Tony Gioventu
Province

Dear Condo Smarts:

We live in a triplex built in 1985.While we are a strata corporation we have chosen to operate informally.

We have never convened an official annual general meeting, we have no bylaws, no minutes of meetings or records for sales documents and purchase our own insurance separately. Now we are at a crisis.

Our roof must be replaced as there are leaks in our attics, but one owner is refusing to agree to a roofing contract and pay his share of the roof expense, so we’re stalled.

Is there any way we can force him to pay up?

Unless we do, we will be faced with damages and rising unmanageable costs.

— Carol Miller, Nanaimo Dear Carol:

Whether you are in a duplex in >Prince Rupert or a 600-unit complex in Vancouver, you are still a strata and you must operate in compliance with the Strata Property Act.

Even the smallest strata corporations must take the time each year to hold an annual general meeting and pass a budget and elect a council.

You must also produce minutes as a record of meetings.

Within your budgets, you must include common expenses such as strata insurance, operating costs and contingency reserve contributions.

Many small strata complexes under 10 units pay strata fees of $350 per month or more to ensure they are properly maintaining their common property, buying the right insurance and planning for future repairs and not dumping all the responsibility on just one or two owners.

In your case, you need to start by holding an AGM to set a basic budget for operating and financial planning for future repairs. But there is a kink in the legislation.

If you are duplex or triplex and one person votes against everything, you can’t pass a special levy by 3/4 vote for roof repairs or new bylaws that address long-term planning and maintenance — the vote must be all voting in favour.

The result is you may have to proceed to court if your resolutions fail.

Hold an AGM, place the resolutions on the agenda, create minutes recording results of the votes and, if they fail, the owners must retain a lawyer to either obtain a court order for repairs or application of an administrator to handle the strata affairs.

Education is critical. Knowing what you are doing makes all the difference. Check out CHOA’s fall seminar schedule at www.choa.bc.ca. Sessions commence province-wide Sept. 20, and are open to all strata owners, councils and managers.

Tony Gioventu is the executive director of the Condominium Home Owners Association. Call 604-584-2462 or 1-877-353-2462.

Prices down from July, but up from year ago

Helen Morris
Province

OTTAWA — Home sales in the country’s major cities eased in August, down 5.3 per cent from July, when monthly sales were the second-highest on record, a new report released Friday shows.

Seasonally adjusted national sales activity in August was 29,717 units, according to the Canadian Real Estate Association, which said the reduction in sales levels was primarily

driven by fewer sales in Toronto, Montreal, Edmonton and Vancouver.

The average price rose 11.2 per cent year-over-year to $325,881 in August, but fell $6,500 from July 2007.

Average prices reached records in Saskatoon, Sudbury, Windsor and St. John’s and remained above levels recorded in August 2006 in all major markets, CREA said.

“There were adjustments to mortgage rates in July that may have had an impact on the re-sale housing market in August,” said Gregory Klump, chief economist at CREA, “but the housing market continued at near-record levels because the Canadian economy is strong and two factors that influence housing — employment and consumer confidence — are strong.”

A decline in Toronto and Vancouver helped reduce new listings to 48,817 units. Despite the 1.5-per-cent reduction, the levels are still healthy, as August new listings were the sixth-highest on record and included a rise in listings in Calgary, Winnipeg and Saskatoon, CREA said.

The marginal decrease in new listings combined with the August decline in sales have eased market conditions compared with July, the association added.

“The move to a more balanced market means some buyers will take more time to shop,” said CREA president Ann Bosley. “With a higher supply and continued strong demand, we anticipate the resale housing market will remain strong and steady for the balance of the year.

“This is a housing market built on good fundamentals, including good lending practices.”

A separate report Thursday from Scotia Economics cautioned that home prices across Canada are ripe for a fall.

Adrienne Warren, senior economist with Scotia Economics, said a bustling market has led to housing in many regions of the country being overvalued, increasing the risk of prices dipping in the longer-term.

Also last week, RBC Economics reported that housing affordability in Canada in the second quarter worsened in every housing type, every province and every major city, owing to higher house prices, mortgage rates, utilities and property taxes.

