Vancouver Real Estate 'Bubble' at 30-year Peak

[WarrenC12]

CACs don't go into a black hole though, they provide community resources in the direct area of the development. Without them, the developer would collect more cash, and we'd either not have the amenities, or other taxpayers would be on the hook for them.

I understand the complaint, but I'm also hearing construction is still going full tilt in the city... so...

[GenWhy?]

Originally Posted by officedweller

I think the point is that for market condos, in the event of a depressed market (as we are in now), the CACs establish a floor for cost recovery that prevents market pricing from being lowered.

Yes, developers won't voluntarily give up profits if the market is high, but the CACs appear to have the effect of shifting the breakeven point to a point where affordability is impossible (even if the developer wants to do so).

By reference, I cringe at the CAC cost in Vancouver now, because my 1994 condo purchase (resale near Yaletown in a down market) was at $217 per sq ft. (the original HK buyer had paid $281 per sq ft and took a loss).

I'd say it depends on what you think you can get in the market at that time, mixed with how much you paid for land. Lots of folks bought land recently and need to recoup. Others that have had their land for a long time (discounted land) and maybe get some lucky density either outright or rezoning, why would they market units for less? If the market says $x for a 2-bed in east van I swear it'll re-sell to an "affordable" rate in this market anyway.

Then there's the low density aspect of this city that doesn't allow (for the most part) fourplexes, at least, or the ability to redevelop without the City forcing a local family developer from doing a land assembly. This happens all. The. Time. A decent-sized lot that could accommodate an apartment is forced to buy the neighbouring lot. = no redevelopment until a big company buys everyone out for a premium = expensive condos. Generally and anecdotally speaking.

[officedweller]

Originally Posted by GenWhy?

... Others that have had their land for a long time (discounted land) and maybe get some lucky density either outright or rezoning, why would they market units for less? If the market says $x for a 2-bed in east van I swear it'll re-sell to an "affordable" rate in this market anyway.

In this case, in a down market, if the CAC was lower, the developer would at least have the option of undertaking a project with a lower margin and still have a pricepoint that appeals to the market, rather than continuing to sit on the land. i.e. flexibility to respond to market conditions. Why would they market units for less? Because "less" is market pricing.

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

CACs don't go into a black hole though, they provide community resources in the direct area of the development. Without them, the developer would collect more cash, and we'd either not have the amenities, or other taxpayers would be on the hook for them...

You have to wonder whether the newcomers to the neighbourhood should be the only ones bearing the cost of the amenties provided by CACs (such as daycare centres, social housing, cultural amenities, etc.). Is the need for those facilities solely exacerbated by the new construction and residents? Or is it an extension of a NIMBY sentiment against change and a monetary trade-off or buy-in (that introduces a barrier to entry through high units prices)?

[Changing City]

Originally Posted by officedweller

You have to wonder whether the newcomers to the neighbourhood should be the only ones bearing the cost of the amenties provided by CACs (such as daycare centres, social housing, cultural amenities, etc.). Is the need for those facilities solely exacerbated by the new construction and residents? Or is it an extension of a NIMBY sentiment against change and a monetary trade-off or buy-in (that introduces a barrier to entry through high units prices)?

If you accept Genwhy's point that the market sets the price for new apartments (whether there's a CAC or not) the newcomers aren't bearing the costs. The developers are bearing the costs, and they ought to be paying less for the land as a result. If there were no CACs land values would probably be even greater.

CACs aren't the only source of funding for new facilities, they're just one source. Most renewals and many upgrades of existing public facilities are paid out of the capital element of the City's budget - the part that has to be approved at each municipal election. Other growth related facilities are paid for with Development Cost Levies - DCLs - paid be almost every development project. (Only some rezonings pay a CAC). For example, Emery Barnes Park was initially acquired, and then expanded, with DCLs collected over many years in Downtown South. The new Richards Street Park site was acquired by the City, but the construction is funded from a CAC offered by Westbank for the Telus Garden condos.

[officedweller]

Originally Posted by Changing City

If you accept Genwhy's point that the market sets the price for new apartments (whether there's a CAC or not) the newcomers aren't bearing the costs. The developers are bearing the costs, and they ought to be paying less for the land as a result. If there were no CACs land values would probably be even greater.

I think that [they ought to be paying less for land] assumes that land costs being incurred in real-time as opposed to an example of a developer having bought land in the past - whether at lower cost or higher cost.
If you view the cost of the land as a sunk cost, the variables governing whether to proceed or not (at the present time) or wait or get out are on the construction and sales side (ie all those bits need to fit between land cost and market price).
I suppose there are many developers who do acquire the land immediately before developing, but there are probably others who hold land for longer periods before developing.

Didn't Westbank have to add a floor to Shangri-La because the package they had agreed to was too costly?

