Sun

TOWNE II

Presentation centre: #11-5808

Tisdall, Vancouver

Centre hours: Noon – 5 p.m., Sat – Thu

Telephone: 604-261-3000

Web: towneliving.com

Developer: Mosaic Homes

Architect: Hollifield Architect, Inc.

Interior design: BYU Design Ltd.

Project size: 15 townhouses

Residence size: 1,420 – 1,677 sq. ft.

Residence price: $568,800 – $798,800

Warranty: St. Paul‘s Guarantee

The Georgian style is simple in form, but elegant in composition and has been popular for more than 200 years, Max Bruce says of Mosaic Homes’ sponsorship of the style in its Lower Mainland new-home projects.

The young company, only five years old in January, has made Georgian its signature design in townhouse projects from Surrey to Kitsilano.

Now it’s introducing its brick-facade rowhouses to the Vancouver neighbourhood of Oakridge.

Phase 1 of the Towne project, 25 rowhouses, sold out in four weeks, Max reports. Phase 2 selling, of 15 rowhouses, is now under way.

Why the popularity?

”We get the comment that buyers appreciate the timeless form of architecture and the exterior,” Max reports. ”As a result of using a material – brick – that has been used over the centuries . . . the homes [have] a classic look.”

The components of that look, after the box-like form, include ”stately entry porches, wood brackets, dentil mouldings and proud chimmneys.”

The Mosaic partners, to ensure the authenticity of their product, travel as much at they can to the big Atlantic world towns like Boston and London. They were in Boston recently.

The Towne rowhouses are wood-frame construction but they have a brick facade, and plenty of the architectural details which Mosaic believes will makes them stand out from much of today’s new construction.

“We’ve had a phenomenal response (with red brick rowhouses),” Max says. “We’re taking some elements from the first red brick projects and improving upon them. Our approach to exteriors is to choose an aesthetic that gives the homes a timeless architectural appeal. It looks like the homes could have been here 100 years.”

A “timeless” component of townhouse and rowhouse marketing, by the way, is the premium price commanded by the end-of-row homes. ”The end homes will be selling for a higher price than the interior,” says Bruce, because of their third outside walls and the addition, consequently, of more windows

That attention to detail extends to the doorbell, Max says of the “Restoration-style” bell .

“Most new homes will have an illuminated plastic doorbell. But when we looked at home much effort when into these homes it didn’t fit so we spend time and effort researching what would be the best doorbell. We wanted something rich enough in keeping with the character of the exterior.”

All of the homes will feature pedestrian access from a secured mews style courtyard, reminiscent of old rowhouse neighbourhoods on the east coast of North America and in Europe.

All but two of the 15 Phase II homes will have direct access to an underground parking garage, with the parking actually done behind individual garage doors and in the basements of the homes above.

These basements will consist, firstly of the garages and adjacent flex space.

“It has been done before in luxury high-rises downtown. Mosaic did it before at Hansdowne [in Kitsilano] and Towne Phase 1,” Max reports.

 

© The Vancouver Sun 2005

Sun

Q: We currently have a rental condo for which we report income and expenses every year. We also live in our own home. In the future, if we sold our home and moved into the condo, would we be able to circumvent paying capital gains on the condo if we lived in it for a year or so, then sold it?

– Grace Kravac,

West Vancouver

Chartered accountant Blair East, of Vancouver‘s Manning Elliott, answers:

Unfortunately, simply living in your condo for a year will not eliminate paying some income tax on a capital gain on the sale of your rental condo.

You are deemed to dispose of your rental condo for proceeds equal to its fair market value at the time you convert it to your principal residence. Any appreciation in the condo’s value since its purchase will result in a capital gain subject to income tax.

An election may be made to defer the capital gain on conversion until you actually sell the condo. This election would be filed with your return for the year in which you sell the condo.

However, this election cannot be made if you have previously deducted capital cost allowance in respect of the property. Where CCA has been deducted, you may also be taxed on any recovery of previous CCA deductions in addition to the capital gain.

Once you start living in the condo you may be able to use the principal residence exemption to reduce the capital gain on a future appreciation in the condo’s value that will be subject to income tax.

