Alan Zibel, AP Real Estate Writer
USA Today

WASHINGTON — Rates for 30-year home loans fell to a shade below 5% this week but remained above last month’s record lows.

The average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage fell to 4.99%, down from 5.06% a week earlier, mortgage company Freddie Mac said Thursday.

It’s the third straight weekly decline. The drop comes after interest rates fell in the bond market this week as concerns about the economy increased demand for the safety of government debt, which is closely tied to mortgage rates.

Freddie Mac collects mortgage rates on Monday through Wednesday of each week from lenders around the country. Rates often fluctuate significantly, even within a given day, often in line with long-term Treasury bonds.

Rates for 30-year loans had dropped to a record low of 4.71% in early December, pushed down by an aggressive government campaign to reduce consumers’ borrowing costs.

The Federal Reserve is pumping $1.25 trillion into mortgage-backed securities to try to bring down mortgage rates, but that money is set to run out next spring. The goal of the program is to make home buying more affordable and prop up the housing market.

While it’s possible that the program could be extended, analysts believe the Fed is reluctant to do so.

The average rate on 15-year fixed-rate mortgages fell to 4.4%, down from 4.45% last week, according to Freddie Mac.

Rates on five-year, adjustable-rate mortgages averaged 4.27%, down from 4.32% a week earlier. Rates on one-year, adjustable-rate mortgages dropped to 4.32% from 4.39%.

The rates do not include add-on fees known as points. One point is equal to 1% of the total loan amount.

The nationwide fee for loans in Freddie Mac’s survey averaged 0.7 point for 30-year loans and 0.6 point for 15-year, five-year and one-year loans.

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved

Property developer starts with Yaletown residential unit and now has $700-million empire

Malcolm Parry
Sun

Auto racer Will Lin’s Rize Alliance Properties will build the $70-million Roston tower on the Cecil Hotel site and refurbish the adjacent Yale Hotel.

HOW WILL LIN WINS: Tires have squealed beside the Cecil Hotel since 1954, when the then-new Granville Street Bridge’s exit ramp brushed its south wall. Hotel and ramp will be razed soon. But rubber will still burn for Will Lin, 44, who’ll build the $70-million, 187-unit Rolston tower on the site that cost him $10.5 million and has been rezoned from 5 to 8.25 FSR (floor space ratio).

That’s because the Rize Alliance Properties Ltd CEO/founder spends some of his spare time racing 1995 Porsche 943 and 1992 BMW 325i cars. He also “tracks” a Honda CBR 600 motorcycle, meaning running it at race speeds without competing. As well, his home garage houses a Triumph Thruxton, Ducati 848 SS, BMW 1300 GT and — “my first girlfriend” — a 1985 Suzuki GSXR-750 motorcycle. There’s a Porsche Panamera sedan on order.

Motorhead ways aside, Lin will build the Rolston to LEED Gold environmental specifications, and renovate the adjacent Yale hotel and its SRA (Single Room Occupancy) rooms. The Yale’s famed blues pub, but not the Cecil’s stripper bar, will live on in a deal that enables vendor Wade Luciak to acquire 10 per cent of the completed complex.

Designed by HBI/IB Architects, the project brings Lin back within a block of the one that got him started in 1992. That development, at Hamilton and Drake Street, also involved its vendor, when John White and Lin put up $350,000 each. Lin got his stake from his Taiwanese physician-father, Chao Chi Lin, and Citizen’s Bank loaned $1.1 million. Eleven live-work units and two retail units sold for some $200-per-square-foot, Lin recalled, smiling.

With cash flowing, Lin eventually bought “seven or eight” buildings, mostly in burgeoning Yaletown, and sold them during the 2006-2008 “heyday” before prices nosedived. But his high-rise-development breakthrough was the 1995 Richards-at-Davie Metropolis. That project incorporated the old Canadian Linen facility’s facade, and had some three-quarters of its 99 units built as 16-foot-ceiling lofts. He’s still flabbergasted that Scotiabank’s now-senior VP, Michele Kwok, saw the Metropolis presentation centre and volunteered a $25-million loan. “I was 29 years old, and didn’t have a broker or anything,” Lin said. “If only that would happen nowadays.”

What did happen is that Lin “learned that we were able to preserve heritage buildings and get heritage density from city hall to sell to recipient sites.” Case in point: The 1930s Art-Deco-style London Building at 626 West Pender Street. It yielded 80,000 square feet of density Lin sold to Delta Land Development’s Bruce Langereis for the Urban Fare market in that firm’s Cielo development.

