Clients taken for $240,000

KEITH FRASER
The Vancouver Sun

A former Vancouver realtor who pleaded guilty to defrauding clients of more than $240,000 has been sentenced to two years in jail.

Court heard that Johnson Salanga used his position with Sutton WestCoast Realty and his position in the Filipino community to persuade clients to make payments to him on the false representation that the money would be used to purchase real estate.

Salanga, who pleaded guilty to two counts of fraud over $5,000, made ongoing representations to a Vancouver couple that their offer on a residential property had been accepted.

He persuaded them to make ongoing payments towards the purchase price and forged a contract of purchase and sale. The couple were eventually out of pocket $173,000.

The second fraud related to Salanga, who lost his real estate licence after the crimes were reported to police, involved persuading a man to invest $70,000 in a residential real estate property. The deal fell through but the victim was able to recoup his $70,000 loss from a compensation fund of the Real Estate Council of B.C.

The Crown called for a 24to 30-month jail term, but Salanga argued he should get a six-month jail term followed by a conditional sentence of 18 months less a day, given the fact his life had come apart following his mother’s death and a downturn in the market in 2010.

The offender began drinking heavily, a bottle of scotch a day, and gambling.

But in imposing sentence Monday, B.C. Supreme Court Associate Chief Justice Austin Cullen said that while Salanga had accepted responsibility and expressed remorse, his explanation for the fraudulent behaviour was not of the sort to allow a conditional sentence.

The judge noted that while Salanga’s problems no doubt personally affected him, they did not explain the “loss of his moral compass.”

“At its core, his behaviour represents a surrender to self-indulgence without regard for the serious impact on the lives of those he targeted with his deception.”

Salanga, who was also ordered to pay $243,000 in restitution, had little reaction to the sentence.

© 2016 Postmedia Network Inc.

PROPERTY ASSESSMENT: Single-family homeowners are getting hit hard, while condo owners get a break

KELLY SINOSKI AND DAN FUMANO
The Province

Some homeowners are getting shockingly big property tax bills in the mail while condo owners get a break.

In Port Moody, which has some of Metro’s highest property tax increases this year, neighbours Rick Evon and Craig Berezowski expected to see a 4.98-per-cent boost (an extra $149 on average for the year) tacked onto the annual notices. They were shocked to see increases of 13 per cent and 21 per cent, respectively.

Evon’s property taxes increased by $415, while Berezowski’s rose by $645.

“When people got their bills, it said (property taxes) would go up $149,” Evon said. “I feel we were misled. Then you start thinking, ‘I want to be here for the long-term, but am I going to be able to afford living here in the next eight years?’”

It’s a common situation across Metro Vancouver as skyrocketing prices play havoc with property assessments, especially for single-family detached homes, prompting mayors to call on the provincial government to allow different tax rates for houses and condominiums.

“What we’re looking to do is have the opportunity to separate (the rates) if a city wants to do it” so single-family homeowners don’t bear too much of the tax burden, said Langley City Mayor Ted Schafer. “We’re kind of saying everyone should pay a little bit. We’re trying to make it fairer on all property owners.”

In Richmond, the average residential property tax rate increase is 3.11 per cent this year, but most condominiums — even high-end ones — will see taxes go down, city spokesman Ted Townsend said. Meanwhile, almost all of Richmond’s single-family homes, regardless of neighbourhood, saw tax increases this year, he said.

Property tax increases are based on how much the assessed value of a home has risen, year-over-year, compared with the municipal average. Burnaby, for instance, saw an assessment increase of 17 per cent on an average $815,000 home this year, so if a homeowner’s assessment has also gone up in that range, they will likely pay this year’s tax increase of 2.65 per cent. If their increase is higher, they will pay more.

Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan said he is just as frustrated as homeowners.

“I don’t blame them. I got my tax form and I want to complain to me,” he said. “Just because you have a single-family home doesn’t mean you have money. The whole thing is unfair and the province seems to be turning a blind eye to it. The province’s view is we should keep piling expenses on property owners.”

The City of Vancouver has a unique method for softening the sharpest tax impacts hitting the hottest, fastest-increasing properties.

Vancouver is the only municipality in the province that uses “land assessment averaging” to calculate residential property taxes based on a three-year average.

Last year, roughly 9,900 residential properties in Vancouver saw some measure of temporary tax relief from the first year of targeted averaging. For 2016, city staff predicts 15,770 residential properties will benefit.

In an emailed statement, Minister of Community, Sport and Cultural Development Peter Fassbender said the government is aware of concerns that property assessments have increased significantly in Metro Vancouver and other areas.

But he added municipal governments already have tools to “mitigate the effects of dramatic increases in market-driven assessed values and in keeping property taxes at a manageable level.”

© 2016 Postmedia Network Inc.

