Vancouver developers build, hoping they will come

[dc_denizen]

it is interesting and singular to have a single company/family business (Concord Pacific Developers, from Hong Kong) take such an active role in the development of huge parts of the city.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concord...c_Developments

Concord Pacific Developments first came onto the Canadian urban development scene when the principal share holder, Li Ka-Shing of Hong Kong, obtained the property that hosted downtown Vancouver's Expo '86. Since then, numerous condominium developments have been constructed on that site by Concord Pacific. One of the most notable projects created on the waterfront Expo '86 site is Concord Pacific Place. This is a massive 204 acre waterfront development which combines housing for about 15,000 people and features more than 50 acres of public parks and three kilometers of seawall walkway.
Concord Pacific's attention to living space and green environments garnered several accolades and awards from real estate boards and financial organizations. Under the current leadership of Concord Pacific Group's president, Terry Hui, each community has been envisioned and designed in synergy with its surroundings, with shops, parks, marinas and recreation. Recent accolades include, the company’s rating of #1 Developer in Canada for sales volume and winning the prestigious Grand Georgie Award for having British Columbia's Best Multi Family Development of the Year.
Concord Pacific Developments soon began projects in other areas of Canada. Currently in Toronto, a large master planned community is estimated to complete in 2010 on downtown Toronto's lakefront. It is called the CityPlace and is adjacent to Toronto's Rogers Center (formerly known as Sky Dome) and the world famous CN Tower. Over 7500 residential units have been created within an array of 20 high rise and midrise towers.
Concord Pacific Developments have numerous projects other cities including Calgary, Richmond, Surrey, and BC's Okanagan.

[fflint]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

This is accurate, but like San Francisco, having a poor job market and high cost of living is a far cry from being "a resort city for the Chinese". That's just hyperbole.

What? San Francisco doesn't have a poor job market. There are more employed San Franciscans now than there have ever been, and unemployment is at a 15-year low. Jobs in the city proper have grown 19% between 2010 and 2015, some 4.6% in 2014 alone. The current unemployment rate in SF is 3.6%. One commercial brokerage ranked San Francisco the top U.S. office market, based on employment growth, vacancy and rents. And it's not just tech, which is of course growing at a torrid pace--between 2010 and mid-2014, the city's hospitality sector grew roughly 25%, retail over 15%, manufacturing over 9%, construction over 14%. People move to San Francisco for good jobs, of which there are plenty.

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by fflint

What? San Francisco doesn't have a poor job market.

Just speaking in reference to how a fellow San Franciscan characterized the city's job market... (the specifics of which aren't really relevant to my point in any case)

[NorthernDancer]

Originally Posted by destroycreate

Actually most people I've met who live in Vancouver all complain about low wages and lack of opportunity.

That has nothing to do with anything I said. I said:

1. Vancouver does not have a low amount of office space. The metro area has well over 20 square feet of office per capita. That is right in-line with other regions/metro areas, including Seattle.

2. There is not a "lack of places to work". That someone would say there is, is pure nonsense. And it would be reflected in sky-high unemployment rates.

3. It is not a "resort city" for the Chinese, or any other group. It's a city like any other city. The fact that it has a lot of foreign investment in real estate does not make it a "resort city".


I never said anything about whether jobs there paid well or not.

[mhays]

The Seattle metro has at least triple that amount per capita, and maybe quadruple. Colliers put the market at 128,700,000 sf last year, with "Seattle" at 55,600,000 of that (no idea what boundaries). They skip a lot of space.

[destroycreate]

Originally Posted by NorthernDancer

That has nothing to do with anything I said. I said:

1. Vancouver does not have a low amount of office space. The metro area has well over 20 square feet of office per capita. That is right in-line with other regions/metro areas, including Seattle.

2. There is not a "lack of places to work". That someone would say there is, is pure nonsense. And it would be reflected in sky-high unemployment rates.

3. It is not a "resort city" for the Chinese, or any other group. It's a city like any other city. The fact that it has a lot of foreign investment in real estate does not make it a "resort city".


I never said anything about whether jobs there paid well or not.

What's your point? Nobody is trying to fight with you.

[tech12]

Originally Posted by fflint

There is just no way there is only fifty million square feet of office space in downtown SF.

This has downtown SF at around 80 million square feet, as of last year:

http://www.corfac.com/MarketReports/TRENDS-2014Q2.pdf

Financial District - 29,616,341
South Financial District - 26,655,795
Rincon/South Beach - 5,450,192
Jackson Square - 3,044,634
Union Square - 5,581,038
Mid-Market - 6,834,920
Civic Center - 4,256,475
South of Market - 1,944,485

total: 83,383,880 sq. ft. of office space

Of course that's probably including a little extra that should be excluded, such as South beach (but not Rincon Hill) and part of SOMA (depending on what they're counting as "SOMA")...so the total is probably more like 80 million square feet, give or take a couple million.

It definitely looks more correct than 50 million square feet. I remember seeing another report several years ago that also had downtown SF at around 80 million.

