Local homes sales are in a balanced state despite the lowest April sales numbers since 2001, according to a report by the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver.
“Although April sales were below what’s typical for the month, we continue to see, with a sales-to-active listing ratio of nearly 17 per cent, a balanced relationship between buyer demand and seller supply in our marketplace,” Eugen Klein, REBGV president said in a statement.
“Recent activity has had a stabilizing effect on home prices at the regional level, although pricing can vary depending on area and property type.”
According to the monthly report, homes sales and listings have maintained a consistent pace in recent months, contributing to the balanced conditions.
However, the report noted that Metro Vancouver sales totalled 2,799 in April 2012, a 13.2-per-cent decline compared to the 3,225 sales in April 2011 and a decline of 2.6 per cent compared to the 2,874 sales in March 2012.
April sales were the lowest total for the month in the region since 2001 and 16.9 per cent below the 10-year April sales average of 3,369, the board said in a release.
Three new towers proposed for Rogers Arena vicinity - Vancouver New Development
Public consultations beginning this month on the development of towers around the Rogers Arena mean Vancouver's skyline could change in an area that has seen plenty of controversy.
Aquilini Development's proposal to build three new residential and commercial towers may upset some residents, but community activist Sandy Garossino supports the idea.
She believes the project could convince the B.C. Pavillion Corporation to abandon reviving the idea of building a mega-casino in favour of condo and office tower development in Yaletown.
"We're still concerned the casino idea is going to come back," Garassino said. "There is just such a strong feeling that this is a community; this is a residential neighrbourhood." Public consultation on the three towers will begin on Feb. 20.
While the proposed changes to the skyline and the density of the neighbourhood make the project noteworthy, it's also the first to consider what would happen if city council approves demolishing one of the two viaducts in Vancouver.
Vancouver city councillor Geoff Meggs has long championed the contentious idea of removing the viaducts in favour of more public and residential development.
He says the long-term possibility of a fourth tower where the Dunsmuir Viaduct now runs fits with the city's vision for the area.
Greater Vancouver home sales trend toward buyers’ market over summer
VANCOUVER, BC – August marked the third consecutive month that home sale activity in Greater Vancouver was below the 10-year average for the month. In contrast, home listing activity in the region has exceeded the 10-year norm every month since the beginning of the year.
The Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver (REBGV) reports that residential property sales of detached, attached and apartment properties on the region’s Multiple Listing Service® (MLS®) reached 2,378 in August. This total represents an eight per cent increase compared to the 2,202 sales in August 2010, but also ranks as the third lowest total for August in the last 10 years.
“MLS® statistics continue to indicate that we’re in a balanced market,” Rosario Setticasi, REBGV president said. “However, with a sales-to-actives listings ratio of 15 per cent, Greater Vancouver is in the lower end of a balanced market and has been trending toward a buyers’ market over the past three months.”
New listings for detached, attached and apartment properties in Greater Vancouver totalled 4,685 in August. This represents a 24.9 per cent increase compared to August 2010 when 3,750 properties were listed for sale on the MLS® and an eight per cent decline compared to the 5,097 new listings reported in July 2011. Last month’s new listing total was the highest volume recorded for August in 16 years.
At 15,437, the total number of residential property listings on the MLS® increased 1.4 per cent in August compared to July 2011 and rose 0.1 per cent compared to this time last year.
The MLSLink® Housing Price Index (HPI) benchmark price for all residential properties in Greater Vancouver over the last 12 months has increased 8.5 per cent to $625,578 in August 2011 from $576,597 in August 2010.
“Year over year, prices are up. However, in the detached home category, benchmark prices have come down slightly in each of the past two months,” Setticasi said. “It’s important for people entering the market to understand that activity can differ significantly depending on the area and property type.”
Sales of detached properties on the MLS® in August 2011 reached 1,020, an increase of 14.2 per cent from the 893 detached sales recorded in August 2010, and a 25.4 per cent decrease from the 1,367 units sold in August 2009. The benchmark price for detached properties increased 11.7 per cent from August 2010 to $888,243.
Sales of apartment properties reached 955 in August 2011, a 2.1 per cent increase compared to the 935 sales in August 2010, and a decrease of 34.8 per cent compared to the 1,464 sales in August 2009. The benchmark price of an apartment property increased 5.6 per cent from August 2010 to $407,457.
Attached property sales in August 2011 totalled 403, a 7.8 per cent increase compared to the 374 sales in August 2010, and a 33.9 per cent decrease from the 610 attached properties sold in August 2009. The benchmark price of an attached unit increased 4.5 per cent between August 2010 and 2011 to $511,433.