Today, Rize (say Rice) has $700-million-worth of projects on the go and turns over some $140 million annually. That’s some journey from his $1.9-million kickoff in still-nascent Yaletown, when passersby asked: “Another warehouse?”

“No. It’s residential,” Lin replied.

“Good luck,” many said. –

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Michael Geler
Sun

The Woodward’s W was recently lit.

Will the recent lighting of the Woodward’s W herald a new chapter in the life of the Downtown Eastside?

I do not share the view proclaimed by some community activists that Woodward’s and other condominium developments will lead to the eviction of low income households and more homelessness. But there will be changes; some neighbourhood residents will no longer be able to urinate in the streets and alleys and openly sell and use drugs in front of the Woodward’s property. Unless we put in place a National Housing Policy that proclaims housing as a right, like the government of Cuba did after the revolution, there will always be homeless people in our city.

Since we are not soon likely to get a National Housing Policy, below are five approaches that could be tried.

Recently it was announced that the StreetoHome foundation wants to build thousands of new housing units in the city.

I would suggest the Foundation copy what its Toronto counterpart did, namely help fund the placement of people into existing rental apartments scattered around the city, along with a range of support services.

Some people on the streets did have friends and families from whom they have been cut off. Perhaps we should devote more resources to help reunify these people with families and friends.

The Salvation Army operates one such program, but with inadequate resources. Maybe additional funding should be provided to it and other organizations offering similar services.

Many homeless and low income people are capable of working, if only they could find suitable employment. Tradeworks, Building Opportunities for Business (BOB) and Eastside Movement for Business & Economic Renewal Society (EMBERS) are excellent organizations trying to help people find work. However, each needs more funding and support.

Some people want to work but cannot do so because of their appearance. So why not have more barbershops where people can get free shaves and haircuts to prepare them for work?

There is no one coordinating entity. Perhaps what we need is a local Community Trust.

One of the worst times in the DTES is Welfare Wednesday when everyone receives their welfare cheque and many head off to pubs and drug dealers, resulting in increased crime. Why not spread the payday across the whole month?

In summary, there is no one easy answer to address the problems of this neighbourhood.

However, while Woodward’s may offer many benefits, there may be equally effective but considerably less expensive and time consuming solutions. Let us hope so.

Michael Geller is a Vancouver architect and developer.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

From idea to conception, the Empire State Building was built in 1 1/2 years, the Eiffel Tower in two. Social housing in Woodward’s? 25 years

Pete McMartin
Sun

Woodward’s closed its doors in 1993, but the idea to convert the building to include social housing was born years before. Photograph by: Arlen Redekop, PNG, Vancouver Sun

From its birth as an idea to its completion as the first link across the country, it took 14 years to build the Canadian Pacific Railway.

It took the same amount of time to build the Golden Gate Bridge.

From the day its investors assembled the land to the day it opened, it took 1 1/2 years to complete the Empire State Building.

It took two years to build the Eiffel Tower.

Here’s something funny: A 25-metre-high replica of the Eiffel Tower was built to support the famous “W” that stood atop the old Woodward’s building. From the day the old Woodward’s building closed its doors in 1993 to the day of its reincarnation this month, it took 17 years for the new Woodward’s building, and a new “W” resting atop a new replica Eiffel Tower, to be reborn. If you add on the years the idea was first floated to convert the former Woodward’s building into a residence with a social housing component, it will have taken 25 years from start to finish. For some reason that eludes me, people felt this was a reason for celebration when it opened its doors this month.

In those 2 1/2 decades, little in the neighbourhood has changed for the better. Drugs are still omnipresent. The number of homeless are still legion. Crime, disease, the problems of the mentally ill … the grim litany continues apace 25 years down the road.

It is the accepted wisdom that poverty is the Downtown Eastside’s biggest problem, but that is nonsense. The Downtown Eastside’s biggest problem is paralysis. Despite the balm of hundreds of millions of tax dollars applied to the neighbourhood in those 25 years, despite the steady accretion of layer after layer of social welfare agencies (so many that the provincial government finally ordered an audit last year to find out exactly how many there were), despite the tireless work of charities and churches and foundations, the sore continues to fester.

