Americans are in the midst of an unsustainable real estate bubble that will rattle Canada if it bursts, a leading economist warned Wednesday.

British Columbia‘s lumber exports will be undermined and Canada‘s economy in general will suffer if U.S. consumers pull in their horns, said Patti Croft, chief economist for Vancouver-based Phillips, Hager & North Investment Management.

However, cracks in the U.S. market will not necessarily affect Canadian real estate prices, unless the catalyst is rapidly rising interest rates.

“I think the U.S. Federal Reserve and the Bank of Canada will be pretty cautious in raising rates, very cognizant of the high degree of debt and leverage and certainly not wanting to set off any kind of collapse in the housing market,” Croft said in an interview.

She was commenting on a recent PH&N study that shows the U.S. real estate market is exhibiting signs of a continent-wide bubble not evident in the Canadian market.

VANCOUVER SUN Source: Phillips, Hager and North Americans’ ‘home ATM’ will run out of cash

Signs include real (after-inflation) house price gains in markets in every U.S. state, coupled with high valuations and “very buoyant” investor optimism.

“House prices continue to rise at a very rapid pace and we just don’t think it is sustainable,” Croft said.

U.S. consumer debt is at record highs because consumers have taken advantage of falling interest rates and rising house prices to use their homes as cash machines — drawing down home equity to finance other purchases. Home equity withdrawal now stands at a record 2.5-3.0 per cent of U.S. gross domestic product.

“Home prices need not decline nor mortgage rates rise for this source of consumer spending to dissipate quickly,” the study states. “If house prices decline, the headwind to the U.S. economy would be quite significant.”

The study says Canadians have not run down the equity in their homes to the same degree and, while real house prices have increased in Canada since bottoming out about 1995, the gains have been neither as large nor as pervasive as in the U.S.

Croft says there are no signs of a broad-based bubble in Canada, despite localized bidding wars and surges in the ranks of real estate brokers in markets like Vancouver, Kelowna and Toronto.

Further evidence of irrational real estate exuberance in the U.S. comes in a survey from the American consulting firm Spectrem Group showing that 63 per cent of baby boomers plan to finance their eventual retirement by selling their primary residence.

“The reality is that people’s homes are a big part of their assets and their net worth, but to count on the appreciation in your house value to pay for your retirement may be rather wishful thinking,” Croft said.

“There are some myths in real estate and one of them is that real estate always increases in value. In Calgary, Edmonton and Winnipeg, real house prices today are actually lower than they were in 1980, which is phenomenal.”

Despite recent gains in the Greater Vancouver real estate market, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. recently noted that average annual returns for the past 10 years are a mere 1.77 per cent because prices were flat or losing ground from 1995 to 2000.

Croft noted that bubble markets in the U.K. and Australia are cooling after aggressive interest rate hikes, while the end of house price appreciation in the Netherlands has created “a deep downturn” in the economy.

She anticipates more moderate interest rate increases are unlikely to cause a correction in the U.S. or Canada before the end of 2005 or early in 2006.

“Ordinarily what causes the housing market to ultimately correct is an inversion of the yield curve — when short-term interest rates rise above long-term interest rates — and that may not even occur in this cycle because both central banks are acutely aware of the degree of leverage in the economy. Look at how indebted the U.S. consumer is and how they have relied on their house as essentially a cash machine.”

Short-term borrowers and those with variable-rate mortgages would be hurt the most by higher short-term interest rates. While 85-90 per cent of U.S. mortgage loans are at fixed rates, PH&N says higher rates will still bite, particularly for recent buyers who have shown a marked preference for floating-rate products.

Croft said home prices could rise in Canada next year “but not at the rate they have and certainly not economy-wide.”

She noted young people of home-buying age are spending more time in the family nest because they can’t afford to enter the market, and higher interest rates will fuel that trend.

As for the effect of the 2010 Olympics on Vancouver‘s market, Croft said studies in various cities across North America show there may be a short-term bump up in the value of real estate but it is not sustained.

