Q: I would like to relocate to Vancouver, but I'm not sure what kind of salary I should aim for since I know it has such a high cost of living. All of the salary/relocation calculators I've found online will not allow you to compare outside of the US. It would be great if I had some frame of reference. I am currently living in Birmingham, AL, so I know the cost of living will be dramatically different from here. I don't expect to have all the things I have here, but I don't exactly want to set myself back just to move there.
A: Probably Seattle. Not only are the costs of living similar, but so is the (horrible) weather. But it all depends what part you live in. Last year, the cheapest home on the market in the GVA was $300,000, and it was a piece of crap. And housing prices will only go up with the Olympics. There are some nice areas in the suburbs which are cheaper than Vancouver itself, but personally, I get bad vibes from the surburbs for some reason. Downtown is super expensive. The false creek area of downtown is amazingly nice, and there is so much new development there, it is very modern and family friendly, although I am not sure about pricing there. I live in the west side of Vancouver (the nicer side), and my house cost $1.3 million when we bought it in 1996 (and this is a regular sized home on a quarter acre lot), and the prices have gone up A LOT since then. There are a lot of houses in my area that are selling for over 3 million. As for the salary, no clue. But you could find a nice apartment on the west side, like kerrisdale or kitsilano. By the way, the public school system in Vancouver, complete crap. The weather might send you into depression as well. You could wait until we have the huge catastrophic earthquake which is inevitable, the house prices will go WAY down then! Just curious, where are you living in now?