Expert in Games’ tendering process tells firms to start early

Jim Jamieson
Province

The table is set for B.C. businesses to take advantage of opportunities afforded by the Vancouver Whistler 2010 Winter Olympics, says an Australian bureaucrat familiar with her country’s experience at the Sydney Games in 2000.

But companies must mobilize right now if they are to reap the economic benefits — both in the run-up and following the Olympics, said Margy Osmond, CEO of the State Chamber of Commerce of New South Wales, and who established the Sydney 2000 Olympic Commerce Centre in 1997, which guided businesses through the games’ tendering process.

“It’s really hard to understand when you haven’t been through a Games to understand the enormous impact it has on the area,” said Osmond, in an interview with The Province yesterday. “The Olympics is probably the most impressive catalyst you can have. B.C. looked really hard at what Sydney has done and has leveraged it. From what I’ve seen so far, B.C. is way ahead of the pack.”

Osmond will deliver the first of three addresses today to the Vancouver Board of Trade to kick off a speakers series — introduced by 2010 Legacies Now — which is meant to highlight Olympic opportunities for B.C. businesses. Osmond will also speak in Kamloops tomorrow and in Prince George on Thursday.

According to a study done by consultant PricewaterhouseCoopers, the Sydney Olympics generated about $2.5 billion in business outcomes. Osmond added that about 80 per cent of the contacts related to the Games in a competitive bid went to Australian companies.

Osmond said the key advice she would give to B.C. companies is to polish up their business plans and get involved right now.

“I think the most critical thing is engagement early, as soon as possible,” she said. “We started talking to the business community probably about three to 31/2 years out. I think you are very lucky that the [B.C.] government has chosen to invest in the 2010 Legacies Now and the 2010 Commerce Centre so far out from your Games.”

Osmond said that businesses from centres outside Vancouver and Whistler should be able to benefit along with those geographically close to the games. Of the aforementioned $2.4-billion impact, about $424 million went to regional companies outside of Sydney.

Maurice Levi of University of B.C.’s Sauder School of Business said with various factors stoking the provincial economy, the Olympics are coming at an inopportune time for overheated sectors such as construction.

“Whatever numbers we get from the Olympics are smaller now than they would be in normal times because we’re having to compete for those workers rather than take them out of the slack labour pool,” he said.

Osmond said it’s a case of businesses making a choice and seeing the value.

“They will have to judge,” she said. “If they don’t, it will open the door to other companies from across the continent.”

© The Vancouver Province 2006

USA Today

WASHINGTON (Reuters) — Home sales will fall in 2006 as house prices rise at rates far below those notched last year, but the housing market should remain healthy by historic standards, a trade group said Tuesday.

The National Association of Realtors’ chief economist said sales of existing homes should drop 4.7% to 6.74 million units this year, from a record 7.07 million in 2005

Sales of new homes should fall 8.5% to 1.17 million units, from a record of 1.28 million, David Lereah said in his monthly outlook. He pegged 2006 housing starts at 1.87 million units, down 9.3% from 2.06 million.

“Sometimes people lose sight of the fact that real estate is cyclical,” he said. “Even so, sales will continue at a historically high pace with modestly higher interest rates as the year progresses, and 2006 is forecast to be the third strongest year on record.”

Lereah said the national median existing home price for all housing types is expected to rise 5% to $219,200 — a rate of increase far below the double-digit annual gains notched during a five-year market rally.

Some home builders are already feeling the slowdown.

Toll Brothers (TOL) on Tuesday lowered its guidance for home deliveries this year as it noted softening demand in a number of markets.

The home builder said its backlog as of Jan. 31 rose 22% to about $5.95 billion.

But signed contracts were down about 21% from last year to $1.14 billion.

“Selling homes this first quarter was certainly more difficult than one year ago,” said Robert Toll, chairman and chief executive, in a statement. “We experienced softening demand, to varying degrees, in a number of markets and continue to be constrained by long delivery times at many of our communities.”

“Although demand is not as strong as it was one year ago, most of our markets remain fundamentally healthy, based on job and income growth data,” Toll said.

