A strip of family homes in East Vancouver has become a $25-million dream, forming two land assemblies on a street the city says it has no plans to rezone.

Nick Eagland
The Vancouver Sun

Between the 2500-2600 block of Renfrew Street, 10 homes, most of them two-storey “Vancouver Specials,” are listed at $2.5 million each, more than double their assessed value. Public records show these properties had 2016 assessments around $1.2 million.

To the east sits an office and tech hub on Virtual Way; to the south, The Art Institute of Vancouver. To the west are 40 single-family homes and just north of the land assemblies sits a developer-owned lot at 2894 East Broadway. The city is looking at an application to rezone that from commercial, where the developer hopes to put in a mixed-use building with commercial space and 37 units of secured-market rental housing.

What the realtor listing the Renfrew land assemblies — Niko Lambrinoudis of The Residential Group Realty — has planned for them is between him and the homeowners. Lambrinoudis did not return calls this week. The occupants of several of the homes said the owners weren’t home. 

But Vancouver-Hastings MLA Shane Simpson said any plan appears to be speculative, likely based on a hope that someday a buyer will want to use the site for purpose-built rental.

“Certainly, having been assembled in the way that it is, the only way that it has appeal, I believe, to a buyer, is if they believe that they can build at least four storeys and probably rental because the city certainly has a focus on rental right now,” he said. “That’s the only way I see them being able to make a deal work.”

Simpson said he’s supportive of zoning for more rentals in the city but the challenge is ensuring such properties are made affordable and will offer families two- and three-bedroom units, which East Vancouver desperately needs, he said. 

“The city is moving toward upzoning in certain areas, adding density,” Simpson said. “That is an object of the city, that I understand — and I expect that’s what this is — speculation.”

According to City of Vancouver spokesman Tobin Postma, the pocket of 2500-2600 Renfrew Street making up the land assemblies is zoned for single-family dwellings “with no policy for change and no intentions of changing it.”

The Renfrew-Collingwood Community Vision, adopted by city council in 2004, did not set directions for a change in zoning in this specific location, Postma said.

One of the approved directions for the vision, voted for by community members, stated: “In order to retain the basic character of Renfrew-Collingwood, most of the area that is now single family (including areas permitting rental suites) should be kept that way.”

Michelle Yu of Re/Max Real Estate Services, one of Vancouver’s top land-assembly realtors, didn’t want to comment specifically on the Renfrew land assemblies.

But speaking generally about such sales, Yu said if they’re based on a plan to apply for rezoning but do not consider city planning policy, the chances of success are “quite low” — especially if the city has already done extensive community consultation showing neighbours don’t want such changes. 

“I would still encourage that if you want to do an assembly, (you) better focus on the city plan,” Yu said. “I think this area, the neighbours are very involved, to be honest with you. They’re very involved, they have lots of opinions and (the city’s community) plan is very mature.”

© 2016 Postmedia Network Inc.

Simplicity within the home and exterior offers a ?modern classic? feel

Mary Frances Hill
The Province

Oak + Park

What: 7600 Oak Street

Project size: 40 townhomes

Residence sizes and prices: 3-bed + den + flex, 1,280 — 1,732 square feet, from $1,250,000

Developer and builder  Alabaster Homes

Sales centre: 301 — 1788 W. Broadway

Phone: 604-558-5851

In designing its Oak + Park townhome community in Marpole, Alabaster Homes was mindful of homeowners’ needs for both social and private spaces.

Those who visit the project sales centre won’t find a full display suite, but they will be able to check out a cross-section of the Oak + Park layout that illustrates such distinct spaces.

On one floor, two bedrooms are separated by a den and a bathroom for extra quiet and privacy. The master suite occupies its own floor on the highest level, and opens to its own deck. Meanwhile, the bottom floor has an open-concept living and dining/kitchen space that encourages socializing, and gives way to plenty of outdoor space.

Achieving that balance is everything to both Alabaster Homes and Jennifer Hawk.

“This floor plan gives a great sense of open-concept living on the main floor, which will create a wonderful space to socialize in, while allowing the lower level to be a place for TV, games and entertainment,” says Hawk, a designer with Occupy Design, which worked on finishes in the homes, and furnished the display space.