Bob Rennie, home prices, development, realtor commissions, traffic jams, nudists, Jordan Bateman

The Province

So condo salesman Bob Rennie thinks white male homeowners should be muzzled when it comes the planning process. What a racist!

If I’m a non-white citizen of convenience who moved into my neighbourhood last week, I would have a voice but me, Joe Taxpayer for 25 years, should keep my trap shut? If my neighbours and I, white and non-white don’t want towers, density or whatever ant hill his royal highness Rennie wants to build on our street, then that’s our prerogative.

Question now is how Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson will react to these comments. Rennie and his developer buddies appear to call the shots in this little village of ours and the mayor through campaign donations is beholding to these characters.

Barry Craig, Vancouver

Rennie’s ‘greed’ is the issue

Bob Rennie says Vancouver neighbourhoods are too “old” and “white” and resistant. He accuses us “whiteys” of sacrificing future generations by choking off supply and hurting affordability.

Community groups are trying to preserve affordable real estate for our young Canadian people so they don’t have to leave Vancouver.

It is spineless, inept politicians and greedy real-estate moguls who are destroying our beautiful city as they worship at the throne of the almighty dollar.

Brenda Hamilton, North Vancouver

Time to cut fat commissions

Bob Rennie and all real-estate company owners could help potential home sellers and buyers by implementing a reasonable sales commission. With house prices jumping by 20 per cent to 40 per cent last year, I am at a loss trying to figure out how realtors can justify their hugely inflated commissions? I know I’m not alone in thinking that prices and commissions are out of control.

Ed Rogers, Coquitlam

Vision causes traffic jam

Vision has really done it, installing a concrete island in Beach Avenue and Davie Street.

On Sunday, Mayor Gregor Robertson and his council had traffic backed right back to Second Beach, having reduced the street to one lane. You couldn’t cross Beach Ave for the cars, which were bumper to bumper over the cross walks. If a car wanted to turn left at Davie Street, no one behind could get by until it had cleared the intersection.

Vision’s persecution of cars is ludicrous.

Don Smith, Vancouver

Oh, those poor nudists

Wow, I had no idea of the hardships nudists face in Vancouver. A whole extra block to walk to Wreck Beach? Makes everyone else’s transit woes look downright trivial, eh?

Stacey Gilkinson, Delta

Three cheers for Bateman

Thank you, Jordan Bateman! It is about time the role city and municipal governments have been playing in the rapid increase in housing costs was brought to the public’s attention.

The mayors’ regular complaints about foreign investment being the cause of increasing home prices and their demands that the provincial government do something has been a smokescreen to cover up their own massive contribution to the price hikes.

Perhaps they should take a hard look in the mirror to see who is really responsible for these massive price increases.

Perry Coleman, Delta

© 2016 Postmedia Network Inc.

Langzhou New Area is a case study for the country?s growing credit woes

SIMON DENYER
other

LANZHOU NEW AREA, China —This city is supposed to be the “diamond” on China’s Silk Road Economic Belt — a new metropolis carved out of the mountains in the country’s arid northwest.

But it is shaping up to be fool’s gold, a ghost city in the making.

Lanzhou New Area, in Gansu province, embodies China’s twin dreams of catapulting its poorer western regions into the economic mainstream through an orgy of infrastructure spending and cementing its place at the heart of Asia through a revival of the ancient Silk Road.

Hundreds of hills on the dry, sandy Loess Plateau were flattened by bulldozers to create the 315-square-mile city. But today, cranes stand idle in planned industrial parks while newly built residential blocks loom empty. Streets are mostly deserted. Life-size replicas of the Parthenon and the Sphinx sit surrounded by wasteland, monuments to profligacy.

The project epitomizes what is wrong with China’s economic model, foreign experts say — in particular, how debt is rising to alarming levels as the government tries to prop up a slowing economy with projects that make little or no commercial sense.

 “Where Gansu goes, China goes,” said Rodney Jones, founder of Wigram Capital Advisors in Beijing. “You’ve had massive credit growth and investment in projects that don’t generate an economic return.

“Now you’re facing two shocks — you’ve got to stop credit growing and deal with the bad loans, and you’ve also got to see how the economy expands once this credit boom is over.”

China launched an ambitious “Go West” campaign at the turn of the millennium, aiming to narrow the income gap between the booming eastern seaboard and the remote west, essentially by building modern infrastructure and exploiting the west’s natural resources.

The initiative got a huge push as China launched a nationwide economic stimulus after the 2008 global financial crisis. And President Xi Jinping’s plans to revitalize the Silk Road, the ancient desert trade route between East and West, have provided a further boost.

About $10 billion is being invested to clear Lanzhou New Area and build infrastructure that includes roads, railways and an expanded airport. Water is being diverted from a branch of the Yellow River and stored in three new reservoirs to create a city that a promotional video shows as awash with lakes and rivers.

