Suzanne Morphet
Sun

601 Herald

Location: Victoria

Project size: 27 homes, 4-storey building

Residence size: 446 sq. ft– 1,018 sq. ft.

Prices: from $249,900

Contacts: Rebecca Ross or Mark Lawless

Telephone: 1-250-383-1725

E-mail:

[email protected] [email protected]

Web: 601herald.com

Developer: Airey Development

Architect: Matrix Architecture and Planning

Interiors: Evoke

Occupancy: summer/fall 2011

—

If Trevor Linden’s name carries any cachet from his years as ‘Captain Canuck’ you would hardly know it given his low profile in a new multifamily residential development in Victoria.

“We’ve talked about it and I don’t think it does,” says Howard Airey, president of the Airey Group, whom Linden has partnered with to develop the four-storey 27-unit building in the city’s historic Chinatown.

“With all due respect to Trevor, when we did our building in Vancouver, ‘West,’ I think it was interesting for people, but at the end of the day they have to like what we’re doing, it has to make sense.”

Airey and Linden were both in Victoria recently to dig a few shovelfuls of dirt to officially launch the construction phase of their project at 601 Herald St. This is the second project together, but Linden has also built some single-family homes in Vancouver with his brother, Jamie, including two contemporary-style homes in the Point Grey neighbourhood.

Still, Linden doesn’t call himself a developer. “You know, I’ve always enjoyed the real estate side, the personal side, from the time I was in my early 20s, looking at unique real estate products and that sort of thing. I enjoy the creative side of it so when people ask me what I do, I don’t say ‘I’m a developer,’ but I suppose in a way I am.”

Asked what he does call himself these days, he pauses to consider, then suggests, “I’m an unemployed hockey player?”

But according to Airey, Linden is not a passive investor in this project. He’s in the Vancouver office every day comanaging all aspects of the development.

“Real estate development is one or two big moves and a million small moves,” says Airey. “Trevor’s very good on the big moves and on the small stuff …. He’s not popular by accident, this guy is a real natural leader and can motivate people and obviously he’s a team player. He’s a huge asset.”

Both partners really like Victoria, says Airey, explaining why they chose to build across the Strait for the first time, and they scouted out a lot of locations before purchasing the vacant lot next to the Chinese

Benevolent Society. But they purchased just before the recession, forcing them to sit tight them for months. Even now, says Airey, it takes careful planning to make sure the project is viable.

They’ve been working closely with Durwest Construction, a Victoria-based builder that has numerous high profile projects under its belt, including the Victoria International Airport expansion, the Bear Mountain Clubhouse and the Sidney Pier Hotel and condos.

“The margins are very tight on development right now,” explains Airey. ” Construction costs are the biggest variable and they’ve been really great managing that.”

But the first step was determining what kind of condominiums are in demand in Victoria. To answer that, the partners met with local realtors.

“We organized two or three events where we had realtors come and tell us what they actually thought was missing in the market,” says Airey. “What came out of that was [that] having a mix of unit types, offering a range for everybody, would be the smartest thing that we could do.” So that’s what the partners designed, with units ranging from 400 square feet to over 1,000 square feet and prices starting at $249,900. The top floor, two-storey units with 18-foot ceilings climb to $489,900. Though 400 square feet sounds small, Linden says Victoria has lots of condos that are even smaller, some no bigger than hotel rooms.

“We never did any of that, because we could never see ourselves living in something like that, so we really built a product where people live and work and that will be home for them.”

The building’s brick exterior is traditional and designed to fit into the historic neighbourhood, the second oldest Chinatown in North America. But the interiors will be modern, says Linden, reflecting his and Airey’s personal preferences.

The architect who is looking after that part of the project is David Nicolay of Evoke International Design, who also worked with Linden on the single family homes he built with his brother.

“These interiors are very clean, a little bit contemporary and that appeals to my eye” says Linden. “A lot of things – the products we chose, colour palettes -are all things we would see ourselves liking, for sure.”