“The location of the bedrooms is great for each family member to have their own personal retreat and sanctuary in the home. That’s something we feel is important.”

Simplicity is key within the home and on its exteriors. This comes out in the details. Take, for instance, the hex-tile, a sophisticated — and understated — tile that lines the wall in the large shower in one bathroom.

“The hexagon-like tile was our piece of flair. We wanted to add a little interest without being to busy or overtaking the space and that white colour of the tile mixed with the pattern achieves this.

“We wanted to create a palette that would allow homeowners to add their own touches if they wanted, but could stand firmly on its own legs just as it is.”

The classic look comes out in the muntin bars on the windows—in the doors, kitchen and in the living space, thanks to Ciccozzi Architects. Hawk says Occupy Design aimed to add a modern look to the interiors to strike a balance with the exterior details, and the glass in the doors and windows.

“The exterior of the homes are very classic looking, so I took this as a cue,” she says. “We wanted to pay tribute to the classic elements, but I also wanted the interiors to be fresh and feel modern.”

To incorporate the two vibes, she introduced a brick pattern marble backsplash in the kitchen.

“The materials used throughout create a neutral colour scheme, but have clean, fresh lines and this also attributes to the ‘modern classic’ feel I was aiming to achieve.”

© 2016 Postmedia Network Inc.

Mayor Gregor Robertson vowed Tuesday to expedite the rezoning and development process for a lot at 58 West Hastings

STEPHANIE IP
The Vancouver Sun

Standing on the steps of the Downtown Eastside’s Carnegie Centre, Mayor Gregor Robertson vowed Tuesday to expedite the rezoning and development process for a lot at 58 West Hastings, in a bid to bring more social housing to the impoverished neighbourhood.

“We’ve come to an agreement to make sure that the 58 West Hastings site is 100 per cent social housing,” said Robertson to cheers.

Mayor Gregor Robertson poses for photographs after he speaks outside of Carnegie Centre. Mark van Manen / PNG

He added that the city would continue to push the B.C. government as well, in hopes of raising shelter rates and seeking a province-wide promise to end homelessness. Robertson also promised that the city would “crank up” the single-room occupancy task force to “crack down on the slumlords.”

“So we’re going to keep focused, working with the community, to make sure this site and many others around the city are focused for the most vulnerable people, who can only afford welfare rates, and that’s going to be a big piece of our work in the weeks ahead.”

The promise came following a one-and-a-half hour-long meeting between Robertson and members of the DTES community and housing advocates Tuesday, in which the two sides hammered out details on how to proceed with the Hastings lot, where a tent city of about 50 people have been camped since early July. At the meeting’s end, Robertson and other advocates appeared outside Carnegie Centre to share the agreement that had been established.

On a large sheet of poster paper, a mock contract had been drawn up, promising that the city would work with local community to put forward a rezoning application to city council by the end of June 2017. Robertson’s signature flourished the bottom of the contract, above a blank labelled ‘Mayor Robertson’ and dated Tuesday.

Organizers asked that media not attend the meeting with the mayor, which was scheduled for 3 p.m., but did speak with media afterward at Carnegie Centre to share what was discussed.

Yuly Chan with the Chinatown Action Group was among those in the meeting, noting that being able to unite different groups from various backgrounds on a central issue was key to the meeting’s success.

“I think today was a very positive development for the struggles that Downtown Eastside residents have been facing for a very long time,” she said.

“I think it was very encouraging to see his (Robertson’s) commitment to building social housing here at 58 West Hastings, and like I said, that’s definitely the first step – it’s not the end – and we will continue to push for more but we’re encouraged by his willingness and we will continue to ask for more because this wasn’t enough.”

Chan said it’s important to note that 58 West Hastings represents “just one fight out of many” for social housing in Vancouver, citing the displacement taking place in Chinatown where low-income Chinese seniors are being pushed out by gentrification and development.

Tuesday’s meeting, coordinated by members of the Our Homes Can’t Wait campaign, is the second meeting Robertson has attended to discuss the encampment on Hastings Street.

The lot is city-owned property, bookended by the Portland Hotel and the Grand Union Pub. The site currently hosts a community garden, operated by the Portland Hotel Society, but had previously been empty since a demolition in 2008.