A free-trade zone and logistics hub are meant to ensure that the city benefits from its location on a new Silk Road, while industrial parks dedicated to auto and equipment manufacturing, ­petro­chemicals and traditional Chinese medicine are supposed to create the jobs that will sustain a city of 1 million by 2030.

Struggling for investors

On a recent trip organized by the provincial government, journalists were shown around a heavy-machinery plant run by the state-owned Lanzhou LS Group and the privately owned Scisky factory, which makes a water-based polymer resin. Scisky executives said they hoped to take advantage of local raw materials and export to Central Asia and Europe.

Xu Dawu, deputy Communist Party secretary for the New Area, says 150,000 people live here, along with 40,000 temporary construction workers — but those numbers seem at odds with the largely empty vistas that visitors see.

The reality is that despite cheap land, tax holidays and large subsidies, the New Area has struggled to attract both investment and people. Yan Yuejin at E-House China R&D Institute in Shanghai looked at vacancy rates and concluded that the venture has been “very unsuccessful.”

Even Xu admits to “a problem.”

“Lanzhou is a very important town on the Silk Road, but it is sandwiched between two mountains with a river running through it,” he said. To draw more industries from the south, he said, “we need to jump out of Lanzhou and seek a larger space.”

If that doesn’t work, he said in what sounded like a tacit admission of defeat, “we can at least develop modern agriculture here.”

Chinese economists said Gansu is making basic economic missteps, investing in heavy industry at a time of global overcapacity and building infrastructure when it should be reducing its debt.

“This is just copying the old development model without taking local reality into consideration,” said Ding Wenfeng, a professor of economics at the Chinese Academy of Governance, urging the government to apply an “emergency brake.”

“Urbanization and modernization are processes that naturally take place,” he said. “You can’t force it to happen or have 1,000 places copy the same model.”

Bao Cunkuan, an environmental science professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, agreed, saying that the poorer northwestern provinces such as Gansu have typically survived by exporting people to richer parts of China, not by attracting people.

“People will vote with their feet,” he said. “If the place is not good enough, nobody will come no matter how many houses you build. Where people go, the allocation of capital and resources should follow.”

Gansu has a per capita annual income of just $4,000 and little trade with the outside world. Its growth was driven by metals and other minerals, as well as by real estate, but it is suffering the ill effects of China’s slowdown and a global slump in commodity prices.

The province’s attempt to spend its way to prosperity has only aggravated its problems. Last year, total credit expanded by about $50 billion, in an economy worth just $100 billion, Wigram Capital calculates. Despite the huge injection of credit, the economy shrank 1 percent in nominal terms, while the ratio of loans to gross domestic product expanded to 200 percent, up from less than 90 percent in 2009.

Andrew Polk at Medley Global Advisors in Beijing visited Lanzhou New Area recently and noted its “desolate” location. “You can just sense from being there it’s not a commercially viable place,” he said.

Yet the eagerness to support Xi’s hallmark Silk Road initiative — an economic belt running through Central Asia to Europe and a “Maritime Silk Road” hugging Asia’s southern coastline — seems to trump economic sense.

“It’s just another example of government priorities being at odds with each other,” Polk said. “There is a desire to do the belt and road program, and there is also a desire to de-leverage. You can’t do both at the same time, but we have seen time and time again in China which tends to win out.”

An old idea

Indeed, Gansu is far from an isolated case. The idea of building new cities around China caught on after the success of Pudong in the 1990s, as skyscrapers replaced farmland on the east bank of the Huangpu River facing old Shanghai.

But Shanghai’s success remains an exception.

“Everyone wanted to build new cities — they thought they could replicate Pudong all over China,” said Jones of Wigram Capital. “Provinces didn’t have a strategy built around their comparative advantages. Building a new city in Gansu just doesn’t make any sense.”

There are other problems with a project on the scale of Lanzhou New Area. Writing in Nature magazine in 2014, three Chinese scientists warned that the environmental impacts of this and similar “mountain-moving” undertakings had not been properly considered, likening them to “major surgery on the Earth’s crust.”

The Lanzhou project was halted in 2013 because of problems with air pollution, pending an environmental assessment, Peiyue Li, Hui Qian and Jianhua Wu wrote. Four weeks later, as contractors’ costs mounted, it was restarted — without the assessment.

Gao Ying of the Shanghai Academy of Environmental Sciences told China Business News in November that petrochemical plants planned for the new city could cause serious environmental and air pollution and would use vast amounts of water in a fragile and arid zone.

In China, debt has ballooned to 280 percent of gross domestic product, from 135 percent in 2009, Wigram Capital calculates. Bad loans are soaring, and new debt is increasingly being used to pay back old loans.

It now takes 4 yuan of debt to generate 1 yuan of economic growth, up from 1 to 1 at the time of the financial crisis.

