Despite challenging economic times, developer hasn’t had to lower prices to entice buyers
Michael Sasges
Sun
A family home, but an affordable family home, is the message in the MacPherson Walk show home. ‘Our pricing at the beginning was realistic and value-based,’ Michael Hungerford says.
The MacPherson Walk developer is selling the last homes there from a show home in a completed townhouse. Further, it is selling them from an inside-row residence, and not an end-of-row residence. The latter admits natural light and breezes from three sides; the former from two, the back of the residence and the front. Main-floor townhouse ceilings are nine feet off the floor.
MACPHERSON WALK
Project location: Burnaby, MacPherson and Irmin
Project size: 49 townhouses, 296 apartments
Residence Size: 1 bed, 514 sq. ft. – 665 sq. ft.; 2 bed, 2 bath, 782 sq. ft. – 893 sq. ft.; 3 bed, 2 1/2 bath townhouse, 1291 sq. ft. – 1,355 sq. ft.
Prices: 1 bed, from $259,900; 2 bed, from $334,900; 3-bed townhouses, from $559,900
Sales centre: 14 – 5883 Irmin St.
Hours: noon – 5 p.m. Sat – Sun
Telephone: 604-456-8883
E-mail: [email protected]
Developer: Hungerford Group
Web: macphersonwalk.com
Architecture: Robert Ciccozzi Architecture
Interior Design: BYU Design
Occupancy: phase 1, fall, winter; phase 2, spring
– – –
An architect and interior designer whose mastery of space is proclaimed by their success in professional competitions and the width and depth of their commissions.
Two attached-residency types. Four acres of landscaped grounds. Six buildings, robustly detailed in timber and brick. A seven-acre property.
MacPherson Walk is big, memorably big: it is a departure for the family-owned real estate company responsible for its development, the Hungerford Group, and it is intended by the family as a profession of its abilities.
”Our family has been around,” Michael Hungerford says. ”I’m the fifth generation in Vancouver, my kids are the sixth.
”We’ve been developing property for over 30 years. I would say we are a new face to large-scale multi-family. In terms of understanding development, understanding service, we’ve been doing it for a long time and we have a reputation that’s been earned over the generations….
”We are here to stay and we want this to be the measure of what we will do in the future.”
“We” are Michael and brother Andrew and their father, George.
“They” are not necessarily saying that MacPherson Walk, wood-frame attached residential, is their definite future.
”…this is a good measure of the standard we want to set for this market. We will be servicing other markets with our products. It could be high-end communities; it could be industrial parks, retail. We’re a developer that’s not afraid to go into different asset-classes.”
All but 25 of the MacPherson Walk homes have been sold. The sales and marketing campaign started in October 2007; construction, in early 2008.
Father and sons, in other words, are completing the sale and construction of a new-to-them product in challenging economic times.
”Obviously no one could have predicted the market conditions and the difficulty purchasers have had with employment,” Hungerford says to the question, what do you know in the summer of 2009 that you didn’t in the summer of 2007?
”I think you have to be flexible; you have add some value to hold value. I think everyone anticipates value goes up. I think in this market that’s changed for people; prices have come down.
”We’re really fortunate that prices have held up here. We’ve never lowered our price. And I think that the general south Burnaby market is one of the stronger markets in metro Vancouver.
”There are fewer large-scale communities like this. I think people see quality and they see a different experience living here. And that’s something that has allowed us to maintain prices.”
The first six months of the Westcoast Homes reporting year, of course, has been a chronicle of declining prices: Concord Pacific, the Cosmo tower in downtown Vancouver; Francesco Aquilini, the Richards tower downtown; Amacon, the Beasley, again downtown: a “bulk,” or liquidation, campaign by one of the big organizers of sales and marketing campaigns and on behalf of developers with unsold homes around here and in the Okanagan.
”Our pricing at the beginning was realistic and value-based,” Hungerford says. “We set prices that we thought were reasonable to begin with. So we didn’t need to drop prices.”
Hungerford says the family has also tried to increase value for their customers during the wait for their homes.
Heavier carpet underlay. Cement board, not waterproof drywall, behind bathroom tiles. Booster fans to accelerate laundry-room venting and improve dryer efficiency. Outside, retaining walls of stone, not wood.
He says he has not priced out the cost to Hungerford of these after-sale upgrades.
”These things are going to see this project last a lot longer. We haven’t priced them out. But they were certainly the right decision. Throughout the development of a project you have to constantly make decisions about product selection and issues that come up. We have always tried to do the right thing, which is for the long term.”
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