Deliveries were below the company’s projection primarily because of delays in obtaining certificates of occupancy, construction inspections and utility hook-ups.

As a result, Toll Brothers reduced its fiscal-year deliveries guidance to between 9,200 and 9,900 homes, compared with prior guidance to 9,500 to 10,200 deliveries and 8,769 deliveries in fiscal 2005.

It also said first-quarter revenue rose 35% to about $1.33 billion

They totalled nearly $10.2 billion in B.C. in 2005, 28 per cent higher than the previous year

Wency Leung
Sun

The value of building permits issued in B.C. reached a new high in 2005, topping $10 billion after a record December, Statistics Canada reported Monday.

Building permits worth nearly $10.2 billion were issued in the province for the year, up 28 per cent from 2004. Non-residential intentions surged 54.7 per cent to $3.2 billion, compared with $2.1 billion the previous year, while residential permits jumped 18.5 per cent to nearly $7 billion from $5.9 billion in 2004.

“It’s a new annual record in B.C.,” Statistics Canada economist Etienne Saint-Pierre said in an interview.

B.C. and Alberta outpaced the rest of the country, driving the total value of construction permits in Canada to more than $60 billion for 2005, 9.3 per cent higher than the previous high of $55.6 billion issued in 2004.

As the federal agency said in a press release, “If these two provinces were excluded, the annual value of non-residential permits would have risen only 3.3 per cent.”

Low mortgage rates, growth in full-time employment, and a high level of immigration helped gains in the housing sector, Statistics Canada said. Meanwhile, non-residential building intentions were fuelled by low interest rates, strong retail sales and tight office vacancy rates.

B.C. also notched a monthly record for housing permits, which reached $796.3 million in December, up 40.2 percent from November.

December non-residential permits, issued for commercial, institutional and industrial construction, were up a steady 7.6 per cent at $255.5 million.

Those gains are expected to extend the province’s building boom for the next few months, Saint-Pierre said.

“[Contractors] are busy already, but they will remain busy,” he said.

In Vancouver, the value of building permits rose 16.5 per cent to $5.6 billion in 2005. That was helped by a 14.4-per-cent increase in December, with permits valued at $507.9 million, compared with $444 million in November.

Keith Sashaw, president of the Vancouver Regional Construction Association, said he expected the value of permits to be issued this year to outstrip 2005 numbers, despite the rising cost of construction, which he attributed largely to high commodity prices.

“We’re continuing to expect a strong and robust construction market into 2006,” Sashaw said. “There’s a lot of exciting projects that we expect to see being rolled out.”

Sashaw added that despite a current shortage of workers, the construction industry is expected to be able to meet demand as training levels are rising, and more young people are entering the sector.

The labour shortage is “a concern,” Sashaw said. But he added: “It’s not a crisis at this point and we don’t expect to see a crisis.”

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

Province

Real-estate sales in the Fraser Valley have started the year off with a bang, new figures show.
   The Fraser Valley Real Estate Board says sales for January increased by 38 per cent over January 2005.
   There were 1,165 sales recorded during the month, which ties January 2002 as the third most productive January ever.
   “In December experts forecast more moderation for the year ahead but so far that’s not the case for the Fraser Valley,” said Jake Siemens, president of the Fraser Valley Real Estate Board.
   “Not only have sales increased by 38 per cent in one year, the dollar value of January sales increased by 71 per cent compared to January 2005,” he added.
   Meanwhile, the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver says its overall sales increased by 13.2 per cent to 1,924 units in January from 1,700 units for January 2005.
   “Driven by strong demand and affordability, townhouse and condominium sales remain very active,” said Georges Pahud, the REBGV president.
   “Right now more than 50 per cent of active residential listings are priced under the Greater Vancouver average of $456,952, while more than 15 per cent of listings are available under $250,000,” he added.
   Pahud also said that nearly 68 per cent of sales in January were under the average price.