The Economist magazine warned this month of China’s “coming debt bust,” arguing that these trends are unsustainable and recommending that the government plan for “turmoil.”

The central government talks of reducing industrial overcapacity, cutting debt and transitioning to a new, innovation-driven economy, but provincial leaders, under pressure to meet economic targets, seem unable to abandon the old playbook.

“You can see why they keep returning to the well, because it did work for a long time — it was extremely successful,” Polk said. “That’s the core of the issue right now. People are grappling with the changing nature of the economy. Old tricks don’t work.”

The old tricks could even be making matters worse: Fudan University’s Bao compares the approach to “drinking poison when you are thirsty.”

© 1996-2016 The Washington Post

?I ended up with this property that?s an SRO?

John Mackie
The Vancouver Sun

In 1895, Robert Pollock built a three-bedroom house at 320 Barnard St., which is now called Union Street.

It was modest, but cool, with a square bay window in front, a funky little arch with dentils above the front door and a second-storey balcony.

Inside it had ornate mouldings, a handsome fir fireplace and a big stained glass window beside the stairs. Outside there was plenty of space, because the house was built on a lot-and-a-half.

Against all odds, the house survived over a century of booms and busts in the local real estate market. Unfortunately it’s been empty for over a decade, a faded gem covered by unsightly stucco.

No more. The house was recently sold, and work has begun on bringing the house back to its former glory.

The first phase was scraping away some of the stucco to see what was underneath. Surprise, it was the original 120-year-old siding, in surprisingly good shape.

“Behind the stucco it’s kind of a mint julep green with a pink trim on the windows,” said the home’s new owner, Sandra Botnen.

“I’ve been looking at pictures of Painted Ladies (in San Francisco), and some of the colours (they’re painted) are just fun. Mint green with pale yellow and pink trim — I’m tempted to stick with it.”

She laughs. Having a sense of humour helps when it comes to 320 Union, which may be a bit of a challenge to restore.

The house has been empty for a decade because it is classified as an SRO, like a hotel or rooming house in the Downtown Eastside.

Under the city’s SRO bylaw, you have to pay $125,000 a room to convert it back to a single-family residence. The city said seven people used to live in the house, so that would be $875,000.

In fact, it was never an SRO, in the hotel sense – it was owned by a Chinese association that rented out rooms. But somewhere along the line the city classified it as an SRO, and refused to change it.

The house sold for $375,000 in 2004 and $975,000 in early 2015 before Botnen picked it up for $1.1 million in Sept., 2015.

Her plan is to keep the house as an SRO for female artists, then build a residence for herself in the back.

“I was born and raised in Vancouver, and it’s a little bit crazy to see what’s happened to the city – the livability of the city, the cost and all that,” said Botnen.

“I ended up with this property that’s an SRO, and I thought because I care about people who make a cultural contribution, I’d offer it to young artists.

“I was more inclined to have women, because I thought it might be a better environment for people to get along and start to create a community … that was a supportive, affordable place.”

Vince Hemingson has been working on the house, and said several people have dropped in to ask what was happening with it. When he tells them it’s being restored, the response has been overwhelmingly positive.

That said, it’s going to take a lot of work to bring the house back. The bones are there, but it’s in fairly rough shape – at one point it was a grow-op.

Botnen is a former dancer and performer with Cirque du Soleil who is still active in the arts world.

“I restored a house on Main Street already, and I loved it so much I felt like I wanted to do it again,” she said.

“There were other houses I was interested in and I found I was 10^th in line to buy them. This house had so many irregularities to it that I wasn’t 10^th in line. Because of the SRO, and also because it was a grow-op, it had a lot of problems (attached) to it, so I was able to buy it.”

She isn’t quite sure how much it will cost to bring the house back – maybe $150,000, maybe $200,000. But she’s happy to bring it back to life, and provide housing for artists.

“Who’s really investing in the cultural aspects of the city?” she said.

“I think that’s an issue, and I think that’s important. Those are the people I would like to offer the housing to.”

© 2016 Postmedia Network Inc.

Vancouver mayor calls on province and feds to rein in ?excesses? of housing market

GORDON HOEKSTRA
The Vancouver Sun

Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson urged the provincial and federal governments on Sunday to heed warnings from the financial sector to cool Metro’s red-hot housing market.

In a written statement, Robertson said clear measures are needed to “rein in the excesses of the city’s housing market.”

The Bank of Nova Scotia and the National Bank of Canada recently said the federal government should take more steps to intervene to stop the rapid rise in housing prices in Vancouver and Toronto. That rapid rise has been blamed on factors such as low interest rates, a tight housing supply, a low Canadian dollar and foreign investment, particularly from mainland China.

Scotiabank CEO and president Brian Porter has said the government could consider measures such as raising down payments, increasing the qualifying rate for five-year fixed mortgages and imposing a temporary luxury tax on foreign buyers.