Some buyers will have terraces bordering an interior courtyard, something the partners have dubbed the Zen garden. “It’s a very contemporary garden so homes on the inside will look onto that urban garden,” says Airey.

“You know, in New York City, there’s a lot of these, people don’t even know they’re there, but there are these great urban gardens behind the compounds and apartments that you look down onto.”

Another modern feature is a bicycle storage and maintenance room, right off the street rather than in the basement, where they’re typically located. This could have been retail space for sale, but Airey says it’s their nod to the environment, providing owners with a facility that will encourage them to bike rather than use cars.

“Sales are great at this stage of development,” report Mark Lawless and Rebecca Ross, realtors for 601 Herald. “We are now 30 per cent sold.”

The project is attracting a wide range of people, from young first-time buyers to retired empty nesters and everything in-between.

“It’s definitely a neighbourhood I could see myself living in,” says Linden. But while he has no plans to move in, his parents have bought a unit.

They live in Medicine Hat, Alta., so for them, Linden says “it’s a place to escape the nasty weather, and my dad really likes the area, the neighbourhood.”

Suzanne Morphet is a freelance writer in Victoria and co-author of the Vancouver Island Book of Everything.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

New ‘suburbia’ features affordable and sustainable housing close to shops, dining and transit

Claudia Kwan
Sun

Shaughnessy on Lions Park

Project location: Port Coquitlam

Project size: 167 residences, 26-storey building Residence size: 1 bed, 580 sq. ft -735 sq. ft; 2 bed, 830 sq. ft– 1,150 sq. ft.

Prices: from $244,900

Sales centre: 2950 Glen Drive, Coquitlam

Hours: noon — 6 p.m., Sat — Thu

Telephone: 604-461-2750

E-mail:

Web: liveattheshaughnessy. com

Developer: Onni Group of Companies

Architect: LDA/IBI Architects

Occupancy: fall 2012

Oasis

Project location: Coquitlam

Project size: 225 residences, 37-storey building Residence size: 1 bed, 510 sq. ft– 520 (to be checked– mjs) sq. ft; 2 bed, 850 sq. ft– 915 sq. ft.

Prices: from $222,900

Sales centre: 2950 Glen Drive, Coquitlam

Hours: noon — 6 p.m., Sat — Thu

Telephone: 604-461-2750

Web: oasiscoquitlam. com

Developer: Onni Group of Companies

Architect: LDA/IBI Architects

Occupancy: Spring 2013

—

As the first highrise in Port Coquitlam’s history, Shaughnessy on Lions Park is the latest invitation to the new-home shopper to experience urban residency in a local suburb.

“It’s an accepted lifestyle development, to have multi-family residences,” says Beau Jarvis, vice-president of development for Onni.

“Cities are planning for densification with transportation, mixed-use planning and more community amenities.”

The permitting process proceeded slowly, but surely, Jarvis reports.

“The site was available and the city indicated a willingness to consider it, but it was controversial at first. People were saying, ‘this isn’t Yaletown.’ There’s always resistance to change.”

“Suburbia” is now filled with highrises, says Jarvis. The attached home is more likely than not to be more affordable than the detached home. And it is more likely than not to be more sustainable, more green. A “town centre” household has less cause to use the private automobile and more opportunity to use public transit, for example.

The organizer of the Shaughnessy sales and marketing campaign, Cam Good of TheKey. com, thinks that the suburban-urban divide is disappearing as downtowns, or town centres, develop in Lower Mainland municipalities outside Vancouver.

“The idea of where is ‘cool’ is shifting,” Good says. “The suburbs have centres with their own restaurants, shops and events.”

The Shaughnessy homes, Good reports, are appealing to a wide range of buyers. About one-third of the homes have been sold, by an equal mix of first-time homebuyers, downsizers and would-be landlords.

“There’s a group of young people who went to high school in this community and they want to stay here, but if they’re going to do that, they want to live in the coolest building,” Good explains. “The investors believe this is going to be the rental hot spot of PoCo. The only other competition is $800 basement suites.”