FINAL PHASE: Developer offers 165 well-priced units on the east side of False Creek

Jeani Read
Province

Vancouver‘s city centre is moving slowly eastward and, in the process, discovering new territory, borrowing flavour and character from sleepy traditional neighbourhoods and waking them up to the 21st century.

We asked Maureen Wilson, sales rep at Creekside, the final offering in Bosa’s ambitious eight-phase, 15-year Citygate development, why she likes the project so well she bought a unit in it herself.

Q: What’s attractive about the neighbourhood?

“It’s Yaletown six or seven years ago. It’s a developing area. The people who moved into Brighton (next door) a year ago have noticed a huge change in that short time. The views are the best in the city: False Creek, the city of Vancouver, all the way up Indian Arm and the North Shore mountains. You don’t get that in Yaletown. And you’re kind of in the city but not in the city. I’s quieter, yet you’re minutes away from the downtown core.”

Q: The future?

“With everything in the south-east False Creek in huge new development, the future is going to be very high-end, much like Marinaside. It’ll all come in and meld in around False Creek.”

Q: What’s attracting buyers?

“The prices. Wow. We’re Yaletown without the Yaletown prices. [Creekside] is very competitive, you can get a 1,600 sq. ft. townhouse with private garage for $421 a foot. Where can you buy that in Vancouver? You can’t.”

Q: Amenities?

“There’s a steam room, a sauna, a billiards room, an exercise area, private lounge and private garden. On the east side it’s all garden courtyards.”

Q: What do people like about the floor plans?

“The square footage. They’re big! Homes are getting smaller and smaller but Bosa still builds a 1,274-sq.-ft. condo. And they’re very open — every space is usable, no lost space in hallways and good closet space. Some even have storage and most come with two-car parking.”

Q: Upgrades?

“New low-profile stainless steel fridges are standard — very European and streamlined. All appliances are stainless, standard. A built-in microwave, full-size stacking washer/dryer, all granite countertops. The hardwood floors are all hardwood, not laminate, and are standard in the kitchen. You can upgrade to hardwood throughout but, outside of that, everything is upgraded already.”

Q: Who’s buying?

“People who are already in the area, living in older buildings but wanting to move to a newer building. A lot of people who moved out of town but are coming back because they miss it. Empty nesters and young professionals who want to get rid of that car. A good mix.”

QUICK FACTS

CREEKSIDE

What: 165 units on the east edge of False Creek

Where: Columbia and Keefer

Developer: Bosa Development

Sizes: One-bedroom and den condos to two-bedroom plus den and family room townhomes, 734 to 1,554 sq.ft.

Prices: $409,200-$752,800

Tickets: Noon to 5 p.m. daily except Friday, 106 Keefer St., 604-689-5222

FIVE FAB FEATURES

– By land: “You can walk across the street and be on the seawall. That’s wonderful. And it’s a five-minute walk to Marinaside’s fab restaurants.”

– By sea: “You can take the little ferry to Granville Island Market.”

– By latte: “There’s a Starbucks right there. That’s always wonderful.”

– The easy button: “A live-in caretaker.”

– Get fit: “I love sauna and steam room. And you don’t have to join a fitness club.”

© The Vancouver Province 2006

DEVELOPMENT: ‘There’s a Canadian way to do solutions in a community like this’

John Bermingham
Province

It’s being called “The Shift East.”

Larry Beasley, the City of Vancouver’s director of current planning, coined the phrase almost two years ago in a keynote speech to property developers, challenging them to invest in the older, eastern portion of Vancouver’s downtown region.

Today, with the central downtown peninsula almost built-out, developers now see the city’s eastern metropolitan area, which extends beyond the traditional Downtown Eastside, as the future.

Over the next 25 years, more than 40,000 low and middle-income residents are expected to buy new homes in the region.

Beasley says living there can keep the dream alive of owning an affordable home in the city, provided you’re willing to live in some demanding, mixed-income neighbourhoods.

It also opens up new opportunities for a new generation of developers willing to work in traditionally low-income areas.

“This is not about gentrification at all,” Beasley told The Province. “But we can create a social mix to build much more economic activity. Our idea of complete neighbourhoods includes community and commercial infrastructure.”