[NorthernDancer]

Originally Posted by mhays

The Seattle metro has at least triple that amount per capita, and maybe quadruple. Colliers put the market at 128,700,000 sf last year, with "Seattle" at 55,600,000 of that (no idea what boundaries). They skip a lot of space.

LOL. How do you figure that is triple or quadruple the amount per capita? The Seattle metro area has about 3.7 million people.

-------
128.7 million square feet/3.7 million people = 34.7 square feet per capita

That's not even double Vancouver's square footage per capita. It's certainly not triple or quadruple.
---------

If that market is the Seattle CSA, that's about 4.6 million people

128.7 million square feet/4.6 million people = 28 square feet per capita

----------

I'm really trying to figure out where you're getting this "triple or quadruple" square feet per capita from. Vancouver has 20 some square feet per capita. Triple or quadruple would mean 70-90 square feet per capita.

[Jasonhouse]

Originally Posted by James Bond Agent 007

Because, if you have a residential market that's vastly out of proportion to the commercial market, that indicates something is wrong. Or, at best, you have a highly unusual real estate market.

Imagine, for example, a city of 300K, with no other cities within 200 miles. Imagine further this city only has 100K sq ft of office space - total. And maybe another 100K sq ft of industrial and retail space, each, in total.

Would that indicate either something very wrong, and/or something very unusual? Absolutely. A city that size should have a lot more than 300K sq ft of total commercial/retail/industrial space.

I have always noticed that every time I went to Vancouver. The amount of places to live seems vastly out of proportion to the amount of places to work.

Seriously though, if this is a fact, then there's got to be some research somewhere essentially proving that to be the case. Does anyone have a link to it? I don't, I looked, but couldn't find it. Would be nice to see.



Put another way, can anyone cite an example of another city which demonstrates the consequences of what people are suggesting will be disastrous for Vancouver?

[James Bond Agent 007]

Frankly, I thought this had become something akin to common knowledge by now, there's been so much press on it.

Vancouver planner Andy Yan fights to prevent a ‘zombie’ city

When Andy Yan talks about the housing crisis in Vancouver, he uses value-laden words such as “citizenship,” “courage” and “sacrifice” as he describes how to make sure this place doesn’t become a “zombie” city in which people are indifferent to each other.

The Vancouver-raised urban planner has become the go-to man on the hot subjects of housing unaffordability, empty condos and the “problems and opportunities of money flowing all around the world,” which is making this West Coast city unique.

And not necessarily unique in a good way.

Metro Vancouver may be developing into a “resort economy,” he says, in which many people who own property in Metro Vancouver for the most part do not live here.

Downtown Vancouver condos left empty by foreign owners

Nearly a quarter of all condos in some parts of downtown Vancouver area are empty or occupied only part of the year by non-residents, according to data from the 2011 census data.

In Coal Harbour, about one in four condos are "non-resident occupied", said Andy Yan, a senior researcher with BTAworks, the research division of Bing Thom Architects.

Vancouver’s vacancies point to investors, not residents

Nearly a quarter of condos in Vancouver are empty or occupied by non-residents in some dense areas of downtown, a signal that investors play a significant role in the city’s housing market.

And the city overall has a much higher rate of empty apartments and houses than other Canadian cities, with a rate closer to places like New York and San Francisco at the height of their mortgage crisis in 2010.

Downtown, the rate is so high that it’s as though there were 35 towers at 20 storeys apiece – empty.

Now, I suppose it might be OK for this to go on for a while. But if all those Chinese investors decide to all sell at once, Vancouver is going to end up with a whole slew of vertical slums.

[mhays]

You're right NorthernDancer, I was off by a factor of 2.

More like 40/pp if you include all types of offices. The Colliers numbers get close to 55/pp for King County, so that would be in the 60s at least, though I acknowledge that would be gerrymandering and also Vancouver's 20 is also a substantial undercount.

[NorthernDancer]

Originally Posted by mhays

You're right NorthernDancer, I was off by a factor of 2.

More like 40/pp if you include all types of offices. The Colliers numbers get close to 55/pp for King County, so that would be in the 60s at least, though I acknowledge that would be gerrymandering and also Vancouver's 20 is also a substantial undercount.

I'm just trying to figure out how you came to the conclusion that Seattle has 3-4 times the office space per capita of Vancouver. Can you share your calculations with us?

And the figure for Vancouver is not 20. I don't know where you get that from. I said that it's 20 something, not 20.

According to Colliers Q3 2014 NA Office Report, Vancouver had 24.5 million square feet of downtown office space (with 2.2 million square feet under construction), and 30.1 million square feet of suburban office space (with 1.1 million square feet under construction):

http://www.colliers.com/-/media/File...14Q3_Final.pdf

That's about 54.6 million square feet of office space in the metro are, divided by about 2.5 million people = 21.8 square feet per capita. If you include the space that was under construction, that is about 23.2 square feet per capita.

[Jasonhouse]

Originally Posted by James Bond Agent 007

Frankly, I thought this had become something akin to common knowledge by now, there's been so much press on it.

