So, when you move to a new country, one of the first and most important things you will have to do, is find a place to live. So where do you start? And what are the factors you need to keep in mind? What housing options are available in Vancouver?
Most people who work in the city – especially those working for Amazon – prefer to live in the city centre. The benefit of course is that you are close to work and you don’t have to travel that far to get to the office. In fact, depending on how close you live to where you work, you could even walk or ride a bike to work. However, the drawback is that your only housing options are high-rise apartments; which is fine if you are single, but this can pose a problem if you have a family – especially a family with small kids. We didn’t like the idea of living in an apartment with a toddler, because we believe she needs space to run around. Besides, in South Africa we owned a house with a big backyard, so we were hoping to find something that had a garden or backyard of some sort for Emma to play in.
We made the call to house hunt in the suburban areas just outside of the city centre and not to settle in the city centre for two reasons: firstly, the need for space for Emma and the cats and secondly, because we simply could not afford the apartments in the city centre. Renting an apartment in the city centre could cost you anything between $3 500 and $6 500 a month depending on the size and location of the apartment. For those of you in South Africa, multiply by 10 to work out the price in South African rand. $3 500 (or R35 000) per month would get you a one-bedroom apartment in the city centre. Two-bedroom apartments go for about $4 000 to $4 500 (or between R40 000 and R45 000) a month!
As you move further out of the city centre, rental properties become “cheaper” and you also have more options. You don’t have to live in an apartment, you could opt for a condo or a basement suite or a full house. So how did we decide where to live? Who did we contact, or where did we look for available rentals?
How we decided where to live
In our first few weeks here, we took the time to drive around all the areas in Vancouver, including North Vancouver, Richmond, Burnaby, Surrey, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Pitt Meadows and Maple Ridge.
North Vancouver is stunningly beautiful. You are surrounded by mountains and it has more of quint Cape Town type of vibe. There are smaller shops and lots of fun outdoor activities like hiking trails, suspension bridges and parks. However, it is VERY expensive. It is probably just as expensive as the city centre or a close second. Most of the available rental options that fit our budget were simply not spacious enough or were a bit neglected. There are two other things to keep in mind about living in North Vancouver. Firstly, you can only get to the city centre with a bus. There are no trains that run from North Vancouver. This is not necessarily a bad thing, since the bus is much faster. The average commute is about 26 minutes. Unless of course the bus services are on strike; which sometimes happens – yes, believe it or not, even in Canada, they sometimes strike. We have had one bus strike in the last six months of living here. The other thing about living in North Vancouver, is the fact that the streets are narrow, and the houses don’t have garages, so you are forced to park in the street – very much like in Cape Town – but there is not much space. So, if you own a car – which you should if you live in North Vancouver unfortunately, because it is the best way to get around – you will struggle with parking all the time. So again, this was a no for us. We wanted more house for our money and we wanted a garage.
Richmond and Burnaby were also too expensive, and Burnaby has a lot of old houses with old wiring and again no garages to park your car in. Surrey has gorgeous large houses, but locals here told us that it is their “dodgy” area; which we can’t imagine is anything as dodgy as some parts of Johannesburg. However, public transport from both Burnaby and Surrey are also not that great. There are not a lot of trains to the city centre, so you would need a car and we had decided from the start that Johann would use public transport to get to work and that we would only buy one car to use for emergencies, grocery shopping and travel. Pitt Meadows and Maple Ridge are the more “rural” areas of Vancouver with larger stretches of land and small farm holdings as well as beautiful suburbs. The houses are huge and affordable compared to the city centre, Burnaby and Surrey. In Maple Ridge, you could rent a three- or four-bedroom home for between $2 600 and $3 500 and then you have access to the full house and a garden. However, it is very far out from the city and the average commute to work would be about two hours there and two hours back. Understandably, Johann did not want to spend 4 hours a day travelling to and from work.