But, oh, the tail-chasing social welfare debates and failed experiments over those 2 1/2 decades! And the moralizing designed to frustrate anyone who dares think of the Downtown Eastside as anything other than an enclave for the poor, the poor who always seem to be beset by the horrors of gentrification, which is a word the socially sensitive gentry use to express their horror of gentrification. Mount Pleasant can be beset by gentrification, Commercial Drive and Yaletown can be beset by gentrification. Even nearby Strathcona can be beset by gentrification. Change has touched them all. But a pestilential war zone located next door to the downtown of a city completely reinventing itself? Never!

Meanwhile, in all those years, Woodward’s did nothing but languish. In the campaign to incorporate social housing into its redevelopment, any suggestion of commercial enterprise wasn’t just rejected, it was demonized.

When Fama Holdings bought the building in 1995 and announced plans to build 350 condos and two floors of commercial space, the then president of the Downtown Eastside Residents Association offered the view that the developers should pay for any social housing to be built in a low-income area like the Downtown Eastside because, after all, “they’re the ones making fortunes.”

The blitheness and entitlement of that statement typified the welfare culture that had established itself firmly in the area. The developer, in response, replied that if the neighbourhood wanted social housing, maybe it should ask the government, whose duty it was to provide it.

At this ideological impasse, the provincial government stepped in. In 2001, the province, that is, taxpayers, bought the crumbling building for $22 million. In 2002, there was the famous squat of protesters demanding the building be saved and developed into social housing, followed by the famous squat eviction of the protesters by the city. Then in 2003, the city, that is, the taxpayers, rode to the rescue and bought the building from the province for $5 million. Then, after a couple of years of massaging plans into just the right socially responsible mixture, construction began in 2006.

Construction took four years. It cost $400 million. There’s a couple hundred non-market units, over 500 market units, retail space, a downtown campus for SFU and other government flotsam and jetsam for ballast. Something for everybody.

And after all this angst and decades of delay and truly gargantuan expenditure of public money, and this bending-over-backwards to satisfy the insatiable appetite for social housing, what ran on the op-ed page of The Sun on the week the new Woodward’s building opened? Jean Swanson, coordinator of the Carnegie Community Action Project, fretted in print that the new Woodward’s will have the effect of driving out the homeless population living on the street and the resident population living in single-room occupancy hotels because, she felt, it would make them feel “uncomfortable.” In other words, they will flee in the face of gentrification.

In the Downtown Eastside, no one will ever get it right.

In the Downtown Eastside, change will never be good.

In the Downtown Eastside, the one constant we can always be sure of, even after 25 years of stagnation, is complaint.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

shedding assets: Brass artifact to be sold for charity at private party in strip-club showroom

Andy Ivens
Province

The Cecil Hotel’s steamy contribution to Vancouver entertainment history will bump and grind to a halt this summer, when the building is demolished to make way for a new condo development. Les Bazso — PNG

When Vancouver’s Cecil Hotel is demolished later this year, a vestige of the strip club’s lively history will survive.

The brass pole used by a cavalcade of exotic dancers in their acts over the years will be auctioned off next week in what the developers of the condo project that will replace the Cecil have dubbed “The Last Dance.”

“We’re hoping [the pole] will bring in [a donation] in the thousands,” Will Lin, president of Rize Alliance Properties, told The Province on Wednesday.

Rize Alliance has booked the Cecil’s showroom for a private party Jan. 26 for the soiree.

“There will be entertainment, but in good taste,” Lin said of the party.

“I don’t think it will be quite as far as what they currently have.”

Proceeds of the auction will go to the St. James Community Service Society, which manages numerous supportivehousing initiatives around the city.

The showroom, operated by a different company, likely will shut down for good closer to the demolition date — set for July or August — said Lin.

Rize Alliane also owns the Yale Hotel, which will undergo an extreme makeover when the new 23-storey tower is completed.

The Yale, which first opened in 1889 as the Colonial Hotel, is on the city’s list of heritage buildings, but the Cecil is not.

Rize Alliance has committed to upgrading 43 singleroom accommodations (SRAs) in the Yale and handing them over free of charge to the city — a $3.8-million amenity — to make up for the loss of the 50 SRAs currently in the Cecil.

The Yale’s makeover will pay meticulous attention to preserving the architectural details of the Second Empire style that make it so special, such as the mansard roof and gabled dormers.

The 225-seat Yale pub, widely known as Vancouver’s “Home of the Blues,” will be renovated, but keep its current footprint.

“The current owner of the pub will come back and continue to operate it when the renovation is completed,” said Lin.