“Some people may be hoping or counting on the Olympics but if you think about it, you have got 50,000 people coming to a city over a three-week period, why would that create a permanent increase in real estate value?”

© The Vancouver Sun 2004

Waterfront land running out

Condo project on False Creek one of the last sites left for development

Gillian Shaw

Vancouver Sun

November 17, 2004

Vancouver is running out of waterfront for residential developments, the head of one of the city’s biggest condo builders says.

One of the last such sites, on False Creek’s north shore, is slated to be filled up shortly with a 600-unit Concord Pacific project.

Coopers Quay, a five-building mix of low-rise and high-rise construction, including tower condos, townhouses and lofts, will stretch east from the Cambie Bridge all the way to B.C. Place.

Vancouver Mayor Larry Campbell and Concord Pacific president Terry Hui ceremoniously tossed the first shovel of dirt Tuesday for the project, scheduled for completion in the fall of 2007.

“We [developers] have been spoiled in the last decade by different waterfront offerings,” Hui said. “I can tell you that is coming to an end.

“Coopers Quay will probably be the last affordable [waterfront] neighbourhood with units averaging under a million dollars.”

Units begin selling in two weeks starting at about $300,000 for a 530-square-foot one-bedroom, topping off in the $1 million range for 2,000-square-foot, three-bedroom and family room units with an entire floor to themselves.

Concord marketing director Ivan Tsao said the residential site is the second to last of the lands bordering False Creek being developed by Concord.

“We have one more site to the east, but this is the last small- scale waterfront development,” he said, adding that there are no immediate plans for the remaining land.

Tsao said that unlike many towers of the Yaletown and downtown area, the Coopers Quay development is very much linked to the water and the activities it offers.

“This neighbourhood is unique in that all the projects are fronting the park and the water,” he said.

Hui said in introducing the development that most units will have a “spectacular view”, along with the Esprit City Club, a 14,000-square-foot recreation centre catering to Coopers Quay residents that will have everything from its own private, two-lane, 10- pin bowling alley, to a fleet of kayaks for residents, to a 60-foot lap pool, a big screen video theatre, fitness centre and a yoga-Pilates studio.

The first phase of the neighbourhood, Coopers Lookout, is reminiscent of a ship facing the sea, rising perpendicular to the creek with a tall condo tower filling in for the ship’s watchtower and the rest of the building stepping down towards the water, which is separated from the building only by a park.

The Coopers Quay project will create 1,700 person years of employment, with Concord and its contractors slated to spend locally $100 million in wages and professional fees.

Hui said that of the approximate half-billion dollars going into the development, about half will be spent on local employment.

Campbell lauded the company and its development, terming the False Creek development, “an example of a city doing things right.”

© The Vancouver Sun 2004

CREDIT: Peter Battistoni, Vancouver Sun Re/Max Select Properties realtor Arlene Butler is still seeing multiple offers but fewer bidders for properties.

The average house price in Vancouver will break through the $400,000 threshold next year despite slowing sales, a national real-estate firm predicted Monday.

Re/Max Canada says the Vancouver market will end 2004 with average prices up 14 per cent to about $376,000, the largest annual gain in more than a decade.

Next year the real-estate franchising giant forecasts that the rate of increase will slow to eight per cent, pushing the average price past $400,000 for the first time to $406,000.

At the same time, home sales are slowing, in part because of rising new-home construction costs and bottlenecks in the approval process, said Elton Ash, regional director of Re/Max Western Canada.

Vancouver unit sales will finish this year at about 38,700, down one per cent from 2003, and are likely to fall another two per cent to about 38,000 in 2005.

Slowing sales and rising interest rates might be expected to put a damper on real-estate markets, said Tsur Somerville, director of the UBC Centre for Urban Economics and Real Estate.

“The underlying economic fundamentals do not suggest any kind of collapse of the real-estate market, but that doesn’t mean that prices can’t weaken somewhat — and it certainly doesn’t mean that you can’t have areas within the Lower Mainland that weaken substantially more.”