EDIT - found it:
https://council.vancouver.ca/20060131/documents/a2.pdf

[Changing City]

Originally Posted by officedweller

Didn't Westbank have to add a floor to Shangri-La because the package they had agreed to was too costly?

EDIT - found it:
https://council.vancouver.ca/20060131/documents/a2.pdf

That report that you found is for the form of development. This is the rezoning report that added an extra floor. You'll see that it wasn't just the difficult market conditions, but also that Wesbank were very unhappy that Holborn came along with an equally tall tower right across the street. (I recall that their owners made it clear at the public hearing that they didn't want to look at another tower either). Nevertheless, even though they had paid an amount assessed as 94% of the land lift for the rezoning, they still paid a token additional CAC (and DCL) for the extra floor.

I get you general point that in a falling market a developer may have paid too high a CAC (and maybe too high a land price) and so find themselves unable to make a project work. That was sort of true with Jameson House, which was a very fancy expensive design with expensive on-site heritage preservation; in the end Bosa stepped in and completed it. Jameson reemerged and are now developing the 28 storey rental on West Broadway. But equally in a rising market a developer might have paid a CAC based on selling at $800 a square foot, and then the developer sells at $1,000 and the City misses out on a windfall profit with a much lower proportion of the actual land lift than had been calculated.

It's not a perfect system by any means, but it's a mechanism to try to ensure that growth above the base zoning, that adds additional demands for services provided by the City, contributes something to the City's needs. I suspect that CACs aren't really a big reason why rezonings are slowing down, and the City of Vancouver isn't seeing as many deals at the moment. Several projects were marketed and aren't proceeding, suggesting sales of new product aren't going well. That's probably because we're seeing far fewer, if any investor, or flipper purchases. In the past six months the pandemic is obviously a factor. Apart from Terrace House we haven't seen any project stop, or developer call in the receivers, as we've seen in previous slowdowns. Development might pick up again, or it may stay stuck in the doldrums. There's a lot of fear that not all the pre-purchased units in the projects already underway will complete, so it's not surprising the developers are waiting to see how things go. These days, if the units don't sell, I wonder if they then have to pay the empty home tax?

[SpongeG]

how does building a rental building work for a developer? they don't get the money of immediate sales, they get it over the lifetime of people renting. What is the benefit of rental vs strata? the land value? the idea that they will build it and sell it fairly soon after completing? just curious and not very knowledgeable of the subject.

[officedweller]

Thanks for finding that.
I had also forgotten that Jameson House was transferred.

It's interesting though that the City is cashing in on rezoning land lift so heavily, because I don't think the opposite is true - as far as I recall, municipalities do not have any obligation to compensate landowners for losses arising from downzonings.

WRT the slow market, I think people are probably be conservative with their money over the uncertainty of the economy.

Hmmm - it appears the developer may have to pay empty homes tax if it was not occupied for 6 months in the year or under construction for 6 months in the year. I wonder if that would cause a developer to delay completion until after 6 months of construction have elapsed?

https://vancouver.ca/images/web/empt...2017-05-31.pdf

[MIPS]

Vancouver real estate: backyard or laneway house in Kitsilano sold for $1,850,000

Call it a coach house, carriage home, or laneway house.

Some also refer to this type of residence as a granny suite or garden home.

They’re all the same.

Typically located at the rear of a principal home, a coach or laneway house constitutes a detached and separate dwelling.

They can be pricey.

A backyard house on the west side of Vancouver sold for more than the price of a typical single family home on the east side of the city.

The laneway home at 1959 West 15th Avenue fetched $1,850,000.

- https://www.straight.com/news/vancou...ld-for-1850000

Wasn't the plan for laneway houses to increase density while introducing lower cost residences? Also, is it really a laneway house if it's 1500 square feet? That's pretty damn big.

[Changing City]

Originally Posted by MIPS

Vancouver real estate: backyard or laneway house in Kitsilano sold for $1,850,000

Wasn't the plan for laneway houses to increase density while introducing lower cost residences? Also, is it really a laneway house if it's 1500 square feet? That's pretty damn big.

That's not a typical laneway house - it's in the small RT-8 zoned area of Kitsilano that allows strata splitting of the lot. That's also why it's so large. There are other similar areas of Mount Pleasant that allow the same sort of development. The vast majority of laneway homes are in RS zones and can't be sold - they're rental only and remain part of the same ownership as the main house.

[trofirhen]

The housing crisis in Metro Vancouver is acute, and has gone beyond a joke ... IMHO.
Whether this is the right thread to post this or not, and though most people will have read it, I think that it illuminates the issues staring down affordable hosuing in Metro.

https://vancouversun.com/news/local-...S_HeadlineNews

[Sheba]

It reads like advertising but this stood out:

Selecting finishes is typically part of the process for condo buyers, but Kutak Development is taking personalization to another level in its One Shaughnessy project in downtown Port Coquitlam where purchasers can choose from 27 finish combinations – from floors to cabinetry and tiles – to create a colour palette that reflects their own design preferences.

