Claudia Kwan
Sun

Project name: McGregor

Project location: 4250 Marine Dr., Burnaby

Project size: 36 townhouses in Phase 1; 92 townhouses + 4 condos in total

Residence size: 4-bed 1,625 to 1,655 sq. ft.

Prices: Townhouses from $539,000

Developer: Amacon

Architect: Robert Ciccozzi Architecture.

Interior Design: Portico Design Group

Sales centre: 4250 Marine Dr., Burnaby

Hours: Noon to 6 p.m., Sat to Thur

Telephone: 604-433-4567

Web: www.mcgregorliving.com

Occupancy: Summer/fall 2011

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When you’re travelling along the road through Burnaby’s Big Bend neighbourhood, you might spot some big box stores, a church and some produce farms.

It takes a considerable craning of the neck — or a slight detour — to find McGregor, Amacon’s latest development.

At the moment, the 12-acre property seems fairly serene. The heritage McGregor house, completed in about 1905, is set back nearly 500 metres from the cars swooshing by on Marine Way. A number of two-storey industrial warehouses, also owned by Amacon, are in a buffer zone near the road. The rumble of traffic is faintly audible from the home’s wide veranda, but it’s surprisingly quiet overall.

Initial work has begun on the site to prepare it for construction. When all three phases of the project are complete, a series of small townhouse buildings (with a total of 96 homes), will dot the landscape, amid a parklike setting of trees and cycling and pedestrian paths. A huge community garden patch will take advantage of the rich boggy soil that produces vegetables for farms just down the street. A stream that serves as fish habitat will wind its way through the property from a large pond to the east of the original house.

The pond and waterways were originally used to move logs to market in the late 19th century, when the site was known as the Royal City Mills logging camp. Now the stream will likely provide hours of amusement and enjoyment for the young families envisioned as the buyers for McGregor.

The home was built for Duncan McGregor and his wife, Margaret, who carved a palatial estate from the original 160-acre parcel, with manicured gardens, a tennis court, fruit orchards and a barn. Their son Douglas grew up riding ponies and horses, rambling on the grounds with pointer dogs, before growing up and attending Burnaby South secondary school.

Duncan McGregor died of cancer in 1928, and the family fell on tough financial times after the Great Depression hit. His widow Margaret leased out the property, but the municipality of Burnaby eventually took it for nonpayment of property taxes.

The provincial government bought the property and used it for decades as a boys’ rehabilitative home known as New Haven. It was ultimately sold to Amacon.

Four apartments will be located in the heritage home, above communal amenities such as a games room and library, and a heritage barn from the early 20th century will also remain on the property.

The first phase is scheduled to be ready for occupancy by the summer or fall of 2011, with the remaining homes ready over the year after that.

It’s the opposite of the trend toward ultra-high density housing seen in so many other urban areas; if you do the math, there’s more than 5,500 square feet of parkland per home on the property.

While maximizing profits by maximizing land use is usually a primary goal in real estate development, Nic Jensen says the idea here is also to sell a specific lifestyle incorporating the spacious outdoor surroundings.

“With all of the green space, it feels like home, but people still get a simple strata lifestyle,” explains the manager of sales and marketing for developer Amacon.

“We wanted it to feel open.”

The development accommodates a commute either east to the Fraser Valley, or west to Vancouver. Jensen believes it provides a hugely livable option for people who aren’t ready or willing to take on a single-family home, at less than $350 per square foot.

“We think it will mostly be young families taking advantage of the price point,” he says. “We’ve even incorporated that into the floor plans. The combined dining area and kitchen looks into an enclosed family room, so you can cook or clean while you’re watching over the kids. It’s the best of both worlds.”

Robert Ciccozzi, principal of Robert Ciccozzi Architecture, wanted to give buyers little details that would help make the homes seem more individual.

“We took elements from the character house and applied it to the townhouses, like little entry shed roofs so that people identify with their own front door,” he says. “We also broke up the roof line with gables and dormers to further identify individual units.”

Some of the homes also have wraparound porches, echoing the heritage home.

Ciccozzi paid homage to the McGregor house, now painted dark green, by using one bold colour for the exteriors of the individual townhouse buildings, including forest green, dark slate blue and brick red, accented by simple white trim.

“They’re not conventional colours, but they look great while being different.

“They’re a bold statement with nice clarity, very presentable.”

Duncan McGregor would probably like the idea of townhouses being developed on the estate he originally named Glen-Lyon.

He had tried to develop the property himself by selling off lots in the 1920s, but the timing wasn’t right.

