Californication

So after a long look we decided to move to California. The decision process wasn't easy but it satisfied most of the criteria we were looking for and had some strong emotional appeal. The final decision to make the jump was back in April. It had been raining in Vancouver for what seemed like months; then my wife and I flew down to check out the local housing market. The weather was fantastic and the housing stock was much more than we could have imagined.

As I would later find out; making the decision to move proved to be the easy part; actually executing the move would be a long process.

Where to move?

With house prices rising beyond what we wanted to spend, we started looking at areas outside our current neighbourhood. The most obvious choice would be to move out to the eastern suburbs where prices are lower. This raised a couple of important issues.

The first issue has to do with commute times. This is something that I was not able to compromise on. The longest I am willing to travel is 1 hour each day (30 minutes each way). If we move to the eastern suburbs it could easily be 45 minutes to 60 minutes of driving. This would be huge hit to my quaility of life; and something many people don't consider when picking a location to live. Also I question how much money would actually be saved. Right now I spend under $100 / month on gas; this is with a 20KM / day commute. This could easily jump to $400 -$500 per month if my driving increased.

The other issue we faced with moving out of our existing neighbourhood was that of lifestyle. Moving would require us to change schools for the kids along with other changes. With all things considered even moving 1 hour away is a big change to our life.

After considering both these issues we decided to expand our search beyond the Vancouver area to see what we could find.

Vancouver House Prices

House prices in Vancouver are very expensive; North Vancouver being one of the most exepensive areas as well. Prices have risen dramatically in the nearly 10 years we have owned our place.

Below is a chart of an "average" house in the Vancouver area.




Its said that once you are in the market it doesn't really matter if prices go up or down since you will just be swapping houses. But is that really true? In our case no its not true; prices do matter. I started charting out the "gap" between the average attached house (what we own) and the average detached house (what we want to buy).



What these results show is that the average percentage gap is pretty constant; basically averaging between 33% with no clear trend over time. This means that as prices rise the amount of extra money needed to swap from an attached house to a detached house is rising significantly.



There are some variations in the numbers but the trend is clearly in the wrong direction for us. In May 2005 the gap was $213K, in May 2006 it has risen to $243K, and by May 2007 it was $324K. That is a lot of extra mortgage to take on ($300K at 5.5% over 25 years is nearly $1850 per month of EXTRA payments).

I don't have any data that shows what happens in a down market (if the gap increases or decreases or stays the same in terms of percentage). But it is clear that moving to a detached house in our area was going to be an expensive proposition.

Links:
http://cuer.sauder.ubc.ca/cma/van_res.html

Things I will miss: Corey Rock

I went out hiking with my wife today to one of my favorite spots: Corey Rock. The rock is a nice lookout point that has terrific views of Deep Cove. The hike up is a short 30 minutes (I have run it 12:30) with some bridges to cross creeks and some impressive trees.

Deep Cove really is a beautiful spot to enjoy a summer evening and I am going to miss it a lot.

Feeling Cramped

When we purchased our house in 1999 we made the decision with the thought that we would live in our house for 10 years. Well we almost made it. The truth is we could have lasted another year or two but things are definately starting to get cramped. With three kids and only 3 bedrooms it means we needed to double up the girls and their room is pretty small. Also the lack of a back yard was getting to be an issue.

Its been reported that in the last 50 years house sizes have nearly doubled (from 1100 sq ft, to over 2000 sq ft) even as the average family size shrinks. I am not sure how that 1100 sq ft house managed with so many people. Our place is just under 1700 and it certainly feels like we have used all available space.

In addition to literally out growing our house; there were some up comming repairs that were going to really start to add up. Last year we renovated a bathroom and it cost us nearly $6000. We would need to do a similar renovation to the master bath ($8000); update the kitchen ($15,000), update the carpets upstairs ($4000), and the big drainage project ($15,000). That adds up to over $40,000 in renos over the next 2-3 years.

Given all these issues we started to put our feelers out in January to start to see what we would do. The options were pretty simple; either hang tight for 3 years and put some money into our place; or find something larger.

Why the move?

As all of my friends know I love where I live, and it came as a big shock to many of them that I decided to relocate. The reasons for moving can come down to a combination of circumstance and opportunity.

- We have out grown our existing home and it is in need of some renovations
- House Prices in Vancouver are at an all time high and are actually quite unaffordable
- Our kids are still small enough that a move is not catastrophic to their lifestyle
- We were looking for an adventure
- Some opportunities came up at work

I will address each of these in detail in upcomming posts.

Introduction

This blog will primarily focus on the details of my move from Canada to the USA. I have lived in Canada all my life and recently decided to pack up and move out. The reasons for the move are both professional and personal. It will be hard to say good bye to a city I have lived in for all of my adult life (nearly 20 years) but I am looking forward to the many new things that such a change will bring about.

The blog entries here will attempt to document many of the processes needed to move; I have already started many of these and will list my experiences and keep up to date with new things that come along. My hope is that this blog can serve as a resource for anyone else that happens to take such an undertaking.

cheers