The Woodward’s redevelopment along Hastings, for example, is already putting 500 market-units on the block in March, and eventually will add 200 subsidized social-housing units.

Beasley said the success of Woodward’s will attract new developers and increase property investment all along Hastings.

“It’s going to bring a kind of stability, an anchor, to the whole area,” said Beasley. “I think it’s going to become very much the neighbourhood centre here.”

Woodward’s selling agent Bob Rennie agrees. “The city has nowhere else to go but east,” he said.

Rennie also insists that as east-side development picks up, the poor and needy Downtown Eastside residents will remain, but that the drug dealers will move on.

The shift east began several years ago, with heritage incentives for projects in Gastown, Chinatown and Hastings Street, which has led to 20 heritage projects either completed or under way.

Gastown property developer Jon Stovell is one of the east-side players. He’s been converting warehouses into live-work spaces since the mid-1990s. His latest project is at 33 Water St., a 10-storey, loft-style rental building.

He says heritage incentives are changing the face of Gastown and luring new retail investment.

“Pushing east into a very low-density area that’s very close to downtown and borders on an under-utilized industrial area is only logical,” he said.

Beasley adds that Vancouver planners are also avoiding the pitfalls of ghettoizing or gentrifying the Downtown Eastside.

While the city wants to develop the area, it also wants existing residents to benefit.

“There’s a Canadian way to do solutions in a community like this that is more humane and more sensitive to the real needs of people,” said Beasley.

Steps include city council increasing policing in the Downtown Eastside and aggressively pursuing the Four Pillars drug strategy.

The Vancouver Agreement, with the goal of integrating Canada’s poorest neighbourhood with the 2010 Olympics, has also invested $20 million in federal and provincial dollars for various local projects. The mix of low- and middle-income people in the same neighbourhood is expected to work in new projects along False Creek, Beasley explains.

The Southeast False Creek project, with a build-out of 15 years on public and private land, could bring 15,000 new residents to a sustainable community near Science World.

In Northeast False Creek, roughly the area around B.C. Place stadium east of the Cambie Bridge, a smaller-scale project will add a population of 5,000.

The False Creek Flats, an old industrial area between Main and Clark Drive,will be rebuilt over the next 25 years. It’s now being planned as a major mixed-use project, including a high-tech hub, live-work units and low and mid-rise housing.

Add to that the prospect of university space on the old Finning lands and St. Paul’s Hospital possibly moving on the north end of the flats.

In Mount Pleasant, developers are working with the community to build middle-income housing while preserving the community’s heritage character.

Beasley also expects that private developers will take up the challenge and work with the city and community leaders.

Melinda Entwistle, executive director of the Vancouver Economic Development Commission, said economic benefits will flow from increased residential development.

And David Podmore, president of the Urban Development Institute, sees the area as an exciting venue for young developers. Podmore said the sites will be smaller, but will provide more affordable products.

“You are going to see the development community take a more serious look at properties in East Vancouver,” he adds.

“It’s just the natural evolution of the city.”

Peter Simpson, CEO of the Greater Vancouver Home Builders’ Association, puts it this way: “It was almost a poor cousin before but now you’re seeing more multi-use projects, where you’ve got retail on the main level and residential on the top level.”

Simpson said the eastern metropolitan area will be rejuvenated, with an influx of younger residents looking for affordable homes in the heart of city.

“The young people like to be where all the action is. If you can provide them with affordable homes then I think the prospects look very good.”

Cheeying Ho, executive director of Smartgrowth B.C., said the eastward metropolitan shift is a great thing, but she’ll be watching to ensure affordable housing is not forgotten.

“We want to make sure any of these developments will include moderate and affordable housing,” she adds.

Ho also agrees with developing on existing sites, as long as transit in the areas connects them to the downtown. And the neighbourhoods must have their own retail and services, she adds.

© The Vancouver Province 2006

Bob Ransford
Sun

Vancouver’s current housing boom may be facing its first minor market correction as rising construction costs push selling prices to income-limit levels.

