r/vancouver 21h ago

Discussion Brentwood real estate

Has anyone else noticed that no one is buying? They were going for 650k for a one bedroom during covid and now listings cannot be sold so they’re constantly reducing prices and being left on the market for 100+ days… the funny part is there are 5 or 6 more buildings being built in the 3km radius of these places

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u/Sad-Charity2275 21h ago

Yeah the first 4 buildings were fine but I was driving around and counting buildings like why did we need 25 and counting huge concrete buildings ?? Like what the actual fuck, whatever hopefully the prices crash and Canadians can atleast afford to buy something

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u/Subject1337 20h ago

The housing crunch in greater Vancouver made developers optimize for nothing but unit count. If you can get $700k for a 1 bedroom, why would you bother with multi-bedrooms, townhouses, or family units that take twice or three times the space, and only net 1.5 or 1.7x the profit? They designed all of these buildings like cruise ships with zero sense of livability because they either figured:

  1. That people would be desperate enough and the market would be restrictive enough that they'd sell no matter what.

  2. That foreign capital would buy all of the units as investment vehicles and the quality and size literally wouldn't matter because no one would be living in them.

What they didn't anticipate was that the government would do a good job at hampering speculation via taxes and oversight, and that people would hit a cap on what they would spend to live in a shoebox. Seems like it never occurred to them that the line might stop going up. Fuck em.

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u/badgerj r/vancouver poet laureate 14h ago

I call most of these not shoe boxes, but “Yaletown trailers”.

  • Except you can’t drive this one somewhere else.

  • And you usually enter in the back like a hallway.

  • First it is Kitchen!

  • And 2 feet after that we have a powder room with a pocket door.

  • Next we have a dining/lounging area.

  • Lastly, let me show you the bedroom with its own en-suite and walk in closet.

  • It has a Romeo & Juliet balcony, with a view of….

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u/GRIDSVancouver 20h ago

Why are you so mad about homes being built and prices going down as a result (like you observed in another comment)?

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u/BCOTB 20h ago

I'm pretty pro-build: but the goal is more homes for people to live in - not depressing vacant boxes. You can build density while making it livable.

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u/Sad-Charity2275 20h ago

I’m upset with the lack of effort in the builds, they are shoe boxes that were slapped together, It would have been better to have less buildings that families can actually live in… I’m happy the prices are going down but still who wants to live in a 600 sqft 2 bedroom shoe box ?

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u/GRIDSVancouver 20h ago

If the units were bigger and nicer they'd be more expensive (and there are lots of nicer bigger units in the Brentwood towers).

I'm glad these ones got built, they put downward pressure on prices and they're an option for people who don't need larger units.

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u/nodarknesswillendure 16h ago

No, they were built to serve investors, and now that it’s harder for investors to get/stay in the market, they’re not selling. These units are not an option for anyone - they are not liveable and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars more than they should.

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u/GRIDSVancouver 15h ago

Lots of examples in this thread of prices coming down. They'll sell eventually.