National Bank of Canada CEO and president Louis Vachon has also said Canada should eventually increase minimum down payment requirements for mortgages.

Robertson also noted that Benjamin Tal, the deputy chief economist at CIBC World Markets, had suggested a flipping tax could reduce foreign speculation. However, Tal has also said it is no replacement for proper data on foreign investment.

“I support both these tools (luxury and flipping taxes) and will continue to aggressively advocate for them to the federal and provincial governments as a way to help create a level playing field in the Vancouver housing market,” said Robertson.

The mayor is heading to Ottawa this week, but the main item on his agenda is not housing but communicating the city’s opposition to Kinder Morgan’s proposed $6.8-billion Trans Mountain oil pipeline expansion.

The most recent figures from the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver show prices nearly 30 per cent higher in May, at $899,100 for a Metro Vancouver benchmark, than the same time last year.

The Department of Finance has said in a statement to Postmedia that it is watching what is going on in the housing market and “prepared to take further action if required,” but that there are no measures planned for now.

Last year, Ottawa raised the down payment on the portion of homes over $500,000 to 10 per cent from five per cent. On June 10, the B.C. Liberal government will start using a new property transfer tax form that asks for a buyer’s principal residential address and whether he or she is a Canadian citizen or permanent resident.

This spring, the province also raised the property tax exemption on new homes to $750,000 from $475,000 and increased the tax on homes over $2 million to three per cent from two per cent. It was called a half measure by critics.

© 2016 Postmedia Network Inc.

Couple makes ?Black and White? purchase in Victoria project

SHAWN CONNER
Vancouver Sun

Project name: Black and White

Project location: 1033 Cook St., Victoria

Project size: 75 homes ( junior, one- and two-bedrooms), including nine penthouse suites

Residence size: 504 to 1,518 square feet

Price: from $279,900

Developer: Abstract Developments

Architect: Cascadia Architects

Interior designer: Nygaard

Sales centre: 1010 Fort St.

Hours: noon to 5 p.m., Wed. to Sat.

Contact: 778-265-3464

Website: abstract-developments.com/project/black-and-white3/

Move-in date: fall 2018

Glen and Tanya Frecker may not have any connections on the West Coast, but that’s not stopping the Toronto couple from moving to Victoria.

“I just always had a feeling that I should go out West, and I never got around to it until the last two years,” Glen Frecker said. “I said to my wife, ‘We have to get out there and have a look.’ We went out and I was hooked. Our drive from the airport into the city, seeing the sights, it being so different from Toronto — there’s something about the West Coast, it’s just a real warm feeling to me.”

When the move comes — two years from now, after Glen, a 58-year-old biomed engineer, retires — they’ll be settling into Black and White, a new building going up on Fort Street in Victoria.

A six-storey mixed-use commercial and residential building, Black and White encompasses 75 homes, ranging from “junior ones” to penthouse suites.

Since coming to market in midApril, 45 per cent of the units have sold.

“We’ve more than exceeded our sales projections,” said Mike Miller, president and founder of builder, Abstract Developments.

The demand is due to a combination of factors, Miller says.

“The Victoria market is doing really, really well. Notwithstanding that, Abstract is now 17 years old.”

Miller says that the builder has built the brand “on a solid foundation of custom homes and speculative high-end single-family homes, rolling up to townhomes and small condominiums, and now this littlelarger mixed-used building.”

“I think we’ve really built our brand and reputation on a solid foundation. And the design is second-to-none in Victoria.”

The developer brought in Cascadia Architecture “to cut a new mould. And they’ve done that.”

The visually striking exterior features three stacked sections of dark charcoal and white brick, with the black section in the middle, giving the building a reverse- Oreo cookie look.

Instead of a rooftop patio, a 20foot high, two-storey patio will be situated on the second and third floors in the building’s southwest corner. The common area will have a barbecue and firepit.

“That’s been a hugely well-received idea,” Miller said.

The enclosed space overlooks Cook and Meares streets. The building site is in the Upper Fort district, a short walk from downtown.

“It’s kind of the place to be,” Miller said. “It’s a perfect mix between urban and neighbourhood. It’s a threesided site; there’s neighbourhood on two of the sides, then the high street that’s walkable, with cafes and shops.”

The building is low on amenities, but the ones the developer has chosen are unique. For example, Abstract will provide services that will include an on-call chef and sommelier, personal assistants, and a “rightsizing” consultant for downsizers. All of this will be “managed with a full-time caretaker-slashconcierge,” Miller said.

For residents’ use, the building will also come equipped with “an electric BMW car, which is unique to Victoria, and electric bikes.”

Another design touch is the parkade, which will be painted a neutral colour and include artwork such as murals.

“It’s probably not the most important facet, but it’s another example of what Abstract does,” Miller said.