The principal residence exemption is determined by multiplying the capital gain on sale by the proportion of one plus the number of years the property is designated as your principal residence divided by the total number of years the property was owned. An important consideration is that only one property may be designated as your principal residence for any given year.

If you made a capital gain election in respect of the condo in your 1994 tax return (the last year an individual taxpayer could elect in their tax return to claim their unused basic $100,000 capital gain exemption, before it expired) this election will also reduce the tax payable on a future sale of the condo.

– – –

Q: In 2002 I purchased a U.S. guaranteed investment certificate. The subsequent rise in the Canadian dollar meant my exchange-rate losses wiped out any interest gains. How does that affect taxation when the GIC multi-year term has ended, acknowledging that annual interest earnings must be declared. If an investment has lost all or part of the interest earnings over that extended period, can a loss be declared against future interest income. A capital loss allowance would not be of value if it could only be applied against capital gains since I only have interest income.

– David Colley,

Vancouver

Chartered accountant Mark Hoag, of Vancouver’s Nordahl Craig Cummings and Gares, answers:

Capital losses cannot be applied against interest income, as the two sources of income are treated differently for tax purposes. Interest income is fully taxable, whereas only 50 per cent of capital gains are taxable.

Any foreign interest income earned is to be reported annually on your Canadian tax return after it is converted to Canadian dollars using the annual average foreign exchange rate prescribed by the Canada Revenue Agency.

Any difference between what you pay for an investment and what you receive on the sale or redemption of the investment is considered a capital gain or loss. This includes any gain or loss in the value of the investment due to fluctuations in the foreign exchange rate. Any annual fluctuation in the value of the investment does not affect income taxes because gains or losses for tax purposes are only recognized when the investment is disposed of.

Though any capital loss arising from the sale of the investment cannot be applied against the interest income, the loss can be applied against any capital gains which may have arisen on the sale of other investments in the current year or in future years.- – -Send your money questions with your name, address and a daytime telephone number to Michael Kane at [email protected], or fax 604-605-2320, or c/o The Vancouver Sun, 200 Granville St., Suite 1, Vancouver, B.C., V6C 3N3.

© The Vancouver Sun 2005

 

Paula Brook
Sun

For most young people, the prospect of getting a toehold in Vancouver‘s overheated housing market seems slim to nonexistent. Denise Liu and Linus Lam have not only beat the odds, but done it in style.

Of course it helps that Denise, 29, and Linus, 30, are both graduate architects interning at local design firms, but that’s not the whole story. The young couple brought thrift, creativity and plain hard work to bear on the challenge of transforming a homely little downtown condo into a homey little modernist love nest. They did it in three months for under $5,000.

Take out your pen and paper, kids. There are lessons to be learned here.

For starters, they found the perfect place — for their money. This past summer, they paid $235,000 for a 617-square-foot one-bedroom condo on the third floor of The Electra, the former B.C. Electric (later B.C. Hydro) building at the corner of Burrard and Smithe. Designed in the late ’50s by Ron Thom and Ned Pratt and brilliantly converted to residential four decades later by Paul Merrick, this heritage landmark was one of the first popular “junior condo” projects on the downtown skyline. And it continues to exert a strong draw for the young urbanite crowd, particularly design-savvy first buyers who appreciate the iconic stature of one of Canada’s first major modernist buildings — not to mention such features as the indoor-outdoor lobby lounge, the secure bike parking, the communal library and billiards room.

Denise and Linus fit the Electra profile perfectly, and the building fit their needs — the location is exactly halfway between their two workplaces. She walks 20 minutes north to Osburn Clarke Productions in Gastown; he heads 20 minutes south to Peter Cardew Architects on False Creek.

Both had been living with relatives since arriving last year from Winnipeg where they graduated from the University of Manitoba. They came to the project with a lot of ideas and energy and just a few sticks of old furniture.

When I first visited them in their new home two months ago, the renovation had barely begun and was already a far bigger job than they’d anticipated. As renos tend to go.

“It’s a huge mess,” Denise warned, ushering me through the cramped entrance hall into the torn-apart living room. There was dust on her eyelashes, and Linus was nursing sore arms from a long night of mudding and sanding the ceiling.

“We wanted to pace our priorities,” Denise told me, “and just do as much as we could afford right now. At first we thought we’d just do the floor and paint the walls. It spread from there.”

