Valuing Vancouver

The MountainMath blog has created an interesting mapped visualization of Vancouver's Homes in One Family (RS) Zones. The map allows you to enter your salary to view where you can afford to buy a home in the city (or, as is more likely, where you can't afford to buy).

If you earn less than $175,000 your options for buying in a one family zone are very limited. At around 200k you have some limited choice in the far eastern outskirts of the city. At 300k a year you can pretty much have your pick of the East Side. If you want to buy in the West Side then you need to be earning north of $400,000 a year.


In January Demographia International named Vancouver the 3rd least affordable housing market in the world, behind Hong Kong and Sydney. Darkhorse Analytics has created an interactive map to help explain how the city's housing market has become so unaffordable. The 2017 Property Assessments Map visualizes the average property assessments for buildings in Vancouver.

Individual building footprints on the map are colored by their value. One impressive feature of Darkhouse Analytics' mapped visualization is the 'Stories in the Data' feature. This feature picks out interesting stories in the data to help explain the high cost of property in the city. For example it highlights on the map neighborhoods where the average property assessments are higher or lower than the average for the city. It also highlights areas where there are large variations in property prices.


The Vancouver Land Prices Heat Map visualizes the price of Vancouver parcels of land based on the 2014 BC assessment data from tax reports. Land parcels on the map are coloured to reflect the price per square foot of the property.

The map shows that many of Vancouver's most expensive properties are concentrated in the Downtown, West End and Fairview neighborhoods. The map also shows that land prices tend to get cheaper the further you move east in the city. If you select a building lot on the map you can view the exact price per square foot for the property.