The new tower replacing the Cecil will be called the Rolston. It will have 187 units of market housing above two floors of commercial space fronting on Granville Street.

The Cecil’s 200-seat liquor licence will be retained for a new restaurant.

The Rolston will feature horizontal slabs that push in and out similar to a Jenga puzzle, accommodating large decks, according to the development permit’s description.

The Rolston also will pay homage to the rich history of the Cecil, including an interpretive plan recording the Cecil’s role in the formation of Greenpeace and the Georgia Straight.

Springtime house hunters out early thanks to tax credit

Stephanie Armour
USA Today

A sale pending notice is posted over a realtor’s sign outside a home in Andover, Mass., in late December By Charles Krupa, AP

The springtime spurt in home buying may hit before the snow melts this year as buyers scramble to meet an April 30 tax credit deadline.

The spring buying season typically takes off in March and runs through May. But buyers who want to claim this year’s tax credit — up to $8,000 for first-time buyers and up to $6,500 for repeat buyers — must have signed purchase contracts by April 30. And they have to complete the deal by June 30.

“I expect the buying season will be moved up,” says Jim Gillespie, CEO of Coldwell Banker. Sales “are going to take off in February and March and really take off in April. … My concern is that the move-up buyer hasn’t thought what they need to do. Their window is really short. They have to coordinate closing dates.”

The average time it takes to get a home loan processed is about eight weeks now — two weeks more than it used to be, according to the National Association of Realtors.

The tax credit’s impact on 2010 home sales is uncertain. Some economists expect the credit to pull sales that would have occurred later in the year into the first half.

“The tax credit will absolutely have an effect,” says Pete Flint, CEO of Trulia, a residential real estate search engine. “It is going to shift demand from the later part of the year to the first part. January and February will be very strong. The next three months, there will be a surge in demand.”

The credit is pulling in some consumers now.

“I’m actually in the middle of house shopping, and I decided to do it now so that I could get the $8,000 tax credit,” says Amity Gay, 26, who’s looking for a cottage-style house in Tallahassee.

Sellers should be prepared to appeal to first-time home buyers, who still make up the majority of buyers, according to Pat Lashinsky, president and CEO of ZipRealty.

And buyers should expect rising prices in some markets, including San Diego, Dallas, Minneapolis, Chicago and Washington, D.C.

At MetLife Home, buyers are being preapproved now for new housing developments; an increase in demand is being attributed to the expanded tax credit.

“Our spring market got moved up at least two months because of this,” says Kent Geschwender, branch manager.

The tax credit was scheduled to expire on Dec. 1, 2009, but was extended and expanded by Congress.

Derrick Pener
Sun

Last year’s recession dried up enough plans to build new buildings and erased enough construction jobs to take a substantial bite out of the cost to build new buildings. And that cost saving will last through 2010, according to a new survey.

For almost five years, double-digit annual inflation in construction costs were the norm, but those days are gone.

From a peak in 2008, construction costs fell in 2009 from around five to six per cent at the low point to more than 20 per cent, depending on building type, the survey, conducted by quantity surveyors BTY Group in conjunction with the Independent Contractors and Business Association of B.C., found.

With a smaller pool of available projects, more companies are competing for each job, said Philip Hochstein, president of the contractors association. Also, with less work, contractors have laid off their least-experienced and less-productive workers, and don’t need to pay experienced tradespeople the huge incentives that were required during the boom period.

“It’s the productivity improvement that has reduced the labour costs, more than reduction in wages,” Hochstein said.

Hochstein added that the strong Canadian dollar, combined with lower commodity prices, gives contractors better purchasing power for buying materials, which also helps to reduce costs.

However, with a new infusion of infrastructure projects, activity in the market will again put pressure on pricing around 2011, said Joe Rekab, a principal at the BTY Group.

“If we look at the developments planned for, say the Gateway project, that is going to take a lot of the front-end trades involvement,” Rekab said. “Then if you look at some of the vertical infrastructure, some of the health care projects that are going to come up like the Surrey hospital and BCIT, those are significant contracts.”

Rekab expects enough of the construction sector to once again be occupied to reintroduce inflation at the rate of about two to three per cent per year, which he said has been historically typical for the industry.

Keith Sashaw, Vancouver Regional Construction Association president, said that despite thousands of layoffs during the downturn, B.C.’s construction sector also has the demographics of its workforce working against it. The average age of skilled tradespeople is around 55, so the industry still faces the prospect of being depleted by retirements in the coming decade.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun