Can we please stop treating the Vancouver housing market like a property casino?

At this rate we're going to have a half empty city where only millionaires can afford to actually own a home. We're damn close to that, the average price in Vancouver right now is $825,000 for a townhouse. A TOWNHOUSE, not a full sized house / lot. And new developments are flipped multiple times before they're even finished building them. I see so many empty houses and townhouses, sold and resold over and over.

These are supposed to be homes. You know, the concept of shelter, a roof over your head. Places where we live, where we're supposed to get comfort sleeping in our beds at night.

It's insane how prices have quadrupled in less years than I can count on one hand, but even more insane is the bullshit our local financial 'experts' keep feeding us, as if it will continue forever even during a falling economy. They're complicit, after all. Who in Vancouver doesn't have their fingers into the property market? None of them want to ever cast a shadow on it.

It's inflationary gambling, the assumption that property pays for itself because it doubles every few years. It's bullshit. It's crooked. It's greed. It's not sustainable. It's not real supply and demand, it's artificial: Our population has barely budged in comparison to these prices and at this rate the middle class is pushed deep into the suburbs further and further away from their jobs. The daily commutes are getting absurd as everyone drives by a bunch of empty properties (which aren't even rented out while waiting for resale) on their way to work.

And development isn't slowing down, astonishingly it's increasing as the developers try to milk as much as they can out of the market. It's plain they're worried about a crash, but they talk as if they can avoid it by saying it will never happen. I don't know what's worse, the big burst of the bubble when it comes, or the ridiculous inflation before then.

I was born in Vancouver and grew up here too. It's depressing to see what a bunch of greedy investors have done to my hometown.

I'd hope for some heavy duty property resale regulation ASAP, but I doubt it'll happen, because even our crown corporations are in on it. There's too much me-first, get-rich-first attitude in this province. It'd take an economic disaster to wake everyone up.

The situation is already so far out of control. We need to stop gambling with the basics of living.