As someone who moved from Vancouver to SF 4-5 years ago:<p>1. You can drive across a bridge to the east bay and find housing that is half price in semi decent neighborhoods.  You can drive out for 2 hours and find housing that is the standard american price.  In vancouver, driving for an hour just gives you a 100-200k discount on housing that is already over $1 million, there are no real affordable places to escape to unlike the USA.<p>2. Nobody in vancouver makes an income over six figures unless you&#x27;re in the standard professions that make that much, such as doctors, high level managers and successful business owners. Only a very small amount of people are in those professions, and those jobs are not concentrated in any specific area.  You could go be a doctor in quebec, alberta or some other small town and still make a similar income but have a far lower housing cost.  There is nothing unique or high powered economically about Vancouver, it&#x27;s not the center of anything.  Vancouver&#x27;s economic climate is NOT desirable.<p>3. This affordability issue has been a problem for almost a decade, and the provincial &amp; federal governments show no real signs of having any desire to fix it. The only thing that makes it pseudo-affordable is the fact that rent is usually half price to a current mortgage. Housing has increased in vancouver 1:1 with the GDP of the city last year, which is freaking insane. People who have owned houses have gained more than their incomes for years!  For comparison, the crazy SF Bay Area is something around 1:6 with (house value increases):GDP.<p>4. If you&#x27;re stuck in canada, then there are better places to go to as far as money:price ratios go.<p>I could go on and on about this, but you get the general idea.  Vancouver is pretty much dead to me economically and it saddens me that it will never be a good idea to move back at this rate.