As I mentioned in my year-end analysis, construction costs are soaring as a result of the province’s major infrastructure projects and Olympic construction. There is no immediate relief in sight. As a result selling prices for new homes are being pushed to new levels that are approaching a ceiling dictated by incomes.

An international study released earlier this week pegged Vancouver as Canada’s most unaffordable city when it comes to housing, ranking us 15th worst in the world.

The simple fact is that increases in local average incomes are not keeping pace with housing price increases. The pool of eligible buyers gets smaller as construction costs push selling prices further.

Some signature downtown condominium projects at the highest end of the market will likely be immune from any impact, as their pool of buyers is international in scope.

Experienced developers are beginning to shy away from securing new development sites with land costs that add to, rather than temper, future end-product selling price.

This may all end up rebalancing the market somewhat, with a slight slowing in future residential construction, which should see land prices adjust accordingly. The correction may not be enough to provide any relief in construction costs, as we still face a local labour shortage with the volume of construction projects in the public sector.

– – –

The new Harper Conservative government will likely be looking for ways to demonstrate a concern for urban issues, given their lack of electoral success in Canada’s three biggest cities.

It will be interesting to see if Harper gives any consideration to a decades-old Conservative idea — mortgage interest deductibility — a policy idea that helped elect Joe Clark’s minority government.

Close behind addressing housing issues will likely be a concern for quality of life issues that are unique to the urban lexicon. The Party’s roots are conservatively fertilized with a rural perspective, but to make gains next time, Harper will need to portray an understanding of quality of life issues that concern urban Canadians.

Premier Gordon Campbell may have handed Harper a unique opportunity to address urban issues when Campbell revealed details this week of his $3-billion Gateway Lower Mainland transportation program. The premier is counting on major federal funding to assist with this ambitious program.

One of the biggest ticket items will be the twinning of the Port Mann bridge, a controversial project that has regional growth implications. That’s where Harper may have an opportunity.

He could insist on guarantees that the twinned Port Mann bridge won’t simply open the Fraser valley to more residential sprawl, adding to further congestion and all of the consequential negative environmental impacts that concern urban voters.

– – –

An art gallery is not the first place I would think of visiting to get a few budget conscious ideas on modern architectural style and home design. But an upcoming exhibit at the Vancouver Art Gallery will feature the latest in avant garde housing in the form of economical prefabricated homes.

I have written in the past about the appeal of modular or factory-built housing yet the perception still lingers that a factory-built home is little more than a glorified trailer. This upcoming exhibit will challenge that myth.

Today’s prefab movement has captured the spirit and imagination of a new generation of architects and home buyers, who together have championed a variety of modern modular dwellings — from houses owners can build from a kit of parts to those that arrive fully assembled and are habitable within a week or two.

Model homes will be on display at Some Assembly Required: Contemporary Prefabricated Houses, a travelling exhibit that will open in late April at the Vancouver Art Gallery.

Bob Ransford is a public affairs consultant with COUNTERPOINT Communications Inc. He is a former real estate developer who specializes in urban land use issues. Email: [email protected]

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

Lofty expectations

Michael Sasges
Sun

BOWMAN LOFTS

Address: 522 Beatty, Vancouver

Hours: By appointment

Telephone: 604-689-5638

Web: bowmanlofts.com

Project size: 38 residences

Residence size: One level, 674 sq. ft. – 745 sq. ft.; two level, 1,147 sq. ft. – 1,285 sq. ft.

Prices: From $330,000

Developer: The Salient Group

Architect: Gair Williamson Architects

Interior design: Alda Pereira Design

Warranty: St. Paul Guarantee

Construction: Conversion

Construction completion: July

The Bowman warehouse-conversion is a consequential downtown-residency addition structurally and functionally, more than equal to the expectations and aspirations of its sponsors, corporate and government.

Posts, beams and flooring manufactured from ancient Douglas firs in the first years of the previous century and brick and windows, also manufactured in those years, will enclose most of the homes.

Stainless steel and titanium will clad the appliances. Stone will top the counters. Custom shades will cover the windows.