In 2010, the lot was also the site of an Olympic Village protest camp, in hopes of drawing attention to the growing homeless population during the 2010 Winter Olympics. Dozens of homeless and local housing advocates remained on-site until early March 2010, following the end of the Olympics.

At the time, the lot was owned by developer Concord Pacific. The developer later returned the land to the city as a community amenity contribution, in exchange for the rezoning of another Concord property elsewhere in the city.

Earlier this year, local advocates staged a paint-in at the site, splashing their dreams and visions of what the lot should be on the walls of the adjacent buildings. Participants at the time spoke of what they hoped would be 100 per cent welfare- and pension-rate housing built on the lot, with one-third housing Chinese seniors, one-third housing Indigenous people, and the final third for DTES residents who are currently homeless or live in single-room occupancy hotels.

© 2016 Postmedia Network Inc.

Real estate and financial services account for 20 per cent of economy

THEOPHILOS ARGITIS
The Vancouver Sun

Canada is in the midst of one of its weakest expansions ever and only the housing boom keeps it from getting worse.

That’s one of the key take-aways from last Friday’s GDP report. Two years since oil prices started plunging, Canada’s economy is almost completely reliant for growth on bank lending and the hot Vancouver and Toronto housing markets.

Real estate and financial services now account for 20 per cent of the economy, levels not seen in the data since the early 1960s. That could be a problem, with household debt at a record high and policy-makers scrambling to slow price gains that are making homes unaffordable for all but the wealthiest buyers.

While Bank of Canada policymakers expect a sharp second-half rebound as oil production resumes and exports pick up, some investors are hedging their bets. Swaps trading suggests an almost 30 per cent chance central bank governor Stephen Poloz will cut interest rates by the October meeting to give the economy another jolt.

At the very least, the economy’s lethargy will add urgency to efforts by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Finance Minister Bill Morneau to bolster long-term growth ahead of the 2017 budget. Based on Friday’s report, here’s what else we know about how Canadian economic output has changed over the past two years:

STASIS

Since May 2014, Canada’s economy has expanded 1.2 per cent. That’s the slowest two-year pace outside a recession in at least six decades, according to Statistics Canada monthly data back to the early 1960s. Until recently, the country typically mustered growth of least five per cent over two years. Over the past 10 months, Canada’s economy has stalled altogether with zero growth. That’s mostly due to Alberta wildfires in May shutting down oil production. But there appear to be deeper forces at play. Averaging GDP over three months in order to reduce the effect of the wildfires still produces the same result: the worst two-year expansion outside a recession in decades.

OIL INDUSTRY

Output of mining companies, oil and gas producers and their support sectors plunged 14 per cent in May from the same month two years earlier. Averaged over three months, the decline is only nine per cent. Excluding the May figures, oil production has held up relatively well in volume terms, even with the oil-price drop.

The same can’t be said for investment into new capacity. Engineering-related construction — closely associated with oil company investments — is down 21 per cent over that time. The decline in resource production, coupled with the fall in engineering works, has shaved about 1.7 per cent off Canadian GDP in the two years through May, according to Bloomberg calculations.

MANUFACTURING

One of the big economic mysteries for Canadian policy-makers has been manufacturing’s recent poor performance, in spite of a weaker exchange rate. Manufacturers had their worst month in May since the recession, with factory output down 2.4 per cent. A big part of that monthly decline is temporary, led by a 13 per cent drop in refinery output because of the oil-supply disruptions. But even averaging over the last three months produces just a one per cent gain for manufacturing over two years. Jobs data shows a similar trend; the sector has lost 30,000 jobs over the past two years.

REAL ESTATE

The biggest contributor to Canadian growth since oil prices began their decline is real estate. The sector, based on a Statistics Canada measure that is largely made up of the imputed value of owning a home but also includes broker fees and other real estate activity, was 6.8 per cent larger in May from two years earlier, adding about 0.8 per cent to national GDP over that period. That’s pretty much in line with growth rates over the past 15 years for a sector that even escaped the 2008-09 recession largely unscathed. Fees for brokers are up 15 per cent over that time. Real estate has become the country’s biggest industry at 12.4 per cent of GDP, or 13.2 per cent if you include leasing.

FINANCIAL SERVICES

Another Canadian industry experiencing a boom is finance and insurance. Unlike the real estate sector however, banks have actually been accelerating their pace of growth. Output for this sector is more than nine per cent over the past 24 months.