So, we settled for the happy medium. We chose Coquitlam. It is in between Burnaby, Surrey, Pitt Meadows and Maple Ridge and has the best bus and train network; providing easy access to the West Coast Express and thus shortening Johann’s commute to work. Additionally, Coquitlam is built in a smart way. There is lake in the middle of the city – LaFarge Lake. The community centre and aquatic complex is right across from the lake. So are two train stations – LaFarge Lake Station and Coquitlam Central Station. All the malls and shops are around this area and the suburbs and houses expand from here. So, whether you want to get to the train station or the community centre or the mall, you just drive to the middle of the city. Housing options are in the middle range in Coquitlam anywhere between $2 500 and $4 500 depending on what you are looking for. There are apartments, but there are also lots of condos – especially in the Westwood Plateau and Burke Mountain areas. These two areas are growing rapidly with new developments and there are new condominium complexes popping up everywhere. And then of course there are basement suites and houses.
So, what the heck are basements suites?
In South Africa, most houses are flat on the ground – called a “rancher” house in Canada. You get the occasional double story house with stairs, but most houses are on one level. This takes up a lot of space on the ground and is thus impractical in Vancouver. Therefore, in Vancouver most, if not all, of the houses are built in levels to provide the same number of rooms but take up less physical space on the ground. So, the average house in Vancouver, consists of three storeys. Because most of Vancouver is quite hilly, they can build houses where you have access to the middle level or the lower level from the ground.
So, the lower level is usually your garage and basement, the middle level is your living area; which includes a living room, dining room and kitchen and the upper level is usually where the bedrooms and bathrooms are. A basement suite therefore is where a house has a large lower level and they put up dry wall in the basement to separate it into different rooms and thus turn it into an apartment. Many people then live in the middle and upper part of the house and rent the lower part of their house out to renters. If you are new to Vancouver and strapped for cash, a basement suite is a good option. It is like an apartment but on the ground. It is the cheapest housing in Vancouver and usually the utilities are also split 70% and 30% between the home owner and the basement occupant, so you only pay for 30% of the water and electricity.
I suppose for South Africans, this sounds weird. We were freaked out by the idea of living in someone else’s basement, because remember you technically share the house and the garden with the owner. Usually you have a separate entrance, so you do have some privacy. But depending on the way the house was built, it could mean that you don’t have a lot of windows in your apartment and thus very little light coming into your house. That to me, was just too depressing. I like natural light and couldn’t imagine living in a basement on top of the already miserable, rainy weather we have in Vancouver for up to 8 months of the year.
Where do you find available rentals?
The best place to look for rentals is on Craigslist Vancouver. Craigslist is incredibly popular in Vancouver. People sell almost anything on Craigslist and most landlords list their properties on Craigslist. It is much cheaper than working through an agent; although most landlords even use agents on Craigslist. Why are estate agents a problem? Unlike in South Africa where estate agents are quite flexible and very eager for a sale and would thus accommodate your schedule, estate agents in Vancouver are swamped with requests for property and thus they dictate the schedule. They can and will refuse to see you at a time that is inconvenient for them. Some of them for example refuse to work on weekends, or only do showings and viewings of available properties in the middle of the day. They couldn’t care less about your work schedule or your urgency in finding a place to live, because they have so many potential tenants that they will just make the property available to the next person who is willing to jump through their hoops. It is incredibly frustrating, because you can literally spend days phoning and leaving messages and typing e-mails without receiving a reply.
This is where we were lucky, because we had the assistance of a company called Dwellworks. They help you settle in when you arrive in Vancouver. One of their representatives is available for three days to assist you with the matters you identify as most critical to you. So, you could for example ask that they help you obtain your social security number (or social insurance number at it is called in Canada), that they help you open a bank account, that they help you find a place to live, that they help you find an appropriate school for your children etc. But you only have three days, so you must choose wisely. If they assist with finding you a place to live, they phone all the estate agents on your behalf and negotiate the rental agreement on your behalf. All you have to do, is identify the places you are interested in.
Despite the assistance of Dwellworks, it still took us four months to find a place to rent and we considered about 106 properties in total. Most places were either too expensive, or did not allow pets, or were too far away from the nearest bus or train station, making Johann’s commute to work difficult. We ended up selecting a condo or what we would call a townhouse in South Africa. It is in a “complex” and although it looks like South African complexes with all the units in the complex built in the same style, it does not have the same level of security you would be used to in South Africa. There is no gate at the front entrance of the complex, no security guards patrolling the perimeter of the property or having you sign in when you enter the complex, no gates, no electric fencing and barely even any walls to talk about.
