The High Cost of Living

Short Version:
Houses aren't cheap, especially if you have Chinese neighbours

Long Version:
We plan to return to Vancouver pretty soon; it's a really neat city. There's shitty stuff that goes on, for sure - in a metropolitan area where over 4 million people live there are bound to be some ratbags - but it seems to keep itself confined largely to areas we wouldn't want to go anyway (ie Surrey) and/or to those involved in the (apparently very lucrative) drug trade. That's not to say that all of the laws are obeyed all of the time by all of the people, even in the nicer parts of the city - we heard a tale the other day of a street race and a confiscated car and an unimpressed father; apparently Dad was none-too-impressed that his CAD$200,000 Lamborghini had been taken away from his miscreant son. That's permanent confiscation too, none of the pussy thirty-days crap that NZ feebly imposes.

One of the biggest drawbacks Vancouver has, apart from the massive amount of precipitation it gets, is how unaffordable its housing market is; on average, for homeowners in the Greater Vancouver area, 68% of total household income goes towards servicing the mortgage. That's a lot. The cost of housing is so high that first-home buyers are virtually unheard-of anywhere near the city proper, despite the preponderance of one-bedroom and studio apartments; those start around the CAD$300,000 mark. And you probably wouldn't want to live in one from the lower end of that scale. There are, of course, a bunch of factors influencing price, including the recently-researched impact on sale price of the property's street number; this, we're told, can raise or lower the sale price of a property by as much as 2.5%, which is not very much if you're shopping at one of the thrift stores we frequented (and which tended to throw 40-50% reduction sales on a weekly, if not daily basis), but can amount to a significant amount when you're speaking of a CAD$500,000* apartment**. And that's the average amount, so you have to figure that some people out there are paying vast amounts for some particularly auspiciously-numerated house.

The price inflation is higher in neighbourhoods which are heavily populated by ethnic Chinese, and according to wikipedia, Chinese lucky numbers are 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 (ie most of them), with 8 the special favorite. On the downside of the ledger, unlucky numbers are 4, 5, 6, and 7 (ie half of the lucky ones, plus four***). Four is the big nasty of the bunch - it's the anti-eight, akin to 13 in Western societies. so, if you're looking to purchase a property for its resale value, and you believe for some reason that the Sinofication of the area is shaping to increase, nab an 8 property (or an 88, or an 888) but steer clear of 4, or 44.

Also beware of 167, 169, and 1679, which are dirty jokes; 250, which means imbecile; 5354, which often refers to something that is half dead or on the verge of death; 7456, which is "pissing me off"; and 9413, which can be interpreted as inferring "nine die to one live meaning 90% chance of being dead and only 10% chance of being alive, or survived from such situations (a narrow escape)."

Apparently these numbers are used by some Sinophile interwebsters as shorthand statements, so the next time someone responds to your brilliance with "Nice call, Mr 250," or simply says "1679" at you, be offended.









* = For the mathematically-challenged, 2.5% of 500,000 is 12,500. That's a lot of beer tokens.

** = It's a condominium (a "condo" if you're young and hip, or trying to be) if the occupant is the owner.

*** = No known numerologically-evil association with the golfing pants known as plus-fours, which are breeches or trousers that extend 4 inches (10 cm) below the knee (and thus are four inches longer than traditional knickerbockers, hence the name); they're awful of their own accord.