RETAIL

Retailers have been making a comeback after struggling to build momentum from the recession, spurred by the same low interest rates driving real estate and financial services. The sector has been the third-biggest contributor to growth over the past two years. In May, retail output was 6.2 per cent above levels two years ago, adding around 0.3 per cent to national output over that time.

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

While governments are not the biggest contributors to growth, the fact they are adding to it at all marks a change. This partly reflects Trudeau’s emphasis on public spending and the federal government’s return to deficits. Public administration is up 3.1 per cent over the past two years.

© 2016 Postmedia Network Inc.

Transactions in July are first this year to fail to break monthly records, reports board ? but this could be more about lack of supply than a cooling in demand

Joannah Connolly
REW

Fraser Valley real estate sales in July were the first this year to fail to break monthly records, the Fraser Valley Real Estate Board (FVREB) reported August 3.

The 1,962 sales registered Multiple Listing Service® (MLS®) – including residential, industrial and commercial – was a decline of 10.2 per cent compared to the 2,184 sales in July 2015.

This total was also a dramatic 31.5 per cent drop compared with  the 2,864 transactions processed in June 2016, and came nowhere near to the record sales set in March 2016.

Broken out by residential transactions only, home sales dropped nearly 10 per cent year over year and were down 31.4 per cent compared with the previous month, mirroring trends seen at the board’s counterpart in Greater Vancouver.

The number of new homes listed for sale in the Fraser Valley was up a welcome 18.7 per cent year over year, but that was still not enough to meet demand, with total listings at the end of July standing at nearly 23 per cent fewer than the same month last year.

Charles Wiebe, president of the board, said, “A slowing down in activity is expected during the summer. While it may seem drastic or alarming when compared to months prior, this easing off is welcome as we get further into the year – the pace of the market slows, and inventory has a chance to catch up.”

The average sale price of a Fraser Valley property (all property types combined) in June was $659,340, a decline of 7.4 per cent compared with July last year – but benchmark prices for typical homes continued to rise (see below).

Sales and Listings

There were 1,743 residential property sales in the Fraser Valley in July, down 9.9 per cent compared with July 2015 and a drop of 31.4 per cent over the previous month’s figures.

Broken out by home type, 828 single-family houses were sold in July, which like in Greater Vancouver was the steepest decline, dropping 29.8 per cent since last July and 35.4 per cent compared with June. However, demand was still high as the average number of days a Fraser Valley detached home took to sell was 18 days, compared with 33 days in July 2015.

The region’s townhouse, duplex and row home sales fell by 7.3 per cent year over year to 434 sales. This was also a drop of 33.8 per cent compared with June’s attached home sales.

Bucking the year-over-year declines, condo-apartment sales continued to be strong, jumping 68.2 per cent to 481 sales compared with July 2015’s 286 units. Nonetheless, this was a month-over-month drop of 20.4 per cent.

New home listings in the Fraser Valley were up 18.7 per cent compared with one year previously, totalling 2,772 in July. However this was a fall of nearly 11 per cent compared with the previous month, as fewer sellers listed their homes in the slowing summer season.

At the end of July there were 4,094 active home listings on the MLS®, a decline of 22.8 per cent compared with the 5,303 active listings in July 2015, but a rise compared with June of nearly 11 per cent, as sales slowed down in July.

Wiebe added, “This is a good thing for our market, and buyers especially. Additional inventory will help drive us towards a more balanced environment for consumers and remove some of the upward pressure on prices we’ve been seeing.”

Benchmark Prices

The slowdown in sales did not stop benchmark prices from rising in the Fraser Valley, although the pace of that growth had the heat taken out of it somewhat.

The price of a typical detached house in the Fraser Valley in July was $881,400, a leap of 41.9 per cent over July 2015’s $621,100, and a rise of 2.3 per cent since June.

The benchmark price of a townhome or other attached home in the region was up nearly 34 per cent year over year in July, breaching the $400K mark for the first time at $408,200. This was a rise of 5.5 per cent over the previous month.

The cost of a typical condo-apartment unit in the Valley rose nearly 25 per cent year over year to $240,600, up 3.8 per cent over the previous month.