Interior design, too, is “a step above,” Miller said, “with lots of detailing. It’s not just your vanilla apartment. We have a lot of higherend finishes. All the windows are triple-paned windows on the building. It’s definitely a different finish for Victoria.”

The homes feature real wood floors rather than laminate. Kitchens feature flat-panel cabinetry, quartz countertops, under-mounted sinks and a high-end, European appliance package. Most have islands or breakfast bars.

Master bedrooms have been designed to fit a king-sized bed. “Our units are generally larger than the competition’s,” the Abstract head said. “Our junior ones start at 500 square feet, our twos go from the high 900s to 12 and change.” All suites have balconies.

The Freckers looked at “a lot of different builders and building types” before deciding on Black and White, Glen Frecker said.

“We knew right away that we wanted a boutique-style building, that we were shooting for under six storeys. We didn’t want that feel of large-scale condominium, in Toronto now; they’re going up everywhere. It doesn’t feel relaxing. You’re just another number almost. You don’t know anyone in your building.”

Frecker said that he and his wife were also impressed with the builder’s attention to detail — including the parkade.

“Not too many builders look at art as having much to do with the building, and you’ll see some artwork on the sides of a lot of Abstract buildings. In the case of Black and White, from what I’ve read, they’re going to have some artwork even in the parking area. That was something important to my wife and I — we like art and we like the outdoors. Abstract just seems to be a builder that has a lot of pride in what they do.”

When they move, the Freckers will be downsizing to a one-bedroom from a 2,700-square-foot Tudorstyle house in Toronto. But they’re looking forward to West Coast living, even if it means leaving their friends and two children, a 26-yearold daughter and 28-year-old son.

“We’ve told them it’s something we’re following as our dream, and they’re supportive of that,” Frecker said.

“We’re looking at all the positives for them, as well. When they have kids who are old enough and they’re looking at universities, they should also look out that way. The university atmosphere there I think is just great.

“There are no winters, you can do so much even when you’re not studying. There are many things to offer everyone, I think.”

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Charterhouse at Hampton Cove showcases spacious and stylish living

SIMON BRIAULT
Vancouver Sun

Charterhouse at Hampton Cove

Project location: 5510 Admiral Way, Ladner

Project size: 84 townhomes, 3 — 4 bedrooms, 1,550 — 1,860 square feet (All 84 homes in the first release have now sold; however, new Charterhouse residences will be released soon, priced from $799,900.)

Developer: Polygon Charterhouse Homes Ltd.

Architect: Rositch Hemphill Architects

Interior designer: Polygon Interior Design Ltd.

Sales centre: 5510 Admiral Blvd., Ladner

Hours: noon — 6 p.m., Sat — Thurs

Telephone: 604-946-1848

Website: polyhomes.com

Occupancy: spring 2016

Polygon has been building a reputation in recent years for perfecting master-planned communities and there’s been much anticipation about Hampton Cove, its latest offering in Ladner. Charterhouse, phase one of the project, is a development of 84 large townhomes with three or four bedrooms, and sales have been brisk.

“It’s been an empty spot on the right hand side after you come through the [George] Massey Tunnel and people have been wondering about what’s going to be there for a long time,” said Goldie Alam, Polygon’s senior vice-president of marketing. “It’s taken us years of planning and public consultation for us to get to this point, so it’s very exciting for the neighbourhood to see it all coming together.”

Hampton Cove will have approximately 670 homes when it’s completed. They will be primarily townhomes, but the development will also include an apartment building. In the summer, Polygon will be launching a second collection of slightly smaller townhomes called Fairwinds, the next phase in the project.

“There hasn’t been a lot of new development in Ladner, so the demand is very high,” Alam added. “We think this project will give young families and first-time buyers the opportunity to stay in Ladner or to move there. It’s mostly single-family homes in that community right now and those are out of reach for many people. There are also buyers coming from places like Richmond and Burnaby looking for more space for their money.”

Michael Lepore bought a four-bedroom townhome at Charterhouse with his wife and two young children.

“My wife was actually born and raised in Richmond and we were looking at different areas to buy,” he said. “We rented for a year in North Delta in another Polygon development called Sunstone. She liked very much how they set up the neighbourhood and the community feel it had. So when we saw this one come up, we jumped at the chance.”

“A lot of new townhouses don’t have yards these days; they just have the front walk-ups,” Lepore added. “But with the middle unit we’ve bought, there are french doors so you can walk out from the lower-level bedroom into private outdoor space. We’ll be using it as a playroom for the kids, so it works out well for us.”

The community is nestled between a marina, soon to be redeveloped and rebranded by another company as the Hampton Cove Yacht Club with a small commercial village and a golf course. There will also be a park along the river with a children’s play area and a walkway leading to the 16-kilometre Millennium Trail, which connects Ladner to Deas Island Regional Park.