Somerville added: “An eight-per-cent gain in prices next year seems to me a bit in the high range. At the same time they’ve predicted a two-per-cent drop in transactions. That is not a pair of numbers one normally sees together.”

However, Kelowna-based Ash says B.C.’s rosy economy, coupled with employment and population growth, as well as strong consumer confidence, will drive prices higher.

“Purchasers awaiting a slowdown in 2005 should rethink their strategy, as the fundamentals are in place for Vancouver‘s real-estate market to maintain its current pace,” Re/Max states in its 2005 housing outlook, released Monday.

“Low inventory levels across all price ranges have many purchasers still waiting in the wings for the right product to come on-stream.”

There is a continuing sense of urgency in the marketplace, although conditions have slowed from the torrid pace set last year, said West Side Re/Max realtor Arlene Butler.

“We are not seeing the multiple offers to the degree we had earlier in the year, when it was nothing to have seven, eight, nine or 10 competing offers. Now we may have two or three competing offers,” said Butler, who sells many single-family homes in the $900,000 and $1 million price range.

“Vendors are being more price-conscious. If they listen to their realtor, I think they will probably get a better price than if they go on the presumption that people are still offering $50,000 over asking price. They are getting close to asking price.”

Condominiums now account for one in every four sales in the city, but, the report notes, the condo market in Vancouver’s downtown core has become “over-saturated” in the past couple of years and vacancy rates are creeping up.

“A growing number of investors are selling out before completion to cash in on price gains,” the report states. “Outside of the core, supply continues to keep pace with demand.”

Ash said Vancouver‘s downtown remains a highly desirable location, but prices are settling after increasing dramatically.

“If you bought something to flip for profit, you had better do it now, because prices are going to stabilize downtown, but not elsewhere.”

His concerns — about new-home inventory being crimped by shortages of development land, delays in the approval process and rising materials and skilled-labour costs — were echoed by Butler, who says some Vancouver builders are selling undeveloped land rather than waiting for permits.

“It is taking so long to get permits now in Vancouver,” Butler said.

“They see they can make some money on the land, so why would they go through with the building when construction material and labour costs are going up?”

Elsewhere in B.C., multi-family starts — townhouses and condominiums — are expected to exceed single-family-home starts for the first time in Kelowna‘s history. Sales of all home types in the area are forecast to grow by eight per cent in 2005 with the average price growing by 10 per cent to $257,000.

In Victoria, sales are forecast to slip three per cent, with prices climbing six per cent to $337,200.

Nationally, the average price is expected to post a six-per-cent increase to $237,900 in 2005 — topping this year’s record of $224,729 by more than $15,000.

Average price appreciation in 2005 is expected to be highest in Edmonton (12 per cent), followed by Quebec City (11 per cent), Kelowna (10 per cent), Halifax-Dartmouth and Vancouver (eight per cent), Montreal, Ottawa and Victoria (six per cent), Saskatoon (5.5 per cent), Calgary (five per cent), Regina (4.5 per cent), Toronto (3.5 per cent) and Winnipeg (three per cent).

Re/Max says Edmonton will also break through a major threshold next year with the cost of the average home surpassing $200,000 for the first time.

In other highlights:

– First-time buyers are expected to continue to fuel housing activity in major markets across the country, especially where job growth and historically low interest rates have boosted confidence and income levels.

– Move-up buyers will continue to enter the real-estate market in 2005 in record numbers, trading up to larger homes or more prestigious neighbourhoods.

– Luxury-home sales will continue to spiral upward, driven by demand from aging baby boomers.

– Older, established neighbourhoods in the central core of most major cities are expected to continue to experience tight inventory levels in 2005, prompting continued bidding wars.

– Investment-only real-estate purchases are expected to continue to taper as vacancy levels rise in markets across the country.

[email protected]

CROSSING THE THRESHOLD:

An average home in Vancouver is expected to appreciate eight per cent next year and sell for a record $406,000, despite a reduction in the number of houses sold.