First Fully Automated Parking in North America – Jameson House (838 W HASTINGS ST)
Simply pull into the secure transfer section, lock your vehicle and go. Your car will be whisked away safely while you entre the main elevator. When you’re ready to depart, your vehicle will be quickly returned to you.
Metro Vancouver builders have returned to building condominiums in a big enough way to push up the region’s overall housing starts this year while the number of single-family homes is declining, according to new numbers from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.
The pace of new-home construction in June declined from an unexpected frenzy of starts in May, according to Robyn Adamache, a Canada Mortgage and Housing analyst in Vancouver. However, the 8,472 total housing starts recorded in Metro Vancouver at the end of June represented a 23-per-cent increase from the same period of 2010.
Of those starts, 6,813 were multi-family homes — condominiums and townhouses — which was a 51-per-cent increase from starts during the same period of 2010. On the other hand, the 1,659 single-family-home starts for the same period represented a 30-per-cent decline.
Adamache said the post-recession recovery in housing construction began a year ago in single-family home building, but this year’s increase in multi-family construction reflects the confidence developers have that the economic recovery is on more solid ground.
“Builders are feeling more confident to start those larger projects now on the multi-family side,” Adamache said Monday. “They’re feeling like it’s not just a short-term change in the economy and things are really settling down.”
Overall, Adamache added that the factors that drive new-home construction — immigration, an improving job market and continuing low mortgage rates — are still strong enough to support the construction underway.
Adamache said Metro Vancouver saw a spike in the pace of housing construction in May that skewed provincial results, but that was likely due to the nature of stronger multi-family construction.
“[Multi-family] construction is very volatile,” she said. “It makes it look like things are swinging a lot from month to month when it really could be the difference of one or two projects [starting in a given month] if they are very large.”
As of the end of June, Adamache said builders around Metro Vancouver were on pace to start work on 15,700 new housing units by the end of 2011, which is close to Canada Mortgage and Housing’s forecast of 16,000.
The biggest increases in multi-family construction have come in Richmond and Surrey with some of the activity pushed along by same influence of immigrant and offshore purchasing that is affecting the overall real estate market.
Richmond recorded 1,185 multi-family housing starts in the first half of 2011 versus 458 for the first half of 2010, and total starts of 1,315 in 2011 compared with 595 in 2010.
Across B.C., the province’s urban centres saw 11,405 new-home starts in the first half of 2011, which was fractionally lower than the 11,475 in the same period of 2010.
Nationwide, home construction rose more than expected in June, led by a jump in single-unit activity, according to Canada Mortgage and Housing.
Nationally, the seasonally adjusted annual rate of housing starts was 197,400 units last month, up 1.7 per cent from a revised 194,100 units in May, CMHC said. The April figure was also revised to 194,100 units.
Economists had expected between 184,000 and 185,000 starts in June.
“Housing starts increased in June due to an increase in single and multiple starts in Ontario,” said Bob Dugan, chief economist at CMHC’s Market Analysis Centre.
“The revised numbers show that housing starts have been above their trend line since March,” according to Bob Dugan, Canada Mortgage and Housing’s chief economist. “However, we expect housing starts to move back toward levels consistent with demographic fundamentals in the near term.”
Troubled development went into receivership in December, records show
West Vancouver's troubled Evelyn development is up for sale.
A Supreme Court order to place the property into receivership was made in December after the developer, Millennium Evelyn Properties Ltd., defaulted on a $72 million mortgage. Now creditors are awaiting its sale to collect their debts. That court decision had been sealed until earlier this week.
The Sentinel Hill development has been appraised at $100 million, but David Bowra, president of the Bowra Group, the newly appointed receiver for the property, said he's not sure how much it will actually sell for.
"I have no idea what it's worth; it's worth what someone will pay for it," said Bowra.
"I mean, it's a big chunk of real estate and it's a lot of money. There are probably a fairly limited number of people who could acquire a piece of property like that. And it's not just acquiring the property, it's developing it as well."
The City of Vancouver, which is owed money from Millennium Development Corp.'s Olympic Village project, is listed as one of the charge holders against Evelyn, but Bowra couldn't confirm whether or not the city will receive any money.
"I don't know if they're actually owed money or if their mortgage has been assigned, but . . . there are a lot of other people who would have to get paid ahead of them," he said.
As for the buyers who have pre-purchased 31 of Evelyn's 109 condominium units, their money is safe in a lawyers' trust, according to Bowra. And while they're free to get it back, most of them appear to want to see the project through, he said.
"The vast majority . . . are still very interested in buying a unit in the development; I think the number I heard was 80 per cent," he said.