These elements infuse the expectations of developer and designer with their integrity, that the 38 homes will be memorable and singular.

The Bowman’s developer, Robert Fung, expects the homes will appreciate by being appreciated. ” . . . we think we’ve achieved, have come up with, something that is very unique, that the people who invest in this building, who make their homes in this building, will have a very good long-term investment. They [the homes] are things that will carry value,” he says.

” . . . One of our goals would be to hear, in 10 years, someone who is living here say ‘I live in the Bowman’ and to know every body knows what it is.”

Fung’s designer, Alda Pereira, hopes her work will reinvigorate loft construction and residency in Vancouver. ” . . . what this city has come to know as lofts couldn’t be further from the original concept of loft living,” she says.

These are private-space professions. But the Bowman is also the object of public-realm professions, professions of social purpose and consequence.

The building is a pointer to the city’s past and future. It possesses monumental qualities, like the neighbouring warehouses and the east side of the block on which they are located, the 500 block of Beatty Street.

At the Pender Street end of the block is the Sun Tower, an icon of industrial/commercial architecture in Vancouver. At the Dunsmuir end is a Skytrain station.

At one end, in other words, is a memorial to Vancouver’s early ascendancy among post-contact communities in the Lower Mainland – “tallest [building] in the British Empire” (for a few years); at the other end, a memorial to those communities’s later ascendancy.

Additionally, like all the buildings between tower and station, the Bowman is a reminder of one of the economic engines that powered early Vancouver, the wholesaling of manufactured goods from the industrialized east. The CPR located its second Vancouver freight terminus below the warehouses, the Beatty Street yards. The first, the False Creek yards, spawned the Yaletown warehouse district.

“This Edwardian era neo-classical building [erected in 1906] was likely the first large warehouse to be built on Beatty Street and it is valued as a representation of wholesaling activities in downtown Vancouver in the early twentieth century,” a report from city hall staff to city council notes.

The director of current planning prepared the report last spring as a supporting document for a “Heritage Revitalization Agreement” between Salient and city council under which the company subsequently proceeded with the conversion.

City hall’s contribution to the Bowman conversion is worth about $2.2 million, the report calculates. Included in the calculation are $50,000 towards the retention and restoration of the building’s street and lane facades; relief from floor-space limits; and density transferable to another project.

“The requested floor-space variance, facade grant and transferable density represent fair compensation to the owner for the hardship of conservation,” the report notes.

Also easing Salient’s burdens, but excluded from city hall’s estimate of heritage incentives, is relief from parking-space requirements. The bylaw requires 50 spaces for 38 homes; the relaxation requires only 13 spaces.

“Staff support a reduced number of parking spaces for this project as it is a heritage building, and excavating for a parkade is not economic.”

Not parenthetically, the views from the rear homes in the Bowman will encompass either the first or one of the first neighbourhoods in the city rejuvenated with government money, the Strathcona neighbourhood east of Chinatown.

There, in the 1970s, the city and the provincial and federal governments provided $5 million “for the repair of older buildings,” Exploring Vancouver (1978) notes in the introduction to a walking tour of Chinatown and Strathcona.

Again, not parenthetically, the Bowman project may qualify for $1 million in federal money and, if it does not, it will qualify for an equivalent density transfer to another project from city hall.

As importantly as the past to which it points, the Bowman points to the aspirations, of the elected and appointed leadership at city hall, “to improve the general environment of the Downtown District as an attractive place in which to live, work, shop and visit” and “to encourage more people to live within the Downtown District.”

One of the warehouses up the street from the Bowman was the first conversion in the city’s history (until someone comes forward and says otherwise). The warehouse immediately to the north was converted in 1996. The warehouse immediately to the south is currently undergoing conversion, one of two new-home projects on the street by the Townline group of companies. (The other is across the street, a new residential tower.)

All these homes, and the new construction and restorations and renovations in Chinatown below and across Pender and Hastings streets in Gastown, represent a massive injection of middle-class values and expectations — a salient, if you will, of values and expectations based on property ownership — in the downtown eastside.