“One of the big things for us is living in a community that is good for the kids,” Lepore said. “Walkability is important, as well as being in a family-friendly neighbourhood. Polygon has been doing a great job in the last few years building central communities with parks and recreation all included.”

Homes at Charterhouse will have seaside-inspired architecture, picket fencing and window boxes. There are decks or patios in all homes and private fenced yards. Some homes also have a corner veranda and a second patio.

Kitchens have engineered stone countertops and marble tile backsplashes, soft-closing hardware for all cabinet doors and drawers, and dual stainless steel sinks. There are 30-inch gas burners, self-cleaning wall ovens, slide-out ventilation systems by Broan, and 36-inch Fisher & Paykel refrigerators. A recycling station is built into the kitchen of every home.

Ensuite bathrooms feature a bathtub/shower with glass doors, engineered stone countertops, dual under-mount sinks, dual-flush toilets and porcelain tile flooring. All homes have powder rooms on the main floors with porcelain tile flooring, wall-hung sinks or vanities with under-mount sinks. There is also flat-panel cabinetry with polished chrome pulls and soft-closing hardware.

As with many Polygon developments, Hampton Cove will also include a clubhouse. The 12,000-square-foot Hampton Club will feature an outdoor swimming pool, an outdoor barbecue and entertainment area, a playground, fitness studio, gym, guest suite, teen lounge, theatre and billiards room.

“The clubhouse is a huge selling point and will be very popular,” Alam said. “It’s under construction now and people will be able to use it by the spring of 2017.”

“Having new townhomes in Ladner is a big story for that community,” she added. “It’s a very quaint place and once people discover it, they realize they’ve stumbled across a real little gem. It’s got that old village style in the centre with the market and the farms around. But at the same time, you’re not very far from either Richmond or Vancouver.”

Homeowners at Charterhouse will be able to move in this summer and construction has already begun on the next phase.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Tiffany Crawford
Vancouver Sun

Frenzied buyers in Metro Vancouver’s overheated real estate market camped out in Richmond weeks before a sales office opened, hoping to snap up $1.2 million townhouses. 

More than 80 potential buyers set up camp on May 19 as crews were erecting the display homes and sales office for Kingsley Estates ahead of the scheduled opening June 11. 

That led Polygon Pacific Homes to make the impromptu decision to hand out deli-style numbered tickets to those in the queue and sell the units ahead of the opening.

Although the practice of numbered tickets for buyers who line up is not new, it has upset those who were registered with Polygon and never received notice the homes were going on sale.

Long time Steveston residents Gordon and Judy Bird live in a four-bedroom house, but they are thinking about downsizing now that they are retired and their kids have left home. They want to stay in their community, having lived there since the 1970s.

So three years ago, shortly after Polygon bought the site of Richmond’s Steveston secondary for $41 million, Gordon Bird signed up to receive information about pre-sales of the townhouse units.

He says since then he has received many emails marketing other Polygon properties, as well as updates on the townhouse units, but Polygon never announced the pre-sales. He said at one point he called the developer and left a message about the units but did not receive a call back. 

Instead he received an email from Polygon stating that because of the “unprecedented amount of interest in Kingsley Estates” people began camping out as crews were setting up the sales office. In the letter, Polygon said it decided to sell the units to this group of more than 80 buyers in advance of the scheduled opening on June 11. Units start at $1.2 million for 1,700 square-foot four-bedroom townhouses.

“I find it kind of annoying. Those on the email list didn’t have a chance to get in line,” said Bird. “Who are these insiders who are getting a first kick at the can?”

Another Richmond resident, Penny Charlebois, who had signed up with Polygon for sales at Kingsley Estates, said it is unethical not to notify the potential buyers who had registered.

Charlebois, who has lived in a detached house nearby since 1986, has two adult children who want to stay in the community, and a niece who was interested in purchasing one of the units. 

She registered about two months ago, but it wasn’t until she noticed a flurry of activity getting the site ready — and then dozens of parked cars — that she suspected Polygon would sell early. 

“There’s no way they just all showed up without notice. How did all those people know to go there en masse? I just don’t buy it. (Polygon) asks us to come to meetings and get involved and then they shut us out,” she said. 

However, Polygon president Neil Chrystal said there is an “unprecedented” housing supply problem in Metro Vancouver, and he doesn’t find it surprising that prospective buyers are on the lookout for developers setting up shop and then camping out.

He said the same thing happened a few weeks ago at one of Polygon’s projects in Langley.

“These are crazy days,” he said. “When we saw that people had camped out weeks early we decided to issue them numbers. It was a very difficult decision but we decided it was the fairest thing to do.”

Chrystal said they had only 30 units to sell and, with more than 80 people in the lineup, there was no point alerting those who had registered.

“I don’t know if there is a better way to do it. We have always operated on a first come first served basis … and I don’t think a lottery system is the best system,” he said. “When the market is slower it is all much more civilized.” 