Prices in the Fraser Valley differ by city and neighbourhood. To see home prices, sales and listings broken down by community, see the FVREB July 2016 statistics package.

© 2016 Real Estate Weekly

Number of residential properties changing hands returns to ?more normal? July levels, says board ? but that doesn?t stop prices setting fresh records

Joannah Connolly
REW

Metro Vancouver home sales in July dropped nearly 19 per cent compared with a year ago and plummeted nearly 27 per cent over the previous month – marking a return to “more historically normal” July levels, according to a Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver (REBGV) report published August 3.

But despite the summer slowdown in sales, the benchmark price of a typical home (all property types) across the region continued to soar, now standing at $930,400, a 32.6 per cent rise over July 2015. However, this headline figure for all of Metro Vancouver masks huge variations in typical prices between property types, municipalities and neighbourhoods.

Repeating June’s trend, new home listings on the Greater Vancouver MLS ® increased 2.5 per cent year over year in July, but declined compared with the previous month, as fewer sellers listed their homes in the slower summer months. There is still a significant shortage of total active listings, standing more than 27 per cent lower than a year ago.

“After several months of record-breaking sales activity, home buyer demand returned to more historically normal levels in July,” said Dan Morrison, REBGV president.

Sales and Listings

Residential property sales in Greater Vancouver totalled 3,226 in July 2016, a fall of 18.9 per cent from the 3,978 sales recorded the same month last year, and a decline of 26.7 per cent compared with June this year, which saw 4,400 home sales. Last month’s sales were a relatively modest 6.5 per cent above the 10-year sales average for July.

It now looks unlikely that 2016 will see a month busier than March, when an all-time-record total of 5,173 homes were sold in Greater Vancouver.

However, as is often the case, breaking July’s figures down reveals huge differences between the directions of different property types.

Predictably, single-family home sales in July saw the biggest decline at 1,077 total sales, a drop just shy of 31 per cent compared with the 1,559 sales recorded in July 2015, and a decline of just over 31 per cent compared with June’s 1,562 detached house sales.

Sales of townhouses and other attached homes, which had increased the previous month, fell in July by 20.7 per cent year over year. The total of 547 sales was also a drop of 25 per cent compared with June’s 730 townhome sales.

Condo-apartment units in the region fared a little better than other property types, with 1,602 units changing hands in July 2016, a drop of 7.3 per cent compared with the 1,729 sales in July 2015, and a 24 per cent fall from June’s figure of 2,108 sales.

New home listings on the Greater Vancouver MLS® increased by 2.5 per cent year over year to 5,241 in July 2016. However, this is a 10.8 per cent decrease compared to June this year when 5,875 properties were listed, as fewer sellers listed their homes during the summer months.

This meant that total active listings at the end of July stood at 8,351, 27.4 per cent down from the same month last year (11,505). Like the previous month, July’s total listings figure is a slight month-over-month rise of 6.9 per cent, reflecting the further slowing of sales between the two months.

The sales-to-active listings ratio for July 2016 stood at 38.6 per cent. Although this ratio still firmly points towards the current seller’s market, this figure seems to be falling after a sustained period of 50 per cent or more.

“Home sale activity showed some moderating signs in late June and this carried into July,” Morrison said. “We’ll wait and watch over the next few months to see if this marks the return of more normal market trends.”

Benchmark Prices

Despite the drop in home sales and in the sales-to-listings ratio, home prices in the Greater Vancouver area continued their seemingly unwavering upward climb.

The combined residential property type benchmark price in Metro Vancouver raised the bar yet again in July, at $930,400 – a 32.6 per cent year-over-year increase.

The typical detached house in the region is now $1,578,300, a rise of 38 per cent compared with the same month last year, and yet again the sharpest price rise of the three home types. This was a relatively modest rise of just over one per cent since just the previous month ($1,561,500). As usual, this overall price obscures the huge range of detached home prices between different parts of the region. The most expensive area of Vancouver West (including the West Side, West End and most of downtown) saw single-family homes selling for a typical $3.37 million. This ranges all the way down to $467,300 for a typical detached house on the Sunshine Coast.

The July benchmark price of a townhome or other attached unit in Greater Vancouver rose by 29.4 per cent compared with July 2015 to $669,000, up 1.8 per cent compared with June ($656,900). This ranges from just under $1.1 million in Vancouver West to $398,100 for a typical townhome in Maple Ridge.

