In Vancouver, the Only Thing Rising Faster Than the Cost of Living Is the Cost of Dying

I know, I know. You probably don't want to read another whiny article about how expensive it is to live in Vancouver. Thankfully this is not one of those. This is a whiny article about how expensive it is to die in Vancouver.

In an interview with The Province newspaper, a manager for Vancouver's only cemetery said it now costs $25,000 for a literal coffin-sized plot of ground. (That's on par with a one-year lease on an average two-bedroom apartment in the city, but could maybe be considered a deal if you think about how long you'll use it?)

Anyway, I did some math, and it turns out this might be the only price tag rising faster than the cost of housing in the city.

Over the last three decades, the cost of a single-detached home (still the standard measure for some reason) has risen from about $135,000 to nearly $2 million. That's a pretty ridiculous 1,300 percent hike since 1986.

Read More: Nine Students Own $57 Million of Property in Vancouver

A grave at Mountain View Cemetery (still one of the best places to smoke weed and take spooky photos, by the way) used to cost $110 before 1986. That means the cost of a hole where you bury dead people has gone up ~22,727 percent over the same period.

Predictably, this is causing a bit of a buying frenzy. "People are buying graves not because they are dying tomorrow, but because they know prices will go up," a cemetery field operations worker told The Province.

The cemetery raked in $2.4 million in revenues last year from the sale of just 75 graves. You can bet they'll make a killing on the last 800 spots they have left.

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