City Survivor Round 8

They aren't really similar much at all outside of relatively chill and cool NW people who live in each. Climate is somewhat different, terrain, proximity to the ocean, food, culture, etc.  Seattle though, and I'm not bagging on it at all because it's become a world city, is pretty unaffordable.  I think the average single family starts around $900k.  Seattle is a bit more of what I would consider to be a Pacific Rim city and has attracted very successful people from around the Ring of Fire but particularly SE Asia, Taiwan, China, Japan and Korea.  I'd bet Vancouver is slightly less affordable than Seattle.  But if you didn't have a solid trade up, you're looking at figuring shit out with a house note of well over $4,000/month before you get to taxes or insurance.  Seatttle has progressive property taxes, so you'd probably pay about $11,500 on a typical million dollar house.  So that's basically another grand a month with maybe property coverage coming in around $800ish.  So you're at $6,000 a month before getting to water, electricity, gas, internet and cable.  So say $6,750/month before food.  It keeps adding up.  People can make decent money up there, but it would suck to be starting out and having to rent like every room in your house to make shit work.  Sorry about the real estate aside....

Edit - yeah, Vancouver is crazy.  From Google:

According to the REBGV, the benchmark price for all homes in Metro Vancouver at the end of 2021 was $1,230,200, which is a 17.3 per cent increase from December 2020. Prices for detached homes and townhouses rose 22 per cent last year. Apartment prices increased 12.8 per cent, the report said. 20% a year...

Boomtowns.