He concedes that while renters may be willing to pay more for concrete construction and the views at the Shaughnessy, that market is so far untested. Still, Good believes rental rates would be in the area of $1.50 per square foot.

While the Shaughnessy is a first for Port Coquitlam, Onni’s Oasis project is entering a crowded market in Coquitlam. A myriad of projects are in the process of breaking ground in the immediate area around the Coquitlam Centre shopping mall. The Grand Central project (Buying the fundamental in Coquitlam, May 8 Westcoast Homes) is less than two blocks away, for example.

Rather than being concerned about the competition, Beau Jarvis believes the intensity of development is a positive sign, showing the City of Coquitlam’s commitment to densification in that neighbourhood.

“People will choose us because of our reputation, the quality of our finishings, the height of the building, and the amazing amenities we’re putting into Oasis,” Jarvis says with an almost-shrug.

At 37 storeys, Oasis also will be a bold vertical statement in the commercial hub of the city, being the tallest highrise in Coquitlam. The fourth floor common area includes a huge outdoor swimming pool and hot tub, a play area for children, and for golf enthusiasts, a putting green.

Radanka Trubka, one of two inhouse interior designers for Onni, used the same design schemes for both Oasis and the Shaughnessy. Buying in that type of volume, she explains, allows for significant savings.

“We retained full-sized appliances because many of the buyers are coming from a single family home, and that’s what they’re used to,” she says. “We managed to get gas ranges and convection ovens, so there’s lots of value there.”

Trubka says it was important to stay away from flashy or trendy aspects, like glass or mosaic accent tiles. In the kitchen, visual interest is added instead by stacking small rectangular tiles in a dense grouping; in the bathroom, large format rectangular tiles are placed on the vertical plane rather than the more common horizontal. Both add some style without any impact to the bottom line.

Overall, the goal was to stay within the market trend toward a contemporary and clean feel without being too outre. The kitchen reflects what many consumers now demand in highrise living, with industrial, restaurant-style sinks, under cabinet lighting, and soft close drawers.

Since they’re being marketed out of the same sales centre, Oasis and the Shaughnessy could even be considered competition for each other, but Cam Good doesn’t see it that way.

“Coquitlam is more of a proven entity for this style of living,” he says. “If you have a little more of an appetite for risk, you’re heading to Port Coquitlam.”

Much of the densification in both cities has been predicated on the arrival of the Evergreen Line, a transit project that has been the subject of funding wrangles between different levels of government and a seemingly interminable series of delays. It is now scheduled to begin construction in early 2011, but there are still concerns in the Tri-Cities about when the project will finally be completed.

Jarvis is philosophical about one of the fundamental marketing aspects for both developments. (Both Oasis and the Shaughnessy will be less than five minutes away from Evergreen stations.) “There is lots of planning and lots of moving pieces with development. We have to rely on the government to build transportation, but there are no guarantees. There’s always a risk if infrastructure doesn’t develop.”

Good also points out that if the SkyTrain stations were already in place, each buyer in the two developments could easily tack on an additional $50,000 to the purchase price for each unit. Having a little patience and tolerance for risk will ultimately pay off, he believes.

Until then, Onni thinks buyers will enjoy living in the soaring towers of Oasis and the Shaughnessy, high above everyone else.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

$46-million award-winning development includes residential suites, offices and retail space

Brian Morton
Sun

For Fredrik Orling, it’s a no-brainer: Opening his home-accessories store in Gastown three weeks ago was a smart move.

The icing on the cake? Setting up shop in a newly renovated heritage building at 28 Water St. is already paying off in growing sales.

“Our products are designed and produced by family-run businesses in Europe,” Orling, co-owner of Orling & Wu, said in an interview Thursday.

“We believed Gastown was the perfect match for our brands. We wanted to be part of the revitalization and rejuvenation of the area.

“And it’s working out great. We feel we’re already contributing to the area and we’re meeting our targets financially.”

Orling and partner Julie Wu are leasing space in Gastown’s latest revitalization project, five historic buildings at the corner of Carrall and Water Streets that were restored by Vancouver developer The Salient Group in a seven-year project.