Vancouver

$329,447 2003 Actual

$375,800 2004 Estimated +14%

$406,000 2005 Forecast +8%

City 2003 2004 Chng 2005 Chng

Kelowna $197,538 $233,600 18% $257,000 10%

Victoria $280,624 $318,000 13% $337,200 6%

Canada $206,393 $224,700 9% $237,900 6%

Source: Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA), Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB), RE/MAX, N. Barry Lyon Consultants Ltd.

© The Vancouver Sun 2004

CREDIT: Glenn Baglo, Vancouver Sun Intern architect David Battersby sits on the stairs of his unit in the house he shares with Heather Howat. Their workspace is a shared area.

CREDIT: Glenn Baglo, Vancouver Sun The East Vancouver house is a showcase to the intern architects’ design approach to urban living.

Many urbanites determined to own a home in the city make compromises and settle for small spaces or less-than-ideal neighbourhoods. But that doesn’t mean they have to give up their visions of owning a great home.

The key to living well in small city places is in the design. And today’s architects, particularly in a place like Vancouver, are coming up with innovative ideas to create spaciousness on small city lots and improve upon streetscapes.

Intern architects Heather Howat and David Battersby have done just that in a run-down East Vancouver neighbourhood, near Hastings and Commercial Drive.

The modern home they built two years ago is so design-savvy it was selected as one of 21 to be featured in an exhibit called Living Spaces: 21 Contemporary Canadian Homes. The show opened last month in Cambridge, Ontario and continues until Nov. 21.

Exhibit curator John Ota, in a recent article for Canadian Architect, noted a “dishevelled street of chain-link fencing and abandoned spray-painted buildings in East Vancouver is not the first place one would look for one of the city’s most innovative and alluring homes.”

But Ota noted while many of the city’s best and brightest architects “flee to the burbs, this new design firm is intent on challenging convention, maintaining its principles and delivering cutting-edge design.”

Both Battersby and Howat believe no matter where the home is located it is still worthwhile to create a “space of value.”

The couple, who were once married, have built a home with separate units and a shared office — spaces that suit their individual lifestyles and maximize every square foot on the Vancouver standard 33 by 122 square foot lot.

“You can pack a lot of diversity into a small [building] envelope,” said Battersby, whose 1,100-square-foot unit is shared with his partner Bradley Thompson, two dogs and a cat.

(Howat’s unit, including the shared office on her side of the home, is about 1,350 square feet.)

“It’s about being realistic of how you live your lives and setting up a scenario where you make the space efficient as possible without making it mean. Sufficiency often suggests marginal, but we always try to focus on quality and not quantity,” said Battersby.

Howat adds some of their favourite projects have been the most challenging – clients with small lots and small budgets. This is something they know, considering they too were in the same dilemma, wanting to make the most out of their limited lot size and budget.

The home they built now serves as a showcase to their design approach to urban living – one that is realistic and affordable. The cost to build their living/work space was about $180 a square foot. But Howat estimates to achieve something similar today would be around $200 to $250 a square foot – still considerably less than the average $420 a square foot to build in downtown Vancouver.

She said before moving to East Vancouver they had always lived in the city’s downtown or west-end, but changed locations because it was so much more affordable.

CREDIT: Glenn Baglo, Vancouver Sun Heather Howat and David Battersby find a shared office space works well, although their living arrangements are separate.

CREDIT: Glenn Baglo, Vancouver Sun The open-concept design of Howat’s unit (left) has continuous glass windows that create a secure, loft-like feeling.

“The [original] house here was an old-timer in wretched shape,” she said, of the decision to tear it down and start from scratch. “The area was in transition.”

Battersby is more blunt in his assessment of the neighbourhood, noting “the whole street was held hostage by kids who were squatting in one of the homes.”

“We have a 90-year-old neighbour who didn’t go outside because he was so terrified,” said Battersby.

That is no longer the case.

“The illegal activity has diminished in part because we’re always here. We can look out these windows [from their front office] and see everything.”

Battersby adds while the city isn’t particularly supportive of home-based offices the advantage is they can keep an eye on the neighbourhood and report problems quickly to police.

