[pabloescobyte]

Yes indeed. There are Vancouver Specials in the surrounding municipalities as well (I used to live in one).

[emacsen]

I meant more is the administrative red tape an issue. :)

This is somewhat aspirational, but I live in Vancouver and if/when we get PR, we'd like to buy a home and possibly want to renovate.

Condo living (or in local Canadian "Strata Living") has been a very mixed experience for us.

[LawnGnome]

My impression is that it's not amazing anywhere, but I've heard Burnaby (for example) is a bit more development friendly than Vancouver.

I'm interested to see what happens in the next couple of years — Ken Sim (Vancouver's new mayor) had significantly improving permitting speeds and decisions as a key plank in his platform. I'm curious to see how he and his party are planning to follow through on that.