Amacon is now betting the families of today will see the benefits of having a park outside their front doors.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

New Intracorp handbook will help purchasers knowwhat questions to ask

Carla Bury
Sun

After 30 years of building and selling homes across Canada, Intracorp is seeing a new breed of homebuyer.

Today’s purchasers are much better informed than the buyers of the past. They now have access to so much information through not only newspapers and the Internet, but also through social media.

It used to be that developers could create a brochure and website and present just the information they wanted purchasers to know.

Now purchasers can find out through Twitter and Facebook what people are thinking about a particular development.

At the same time, although the information people obtain is often accurate, there is also a lot of misinformation on the Web.

Because they are accustomed to having information at their fingertips, today’s purchasers want facts — and a lot of them — delivered in a way that is relevant.

When they come into a sales presentation centre, they have specific information they are looking for; for example, whether hardwood flooring is included in the purchase price, or whether the strata budget includes garbage pickup.

And although the information is out there, people have to do a lot of digging.

We decided to take the digging out of it and let buyers know we are on their side.

We are baring it all, if you will. There is so much to know about buying a brand new home.

Based on the questions we have heard over the years and the pitfalls we see people fall into because they are not fully informed, we have pulled all the information together and made it easily accessible in book form. Show and Tell: Unlocking the Secrets of New Home Buying is a tool to help purchasers navigate through the process and know the kinds of questions to ask.

To ensure the information is both thorough and authoritative, we approached a dozen people who are well respected in fields related to residential development and sales. The result is nuggets of expert advice you’d generally have to pay for, like legal tips from Glenn Leung of McCarthy Tetrault LLP. For example, if you had never purchased a pre-sale home before, you might not know about the purchaser’s seven-day right of rescission: a seven-day “cooling-off period” providing a week to review a pre-sales contract and either proceed with it or cancel it.

Glenn recommends having a lawyer review the contract to explain exactly what you are getting into and what to watch out for, including situations that could cause a potential purchaser to lose both the home and the deposit.

Understanding the details of the purchase is critical, because people tend to get blinded by the display suite. They don’t realize that their finished home may not look exactly like that. Purchasers sometimes don’t know until they take possession that some items in the show suite, such as hardwood flooring, granite counters or stainless steel appliances, may not be included.

Sue Rutledge, Intracorp’s vice-president of sales, recommends going through the feature sheet with the sales person so you know which items are optional and will cost extra.

She also helps buyers understand the square footage number attached to the finished home, because developers vary in how they measure it, with some developers including decks, patios and exterior walls in the total square footage, while others do not do this.

One of the things buyers often struggle with is how to read a floor plan. With pre-sales, the only physical space they see is a show suite, but they choose their own home based on a floor plan. Whether they are first-time buyers or people downsizing from a single-family home, it is often difficult for them to visualize how much space there will be and whether it will work for their lifestyle.

Top interior designer Robert Ledingham explains what the symbols on the floor plan signify and offers advice on what to look for: closets, laundry facilities, oddly angled walls that create awkward spaces and whether your furniture will fit.

One of his tips is to measure out the floor plan in your existing home to compare the two.

The fun part of a new home is making it your own. Although Inform Design co-owner Nancy Bendtsen sells high-end furniture, she offers advice on how to prioritize your spending and where to cut corners.

The first thing to do, she says, is to think hard about how you live and where you spend your time.

If you don’t cook or entertain a lot, for example, don’t bother with a dining table. If you do, you can economize with a table made from an offcut of wood and metal sawhorses from Home Depot.

Invest in a good mattress and save on the bed frame. And if, like most people, you enjoy watching TV, then put the television in the living room instead of hiding it away in a less inviting spot.

As well as handy lists like 101 questions to ask, Show and Tell: Unlocking the Secrets of New Home Buying also includes expert advice on topics like checking out architects’ and developers’ previous work; the advantages of buying new instead of resale; pros and cons of presale homes; spotting a good developer; picking a neighbourhood; recognizing good construction; negotiating tips; and getting the best mortgage.

Like material on the Internet, the book is free, and it can be picked up at any Intracorp sales centre. Intracorp also videotaped the experts as they gave their advice and is posting the interviews on its website, at www.intracorp.ca.

Carla Bury is Intracorp’s director of marketing.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Sun

Modular housing units used during the Vancouver Olympics are lined up in Victoria, waiting to be assembled to create the first housing project at Mount View Heights. Construction is in full swing, with workers preparing the foundations for the 36-unit Olympic Vista Apartments, which will be managed by the Victoria Cool Aid Society. The affordable rental units are aimed at delivering housing to those who are homeless or at risk of being homeless.

