Course talk:POLI3802012/Survey/RealEstateVancouver

Ok, so we have a whole lot of questions... How do we want to go about sorting them?

Shall we only cover 'actual' Vancouver, or should we expand to places like Richmond?

I think we should stick to only vancouver to keep it focused, since housing prices and the reasons behind this are way differen tin richmond than they are in van-also taxes etc. too. (abigail)

I wonder if keeping it only in Vancouver would be a representative sample of BC. Maybe if we expand it we can get better representative sample.

How about we do the greater Vancouver area. That would include all the cities as far east as Langley. It would give us a bigger sample and allow us the have relatively similar prices.

Yeah Brian greater Vancouver would be good.

If we agree to conduct the survey for all of GVRD than here are some necessary stats that we should consider:

1) Population Growth Trends

http://www.metrovancouver.org/about/publications/Publications/Census2011PopulationGrowthTrends.pdf

Notice: Abbotsford is excluded.

2) Household Trends by Municipality

http://www.metrovancouver.org/about/publications/Publications/HouseholdTrendsbyMunicipality.pdf

3) Housing Price Index Greater Vancouver Real Estate Board

http://www.realtylink.org/statistics/buyers_market_HPI_main.cfm

4) Average and Median Household Income by Municipality

http://www.metrovancouver.org/about/publications/Publications/AverageandMedianHouseholdIncomebyMunicipality.pdf

5) Apartment Average Rents Bachelor http://www.metrovancouver.org/about/publications/Publications/ApartmentAverageRentsBachelor.pdf

Here is a website that might be helpful.

http://www12.statcan.ca/census-recensement/2006/dp-pd/prof/92-591/details/Page.cfm?Lang=E&Geo1=CD&Code1=5915&Geo2=PR&Code2=59&Data=Count&SearchText=Greater%20Vancouver&SearchType=Begins&SearchPR=01&B1=All&Custom=

Iunno. It says Vancouver real estate. It doesn't really talk about applicability to the rest of BC. And I think that would be the point, to find out how ridiculous the pricing is in Van, as opposed to the rest of bc.

Yeah the thing is, the Greater Vancouver area would be different from the rest of BC. It's not like Vancouver prices went up while prices in Surrey or Langley went down. My parent's house in Surrey more than doubled in the last 10 years, so I don't think Surrey is exempt from these trends in Vancouver

Also, I think we need to figure out what issues we want to focus on. There's the idea of affordable housing (though that could go under poverty inequality), 'desirability' in where people want to live, etc. Are we looking for people's opinions on how they think affordable housing should be provided (too normative?) or just simple, real estate issues. I think once we figure that out, we can focus our questions in that direction.

I think we should stick to simple real estate questions honestly, that way it is easier-since there are only 5 questions in the survey, and it also keeps it focused and not going in different directions. or we could ask questions regarding income, then preference to live (we need more than just east and west)and go from there to show some kind of continuity..what doo you think?

Hey guys bit late on the discussion, just trying to figure out what exactly we're trying to focus on. When you mean "simple real estate issues", I think we need to target a specific issue and build from that. Maybe we can divulge into what people "actually" know about their local real-estate? So for example, if we're looking at Vancouver residents, maybe we can ask them whether or not they know what the average amount of pricing for the area they are living in is, and then build from that? (i.e. Do you think it's fair compared to 'x' place), etc.

-Dylan

From there perhaps questions regarding the area of the home and of the land would be appropriate. With real estate, a multitude of factors affect pricing. It is entirely possible for a smaller piece of land to be worth more than a larger one.

Rabi

Rabi: So would we want to set up questions to find pop. density vs. housing value; number of schools vs. housing value; east/west location vs. housing value etc?

Yeah I think we need to define what it is that we are looking for.

@ Brian: It does seem a bit too complicated now in hindsight for a survey of this size to account for property sizes. Unless anyone else can put it in a different way?

I think this was a good point, maybe assess people's attitudes and knowledge about the area and prices, rather than looking for hard information.

So we can all agree to start with the easier questions such as "Can you afford a house in the current Vancouver housing market?" More questions on attitudes towards the market than other areas with a flood of background data. Because I do think that this way is better for a short survey like this where we actually have to call people and have them answer it. The simplier it is, the easier the process should be.

I liked the questions that Rabi started on, anyone have any other question they would like to ask?

Ya that sounds good... It's kind of what I was getting at, at the bottom of the page. And as we were talked about during the lab, about survey planning, you don't want to have questions where you require the responder to need to know a lot of hard facts about whatever it is you're asking them.