Vancouver planner Andy Yan fights to prevent a ‘zombie’ city


Downtown Vancouver condos left empty by foreign owners


Vancouver’s vacancies point to investors, not residents

Now, I suppose it might be OK for this to go on for a while. But if all those Chinese investors decide to all sell at once, Vancouver is going to end up with a whole slew of vertical slums.

Complaints about 'non-resident owned and unoccupied' housing units are much different than complaints about there being a relative lack of jobs downtown, compared to the number of residents, which is what MikeTO was complaining about, which everyone has accepted as gospel, that I wondered about.

As others have noted, DT Vancouver has a large employment base, thanks to the millions of sqft of office, retail and other types of space occupied by paid employees (such as govt facilities). A quick glance at search returns suggest DT area employment around 150k, and residential population of around 100k. Which is a ratio of roughly 3:2. If this is so problematic for Vancouver, then we should be able to identify example cities with a worse ratio of residents to workers that are considered 'failed'. Can anyone name one?

[ue]

Originally Posted by destroycreate

Actually most people I've met who live in Vancouver all complain about low wages and lack of opportunity. If you mean retail jobs or hospitality jobs, sure, they're probably aplenty. But white collar professional jobs that allow you to make a more comfortable living are evidently sparse. That's why many people in that region see Seattle as a better city for your career.

Many Vancouverites I met on my last trip all compared the city to SF, with similarly high cost of living yet not the high paying job market to go with it.

It's always left me stumped though...given Vancouver is so desirable, beautiful, and has close proximity to the far east, you'd think more Canadian headquarters or global satellite offices would seek to be there. It would recruit and attract a lot of talent who don't want to be living in the other colder provinces. Part of the the Bay Area's appeal (even globally) for example is that it's just seen as a very nice place to live--the great outdoors are near, weather is relatively pleasant year round, there's a lot of culture etc. VCR has all of those amenities if not better, so I find it a little odd.

Toronto is also very tied to Asian foreign investment and is already the established financial heart of the country. It's winters are colder than Vancouver's, but milder than most other big cities (Montreal, Ottawa, Edmonton, Calgary) and has more cultural amenities due to its position and size within Canada.

[mhays]

Originally Posted by NorthernDancer

I'm just trying to figure out how you came to the conclusion that Seattle has 3-4 times the office space per capita of Vancouver. Can you share your calculations with us?

And the figure for Vancouver is not 20. I don't know where you get that from. I said that it's 20 something, not 20.

According to Colliers Q3 2014 NA Office Report, Vancouver had 24.5 million square feet of downtown office space (with 2.2 million square feet under construction), and 30.1 million square feet of suburban office space (with 1.1 million square feet under construction):

http://www.colliers.com/-/media/File...14Q3_Final.pdf

That's about 54.6 million square feet of office space in the metro are, divided by about 2.5 million people = 21.8 square feet per capita. If you include the space that was under construction, that is about 23.2 square feet per capita.

So it's 21 something vs. 34 something, both omitting a lot of space. Not really in line.

If you want to include construction, add about 7,000,000 sf under construction in greater Downtown Seattle and Downtown Bellevue.

[biguc]

Originally Posted by James Bond Agent 007

But if all those Chinese investors decide to all sell at once, Vancouver is going to end up with a whole slew of vertical slums.

In that scenario the Chinese investors would lose their shirts, selling at a loss to people who would happily live there. It's not as though Vancouver has become an undesirable place to live, or a city with a glut of housing.

[vanman]

Exactly. Prices would drop but only temporarily as people who were previously priced out of the market flood in. We saw a taste of this with the 2008 Global Financial crisis.

[st7860]

Originally Posted by Jasonhouse

Seriously though, if this is a fact, then there's got to be some research somewhere essentially proving that to be the case. Does anyone have a link to it? I don't, I looked, but couldn't find it. Would be nice to see.

The Andy Yan guy is just a planner for an architectural firm that makes a name for himself going around saying that empty but good looking building are bad and so on. He's been doing it for a few years.

What he does tell people that in Canada, 'foreigners' who are not Canadian residents pay taxes when they sell a home they live in, wheres Canadian's do not. Also, no matter whether a property in Vancouver is occupied, the owner still pays school, property, and sewer taxes.

http://www.scarp.ubc.ca/people/andy-yan

[Trans Canada]

Vancouver office stats from Cushman & Wakefield MarketBeat Office Snapshot, Q4 2014


http://www.cushmanwakefield.com/~/me...ice_Q42014.pdf

[mhays]

To guess at the region's total inventory, I suggest finding the largest brokerage number and adding a percentage based upon however much you know about their methods. Maybe it's 70,000,000 sf or more.

But generally, they apply similar methods to one part of town vs. another. That suggests that most of the metro's office space is actually in or near Downtown. Assuming that's true, then there's been a false narrative that office space is unusually dispersed due to the Downtown Peninsula's residential preference.

In fact, I don't recall any really big office concentrations outside of that area. Even Burnaby's offices seem to be dispersed.