The restoration, part of the Gastown Revitalization Project, cost about $46 million, with the aim of keeping as much of the historic facades and character as possible while modernizing the buildings to 21st-century standards.

All told, 144,000 square feet was made available for retail, office and residential space in the Alhambra, Garage, Cordage, Grand and Terminus, among Vancouver’s oldest buildings.

The last building was completed in December 2009 and 60 to 70 per cent of the retail and office space has been leased.

Project architect Mark Ostry, with Acton Ostry Architects Inc., was one of several people involved in the project who toured the finished buildings Thursday.

“This has already had an impact on Gastown’s revitalization,” Ostry said of the project, which has received the 2010 Canadian Green Building Award from Sustainable Architecture & Building magazine and a 2010 Lieutenant-Governor’s Award gold medal in architecture.

“This is the nerve centre of Gastown. It was a real labour of love, a very complicated project.”

Ostry also noted that before the restoration started, nobody lived in the buildings, which were run down and had few commercial tenants.

“We doubled the density [of the buildings], but you wouldn’t know that.”

He said the key to the project is that while it contributes to the area’s revitalization through careful rehabilitation and expansion of heritage buildings, it did not displace anyone or negatively impact the historic character.

The restoration project includes, among other things, a lovely courtyard behind one of the main buildings and a hallway leading to an elevator dominated by original tin ceiling panels, removed and restored for decorative purposes.

“Part of the challenge was preserving the heritage, and yet bringing it back to life with new uses,” said Donald Luxton, president of Heritage Vancouver Society. “This is the birthplace of Vancouver.”

Leanore Sali, executive director of the Gastown Business Improvement Society, said the development and others like it are bringing a lot of new residents and businesses to the area.

“And these are young, dynamic entrepreneurs who are changing the face of Gastown.”

One new resident is Adrian Keough, who moved into a converted loft apartment.

“It’s amazingly quiet,” Keough said of his south-facing home. “And I love the area. It’s changed so much. Now, you have everything you need here.”

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

With a file from Derrick Penner
Sun

A small surge in residential building-permit applications in June pushed British Columbia to the second-highest month this year for stated building intentions.

Builders took out $612.2 million worth of building permits for new homes in June.

Add $248 million in non-residential permits and the $860.2-million total made it the best month for the province since February, when builders took out $876.5 million in permits.

Keith Sashaw, president of the Vancouver Regional Construction Association, said the numbers were encouraging, but cautioned that the construction sector may see numbers ease in the coming months.

“The underlying trend remains level for the local construction sector, though some softness is coming in the residential and government sectors with declining housing sales and the ending of [government] stimulus plans,” Sashaw said.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Realtors say the new tax — which does not apply to the purchase price of resale homes — is a bigger threat than rising interest rates

Garry Marr
Sun

Royal LePage Real Estate Services says almost half of its agents believe the main reason for the cooling housing market is a public misconception about how the harmonized sales tax affects home sales.

The company conducted an online-only poll of its realtors at the end of July — almost a month after the HST went into effect in British Columbia and Ontario — and found that 43.9 per cent of the 769 respondents in those provinces blamed the new tax for the downturn. The HST was considered a bigger threat than rising interest rates despite two recent quarter-point hikes, Royal LePage said.

Even before the HST was introduced in B.C. and Ontario, sales in the second quarter of this year were down 13.3 per cent from the first quarter, on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to the Canadian Real Estate Association. June sales dropped 8.2 per cent from May.

CREA said the national average sales price rose just 4.9 per cent from a year ago to $342,662 in June.

“We wanted to understand the impact HST has had since it was introduced, and what we found is that there is a need to better educate home buyers and sellers to ensure they understand when the HST is applicable,” said Phil Soper, chief executive of Royal LePage. “According to our realtors who work in B.C. and Ontario communities every day, misconceptions about the HST are having an effect on the market in both provinces.”