"I'd like to think in the next 30 to 60 days, we'll have some definitive news for them, one way or another."
The District of West Vancouver is also eager to see the long-awaited project get rolling.
"I think the receiver, his job will be to deal with the property very quickly, as quickly as possible. So that, I would say, bodes well for moving ahead," said Geri Boyle, manager of community planning for the municipality.
"The community worked hard to come up with an agreement working with a developer and I think they've been disappointed to see it sit as sort of a construction site for so long."
In response to Millennium's claims that municipal approvals took longer to achieve than anticipated and "land lenders lost patience with the long process," Boyle partially agreed.
"It was a complicated process, certainly getting through the zoning probably took longer than they anticipated," she said.
No building permits have been issued to date, but if a new developer were to buy the property they could proceed under the approved master plan.
Millennium Development Corp. is behind both the Evelyn Drive project and the Olympic Village development, which is also in receivership. The latter first ran into problems when its financial backer, Fortress Investment Group, pulled out in 2008 and was replaced by the City of Vancouver. The city has yet to recover its $740-million loan.
Canadian sales of existing homes rose 4.5% in January, hitting their highest level since April last year, as buyers rushed to beat tighter mortgage regulations set to come into effect next month, according to Canadian Real Estate Association figures.
Vancouver and Toronto led the growth, with half of all local markets reporting seasonally adjusted gains in the month, CREA said. Sales activity improved over the second half of last year and is now 25% above its low in July, it said.
"We anticipated the recent announcement of tighter mortgage regulations, which will come into effect this March, would pull forward sales activity into the first quarter of 2011, particularly in some of Canada's more expensive housing markets," said Gregory Klump, CREA's chief economist. "The sharp rise in sales activity in Toronto following the announcement provides early evidence confirming this," said Klump.
CREA warned the government not to take any further action until the longer-term impact of the most recent changes is fully known.
Ottawa announced in January that it would tighten mortgage-lending rules for the second time in a year to stop borrowers taking on more debt than they can afford. The government is reducing the maximum amortization period on mortgages backed by government insurance to 30 years, from 35 years, which makes monthly payments higher.
The tightening is expected to primarily hit first-time homebuyers, or those with less available for a down payment.
BMO mortgage expert Laura Parsons said the changes are a good thing.
“People are like deer in the headlights when these things happen, but they need to be properly informed,” she said. “This is a good thing, it saves them money.”
Reducing the amortization period by five years to 30 years would save about $53,000 in interest payments over the life of the mortgage, she said.
Actual new listings through the MLS System posted their biggest month-over-month increase since 2007 in January, with more than double the listings from the previous month, CREA said.
As sales activity and new supply have risen in tandem, the national market remains balanced, CREA said. The national sale-to-new listings ratio stood at 55.7% in January, little changed from the previous two months.
Parsons said BMO expects the market to remain balanced throughout 2011.
“According to our survey, 61% of homeowners are confident their homes will hold their current values throughout the year,” she said.
The national average price was little changed from the previous three months at $343,675, an increase of 4.5% from January last year, CREA said.
The January year-over-year gain was distorted by a jump in the number of multi-million dollar homes sold in a couple of areas in Greater Vancouver, it said.
Realtor Bob Rennie dodged questions Thursday morning about whether taxpayers would even come close to breaking even on the Olympic Village development.
Hosting a media launch about sales that start Friday at what’s now branded The Village on False Creek, he said Rennie Marketing Systems was working to stabilize the city’s asset and to maximize revenue.
Rennie said he sees the downtown condo market stabilizing and the real estate market reviving from its recent slump.
Instead of aiming to sell approximately 480 unsold units like he did last May after the 2010 Winter Games ended and the property was returned to developer Millennium Water and the city, Rennie aims to sell 230 condos in two areas of the village. Of the 737 condos at the village, 263 have sold, most of them in 2007. Friday’s launch is the third time the units have gone on sale.
Receiver Ernst and Young has contracted with a company to rent approximately 114 units to get the “ghost town” populated fast. Those units don’t include the 119 rental units purpose-built by the developer or the city’s 252 market rental, co-op and below-market rental units in the village.
Rennie blamed slow sales after the Games on bad timing due to a sluggish economy.
“I do not believe we ever had a product problem,” Rennie said. “What I do have is a pricing problem, and that pricing problem on May 15 was compounded by the fact that there was 480 units for sale and people didn’t see any sense of urgency and everybody just moved to the sidelines and folded their arms.”
He’s confident the prices are appropriate now. He said market testing done before the latest sales launch attracted 31 offers in 10 days. They included 12 for units that cost more than $900,000, 11 offers for units priced from $600,000 to $900,000 and eight offers for units under $600,000.