Condo-apartment benchmark price in July rose 27.4 per cent year over year to $510,600, a rise of 1.9 per cent over June’s price ($501,100). As usual, West Vancouver posted the highest benchmark condo price in July at $894,300, with typical Maple Ridge condos selling for $193,400 and New Westminster condos coming in at $368,600.

Home prices vary widely throughout the REBGV region. To get a good idea of home prices in a specific location, check the detailedMLS® Home Price Index in the REBGV full statistics package.

© 2016 Real Estate Weekly

Metro Vancouver realtors are saying deals are collapsing because of the new 15 per cent tax on foreign home buyers

JEFF LEE,, CHERYL CHAN, and ROB SHAW
The Vancouver Sun

Realtors and lawyers desperate to get in under the deadline filed a record-setting 15,000 property transfer applications on Thursday and Friday, the last business days before B.C.’s punishing new 15-per-cent tax on foreign property buyers went into effect.

More than 9,200 transactions were filed on Friday, breaking the 2007-2008 record of more than 8,400 in a single day, according to the B.C. Land Title and Survey Authority. It also reported over 5,800 transactions on Thursday, representing nearly as many deals registered at month’s end in April.

The demand was so heavy that it crashed the land titles office’s electronic filing service on both days, the authority said.

Now, as a new dawn breaks in Metro Vancouver’s real estate market, realty companies and real estate boards are reporting the first anecdotes of deals falling through as foreign buyers forfeited deposits on binding deals rather than pay the new tax. And they report evidence of local buyers withdrawing offers in expectation that the market will soften.

Elton Ash, executive vice-president of Re/Max Western Region, said it is too early to accurately quantify how many deals fell apart, but he’s heard from realtors in some of the company’s 30 Metro Vancouver offices of cases where foreign buyers who couldn’t rearrange previously negotiated closing dates have already walked away.

“Our expectation is that there will be a percentage of transactions collapse due to the buyer basically defaulting on the contract,” Ash said. 

He and other realty experts say it may take up to two or three months to gauge the full effect of the new tax. 

Jonathan Cooper, vice-president of operations at MacDonald Realty, expects many cases to go to court because deposits are held in trust by realtors and usually can’t be released without a court order. 

“I think the next chapters in this story are going to be written by lawyers,” Cooper said. “There are going to be cases for sellers trying to get the deposit out of trust and maybe suing the buyer for specific performance trying to get them to complete, and/or for damages if they are not able to find a buyer at a similar price point.”

Rob Philipp, CEO of the Fraser Valley Real Estate Board, said collapsed deals are “100 per cent happening.”  

And Dan Morrison, chairman of the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver, said he’s heard of instances of Canadian buyers and sellers who backed out because of the uncertainty in the market.

Philipp said one of his offices reported four cancelled deals as a result of the tax, while another reported five failed transactions on Friday alone, with one directly tied to the tax. 

“There’s a domino effect here. One deal collapses, there’s so many other deals impacted by that,” Philipp said.

Not all of the cancelled transactions are directly due to a foreign buyer pulling out, but when they do, it could leave sellers in the lurch and force them to pull out of their own property purchases, creating a contagion effect, he said. 

The tax might not faze foreign buyers looking for a luxury home in Vancouver’s west side, “but in my area, young professionals will absolutely be impacted.” 

The Fraser Valley Real Estate Board covers some Metro Vancouver municipalities affected by the tax, including Surrey, White Rock, Langley and North Delta. It estimates foreign buyers — described by Philipp as mostly middle- to upper-income professionals on work visas who live and work in Metro Vancouver — make up three to five per cent of its region’s average 20,000 sales a year.

“I’m hearing a lot of evidence. Realtors are saying it’s happening to them,” said Morrison. “I’ve had deals die in the last couple days,” although not all of them are directly related to the foreign home buyers’ tax. 

Morrison said many of the people affected by the tax aren’t rich, but are here on work permits or working toward getting landed immigrant status.

“These are people who scraped together every cent to get into the market and are now faced with a 15-per-cent tax,” he said. On an Yaletown condo, “that could add up to $150,000 they don’t have, so they will have to walk away from the transaction and lose their deposit or beg, borrow and steal the money from someone else.”