Living in the mess proved a trial and an inspiration. “Until you’re inside the place day and night, you don’t know what’s really needed,” notes Linus.

The more time they spent in their little corner unit, the more they were struck by its potential. Its biggest asset is light, pouring in through walls of seven-foot-high windows on two sides. Not that their third-floor perch gives them much of a view, by Vancouver standards. But for several hours of the day they’re showered by the shimmering reflections and dramatic architectural refractions offered on both the east and south sides by the glass-covered Law Courts and black-mirrored Wall Centre towers.

A broad-stroke solution would have been to open the whole unit up, removing the bedroom wall to create an airy L-shaped suite. Which is precisely what Denise and Linus didn’t want — “a typical bachelor apartment.” They wanted separate spaces, privacy, a sense of transition when you move from one room to another.

So they went to work on each little space, finding an inch here to make a foot there, opening up closets to make nooks, playing with walls instead of knocking them down. The main challenge was the biggest wall, between the living room and bedroom. They carved out narrow openings on top and down the side to trick the eye, so that from the living room you now get a glimpse of around-the-corner windows. When you’re in the bedroom, which is less than 100 square feet, you don’t feel hemmed in.

They added optical space to the bedroom by juggling its dimensions, decking it up on a foot-high, tile-covered platform. What used to feel like a narrow boxcar now feels like a pleasingly square room, just big enough for a queen-sized bed. Flanking the bed, on the lower level behind a wall of white curtains, is a closet/storage area and a subcompact home-office nook big enough for one extremely tidy worker.

“She’s a filer, I’m a stacker,” laughs Linus. In a word, they’re both clutter busters, which is a very good thing considering.

The same resourcefulness was applied to the kitchen, where the pass-through wall bordering the living room has been built up to the ceiling. The new kitchen actually feels bigger: “It’s more about the proportions than the floorspace,” explains Linus. For Denise, it’s more about being able to sit in the living room without having to look straight at the old kitchen appliances.

“We couldn’t do everything,” she says. “Next on our list are new appliances, and a whole new bathroom, but that could be years away.”

Meanwhile, the kitchen got a coat of bright red paint — five coats of General Paint high-gloss “Sizzling Haute” on the cabinets, which almost killed Denise.

Linus’s hardest job was hauling the drywall and lumber up three storeys into the condo, including eight-foot framing pieces that miraculously emerged from their Mini Cooper.

They finished it off with bright white walls and baseboards, a minimalist backdrop for their small but cherished collection of “favourite stuff,” including a Takashi Murakami collectible doll and a bright orange rotary telephone (not working, until they can afford a land line).

The furniture is a practical mixture of thrift store, remainder-bin and Ikea. The exception is a black leather sofa from Caban. “It’s our biggest investment,” says Denise. “It’s going to follow us around forever.”

Conference board predicts GDP increases above 3 % in next 3 years

Fiona Anderson
Sun

British Columbia‘s economy is “sizzling” as a booming resource sector and active construction industry continues to drive growth in Western Canada, the Conference Board of Canada said in a report released Thursday.

The board predicted that the province would see a 3.3-per-cent increase in its real gross domestic product in 2005, a 3.4-per-cent increase in 2006 and three-per-cent growth in 2007.

“That makes B.C. one of the strongest provinces in Canada this year and again next year,” said Marie-Christine Bernard, the conference board’s associate director of the provincial forecast.

The anticipated growth is due to a combination of factors, Bernard said in an interview. There is momentum in construction, both for housing and non-residential, she said, with large projects such as the Richmond-Airport-Vancouver rapid transit project underway, and more projects to start in 2006 as the province readies itself for the 2010 Olympics.

“We can see it in the employment numbers,” Bernard said. “A lot of the jobs that were created were in the construction sector.”

B.C. saw “amazing” job creation in 2005, with more than 80,000 new jobs last year, Bernard said.

“That should help the economy going forward — people having a new job wanting to buy a house [and] spending on retail items,” she said.

High commodity prices have helped the mining sector, while the pine beetle and hurricanes Katrina and Rita have sparked a mini-boom in the forest industry, Bernard said. The province has increased the timber harvest in an attempt to contain the pine beetle infestation, and there is increased demand arising from reconstruction efforts after the damage done by hurricanes, Bernard said.