Seven chairs sat outside the sales centre at 5 p.m. on Wednesday. Fourteen chairs labelled with people’s names were positioned outside the sales centre just before 11 a.m. Thursday morning. The sales centre was to open at noon Thursday with sales to begin Friday. Rennie said he was giving a tour to 1,058 realtors through the site yesterday starting at 2 p.m.
Prices for the unsold units have been reduced an average of 30 per cent from May 2010 rates. Rennie said rates on the lower priced units weren’t reduced much—a studio now goes for $349,500 to $354,900—but prices on larger units that were priced at $1.5 million saw greater reductions.
He aims to sell 60 units in 60 days.
He noted the receiver for the village, Ernst and Young, has been tackling building deficiencies and that regular new home warranties protect owners.
Only a bank and a private liquor store operate at the village. Rennie said London Drugs is eying population numbers, negotiations are underway with an unnamed grocery store—previously the grocery seller was meant to be Urban Fare—and a consultant has been hired to focus on leasing the other commercial spaces.
The city is owed $740 million for the development.
OTTAWA, February 8, 2011 — The seasonally adjusted annual rate1 of housing starts was 170,400 units in January, according to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC). This is up from 169,000 units in December 2010. According to final figures, actual housing starts for 2010 totalled 189,930 units, with activity moderating towards demographic fundamentals by the final quarter of 2010.
“Housing starts moved slightly higher in January because of an increase in rural starts,” said Bob Dugan, Chief Economist at CMHC’s Market Analysis Centre. “Single-detached and multiple starts showed a moderate decline.”
The seasonally adjusted annual rate of urban starts decreased by 1.7 per cent to 146,900 units in January. Urban multiple starts moderated by 1.5 per cent in January to 82,900 units, while single urban starts moved lower by 2.0 per cent to 64,000 units.
January’s seasonally adjusted annual rate of urban starts decreased by 19.0 per cent in the Prairie Region, by 7.9 per cent in British Columbia, and by 1.0 per cent in Québec. Urban starts increased by 13.3 per cent in Atlantic Canada and by 10.3 per cent in Ontario.
Rural starts2 were estimated at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 23,500 units in January.
As Canada's national housing agency, CMHC draws on 65 years of experience to help Canadians access a variety of high quality, environmentally sustainable and affordable homes. CMHC also provides reliable, impartial and up-to-date housing market reports, analysis and knowledge to support and assist consumers and the housing industry in making informed decisions.
More Canadians were on move in 2010 and they were mostly headed West
TORONTO - A new report from the TD Bank suggests that Canadians are taking the phrase "Go West, young man" seriously.
More Canadians were on the move last year as a percentage of the population than any year since 1998, the bank says.
And most were headed West to take advantage of better job prospects and higher standards of living.
The analysis shows 337,000 Canadians migrated within the country's border's last year, 45,000 more than in 2009. The level represents about one per cent of the total population, the highest since 1998.
Except for New Brunswick, only Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia experienced a net inflow of people last year.
And the report predicts that westward bound migration will continue over the next two years, although not up to the levels seen during the resource boom prior to the recession.
In relative terms, Manitoba and Prince Edward Island are losing the most people. Ontario and Quebec will continue to keep shedding numbers, but by a tiny fraction relative to their populations, the bank said.
B.C. cities, including Victoria, are world-class in their lack of affordability, story and photos
Homes are "severely unaffordable" in all four of the B.C. cities that were included in a 325-city international survey of housing costs, and Vancouver's affordability score was the third-worst of all. The average home in Vancouver, according to data from the third quarter of last year, cost $602,000 -- or 9.5. times the $63,100 median income of households in the city, according to the survey results released Monday by the Winnipeg-based Frontier Centre of Public Policy. Only Sydney, Australia, at 9.6 times the median income, and Hong Kong, at 11.4 times, scored worse.
With their housing prices quite a bit lower but their incomes a little lower, too, Victoria, Abbotsford and Kelowna were -- in that order -- uncomfortably close to Vancouver's 323rd-place finish in the international rankings.
Victoria's average price of $430,000 was 7.1 times the median household income of $60,900, resulting in a ranking of 297th out of 325. Abbotsford's $402,000 average price made it 6.5 times the median household income of $62,300 and 297th in the rankings. And Kelowna finished 283rd with a median income of $57,500 that was 5.9 times the median price of $57,500.
The study pins the "severely unaffordable" label on any city with a multiplier of more than five -- about 75 of the 325 studied, including Montreal and Toronto, but nowhere else in any part of Canada except B.C.