Both Battersby and Howat said while they love their neighbours they aren’t thrilled with the “architecture of the neighbourhood.”

Their contemporary style home, built of glass, wood and grey stucco stands out among the bungalows, “Vancouver Specials” and squat apartments nestled nearby.

“We’ve always believed basically you can’t control your neighbours but you can always control your context,” said Howat.

Thus, their own home is an oasis of calm. Even the step into the front yard creates a sense of tranquility. The entrance was designed precisely forcing visitors to turn and face the garden before meandering down the communal pathway that leads to separate unit entrances.

Battersby, whose background is in landscape architecture, and Thompson, who owns the landscaping company Dig-It, have a space that focuses on their garden. While their home is behind Howat’s southern-facing unit the sloping roof helps to increase the amount of sunshine their garden receives.

Wall to wall windows and a back glass door that steps out onto their patio was built low, at a height of 6’3″ to block out the view of rooftops beyond.

Howat’s home was also built with her specific needs in mind. Because she is single and concerned about safety her home is one where visitors “step up” to reach and its open concept and continuous glass windows create a secure, loft-like feeling.

Her home also is shielded from an unsightly view of the neighbourhood thanks to fast-growing bamboo, that lets in a soft filtered light.

As for their office the view is at grade level to the front door garden and again it typifies their approach to design.

“It’s a tight environment but it works pretty efficiently,” said Battersby.

“We do a lot of expensive custom homes [in their design firm] but we love doing urban homes, particularly like this where there is a challenge of having limited space.”

© The Vancouver Sun 2004

Canadians continued to pay more for new houses in September, Statistics Canada said Wednesday.

The cost of new homes increased 5.8 per cent year-over-year, driven higher by strong demand and rising costs for labour and building materials.

However, September’s increase was not as big as the 6.0 per cent year-over-year increase seen in August and July, and the 6.2 per-cent jump in June.

Victoria continued to post the largest 12-month increase for new homes with a jump of 8.7 per cent, followed by Winnipeg at 8.5 per cent and the St. Catharines-Niagara area of Ontario at 8.1 per cent.

Vancouver landed in the middle of the pack with prices up 5.5 per cent over the year.

“In this particular case, if you are number one in the country it is nothing to be celebrating because high costs impact home ownership,” said Peter Simpson, CEO of the Greater Vancouver Home Builders Association.

“We need to get these costs down, including the government levies which add so much to the cost of a new home.”

Housing prices across Canada were up 0.3 per cent between August and September, a somewhat slower rate than the July-August increase of 0.5 per cent. Prices were up 0.3 per cent for the month in Victoria and 0.1 per cent in Vancouver.

Simpson was surprised that the rate of price increases appears to be slowing as builders are facing higher costs for land, materials and labour. “We haven’t really seen any softening of prices but we have seen a slight softening in the numbers of people visiting the sites.”

“A lot of product has come on the market recently and the new offerings tend to get more attention than homes that have been for sale for longer.”

Last week Statistics Canada reported that building permits in B.C. were up 7.2 per cent in September over the previous month while the value of permits across Canada was down 3.3 per cent. B.C. is expected to be the only province to record higher starts next year.

© The Vancouver Sun 2004

CREDIT: Ian Smith, Vancouver Sun Pleased with his performance running machinery for the convention centre sod-turning ceremony, Premier Gordon Campbell (left) gives the big smile, along with federal Industry Minister David Emerson and Vancouver Mayor Larry Campbell.

Vancouver convention centre officials finally received their wish Monday, an official construction start to the $565-million convention centre expansion, a move that comes after years of false starts, cancelled projects and protracted wrangling over funding.

Tourism marketers say the routine groundbreaking ceremony west of Canada Place was truly a big deal for their industry because now they can better convince international clients that a newer, bigger convention centre will indeed open in Vancouver by the summer of 2008.

“Reality is a big deal in the market because a lot of clients have seen proposals come and go,” Vancouver Convention & Exhibition Centre representative Rod Cameron said. “We even had a project cancelled here once so until they actually see a shovel in the ground, they don’t take the thing very seriously.”

