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Posted by JohnB1999 , 1 reply

The cost to live in Vancouver has skyrocketed in the last 10 years. Mostly due to the fact that people from Hong Kong and mainland China have been buying up real estate as if it were going out of style. They will often buy multiple homes, condos, apartments sight unseen for cash. The AVERAGE home price not in Vancouver is over 1 Million dollars, something comparable would cost $250K for in Denver. Gasoline is over $5.00 a gallon despite the fact that Canada imports no oil. And if you want to live in Richmond, you might want to learn Mandarin or Cantonese as most businesses don’t advertise in English anymore.

Taxes are high, and the system of government there is Parliamentary Democracy, essentially meaning that who ever has a majority in government, the leader of that party can, and does anything they please. It’s more like a benevolent dictatorship form of government.

Unless you’ve got lots of money, I wouldn’t recommend moving there. A truly beautiful place though.

 

1 reply
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Some of the information in this post is misleading. The median home value in Denver is C$560,000. Depending on whereabouts in the Vancouver area you go, the median home value ranges from $362,000 for a condo apartment in Maple Ridge to $3,000,000 for a detached house on the high-end West side of Vancouver. Real estate prices have dropped off over the last year or so, and have not bottomed yet, so not so much investment money is coming in from the US, China, etc. Since half of Richmond does not speak Mandarin, very few businesses there avoid English. The price of gasoline per litre will be more of a concern if you commute by car from an outer area like Maple Ridge into the central city, not so much if you are closer to the core and use Skytrain. BC is not oil self-sufficient – some gasoline is imported from refineries in western America and BC prices are higher than in other province. Taxes in BC are usually lower than what you have to pay in New York or California, plus you don’t have the big payments for health care. I would recommend moving there if you are happy with a condo or can consider a long commute from a detached house further out. Equating a parliamentary democracy to a benevolent dictatorship is far from reality. We have no “Executive Orders” or “Executive Privilege” that a certain other country uses.

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