One limitation to growth may be a scarce labour supply. Alberta, which the conference board predicts will have real GDP growth of 4.6 per cent this year and 3.7 per cent next year, also has a booming construction sector. That means that B.C. and Alberta will be competing directly for the same workers, which may end up pushing the cost of projects up as wages rise.

Inflation, on the other hand, is expected to remain in check with energy prices moderating, Bernard said. So wages may rise more than inflation, leading to real wage increases for the first time in Canada since 1998.

The rosy forecast doesn’t contain any surprises, said Jock Finlayson, executive vice-president of policy for the Business Council of B.C.

“It just confirms that the momentum has definitely shifted to the west,” Finlayson said in an interview.

Provided commodity prices remain high, and China continues to exhibit a hearty appetite for resource-based products, Western Canada should continue to outperform Central Canada, he said.

“But it’s not a 100-per-cent slam dunk. Things can change,” Finlayson said.

The fact that it is the resource-based industries that are leading the charge is interesting, Finlayson said, when just a few years ago people were saying high-tech was the way to go.

GDP in Canada is expected to grow 2.7 per cent in 2005 and 3.1 per cent in 2006.

The Conference Board numbers reflect similar figures released recently, with the TD Bank on Oct. 31 forecasting GDP growth in B.C. at 3.5 per cent, and an RBC Financial Group study on Oct. 26 predicting 3.8-per-cent growth.

WEST IS BEST, FOR NOW

B.C. and Alberta are expected to lead the country in real GDP growth for 2005, with B.C. closing the gap on Alberta considerably in 2006, although by then Newfoundland is expected to take the overall lead thanks to increased oil and mining production.

Difficult to prove building code was to blame

Susan Lazaruk
Sun

Suing Ottawa for B.C.’s leaky- condo crisis based on a faulty

federal building code would be a tough sell, according to building- envelope engineers and construction lawyers.

John Cummins, MP for Delta-East Richmond, said a 26-year-old memo from the head of Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. to a federal deputy minister shows that CMHC was concerned the building code’s tough energy-efficiency measures would “increase the hazard of moisture-induced structural damage.”

Mickey Cohen, an Energy Department deputy minister, wrote back to express his concern about linking energy conservation with moisture problems in homes, said Cummins.

“They knew that the building code was the cause” of what led to the leaky-condo problem, Cummins said. “The most compelling issue is if this issue became public, it would undermine the National Energy Program.”

Cummins has written to Housing Minister Joe Montana, asking if the “coverup” extended to withholding the information from a commission into the leaky-condo crisis headed by former B.C. premier Dave Barrett.

Barrett found the federal building code was not responsible for widespread building-envelope failure in Lower Mainland condos.

A CMHC spokeswoman said the agency cannot comment about the case, now before the courts.

Construction lawyers contacted yesterday weren’t aware of any current lawsuits against CMHC but said one Vancouver law firm was looking for a representative plaintiff for a class-action lawsuit.

Suing the CMHC is “a tough claim,” said Vancouver construction lawyer David Miachka, who said there are complicated legal issues to be overcome before a case could be certified.

“It’s very hard to find a building- envelope expert who’s prepared to say [leaky condos are] the building code’s fault,” he said.

Vancouver construction lawyer David Garner agreed “it’s difficult to prove whether it’s a code problem or an implementation of the code” during construction.

But with the liability of most defendants, including municipalities and architects, ruled out for various reasons, the federal government is one of the last avenues available for leaky-condo owners, he said.

David Wismer, a building envelope contractor with Wismer and Mathieson Projects, said, “Personally, I don’t think [a code lawsuit] will go anywhere. The majority of the leaky condos were created by poor workmanship.”

The code hasn’t changed since the Barrett Commission report, and the latest condo boom is being built under the same standards, although municipalities have passed bylaws to require technology better suited to a rainy climate, such as rainscreens.

© The Vancouver Province 2005

 

Peter O’Neil
Sun

OTTAWA — A newly released internal federal government document proves the federal government attempted to cover up its complicity in B.C.’s $1.5-billion leaky condo crisis, Conservative MP John Cummins said Wednesday.

