I grew up/currently live in the suburbs.

• expensive to buy property, reasonable to rent (especially when compared to the purchase price). Probably cheaper rent than Seattle
• Great public transit (especially within Vancouver city limits) and traffic better than Seattle. If you can get a place near a skytrain station, B-line bus or frequent transit network bus, even better
• weather is familiar to you, but I find Seattle a little rainier
• flights to/from Vancouver are expensive, except down the west coast the prices are OK. we have some new airlines that bring the costs down but only to very few locations
• multicultural, but not like Toronto/NYC which Are super diverse. It’s mainly white people, east Asian people, and Indian people.
• a lot of trendy parts of Vancouver (yaletown, coal harbor, Kitsilano) are like the stereotypical Vancouver experience. Lots of fit beautiful people walking the streets, health food stores, juice bars, people jogging, etc. not a bad place to be if you can afford it. Gastown is sort of a tourist/bar area and Main Street more of a hip area.
• if you visit for 3 days you can probably get a solid idea of what it’s like to live here