Portrait: adam blasberg
I'm a man of a certain age now, and getting
lots of unsolicited advice to "grow up." The
number one sign of my lack of maturity? The
fact that I don't own real estate, after lo these
many years living in Vancouver. "Step out of
your comfort zone and just do it!" egged on
my friend Brian in a recent conversation.
If I were living anywhere else in Canada,
I think I could be convinced to buy. But not
here. This is a market where, as Jim Suther-
land explains in "The Affordability Debate:
Part One" (p. 38), your average detached
home goes for about a million dollars (though
you can get a shoebox in the sky for about half
that). Vancouver has long been the
most expensive place in Canada to
buy. What's changed in recent years
is our incomes: relative to the rest
of the country, they've dropped—by
about 15 per cent since 1976. That
might explain why people from else-
where—rather than native British
Columbians—are so keen to buy in.
Still, there are "deals" to be had
if you know where to look and can
afford the ante, as Jim outlines in
"Four Walls of Worry" (p. 34). Indeed,
our Real Estate 2015 package offers a
bunch of telling facts and anecdotes
about the crazy world of buying and
selling West Coast property. (Think
we have it bad here? Just ask the folks
in San Francisco: there, the afford-
ability crisis is driven not by foreign
buyers but sky-high Silicon Valley sal-
aries, as Kerry Gold explains in "The
Affordability Debate: Part Two," p. 39.)
The good news for me in all this:
apparently Vancouver, while tops in
the country for the cost of buying, is
solidly middle of the road for renting—
about on par with Calgary, Ottawa
and Toronto prices. And in each of the
past two years, more purpose-built
rental buildings went up in B.C. than in the
previous 25 (as Felicity Stone reports in "Rise
Up!" p. 43)—which should help widen the gap
between the cost of renting and owning. Call
me Peter Pan, but I think I'll put off adulthood
for a little while longer.
C O N T R I B U T O R S
Matt O'Grady, Editor-in-Chief
mogrady@canadawide.com / @bCbusiness
Native Vancouverite and
BCBusiness editorial intern
Alix Drabek ("My Kingdom for
a House, " p. 53) took a hiatus
from writing for a stint in the
U.S. Navy. "I always wanted
to return to journalism–what I
originally trained in–but never
expected it to take this long."
Drabek is a 2014 graduate of
Capilano University's magazine
publishing program.
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12 BCBusiness march 2015
San Francisco-based
photographer Peter DaSilva
("The Affordability Debate:
Part Two, " p. 39), a Hong Kong
native, says he doesn't have a
favourite spot to shoot in the
Bay area. "The city has so many
locations you can't go wrong."
DaSilva has also worked for
the New York Times and the
Chicago Tribune.
Never Never Land
editor's desk
In aprIl
The 30 UNDeR 30: Back by popular demand, we celebrate the best and brightest of B.C.'s millennials.