Each unit is 3 stories, with the garage at the lower level, the living area – i.e. living room, dining room and kitchen – on the middle level and the bedrooms and bathrooms on the top level. Each unit also has a very small patch of garden that can be accessed from a glass sliding door in the kitchen. The only thing separating you from your neighbours though, are a few small trees and shrubs and a tiny wooden gate that marks off the perimeter of your garden patch. But everyone has access to everyone else’s garden, so it is not entirely strange to find a random person transiting through your garden to his garden – especially with garden utensils or potted plants or wood beams or even furniture. It is something to get used to, especially for South Africans who are not only always on high alert for suspicious-looking strangers who might want to do you harm, but also incredibly private people who tend to prefer their gardens to be private spaces not shared with others…
What are some of the things to keep in mind when renting in Vancouver?
As mentioned in a previous blog post, most landlords do not allow pets, so it is sometimes difficult to find pet-friendly accommodation and if you do find a landlord who is willing to accept pets, he/she will charge you a pet damage deposit on top of the security deposit you would be required to pay when signing a lease agreement. So, you might end up paying two months’ rent in advance for your new home.
Leases are usually for 12 months. In rare situations you might find a lease for 6 months, but most landlords rent for at least 12 months. Others for 24 months. It is very difficult to get out of a lease agreement. If you cancel your lease before it is up, you might have to continue to pay for the remaining months even though you move to another place. Most landlords see it as breach of contract and insist that you serve out the full term of the lease, because they might not be able to find a new tenant immediately after you move out. What some people do to get out of a lease, is they find the landlord a new tenant to take over their lease, and then give notice to the landlord that they want to terminate the lease agreement.
When you sign the lease agreement and collect the keys to your new place, the landlord will expect you to provide him/her with 12 post-dated cheques for the full term of your lease. Yes, they still use cheques. And no, they do not accept electronic funds transfers or debit orders for payment of rent. Don’t worry though, they cannot cash the cheque until the date written on the cheque, so you must just ensure that you have money in your account at the end of each month to cover the cheque amount.
And then finally, one little piece of good news, most if not all rental properties are rented out with all major appliances. So, the refrigerator, washing machine, tumble drier, dishwasher and microwave are usually included in your rent. This saves you a tonne of money on buying new appliances; especially if you’ve just arrived in Vancouver after selling all your appliances in South Africa – which you must do, by the way, because your South African appliances won’t work in Canada. They use a different voltage system.
One unfortunate reason for our long struggle to find a suitable place to rent, was due to racial discrimination of all things. In certain areas of Vancouver, especially Surrey, Burnaby and parts of Coquitlam and Port Coquitlam, many of the landlords are Chinese immigrants. They have bought up most of the property in Vancouver and some of them only rent to Chinese renters and refuse to rent their properties out to other racial groups.
Although we struggled for four months to find a place to live, it was a blessing in disguise, because our shipment of furniture from South Africa was delayed several times. The original estimates we received for the shipment of our furniture was 12 weeks, but it ended up taking 16 weeks for our furniture to arrive in Vancouver. Thanks to Amazon, we had temporary accommodation to stay in and managed to get by without really needing much of our furniture. However, for people going it alone, it can cause a huge problem, since you might move into a new place but still have to wait for your furniture and end up sleeping on the floor and living off take-aways or staying in a hotel until your stuff arrives which can be very costly. So, it’s something to keep in mind.
We still don’t regret shipping our furniture though, because furniture in Vancouver is very expensive. You could easily end up spending double the value of your furniture back in South Africa just to refurbish your home. A tip though is to get rid of all your junk and at least half of your furniture before you leave South Africa. Houses in Vancouver are much smaller than in South Africa. We gave away and sold half of our stuff before we left South Africa and still ended up with too much stuff that we now have to donate or sell, because we don’t have space for it.
Looking back on this experience, although it was frustrating living in temporary accommodation for so many months, it turned out well for us. We ended up renting a condo in a beautiful complex that is child-friendly and surrounded by beautiful parks and walking trails. We have a view of the mountain and apparently, we will get to see bears in summer as they are quite popular in the Burke Mountain area.