In 1999, rising costs forced the provincial government to cancel a convention centre expansion planned on the east side of Canada Place. In 2002, disagreements over costs also killed a proposed public-private partnership that would have seen Vancouver-based Bentall Capital LP build and manage a new convention centre.

On Monday, virtually every politician at the groundbreaking ceremony — including Premier Gordon Campbell, federal Industry Minister David Emerson and Mayor Larry Campbell — promised this project on the west side of Canada Place will be on time and on budget.

“Count on it,” Premier Campbell told reporters. “There are contingencies built into the project and it’s going to be run professionally. Just as the downtown library was built on time and on budget, this will be built on time and on budget.”

(The downtown Vancouver library, which opened in 1995, cost $30 million to build and was part of a $110-million redevelopment project that features a 21-storey office tower.)

Original plans called for the convention centre expansion to cost $495 million but that figure did not include the costs of renovating the existing convention centre or building a walkway to connect the new facility with the existing centre, so the price-tag increased to $565 million.

The federal and provincial governments will each contribute $222.5 million, with the tourism industry providing $90 million and convention centre leasing and vendor agreements kicking in another $30 million.

The expansion project will more than triple the convention centre’s 12,400 metres of existing function space by adding another 35,470 square metres of space. Campbell says it will create another $229 million a year in delegate spending and support 7,500 new jobs.

He said a shortage of convention space in Vancouver forces the city to turn away 50 conventions and $150 million worth of business a year.

While Campbell took the controls of a huge backhoe during a photo opportunity on the 3.25-hectare expansion site, a team of more than 20

Vancouver tourism officials began a three-day sales trip in Washington, D.C. to attract more U.S. convention business to the city.

Cameron said about 36 future conventions have been booked for Vancouver between 2008 and 2012 and most of those need the extra space provided by the expansion project.

Those conventions will attract just under one million delegates and create about $400 million in delegate spending, Cameron said.

A QUESTION OF SPACE:

Vancouver‘s existing convention centre is small compared to other facilities worldwide. Here’s how we stack up:

Thousands of square feet

Chicago 2,524

Las Vegas 2,228

Orlando 1,479

San Diego 820

Hong Kong 689

Toronto 600

Vancouver (Post-expansion) 489

Salt Lake 462

Montreal 331

Vancouver (Pre-expansion) 133

Calgary 113

Source: Convention project

© The Vancouver Sun 2004

OTTAWA — The pace of home building slowed last month, part of a forecast cooling of the hot housing market that will continue into next year and which will dampen both sales and price increases.

“Canada’s housing market will likely cool to more sustainable levels in 2005 after hitting all-time sales records in all regions of the country this year,” Scotia Economics said in a report yesterday.

The forecast was issued as Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. reported that housing construction starts in October fell five per cent to an annual pace of 225,000 from an upwardly revised 237,900 in September.

While the pace of construction slowed in B.C., Lower Mainland starts are running well ahead of a year ago and expected to stay strong next year.

Nationally starts are on track to reach a 17-year high in 2004, the federal housing authority said. “Favourable economic factors, such as recent growth in full-time employment and low mortgage rates, continue to stimulate residential construction activity,” said CMHC economist Bob Dugan.

After reaching a 15-year high annual pace of 252,900 in March, housing starts fell back for four months, reflecting in part the rise in mortgage rates through the spring and into summer, said Ted Carmichael, economist at J.P. Morgan.

The pace of construction picked up later in the summer as mortgage rates eased back down in the summer.

“Further rate hikes by the Bank of Canada will likely put renewed upward pressure on mortgage rates,” he said. “Housing activity is expected to continue to moderate in the months ahead, and the contribution of housing activity to economic growth is expected to diminish.”

However, Scotia Economics said the cooling of the housing market will not be dramatic.

“The geographical diversity of the current housing market boom is not indicative of a seriously overheated market or overly speculative investor activity, suggesting the odds of a major correction are low,” said the report by Scotia Economics economist Adrienne Warren.

© The Vancouver Province 2004