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Comment by mthoms | Hacker News Reader

Sitting here in my (Chip Wilson owned) $2000/month one bedroom East Vancouver apartment, I'd say this article really hit close to home.

Literally.

While I support the conclusions drawn in the article, there is one important factor that wasn't emphasized - weather. People from all over Canada come here for the (relatively) mild temperatures and snow-free winters.Thus you have a market where demand already exceeds supply before even factoring in foreign ownership.

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It seems many don’t realize that Vancouver is the only major Canadian city on the west coast whereas in the US you have several. In Canada there are three major cities: Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal. If you want to live on the west coast with great weather where are you going to go? Lots of migration in Canada alone.

All of BC is relatively expensive compared to the USA, with Vancouver as the epicenter.

Is $2000/mo a lot or a little? Sorry being in SF I seriously can't tell.

Damn. I live in Poland and pay around 500USD for a comfy apartment in one of the best neighbourhoods in the city, close to nice parks and to every store you need. I definitely recommend making the move if you are willing to learn Polish (not needed at all for a job in IT, but useful if you want to live here long term). Worst case scenario you can always move back. That's what I was thinking when I moved, but in the end I decided to stay.

The best hack is to move to SF, get a Bay Area comp package at a remote friendly tech co, then make the case to go remote when you’ve developed enough trust within the org.

You can find that too in the US, just not in major coastal metros.

Can you? I would have thought that most US cities are either too small or too expensive for that. Or are you talking about the amount of rent specifically?

The USA is a huge place where cities are sometimes spread among vast distances, that has lead to creation of extensive urban centers like you described that are somewhat distant and thus cheap. You can find dozens of cities like that, but of course, the wage is also considerably lower. There is a phenomenon of US digital nomads - people who work remotely but move only across the USA, instead of going to e.g. Asia.

Currently living in a lively midwest town, 10 minutes walk from downtown and three separate centers of attraction. 500/month. It's possible.

It is a lot. Especially considering the tech industry salary is under $90k for a sr engineer, and a normal professional person probably makes $40k-$60k/yr

Ok got it. For a 1-bedroom in any western US metro (Seattle, SF, LA) that would be well below market.

I live in Seattle, and no it wouldn't.

I don't think so.

sf is known for being in the top 5 most expensive cities in occident. sorry to ask, are you really they ignorant of the world outside of the bubble 1 meter around you.

> there is one important factor that wasn't emphasized - weather.

Vancouver has always had nicer weather. If weather is the causative factor, why is there no correlation between Vancouver weather and housing prices over the last 30 years?

According to your very own quote, I said it's "_one_ important factor" so I'm not sure how you parlayed that into "_the_ causative factor".

Those aren't the same things.

The weather has always been nice in Vancouver and Vancouver has always had net positive migration. If there was a change in the weather we could test the theory but alas there hasn't really been one.

Pedentically, I don't think the article is talking about a mild (and likely fairly constant) premium on real estate due to the superior weather, more likely it was about the parabolic price increases in the last decade or so. If mainland were Chinese particularly fond of Vancouver style weather it may be important over and above the natural one time premium it provides.

But mainly, I mostly just get irked when people dismiss RE price action in Vancouver because the weather is nice, it is a pretty common technique for those looking for racism.

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