A total of 18 modular housing units are on the site now. They arrived by truck after being used for athlete accommodation during the Winter Games.

The construction project is the first among several at the former Mount View school site, where the total value is expected to reach $100 million for a range of affordable and supportive housing and a group of care facilities for older citizens.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Derrick Penner
Sun

Buyers now have more control in the Fraser Valley real estate market due to more listings, fewer sales and lower prices in a lot of locations, the Fraser Valley Real Estate Board reported Thursday.

Fraser Valley board realtors recorded 1,477 sales through the Multiple Listing Service in May, down two per cent from May 2009 and down almost 18 per cent from April. New listings of 3,457 homes for sale topped May of 2009 by 23 per cent.

Fraser Valley board president Deanna Horn said that while May sales were 16 per cent below the board’s 10-year average, it still represented solid activity.

“Certainly we’ve got sales, they’re good, but people are taking their time to look,” Horn said, adding that buyers are also negotiating harder on price.

Horn recalled a recent listing she dealt with that attracted multiple offers to buy, but all the offers were below the asking price, “which was unusual.”

Across the Fraser Valley, the average price for all property types hit $452,039 in May, up 10.5 per cent from the same month a year ago, and up almost one per cent from the previous month.

However, within board communities, prices slipped off recent highs for certain property types.

In Abbotsford, the average detached-home price dipped 2.5 per cent from April to $459,734, though it remains 3.5 per cent over the same month a year ago.

In Mission, the average price for a detached home of $360,647 was almost nine per cent off April’s average mark, though still almost four per cent higher than the same month a year ago.

Horn said that reflects the level of competition in the Fraser Valley’s market, which had a total inventory of 11,411 unsold homes in May, up almost 14 per cent from the same month a year ago.

“The last time this many homes were available on Fraser Valley’s MLS in May was 1995,” Horn said.

Higher mortgage rates and the introduction of stricter mortgage-qualification rules following a strong rebound out of the recessionary downturn are expected to push prices down.

Andrey Pavlov, a business professor at Simon Fraser University, said this spring’s slowdown in the Fraser Valley has not been particularly startling considering the unpredictability of real estate sales a year ago.

Pavlov said developers stopped building new homes and possible vendors of existing homes became reluctant to sell just as buyers began jumping back into the market.

“Of course that was going to push prices very high very quickly,” Pavlov said. “Now that situation has been remedied,” he added, with developers building new projects and a flood of listings in the existing-home market.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Brian Morton
Sun

The value of major B.C. construction projects has reached an all-time high of $191.1 billion, according to Iain Black, minister of small business, technology and economic development.

“This is an excellent snapshot of the major projects that are planned, under construction or completed,” Black said in an interview Thursday of the latest Major Projects Inventory released this week that shows construction is making an impact in all parts of the province with 896 major projects -triple the number in 2001.

“And it tells us a couple of things. It’s a solid indication of the confidence in our economy and of the government policies that are driving it.”

According to the survey, the number of proposed projects also topped the charts at 547.

Projects cited in the survey have a capital cost of at least $20 million in the Lower Mainland and at least $15 million in the rest of B.C.

Black said it is encouraging to see that $752 million worth of clean energy projects are newly proposed throughout the regions, which will “strengthen job creation, economic development and B.C.’s reputation as a leader in the global low-carbon economy. And it’s a provincewide phenomena.”

Black said there are four main reasons the B.C. projects have reached an all-time high: sound fiscal management, diversification of the economy, a Triple A credit rating that was maintained through the recession, and the province’s tax policy.

According to the inventory, between January and March 2010:

– Fifteen major projects started construction, with an estimated value of $1.3 billion. The largest of these was the $400-million Rainbow Residential Development in Whistler.

– The capital cost of all major projects under construction in B.C. was estimated at $61.2 billion.

Twenty-nine major projects were completed, with an estimated capital cost of about $2.3 billion, including the $263-million Upper Harrison Hydroelectric Project in Tipella.

Outside the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island, six of the 10 top-valued projects proposed this quarter focus on clean energy, including the $350-million Meikle Wind Energy Project in Tumbler Ridge, the $120-million Merritt Green Energy Project, the $120-million Fort St. James Green Energy Project, the $90-million Beaver River Hydroelectric Project in Golden, the $48-million Long Lake Power Project in Stewart and the $24-million Pacific Wood Pellet plant expansion in Prince George.

The report said that since March 2006, all regions have experienced increases in total project numbers, with increases of 139 per cent in the Cariboo, 84 per cent in the Northeast and 47 per cent in the Thompson Okanagan.

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