Focus

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.

I believe that one or two questions asking about *certain variable* vs housing value would be the most we should have as a survey question because we only have 5 questions to put on the survey and I'm sure we'll have other things we want to ask. That being said, I liked Brian's direction with the questions, but we might want to try to aggregate all of them into one question?

I think if we were to conduct a survey we have to know who are the population that we are interested in targeting. Than we have to know how we are going to conduct this survey via : telephone, social services, or in person. Therefore, if we are wanting to conduct a survey on Real Estate for the GVRD than I suggest we start with a small sample since that could be more accurate: city/municipality vs. housing value in that particular city/municipality. Do you guys agree ?

Possible questions to consider would be: 1) Are the rates of mortgage approval in GVRD affordable? 2) Did you have an agent assisting when buying your property? 3) Has the crisis in Japan affected your real estate decisions in any way?

It was a typo Rabi thanks for bringing that issue to my attention.

I've been thinking, maybe we're getting a bit to ahead of ourselves here. We should probably first establish whether or not the respondent owns property or is renting, then from there we can pursue further questions depending on the answers.I believe there were called filter questions?

Perhaps:

Do you own your place of residence? ->No -> Would you plan on owning property in the GVRD?-> Then ask about current prices

Do you own your place of residence? ->Yes-> Do you currently have a mortgage?

Dren what do you mean by the GTA? Are you referring to the Greater Toronto Area?

@ 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 do think it is going to be a bit too complicated. Why not keep it simple and look at residents who own/rent? Or something along those lines. Mortgage payments are one of the larger debts Canadians are burdened with. I think it would be interesting and narrow enough to propose a set of questions about how people feel about buying/selling in Vancouver, how many own/rent out, the range of their mortgage payments monthly perhaps. How many have paid it off? Since technically they don't "own" it unless it is paid off in full. Thoughts?

I agree with you Lida. At the end of the day what may really matter is what people's mortgage are worth and if people in Vancouver can afford to buy a house or not. I feel that we have to come up with a theory/hypothesis of some kind that we are trying to prove. What is it that we expect to see in our survey? I think we have to decide what patterns we are looking for and from there on develop the questions. Perhaps a focus could be trying through our survey to explain the reasons for over priced housing market, that may help us narrow our questions. I'm not sure this model applies to surveys as well but it could work.

I think look for a why in only 5 questions is a little hard. We could always try to find out IF people in vancouver can afford their current houses-like what was said with asking income, mortgage amount etc. By looking for why housing prices are so high requires a lot more questioning and research than we can find out in 5 Q's. when is this due?