VictorEric Design Journal Our latest news and thoughts on the Design industry

City’s housing affordability problem boils down to too many people on too little land

What drives Vancouver’s house prices so relentlessly to levels four times higher than Winnipeg’s, and more than half again what Torontonians pay?

It’s simple, says Tsur Somerville of UBC Centre for Urban Economics and Real Estate.

“If you want Winnipeg-level house prices here, all you have to do is tear down the mountains and fill in the ocean.”

Well, that puts slow or stop to the steady influx of people — though the massive loss of amenities if our landscape were to be suddenly levelled might do that automatically.

“Depending where you draw the circle,” Somerville says, “70 per cent of the land isn’t developable. It’s mountains or water or the United States.”

Then, on top of this insurmountable geographic limitation, add the relentless population growth that, in good years and in bad, ranges from 1.3 to 1.5 per cent a year.

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Written by: Don Cayo
Date: August 21, 2010

Buyer’s market improves opportunities at bottom of ladder; HST threshold unlikely to create stumbling block for real estate newbies

Real estate pundits are starting to announce -albeit somewhat apologetically, in some cases -that the Metro Vancouver real estate market is now leaning away from sellers in favour of buyers.

Hey, there’s nothing wrong with a buyer’s market. If market balance and sharper pricing allow more folks to climb on to the property ladder, bring it on. And history teaches us market conditions in Lotus Land-by-the-Sea can shift quickly. The buyer’s market might be short-lived, a summer fling.

I have also noticed that real estate organizations believe the HST has caused some confusion among homebuyers, perhaps stalling their purchase decisions. These organizations want consumers to know there is no HST on resale homes. Hmm, I wonder if this messaging, given the increase in listings, is aimed at steering buyers to resale homes. That tactic would be way too obvious, wouldn’t it?

That would be like me promoting, say, the many benefits of a brand new home: superior design and leading-edge technology, enhanced building and fire codes, energy-efficiency upgrades, health-related features, competitive pricing and the strongest warranty in North America. I would never do that…

Written by: Peter Simpson
Date: August 14, 2010

Strong mainland interest in global real estate is boosting housing prices and house-hunting activities near and far.

And Vancouver has been the biggest gainer in this race for prime overseas housing over the past few years, as the Canadian city is among the favorites of Chinese big spenders.

“Chinese buyers have at least doubled or even tripled in the last five or six years,” said Vancouver realty agent Geoff Chiu. “The origin has shifted from Hong Kong in the 1990s to the mainland now.”

More than 70 percent of Chinese buyers are from the mainland, compared to less than 20 percent from Hong Kong or Taiwan, Chiu noted.

“Buyers from the mainland don’t hesitate to pay for the properties they want,” he explained, “and prices go up accordingly.”

Britain has also been touched by the trend. “Buyers of our properties are very diversified,” said Alasdair Nicholls, chief officer at British developer Native Land…

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Posted by: Tony Liaw from The Standard
Date: August 09, 2010

Residents of Ontario and B.C. are unsure about how the harmonized sales tax (HST) affects real estate transactions, a new study finds, and the confusion is being blamed for a slide in home sales.

Home sales in Toronto fell 34 per cent in July, according to the Toronto Real Estate Board.

TREB reported that there were 6,564 sales last month, down from 9,967 in the same month in 2009. Home sales were at the lowest level since 2002.

“The level of July sales remained below the expected long-term trend. The market has become more balanced following record monthly sales through most of the winter and early spring,” said board president Bill Johnston, in a release…

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Date: August 5th, 2010
Published by: CBC News

Real estate sales in the Lower Mainland plummeted in July, according to the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver.

A total of 2,255 homes were sold in the region in July 2010, a 45.2 per cent drop from the 4,114 homes sales in July 2009 — the highest selling July ever recorded.

Sales in July 2010 were also 24 per cent lower than the previous month’s sales.

“I think a lot of people were anticipating that mortgage rates were going to be moving higher, as the Bank of Canada has signaled over the last few months,” said Robyn Adamache, a market analyst with the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.

“So what happened was perhaps some sales were pushed earlier in the year than they might have otherwise been, so we had a relatively active beginning to the year and things are sort of normalizing now.”

Adamache said there’s also been decline in home listings…

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Date: August 5, 2010
Published by: CBC News

Real estate markets have slowed a bit more than the B.C. Real Estate Association’s earlier predictions, prompting a downward revision in the group’s latest market forecast that includes a softening of prices.

Association chief economist Cameron Muir released his third-quarter forecast Friday, calling for Multiple Listing Service recorded sales to dip to 79,500 by the end of the year, a seven-per-cent decline from 2009.

In the association’s second-quarter forecast, Muir had predicted British Columbia’s MLS sales would fall three per cent from the 85,028 recorded in 2009.

“We’ve seen consumer demand has tailed off in the summer months a little more than what was expected, and that accounts for the change in the overall unit-sales numbers,” Muir said in an interview…

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Posted by: Derrick Penner
Date: July 31st, 2010