...

Instead of creating the more usual Light and Dark schemes, where buyers choose one group of colours or the other, she focused on presenting a range of options; all curated to work with one another.

“There will be some constants throughout the schemes, but people will be able to determine what colour flooring they want with three different flooring options, three cabinet face options for the kitchens and two different options for the bathrooms,” she says.

...

Methinks they're having trouble selling units...

[rofina]

Originally Posted by Sheba

It reads like advertising but this stood out:


Methinks they're having trouble selling units...

Perhaps.

But that's a sweet deal for buyers. That's a new custom designed condo. Not bad at all.

[whatnext]

Vancouver sales dropping like a stone following July-August bump:

Vancouver real estate: early September numbers show steep drop in sales from August highs
by Carlito Pablo on September 25th, 2020 at 12:03 PM

Home sales in the city of Vancouver are dropping big time.

This is based on tracking by real-estate site fisherly.com as of late morning Friday (September 25).

Compared to record highs in August, early numbers for September show a steep decline in transactions.

In August, a total of 490 condo units sold in Vancouver.

As of this posting September 25, fisherly.com recorded 202 condo sales so far this month.

Last month, 212 detached homes changed owners. September sales so far show 114 freestanding houses sold in the city.

As for townhouses, 99 sold in August. As of September 25, only 49 townhouses have been purchased....

https://www.straight.com/news/vancou...m-august-highs

[SpongeG]

It seems that Highpoint in Coquitlam by Ledmac is in sales mode now. I've been seeing their ads on facebook, on here, etc. And the sales centre is opening. All units come with parking.

[rofina]

Originally Posted by whatnext

Vancouver sales dropping like a stone following July-August bump:

Vancouver real estate: early September numbers show steep drop in sales from August highs
by Carlito Pablo on September 25th, 2020 at 12:03 PM

Home sales in the city of Vancouver are dropping big time.

This is based on tracking by real-estate site fisherly.com as of late morning Friday (September 25).

Compared to record highs in August, early numbers for September show a steep decline in transactions.

In August, a total of 490 condo units sold in Vancouver.

As of this posting September 25, fisherly.com recorded 202 condo sales so far this month.

Last month, 212 detached homes changed owners. September sales so far show 114 freestanding houses sold in the city.

As for townhouses, 99 sold in August. As of September 25, only 49 townhouses have been purchased....

https://www.straight.com/news/vancou...m-august-highs

Makes sense - "Srping" market was late Summer. Now were into "summer" market in the fall, on top of actual fall, so I do expect it to slow.

Rates are still under 2%, I expect the strength to continue into next year. If Trump wins reelection, I'll be loading up on debt as much as I possibly can.

I think the economic stimulus coming after his win will be unreal, and the spending will match in Canada, as it has to due to currency issues.

[svlt]

Will a Biden win mean the complete opposite of stimulus though?

[cornholio]

Similiar trends globally. Or atleast mostly globally. Here in Europe the summer set records for new mortgages much like everywhere else. Interest rates fell rapidly and governments made other moves to prop realestate markets up (in the country I am in interest rates fell to as low as 1.54% from 2.29% at best at the start of the year and the government scrapped a 4% of value sales tax on realestate).

However now things are also beginning to slow down and projections are that the short summer surge will fade away and the economic disaster unfolding will begin to have a larger impact on the market.

It will be interesting to see how it unfolds and what I seem happening in Canada so far seems to be mirroring what is happening on the orher side of the Atlantic. Rates can't go lower. There isn't too much else that can be done to prop up the market. And the economic damage is real and will only truly be felt next year once companies and countries and people will need to fix their books. Also business travel, tourism and the desire for people to live in cities has changed and will never be the same again. And it changed for the worse regarding realestate. We have people seeing cheap rates and once tices jumping in because they still have their jobs and nothing changed beyond rates going down. Then you have a lot of people trying to get out because they can't rent their places or they want out of the city or they see trouble ahead.

[WarrenC12]

I'm not sure things will change long term (living in cities, etc.).

My variable mortgage is down to 1.4%. Hard to see real estate getting hit too hard when that's available. Locally, downtown condos are in a tough spot, but that will pass after a moderate correction IMO.

[rofina]

Originally Posted by svlt

Will a Biden win mean the complete opposite of stimulus though?

I don't think it will mean Trump level stimulus, but bringing the West back to anything resembling austerity or balanced budgets is going to be suicide for any political party right now. The pain would leave a generational scar on the party that does it.

That's not a statement on if its a good idea overall or not, but its certainly not favorable politically to be removing money from the system at the moment.