For a housing market to be rated as "affordable" the ratio of price to income can't exceed three times. And in nearly half the 35 Canadian cities surveyed, it is either lower or very close to that mark. In Edmonton, for example, the multiplier is just 3.5, although its low figure is in part thanks to the very high median income of $88,800. And in Winnipeg, where people earn just a little less than in Vancouver, it's 3.2.
The researchers who conducted the survey point out that you can't blame things such as interest rates, or the federal mortgage rules that have recently been in the news for B.C.'s worrisomely high score. These factors are the same everywhere across Canada, yet many other Canadian cities remain affordable. For example, it costs just 2.3 times the median income to buy an average home in Fredericton, a small government-dependent provincial capital where incomes are nearly equal to those in unaffordable Victoria.
So the policy factors that drive prices too high in relation to residents' incomes must be closer to home. David Seymour, a senior policy analyst for the Frontier Centre, and his collaborator on the study, consulting demographer Wendell Cox of St. Louis, finger "politically inflated land costs."
"These land prices include the cost increasing influence of land supply restrictions (such as urban growth boundaries), excessive infrastructure fees and other overly strict land use regulations," they write.
In other words, the problem is not only in Vancouver, where everybody knows housing costs too much, but also in Victoria, Abbotsford, Kelowna and, almost certainly, in all of the other Lower Mainland cities that weren't surveyed. And this problem is world-class, worse here than in most cities in many other developed countries.
But the solution, we ought not forget, can only be local.
A prominent Chinese-Canadian fears his ethnic community is being unfairly tarnished by the protest of Asian condominium owners against a proposed hospice at the University of B.C.
“People are afraid that the entire Chinese community is being painted as uncaring and afraid of a facility that would provide good for the entire community,” said Tung Chan, former CEO of the Vancouver-based immigrant services group Success.
Dozens of Asian residents in an upscale condominium highrise on the UBC campus are protesting a proposal to build a hospice next door, near Thunderbird Stadium.
The ethnic Chinese homeowners have complained that proximity to death brings bad luck in their cultural tradition. They also fear the hospice could lower their property values.
Chan’s comments were echoed on Sunday by several Asian UBC residents interviewed by The Vancouver Sun on the campus.
Most did not want to be named, for fear of causing friction among neighbours, but most agreed the controversy is painting the entire ethnic community in a bad light.
Stanley Hee said the condominium residents opposing the hospice are a relatively small group. “We don’t have this strong feeling about that,” Hee said. “They say there are some cultural differences, but I don’t think so. That’s not a good reason [not to build the hospice]; I don’t agree with that.”
Like Chan, Hee and the other residents said they feel the objections are a classic not-in-my-backyard response, similar to the response to proposed recovery houses or homeless shelters in other neighbourhoods.
Some of those surveyed said they felt there were better — more peaceful and scenic — locations for the hospice, but were not opposed to its being on campus.
Chan said many Chinese-Canadians are worried the hospice protest will convince people that Asian immigrants are unwilling to accept the values of their adopted country.
“They fear that people would then say: ‘If that is what Chinese-Canadians believe, then they don’t fit into this society.’
“And that’s a shame.”
Chan said news reports about the “culture clash” behind the protest has “brought out negative comments towards our entire group.
“Whereas the protest only involves a small group of people and is based on Nimbyism. The Chinese community is much more diverse than that, and many Chinese are very supportive of hospice facilities.”
Chan believes the protest is more about economics than culture. “People take whatever excuse they can dream up and say that they don’t want it to be in their backyard.
“If it’s in someone else’s backyard, then it’s fine.”
Chan rejected the notion that being close to dying people is taboo in Chinese culture.
He said Success facilitates visits by volunteers to hospices. “We teach people how to deal with dying people in a more sensitive way.”
The hospice, proposed by the Order of St. John and the UBC faculty of medicine, would be a 15-bed palliative care facility operated by Vancouver Coastal Health.
The site near Thunderbird Stadium was selected after a four-year process — and is considered the best of 12 possible sites on campus because of the need to link with the UBC faculty of medicine for academic and research purposes.
“The integrated research component and the proximity to the UBC faculty of medicine provide a rare service to improving health services to the most vulnerable,” said Order of St. John spokesman Peter Hebb.
There is no other hospice on Vancouver’s west side that is physically separate from a hospital, he added.
Hebb declined to discuss the protest by condo owners.
Joe Stott, director of campus and community planning at UBC, said a plan to bring the hospice proposal to the UBC board of governors in February has been postponed due to a request from the University Neighbourhood Association, for more consultation.
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