Meantime, some residents told the Richmond News that a few camped out buyers in line were unruly. However Chrystal said there were no problems with any of the people in line. The police were called out, but they are not aware of any harassment on site.

Cpl. Dennis Hwang said he did not know how long the buyers had been camped out, but confirmed that RCMP was called to the site around No. 2 Road and Wallace Road shortly after 7 p.m. on May 19 for a liquor-related complaint. No open liquor was observed or seized.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Douglas Todd
Vancouver Sun

It’s time to end the “honour system” involving B.C. property purchases.

Immigration and tax specialists say Metro Vancouver’s soaring house prices are being fuelled in part by people not telling the truth when they buy and sell houses. A side-effect is they are cheating B.C. and Canada of billions of dollars in tax revenue.

Experts are recommending reforms to the property transfer system in light of complaints that Metro Vancouver’s explosive housing prices are significantly driven by the unregulated global movement of billions of dollars, most recently by people from Mainland China, which is on the verge of becoming the world’s largest economy.

One of the first problems to fix in regards to real estate transactions in B.C. is to properly monitor whether property sellers are being honest when they say they are, or are not, residents of Canada as defined under the Income Tax Act, say Vancouver tax specialist Samuel Hyman and immigration lawyer Richard Kurland.

Even though sellers are expected to tick a box on real estate industry forms stating whether they are Canadian residents for income tax purposes, the specialists say there is almost no bona fide monitoring of where the people live and pay taxes, which opens the door to fraudulent property transfers and tax evasions.

As it now stands, non-residents who don’t principally live in Canada but claim they do so on real estate forms are evading paying tax on 25 per cent of their capital gains.

“People who are not a resident in Canada for tax purposes are supposed to pay up to 25 per cent tax on the profit from the sale of their property,” says Kurland.

“People who live and file taxes here don’t have to pay these taxes, which should give an advantage to local buyers. But, when Canada Revenue Agency doesn’t collect the tax, locals lose the advantage they were supposed to enjoy. Canada’s tax system is supposed to favour locals over foreigners, but the system does not work if B.C. fails to make people accurately declare their tax residency on the form.”

In this era of mass trans-national migration, Kurland said, wealthy people around the world are paying professionals to weave them through a complex web of regulations surrounding immigration, residency requirements, real estate and taxation.

In some cases, Kurland said, the professionals are taking advantage of Canada’s tax loopholes so their trans-national clients “can have their cake and eat it too.”

Some, for instance, are claiming to real estate officials they are Canadian residents to buy and sell houses (avoiding capital gains) and to maintain their status as permanent residents.

But then some of the same people, at the same time, Kurland said, are claiming to Revenue Canada they are not residents under our tax law so they don’t have to declare their global income and property holdings and pay taxes in Canada.

Solving such problems, says Hyman, would require no new Canadian tax laws, no new taxes and no new restrictions on ownership, domestic or foreign.

The reforms would simply require more rigorous enforcement of claims by sellers and buyers about where they pay their taxes (regardless of whether they have a Canadian passport).

The reforms, which mainly require better information sharing between governments, will illuminate “market forces pushed by tax evaders, money launderers and economic fugitives parking ill-gotten gains in B.C. real estate,” Hyman said.

In short, Hyman’s proposed new rules would require any declaration that sellers make about where they live and pay taxes to be immediately cross-checked with Immigration Canada and the Canada Revenue Agency.

That way, since it’s the job of both Canadian immigration and tax officials to monitor where someone lives, all residency claims on real estate forms can be confirmed or exposed within days.

Explaining the process in more detail, Kurland said that whenever a person in B.C. sells a house or condominium, “there’s a box to tick” on standard real estate forms in regards to whether the seller is a “resident of Canada for tax purposes.”

If a seller ticks the “yes” box, it means by definition he or she lives in Canada more than six months of the year and is paying income taxes in Canada.

But the real estate information on residency is never cross-checked with Immigration Canada or the Canada Revenue Agency. That means that the government is, by and large, trusting sellers to be honest.

The tax implications are enormous for Canada, however, especially in a market where wealthy trans-national migrants are routinely selling houses in the $3-million to $5-million range.

Why would governments allow this giant loophole?

“It’s a mystery,” Kurland says. “The only logical conclusion is that the B.C. government fears a reduction in the number of buyers and sellers. These reforms would negatively impact only foreign buyers, who are the crew in the spotlight these days.”

It may be worth mentioning that in this often-confusing trans-national realm of property speculation, globalized wealth and multiple passports, Kurland reminds us that where someone says they are a resident for tax purposes is different from where they might also be a citizen.

“Citizenship is as relevant as hair colour when it comes to selling property,” Kurland says, “because you can be a Canadian citizen and still not be a resident in Canada for tax purposes.”

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