The HST applies to newly built homes with exemptions up to a certain amount in both provinces. But it does not apply to the purchase price of resale homes. It does apply to the fees for services and commissions associated with any real estate transaction. New homes represent less than 10 per cent of business, says Royal LePage.

Agents indicated consumers don’t seem to understand how the tax works. When asked to provide examples of comments heard from buyers and sellers regarding the HST and its effect on the housing market, 46.7 per cent of agents indicated that confusion about HST remains more than one month after its introduction.

“Among the most common responses to the survey’s open-ended questions were that many home buyers incorrectly believe HST applies to the sale price of resale properties,” says LePage.

Interest rates were only cited by 28.4 per cent of agents as the biggest threat to the housing market. Overall, 86 per cent of agents reported the HST is affecting their business some way.

“While we predicted that the prospect of rising interest rates would put a damper on the housing market, our agents are finding that the HST is actually having the greater impact on buyer behaviour, at least in the short-term,” said Soper. “Our take-away from this survey is that we need to do more as an industry to educate consumers about the HST.”

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Survey shows tax — not interest hikes — blamed for decline

Garry Marr
Province

Royal LePage Real Estate Services says almost half of its agents believe the main reason for the cooling housing market is a public misconception about how the harmonized sales tax affects home sales.

The company conducted an online-only poll of its realtors at the end of July — almost a month after the HST went into effect in British Columbia and Ontario — and found that 43.9 per cent of the 769 respondents in those provinces blamed the new tax for the — downturn.

The HST was considered a bigger

threat than rising interest rates despite two recent quarter-point hikes from the Bank of Canada, Royal LePage said.

Even before the HST was introduced in B.C. and Ontario, sales in the second quarter of this year were down 13.3 per cent from the first quarter, on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to the Canadian Real Estate Association.

June sales dropped 8.2 per cent from May.

CREA said the national average sales price rose just 4.9 per cent from a year ago to $342,662 in June.

“We wanted to understand the impact HST has had since it was introduced, and what we found is that there is a need to better educate home buyers and sellers to ensure they understand when the HST is applicable,” said Phil Soper, chief executive of Royal LePage.

“According to our realtors who work in B.C. and Ontario communities every day, misconceptions about the HST are having an effect on the market in both provinces.”

The HST applies to newly built homes with exemptions up to a certain amount in both provinces.

But it does not apply to the purchase price of resale homes.

It does apply to the fees for services and commissions associated with any real-estate transaction.

New homes represent less than 10 per cent of business, says Royal LePage.

Agents indicated consumers don’t seem to understand how the tax works. When asked to provide examples of comments heard from buyers and sellers regarding the HST and its effect on the housing market, 46.7 per cent of agents indicated that confusion about HST remains more than one month after its introduction.

“Among the most common responses to the survey’s open-ended questions were that many home buyers incorrectly believe HST applies to the sale price of resale properties,” says LePage.

Interest rates were only cited by 28.4 per cent of agents as the biggest threat to the housing market.

Overall, 86 per cent of agents reported the HST is affecting their business some way.

“While we predicted that the prospect of rising interest rates would put a damper on the housing market, our agents are finding that the HST is actually having the greater impact on buyer behaviour, at least in the short term,” said Soper.

“Our take-away from this survey is that we need to do more as an industry to educate consumers about the HST.”

In addition to B.C. and Ontario, a harmonized sales tax is in effect in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland and Labrador.

© Copyright (c) The Province

Worries about the economy, mortgage rates leave potential owners ‘sitting on the fence’

Derrick Penner
Sun

Yvonne Viel had hoped to get in the low $700,000s for her south Vancouver home.

But in a July where home sales plummeted by almost half from last summer’s red-hot market, she was happy for a quick sale of her home at $675,000.

Pricing was key to the sale, which occurred within days of the home going on the market, she said. She said her realtor convinced her to list at $699,000, which brought three offers, including the one she accepted.

“I did the right thing for my situation,” Viel, a single 50-year-old in the personal management field, said in an interview.

In Metro Vancouver, excluding Surrey, 2,255 sales were registered through the Multiple Listing Service, a 45-per-cent decline from July 2009 and the third-lowest July in a decade.

