearly blind Yankees of Central Florida over what you have.

[Nephrology]

Drivers here in Denver are mong the worst I've ever seen. Previously had never been in an accident, when I moved here I was rear ended 3x within 3 years, each time while at or almost at a complete stop (no sudden braking). Have also had several red light close calls. Has totally changed my driving style I am a much more conservative and defensive driver than I was before moving here.

[Borderland]

Yeah, I can't honestly fault people for buying whatever they can afford. There's tons and tons of new China multimillionaires trying to get money out of that country and in Canada it's extremely easy to buy real estate, plus we offered money laundering on a massive scale, so naturally that happened. It's perfectly rational self-interested decision-making, which is exactly what I would do. So I don't blame people for coming, and buying, and doing.

But no question about it, the knock-on effects of opening that city to global money markets in a really overt way, killed a bunch of people and ruined uncountable numbers of lives. Traffic is insane as mentioned. Plus the social costs of unavailable housing...homelessness is completely out of control. A thousand people a year fatally overdose there now. If you weren't in the real estate market ten years ago in Vancouver, now it's basically "hope your parents own, and die." Locals are like local Haitians, living in a resort town for rich Americans. You can't really afford anything and the prices aren't connected to local wages at all so there's no brake on anything.

For perspective...

Seattle median household income is about $93,500/year.
Vancouver median household income in USD is about 57,600/year.

Average home price in Seattle is around $800,000.
Average home price in Vancouver is around $1,260,000.

That's what happens when you decouple a necessarily local market - housing - from local income. I left.

I had a British friend years ago that was trying to immigrate to the US. She was living in Vancouver and came to Seattle frequently. She became a Canadian citizen eventually, but was never able to immigrate to the US. Apparently, it was much easier to immigrate to Canada at the time than to immigrate to the US. At least that's what she told me.

I used to see some pretty expensive sports cars racing along I-5 at high rates of speed (100 mph plus) with Canadian plates. Ferraris and Lambos, stuff like that, getting yuge tickets after the SP stops them. Generally, the high rollers where I live are old guys with Corvettes and they don't race those on I-5.

We're only about an hour from the border.

[mmc45414]

For perspective...
Average home price in Seattle is around $800,000.
Average home price in Vancouver is around $1,260,000.

I wondered about that, just from watching HGTV...

[Maple Syrup Actual]

If they showed it on HGTV, it was probably several million...a million dollar house in Vancouver is a teardown wreck on a busy road. The 1.25mm average would have to include apartments, I would think.

There used to be a website based in Vancouver called "crack shack or mansion" and they would show pictures of hoses and you had to decide which was an actual crack house, and which was a $1-2 million dollar listing.

But that was ten years ago, before the prices got REALLY crazy.

[Caballoflaco]

If they showed it on HGTV, it was probably several million...a million dollar house in Vancouver is a teardown wreck on a busy road. The 1.25mm average would have to include apartments, I would think.

There used to be a website based in Vancouver called "crack shack or mansion" and they would show pictures of hoses and you had to decide which was an actual crack house, and which was a $1-2 million dollar listing.

But that was ten years ago, before the prices got REALLY crazy.

Man, that’s cyberpunk dystopia pricing.

[Joe in PNG]

Man, that’s cyberpunk dystopia pricing.

We're pretty much at Cyberpunk Dystopia already.

[mmc45414]

If they showed it on HGTV, it was probably several million...a million dollar house in Vancouver is a teardown wreck on a busy road.

I like watching some of those shows to see what they do with some of the properties, but hardly ever do because of the personalities involved. Since I know going in I am going to hate one of the spouses, typically the one who insists they are not going to leave the neighborhood but wants a $800k upgrade on a $80k budget, I just don't watch.

But that was ten years ago, before the prices got REALLY crazy.

Even in a small town like here (Dayton, OH) some stuff seems just crazy in the neighborhoods that have caught traction for restoration. I just ain't gonna spend $200-$400k if I have to compete for street parking. And it is all about location, you can still buy a nice house in the same city for $50k, just not where ya wanna live.

There used to be a website based in Vancouver called "crack shack or mansion" and they would show pictures of hoses and you had to decide which was an actual crack house, and which was a $1-2 million dollar listing.

Our first house did a crack house transition. We bought it cheap, made significant improvements, and sold it for enough to pay ourselves $2-3hr for the work we did. The people we sold to lived there for some time, made a few more improvements, but when they left (for whatever reason) it became a crack house. Then somebody bought it who brought it back to being way better than we ever had it, but it is still in an undesirable neighborhood.

[Maple Syrup Actual]

You guys have houses for $400 grand???

A buddy of mine bought in Vancouver about two years ago. It's a townhouse, built in about 1970, in a complex that's slowly deteriorating as pretty much every 50 year old townhouse complex is. He paid 875. It's now worth about 1.

I sold my one bedroom apartment in a 1978 wooden low-rise for half a million bucks when I left, at about the same time.

I did fine on the whole situation because I bought when that one bedroom apartment could still be had for under 300,000. But for basically anyone who didn't buy ten years ago, unless you can afford the mortgage payments on a million dollar loan, you have no chance at anything but an apartment, and even those aren't cheap. My little sister lives there. She never expects to own anything. The only friend I have who has bought in the last 6-7 years is the townhouse guy. He's a welder and works about 80 hours a week to afford it. His wife is from a rich Japanese family and helps. It's ridiculous.

Vancouver is the example I use of how you can destroy a city in pretty short order with insufficient control over foreign investment.

[Half Moon]

I had a British friend years ago that was trying to immigrate to the US. She was living in Vancouver and came to Seattle frequently. She became a Canadian citizen eventually, but was never able to immigrate to the US. Apparently, it was much easier to immigrate to Canada at the time than to immigrate to the US. At least that's what she told me.

I used to see some pretty expensive sports cars racing along I-5 at high rates of speed (100 mph plus) with Canadian plates. Ferraris and Lambos, stuff like that, getting yuge tickets after the SP stops them. Generally, the high rollers where I live are old guys with Corvettes and they don't race those on I-5.

We're only about an hour from the border.

Try I-5 in Northern California. Same old guys, same Corvettes, but for the right trigger they'll try to race. Back when the Saleen Mustang was my daily, you'd see a Corvette in the rear view and know the mating dance was about to start: corvette on the rear bumper, corvette pulling alongside, corvette dropping back a little, corvette launching then dropping back and giving a puzzled look, repeat a couple times before they realize you're not going to play. Happened often enough Saleen versus Vette was a definite thing...