© The Vancouver Province 2007

A commanding presence in downtown Vancouver, Patina will rise 42 floors from the preserved fa

Markets across the country are running ahead of normal long-term pricing trends

Bruce Constantineau
Sun

Canadian housing prices are likely to soften as the current real estate boom gets long in the tooth and price increases creep above historical norms, according to a Scotia Economics report.

The report said national housing market fundamentals remain strong — with low unemployment, high immigration, little evidence of overbuilding or speculation, and only a slight exposure to subprime lending.

“Yet there is little doubt that current trends are unsustainable,” the report states. “The current housing boom is now the longest of the post-war era [going on nine years], and has seen one of the largest cumulative real price gains [more than 60 per cent].”

The report said almost every Canadian city surveyed has house prices that are higher than they would be if price increases this year followed the historical averages recorded between 1980 and 2006.

The average deviation from the historical norm was eight per cent, ranging from minus one per cent in St. John’s to 25 per cent in Edmonton.

Vancouver had the highest average house price during the first half of 2007 — $570,000, which is 13 per cent above its historical norm.

“There is growing evidence of overvaluation in home prices in some parts of the country — a precursor to a period of softening conditions,” the report said.

Scotia Economics senior economist Adrienne Warren said housing affordability is becoming increasingly stretched for many would-be buyers after nearly a decade of rising prices.

“The further domestic home prices climb above underlying economic fundamentals, the greater the risk of an eventual correction,” she said.

Warren doubts house prices will actually fall in the near future, but expects price growth will drop significantly from current levels. She expects national house price increases of 10 per cent this year will fall to between five and 10 per cent in 2008 and below five per cent in 2009.

Warren said Vancouver‘s 13-per-cent deviation above its historical house price norm this year does not indicate a “frothy” market that’s ready to collapse.

“It has just been pushed up by continued strong demand and a fairly tight supply, but it does not indicate a lot of speculative activity,” she said.

Warren noted Toronto experienced a major house price correction after posting a 33-per-cent deviation rate above its historical house price norm during a previous housing market peak in 1989.

She said higher interest rates would accelerate a national housing market correction but doubts that will happen, feeling a bigger risk is more likely to come from a U.S. economic downturn affecting the Canadian economy.

The report said Canada ranks relatively low in the degree of house price overvaluation, compared with other major developed nations that have also experienced housing booms in the past decade.

It said average real home prices in the U.S. carried a 14-per-cent premium in 2005 but values have since slipped amid growing supply and weakening demand.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

 

A mansion in the sky

John Mackie
Sun

How do you turn a $1.5-million penthouse into an $18-million penthouse? You do it up nice. Real nice.

The penthouse in question is on the 26th and 27th floors of 1000 Beach Ave. in the West End. It’s something of a Vancouver landmark, because of its high-profile location just off the Burrard Bridge, and its somewhat bizarre history.

The tower where it’s located was completed in 1992, but the 6,913-square-foot penthouse was left raw and unfinished. The theory was that people who spend millions of dollars on a unique property like to do it up to their own taste. So the developer left it empty, a concrete shell atop one of Vancouver‘s priciest condo towers.

It attracted lots of media attention back in 1992 because it was listed for sale for $7 million, a record at the time. But when it finally sold in 1994, the price was $2,817,570. Since then, it’s been sold twice, for $2,570,000 in 2000 and $1.5 million in April, 2004.

The latest owner is a Fort Langley businessman who decided to finally finish the apartment, then sell it.

The apartment has a spectacular location that offers breathtaking views most anywhere you look. The trick was to design something that was just as spectacular inside, without overwhelming the view. So he hired Omer Arbel.

Arbel is the young architect and designer who worked wonders with the new Inform store in Gastown, arguably Vancouver‘s most beautiful retail outlet.

His design for the penthouse was elegant and imaginative and quite unlike anything else in the city. There are walls that fold up and open the apartment to the elements, a wild green floor in the kitchen, and several glowing “pods” with onyx-clad walls.

“This project confronted me with a huge amount of space,” Arbel noted in an e-mail from Paris.

“What to do with it all? One night I had a strange idea about floating glowing pods occupying the space, floating around in the two-storey volume like over-sized paper Japanese lanterns. I thought it might be interesting to be able to inhabit these lanterns, but have them be the activating element for the spaces around them.