Cummins released to The Vancouver Sun a 1981 letter from Ray Hession, who, as president of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp., was warning federal colleagues and senior provincial bureaucrats that new federal conservation measures could lead to moisture damage in coastal residential homes.

Hession was responding to an earlier letter from M.A. (Mickey) Cohen, then deputy minister of energy, mines, and resources and the senior Ottawa bureaucrat often dubbed the architect of the controversial National Energy Program.

Hession, in his reply to the Cohen letter, reveals there was concern at the federal bureaucracy’s highest levels over the possible NEP link to future damage to Canadians’ homes in wet climates.

“Thank you for your letter of Sept. 29, in which you expressed your concern about having energy conservation associated with moisture problems arising from various forms of house construction,” Hession wrote on Nov. 13, 1981.

“I agree that we must avoid creating the impression that conservation measures will necessarily entail excessive moisture problems or indeed other construction or occupancy problems.

“Nevertheless, I feel it equally important for us to collectively face up to the reality that construction practices associated with energy conservation measures do, in fact, increase the hazard of moisture induced structural damage.”

Hession had written on Aug. 27, 1981, to the National Research Council’s committee responsible for the National Building Code, warning of the “emergency” matter of moisture damage that is “potentially serious, possibly widespread and … concerns matters of structural safety and public health.”

Cummins, who has been digging up internal documents for months on the issue, still hasn’t obtained the Cohen letter that triggered Hession’s response.

But he said the Hession-to-Cohen letter represents the “smoking gun” that suggests Ottawa needs to compensate the crisis victims.

“There is now clear and unassailable evidence that not only did CMHC know full well there was a serious wet wall problem caused by the federal government’s energy conservation measures, but there is now clear evidence as well that CMHC was under pressure to cover up the problem to protect the National Energy Program,” Cummins said in a statement.

“The smoking gun should put an end to the denials of liability from CMHC.”

A number of critics have alleged when the leaky condo controversy broke in the 1990s that the federal conservation measures, intended to seal homes and eliminate drafts, prevented houses from drying out and resulted in wood rot.

But a commission of inquiry established under former B.C. premier Dave Barrett rejected that theory and any suggestion that the condo crisis, which has devastated owners of thousands of rot-damaged homes in B.C., was caused by conservation requirements in the National Building Code.

Cummins has flooded federal ministers with questions on the issue, but Industry Minister David Emerson and Housing Minister Joe Fontana have refused to discuss the internal documents because the issue is before the courts.

Fontana, however, said that the moisture concerns expressed by Hession and other officials in 1981 were related to developments in Newfoundland, and that those issues were “very different” from the subsequent B.C. disaster.

Cohen, who works for the Toronto law firm Cassels Brock, did not return telephone calls and e-mails Tuesday and Wednesday.

Hession, now semi-retired and reached at his Ottawa home, said Wednesday he doesn’t believe the letter to Cohen suggests a cover-up.

“I would say the exchange would be more in the nature of guarded, sort of small-p politics [suggestion to] ‘watch what you say because we’re in the process of promoting energy conservation.’ “

Hession said he would only agree that the NEP measures were a “potential contributing cause” to the condo crisis, but said there likely were other factors.

“There may have been issues relating to building materials, construction standards, inspection, or engineering certification. All of these things play.”

[email protected]