In the Fraser Valley, July MLS sales were off 47 per cent with 1,101 transactions and the slowest July in a decade, according to real estate board president Deanna Horn.

The benchmark price for detached homes, an average for typical homes sold, dipped a negligible 0.2 per cent to $793,193 in the area of Metro Vancouver covered by the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver.

Fraser Valley Real Estate Board realtors saw the detached-home benchmark hit $510,470 in July, down 1.5 per cent from June.

But not everyone had a slow July.

Lorne Goldman, of Macdonald Realty Lorne Goldman, who sold Viel’s house, said July was a busy month for him with nine sales including a bidding war for one listing.

Other than noticing fewer offers from Mainland Chinese buyers entering the market, Goldman said the change is a shift from “a sellers’ market to a more balanced market.”

“I think it would be natural to assume that a sellers’ market can’t continue forever,” Goldman said.

Vancouver mortgage broker Chris LeMay said he’s noticed he’s doing more refinancing work for clients than home purchases right now, but he was taken aback by the overall decline in July sales.

“It’s a lot higher than I thought,” he said. LeMay‘s impression from talking to clients is that they’re growing uncertain about the economy.

“They’re not sure if [property] prices are going to come down and [mortgage] rates are going to go up and they’re a little bit scared,” LeMay said, “so they’re sitting on the fence.”

But Jake Moldowan, president of the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver, said there are still buyers in the market. About one-third of them are first-time buyers, which is important, he said. “That really starts the chain of events.”

Moldowan suggested comparing July of 2009, which was the record for July sales, with this July, is misleading.

The board saw 19,428 sales to the end of July, and Moldowan said it is on pace to see about 35,000 by the end of the year, which he characterized as a normal year.

“We’ll see what happens in the fall.”

Whether the market is correcting is difficult to determine given that housing inventories are also declining, Sauder School of Business professor Tsur Somerville said in an interview.

In Metro Vancouver, new listings were off almost 18 per cent from a year ago. In the Fraser Valley, new listings were down 27 per cent.

“[Listings] are starting to move in a direction where the resale market is a little more in balance,” Somerville, director of Sauder’s centre for urban economics and real estate, said in an interview.

And while July’s drop in sales “is really striking,” Somerville added that sales levels are still higher than low points of the late 1990s.

Both markets, however, still have higher levels of total inventory. In Metro Vancouver, the inventory of 16,431 homes is 33-per-cent higher than July 2009. In the Fraser Valley, the inventory of 10,852 listings is 14 per cent more than in the same month a year ago.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Paul Luke
Province

Greater Vancouver’s housing market has caught a chill in the middle of summer.

Residential property sales in Greater Vancouver tumbled 45.2 per cent in July from the same month in 2009, the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver said Wednesday.

July 2009 is the highest selling July on record at the Greater Vancouver board.

Sales last month also fell 24.1 per cent from June 2010, the board said.

“Home-sales activity in Greater Vancouver was quieter last month than most Julys over the past decade, with residential sales, prices, and the number of homes listed for sale trending downward in recent months,” it said.

The benchmark price for all residential properties has fallen 2.8 per cent to $577,074 from the all-time high of $593,419 reached in April, the board said. Prices in July, however, remained 9.1 per cent higher than a year earlier.

The recent cooling translates into a buyer’s market. “With the pace of home sales and listings easing off in our market, we’ve begun to see a levelling of home prices from the record highs seen in the spring, creating greater affordability,” board president Jake Moldowan said.

The number of listings on the MLS last month fell 6.5 per cent from June 2010. Listings, however, are up 33 per cent from July 2009.

“It’s currently taking home sellers . . . on average, 45 days to sell their property, which is a historically healthy time frame for both sides of a transaction,” Moldowan said.

Year-over-year sales of detached properties fell 43.7 per cent in July, apartment sales dropped 42.7 per cent, and attached-property sales declined 53.5 per cent.

© Copyright (c) The Province