“We came across a source for very high quality chalk white onyx — a material that transmits light. After some experimentation we discovered we could clad rooms with this material, backlight it, and achieve quite an astonishing result.”

This isn’t just hype. At night, the glowing onyx base for the kitchen counter seems almost otherworldly, particularly when coupled with an onyx-clad ceiling over the dining room. The onyx “pods” worked so well, they became the spark for the entire apartment design.

“The rest became clear — it became important to create a strong contrast between the experience of being inside one of the pods, and being outside of it,” said Arbel.

“We created a set of rules. When outside, the experience is restrained, almost minimal … centred on the glowing pods and the amazing view of Vancouver. Hence various textures of white, and the brown wood floor and surrounds to articulate and warm it.

“Inside the pods, the strategy is opposite. In each pod, we wanted to create an introverted, extremely rich, very detailed — indeed, baroque — interior. While inside the pods, colour and texture overwhelm you. When outside the pods, all you sense is the light, the warm wood, and the view.”

It’s all rather impressive, a modern mansion in the sky. Realtor Ben Kielb of Sotheby’s International calls it one of Vancouver‘s few “true penthouses, where you have the whole floor, or the top two floors, or the top three floors.”

In this case, you get a private four car garage, as well as two additional parking spots. You zip up to the penthouse via a private elevator that opens right into the apartment.

The penthouse has 3,078 square feet of space on the 26th floor and 3,827 square feet on the 27th floor. For the live-in help, it also comes with a 792-square-foot “nanny suite” on the second floor.

There are four bedrooms, six bathrooms, two living rooms, a breakfast nook, a kitchen, a dining room and an office in a loft that floats above the dining room.

This was one of the major structural changes in the space. Originally, the apartment came with a small pool on the upper floor, which was a good conversation piece but kind of odd.

“My client did not like the idea of a pool inside a penthouse residence,” said Arbel. “It took away warmth and domesticity, so we decided to cover it.”

The pool was converted into a dining room and covered with Brazilian walnut flooring, a handsome wood used throughout the condo. Then Arbel added a 362-square-foot loft space above the dining room (with walnut walls), as well as a wine cabinet that lifts up and down out of the dining room floor at the flick of a switch. (If the new owner would rather have the pool, it’s still there, hidden away under the dining room floor.)

The most startling style statement is the kitchen floor, which is done in a bright dayglow green made from industrial resin. The counters and cabinets are white, which only accentuates the bright colour. And it’s got all the mod cons you could ever need, including a built-in cappuccino maker and a drop-down translucent screen so people cooking in the kitchen can be sheltered from partygoers in the rest of the apartment.

“This isn’t your stainless steel/granite countertops-off-taupe tiles kind of look,” says Kielb. “This is kind of going for it.”

The main architectural feature of the space is a 10-metre-high glass pyramid that soars into the sky in the middle of the second-storey living room, which itself is an octagon. Arbel hung a dazzling Bocci chandelier with dozens of pendant lights from the pyramid: the pendants float like bubbles in the day and look like stars at night.

The downstairs living room isn’t quite as dramatic, but is just as stunning. The floor-to-ceiling glass walls fold up so that the room can be completely opened to the outside terrace, an incredible experience at this height. (The windows were custom made by a local company, Atlas Meridian.) For continuity, the walnut floors in the living room are matched by walnut floors on the terrace, although the exterior walnut was left unfinished.

Naturally, there’s a hot tub on the terrace, but it’s the master bathroom on the second floor that is really impressive. It has the impossibly stylish Agape Spoon bathtub, white shag carpet, and is surrounded on three sides by windows.

“People say ‘How can you have a tub all surrounded by glass?’ Well, ’cause no one can see you,” says Kielb.

“I know a number of people who would appreciate having a bath here. The view out English Bay . . . you can imagine what it’s like when the sun is setting.”

The views are, in fact, staggering. Looking south, you get the Burrard and Granville Bridges, Granville Island, False Creek, English Bay and the sunset. Looking north, you get a front-row seat to downtown, plus the North Shore mountains. Because the apartment has two complete floors, there are 360 degrees of views.