FRANCES BULA
Sun

The past three years were a rollicking ride for Vancouverites. The tired old regime was overthrown, a new party was swept in, and the city got national attention for its indefinable celebrity mayor and bold experiment with North America’s first supervisedinjection site for drug addicts.
   This election, the choices are more complex and more daunting. The city is heading towards the 2010 Winter Olympics, which will bring both welcome and unwelcome changes.
   The Downtown Eastside and its problems of addiction, poverty, crime and drug-dealing are still with us, with hotspots throughout the city. And voters are faced with complicated choices about who should lead them in dealing with those issues.
   The left has fragmented into two parties that have many of the same goals, but are barely speaking to each other. The right has remade itself, but not everyone is sure what it’s remade itself into.
   The most active public campaign so far has come from the new “centrist” Vision Vancouver party led by Jim Green, closest ally of outgoing mayor Larry Campbell. Green is promising to continue the Campbell revolution that began under the Coalition of Progressive Electors’ banner.
   Specifically, that means carrying out the city’s two most ambitious projects in half a century.
   One is the redevelopment of the Woodward’s department store into an economic starter engine for the Downtown Eastside. The other is the development of Southeast False Creek, which will house the Olympic athletes’ village, as a model of urban environmentalism.
   Vision’s platform also covers everything from more social housing to free wireless Internet to better transit to economic development.
   COPE also promises to carry out what was started in the past term and, like Vision, advocates for better housing, transit, and environmental goals. Added to that, it has said it will push for a streetcar line and greenway down the Arbutus rail corridor.
   On the other side is the remade Non-Partisan Association, headed by veteran councillor Sam Sullivan. So far, the party has put its emphasis on three things.
   One is crime, the unpleasant underside of Vancouver’s otherwise glowing image. Sullivan has promised community courts and a crime commissioner.
   The second is money, with Sullivan criticizing the COPE/Vision council’s spending and its use of the city’s property endowment fund to create low- and middleincome housing in Southeast False Creek.
   The final one is leadership. Sullivan has spent the past couple of weeks attacking Green’s style and ambitious goals, saying he’s a divisive leader who won’t be able to get anything done if he and his fractured party are elected and that his pet projects are too rich for Vancouver’s blood.
   The two mayoral candidates appear to have reversed traditional Vancouver politics. Green has support from developers, police and business groups, while Sullivan has made a name for himself as an advocate for liberal drug policy that includes giving out prescription heroin to longterm addicts

Province

An architect’s model (above) and photo illustration (right) offer a first look at the Fairmont Pacific Rim Vancouver, the new $350-million, five-star hotel on the city’s central waterfront that will complete the rebuilding of Coal Harbour. The 140-metre tall, 47-storey building includes a 415-room luxury hotel, 173 live-work residential estates and more than 800,000 square feet of retail. Fairmont will manage the James K.M.Cheng Architects-designed building developed by Vancouver-based Westbank and Peterson Group. It will start construction in summer 2006 with completion in 2009 prior to the 2010 Winter Olympics. Located at the southwest corner of Canada Place Way and Burrard adjacent to the new convention centre, the hotel will include a public plaza for visitors, residents and community to enjoy public-art offerings.

ASHLEY FORD
Province

Powered by multiple-housing starts Greater Vancouver saw its second-highest monthly starts ever last month, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. said yesterday.
   Multiple starts — that now comprise 75 per cent of all new housing construction in the Lower Mainland — shot ahead by 121 per cent to 1,573 units compared to 711 a year ago.
   Multiple starts, however, tend to come in bunches due to the permit-approval process and on an annual basis they are only running 2.5-per-cent ahead of a year ago while single-family homes have fallen off by 14.3 per cent.
   Overall housing starts are down 2.5 per cent to 15,942 from last year’s 16,350.
   Affordability and land costs are the drivers for multiple housing, says Peter Simpson, CEO of the Greater Vancouver Home Builders’ Association. Twenty years ago single family housing represented 55 per cent of new housing construction, he said.
   Today, multiple homes comprise 75 per cent of the market. “Higher land and development costs are forcing builders and developers to constantly strive to produce the most innovative housing at the best possible price In this market it is multiple housing.”
   Cameron Muir, senior market analyst at CMHC, says “three out of every four new homes built today are either apartments or townhouses. Strong consumer demand is largely being driven by superior location, relative affordability and the interactive lifestyle of urban living that a condominium residence provides.”
   In its latest housing outlook RE/MAX says prices in Vancouver, Kelowna and Calgary will increase by about 10 per cent next year. That is in stark comparison to the rest of the country’s major markets, where price increases are expected to be in the more modest two-to-five-per-cent range.
   But there could be a slight glimmer of hope for some relief for B.C. and Alberta buyers next year.
   “Affordability has certainly been a major concern, particularly in markets in B.C. and Alberta, where average price has experienced strong upward momentum,” said Elton Ash, regional executive vice-president of RE/MAX Western Canada.
   “An influx of new listing in the marketplace would ease some of the upward pressure on housing values and allow purchasers the luxury of time when buying a home,” he added.