Designer says ‘juxtaposition’ critical driver of loft design

The ideal city loft, the Bowman’s interior designer says, is firstly a tactile experience.

“Reworking a defunct commercial space in a heritage building is the closest anyone can get to the true spirit of city-loft living,” Alda Pereira says.

“The juxtaposition of extremes — of rough and refined, raw and finished, old and new — provides a veritable texture to daily living.”

‘Raw’ means original

The existing, or “raw,” elements in the 100-year-old building include:

– Douglas fir posts and beams;

– The flooring, more Douglas fir;

– The brick walls;

– The original windows.

The windows in the show home (above) have been restored; the two outside windows are double hung. The apartments will not be air conditioned. Windows shades are included in the selling price.

The timbers in the show home were sandblasted and the flooring sanded, as will all the exposed timbers and recycled flooring in the other apartments.

The sandblasting did not eliminate from the show-home posts and beams all the scorching from a fire in the 1920s.

‘Refined’ means designed

Design, or “refined,” elements include:

– The galley kitchen (above) on one side of the living space “to open up the centre of the floor area.”

– Cabinets that are extra deep “to accommodate extra storage . . . .”

– A room divider (facing page) that “holds [more] storage and can accommodate a television that can be turned 360 degrees, for viewing from living room or bedroom.”

– The wall (right, reflected in the mirror) between bedroom and bathroom “perforated . . . to allow natural light to pass through into the bathroom.”

– And, although not part of her enumeration, the new concrete under and beside the windows (above) in the end apartments and lofts, a component of the seismic upgrading. The display home is an outside apartment.

“When the space [the display suite] was empty, someone said, ‘it’s so small.’ But when we started layering it, when we started adding the furniture, it started to feel a lot larger,” Pereira comments.

Close-to-home shopping

The show-home sectional is truly local, from around the corner and down the street. The Bombast design and furniture company is the source; its show room is located in the unit block of East Pender.

Cooking with gas

Bosch is supplying the gas cooktop, wall oven and dishwasher, in stainless; LG, the fridge in titanium. Blanco is supplying the sink, in stainless, and faucets, in chrome, an intimation of European design in the waterworks.

Composite stone will top the kitchen and bathroom counters.

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

The month of January also saw a hike in the price paid on the average sale

Derrick Penner
Sun

Anxious homebuyers got Greater Vancouver’s markets off to a brisk start in 2006 snapping up 1,924 units in January, a rate 13.2-per-cent higher than January 2005, the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver reports.

Prices were also on the rise in most instances with the average Greater Vancouver sale hitting $456,952, up 6.9 per cent from December.

Condominium apartment units, with 848 transactions, accounted for the bulk of sales and were up 13.7 per cent from a year ago. Some 337 townhouses traded hands, up 20.4 per cent from January of 2005, and single-family home sales increased 9.6 per cent from January a year ago to 739.

“There’s nothing too dramatic in the [results],” Helmut Pastrick, chief economist for Credit Union Central B.C. said in an interview. “It’s still a seller’s market, price pressures are still considerable.”

January unit sales were lower than the 2,332 transactions recorded in December, however, Pastrick noted that on a seasonally adjusted basis, January was slightly better than December, which is a development he did not expect.

“I thought seasonally adjusted sales might have dipped lower than December, so that was a pleasant surprise,” he added.

Pastrick said that based on January’s results, markets could see a “nice pop up” of activity in February, on a seasonally adjusted basis.

Georges Pahud, the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver’s president, said he was surprised to see sales volumes as high as they were, until he saw that the region’s inventory had dropped.

“I think the shortage of listings created a bit of extra demand,” Pahud said. “People realize that because there is such little inventory, they’d better move on and make a deal with what’s available [in the market].”

Pahud added that realtors are also finding it “a bit of a challenge” helping clients because of the lack of new listings. However, he noted that Greater Vancouver inventories are close to the levels they were in January, 2005.

And while prices may be rising, Pahud said buyers are still finding deals below the $456,952 average. Some 68 per cent of transactions in January were done at prices below the average, and 15 per cent were done at prices below $250,000.