Coupled with the ultra-contemporary design, it’s a very alluring property, although at a listing price of $18.2 million, it will probably only appeal to an elite international buyer. In the three months it’s been on the market, it’s been shown to people from Canada, the United States, Zimbabwe, Costa Rica, Mexico, England and Hong Kong. “This doesn’t appeal to the couple that has three grown children and are retiring and downsizing,” says Kielb.

“This is kind of like rock star living, so it’s very particular. It [appeals] to a very particular group. But those who are in the group, if they see it, they’d love it.

“It’s kind of like an international property. It will be interesting to see who actually buys it. More than likely it will be a secondary or a third home, a little vacation spot, a little getaway in safe Vancouver.”

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

Frances Bula
Sun

VANCOUVER – The city will be taking the unusual step of shutting down and demolishing a social-housing building in the Downtown Eastside.

“It is with great regret” that the city’s housing centre is proposing to destroy 76 much-needed units of social housing, writes director Cameron Gray in his report to council, but Marie Gomez Place is in such bad shape that there’s no other option.

Gray also notes that there is a lesson to be learned from the Marie Gomez debacle, and that is that there needs to be enough staff and support money for social housing that is going to be used for extremely low-income tenants who have mental-health and addiction problems.

Gray said the building, in the 500 block of Alexander Street, started to develop water leaks in the 1990s, a common problem of wood-frame buildings put up in the 1980s.

The Downtown Eastside Residents Association, which was asked to run the building in 1989, tried to get federal money to repair the leaks, but couldn’t because it got so little in rent from its tenants, who are almost all on welfare, that it couldn’t guarantee repayment.

In 2002, DERA emptied the building because of concerns about its condition but, a year later, allowed people to move back in because it was desperate to find spaces for the increasing numbers of homeless people.

But those who moved in were such a difficult group that the building deteriorated even more, as fires and firefighting efforts caused additional damage. DERA had only enough money from B.C. Housing to maintain a basic staff presence and, as a result, was unable to monitor residents and prevent problems from popping up.

The building will demolished once the current 54 residents have been moved out.

The proposal to demolish it is being made with the agreement of DERA and B.C. Housing.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

 

Experts forecasting correction or moderated gains

Ashley Ford
Province

Current Canadian housing-value trends are “unsustainable,” says a senior economist at Scotia Economics.

Adrienne Warren said yesterday that rising home prices, increasingly out of the reach of many, are eventually heading for a correction.

Warren said the fact housing in many regions of the country is overvalued increases the risk of prices dipping in the longer term.

“The fundamentals underpinning Canada‘s housing market are still quite good,” she said in Scotia Economics’ latest Real Estate Trends report.

“Unemployment is low, immigration is high and apartment-vacancy rates are tight. There is little evidence of overbuilding or speculative buying.

“The industry also has relatively little direct exposure to subprime lending, with these loans accounting for only about five per cent of domestic mortgages in recent years, compared with about 20 per cent in the U.S.,” Warren said.

“Affordability is becoming increasingly stretched for many would-be buyers after almost a decade of rising home prices.

“More recently, economic risks have increased in the wake of the intensifying financial market turmoil stemming from the U.S. subprime-mortgage problems,” she said.

The Scotia report noted that, in all 15 cities examined with the exception of St. John’s, N.L., house prices are above their long-term trend, with big regional variations, from one per cent above trend in Ottawa to 13 per cent in Vancouver and 25 per cent in Edmonton. The average deviation at mid-year was roughly eight per cent.

Richard Wittstock, vice-president Development of Amacon, a major Vancouver-based development company, agrees that the rate of appreciation for houses is probably unsustainable.

“That is probably true and, while prices will remain strong, they will grow at a more moderate rate,” he says.

Amacon has projects across Canada, including in Alberta and Ontario, and Wittstock says the fundamentals of the market remain strong.

“Vancouver is being priced at world prices because it is a world city. At the end of the day, population continues to grow here and that is purely a reflection of the growth of jobs and [a] good economy,” he says.

RBC Economics has reported that housing affordability in Canada in the second quarter worsened in every housing type, every province and every major city.

“In the second quarter, Canada‘s housing affordability experienced one of the largest and most broadly based quarterly deteriorations since the mid-1990s,” said Derek Holt, assistant chief economist with RBC.

© The Vancouver Province 2007