Re/Max realtor Karen Kerr said she has clients who are back to square one after they inked a deal to sell their White Rock house, which was on the market for three weeks. 

The retired couple accepted an offer from a foreign buyer on Sunday. The next day, Premier Christy Clark announced the new tax, which would have added an extra $180,000 to the cost. The buyers could no longer afford it and backed out. 

Luckily, the sellers had held off putting a deposit on a property they were eyeing on Vancouver Island because the buyers had put in subjects on the purchase. The couple now has to list their house again, this time in a distinctly different market, she said. “Right now, everyone is cautiously putting on the brakes to see how things are going to play out.”

In New Westminster, Re/Max realtor Dave Vallee said he had two cases late last week of local buyers backing out of writing offers because they believe the market will drop by 15 per cent in the coming months. 

“I’m getting people coming to our open houses saying, ‘this means the prices are going to come way down,’” he said.

The Greater Vancouver board tracks cancelled sales, but not the reasons behind them, said Morrison. He believes the repercussions of the tax will be felt in the next couple of years, particularly for sales of pre-sale condos and new construction. 

In the last four months, there have already been indications the market is slowing down, both Cooper and Morrison said. If prices do drop, will that just be the market taking care of itself or will it be because of the government tax?

“We’ll never know, though I suspect the government will take credit for it,” Morrison said. 

Both real estate boards, as well as Ash and Cooper, are urging the government to grandfather already-signed deals. 

“At the very least they should have grandfathered the existing deals. Politically, we all knew that the government had to do something,” Ash said. “We’ve got an election coming up next year and it would have been very difficult for the current government not to have done anything and hope to get re-elected. It is just that it was ill thought out.”

Cooper said the tax, rather than stabilizing the market, appears to be harming it.

“When the government intervenes in the market this way and imposes costs that are retroactive … that almost by definition introduces an element of instability in the market.”

© 2016 Postmedia Network Inc.

Vancouver agent under investigation for advocating tax evasion

Ephraim Vecina
Canadian Real Estate Wealth

A Vancouver-based industry professional is now being investigated by the Real Estate Council of British Columbia after supposedly advising his clients on how to successfully go around the province’s newly imposed 15 per cent foreign buyer’s tax.

Real estate agent Mike Stewart was found to have sent emails to clients engaging in presale. The emails allegedly advised these clients to “assign the purchase contract to a friend or family member who is a citizen or resident,” reported CTV Vancouver.

Furthermore, Stewart supposedly proposed in the email that he might yield profits for the client by selling the presale to a third party.

Premier Christy Clark roundly condemned the practice in a July 27 press conference.

“Realtors should not be doing that, and they should be informing their clients that every single one of these transactions could be audited. Anybody trying to find loopholes is going to discover out very quickly that those loopholes don’t stand up,” Clark said.

The Real Estate Council announced that it has warned Stewart to stop sending out the emails, adding that it has started its investigation on the matter.

“The Province is introducing and will be enforcing stringent non-compliance penalties,” the Council stated. “Under the legislation, any individual who fails to pay the additional tax, or who participates in providing incorrect information to avoid the tax could be liable for fines of up to $100,000 and/or two years in prison.”

As of press time, Stewart has not commented on the issue.

Copyright © 2016 Key Media Pty Ltd

The government told the press they were looking at slowing foreign investment in BC on multiple occasions

Mortgage Broker News

British Columbia’s New Democrat housing critic is calling for an investigation into whether a prominent Vancouver real estate agent and B.C. Liberal government insider had advance knowledge of a controversial new tax on foreign property buyers.

David Eby has written B.C. Premier Christy Clark asking what information Bob Rennie had before the government passed the 15 per cent property transfer tax on foreign nationals.

His questions come after the Globe and Mail published an article saying Rennie said he knew about three weeks ago that an additional tax was coming. Rennie chairs the B.C. Liberal’s fundraising committee and is also a party donor.

Eby’s letter asks Clark when Rennie received formal notice of the new tax, who told him and whether he or any of his clients acted on any information they may have received.

“These are all serious questions,” Eby told reporters on Tuesday at a news conference at his constituency office.

“This information is very valuable to someone in the position of Mr. Rennie as a major industry player, as probably one of the most uniquely best-positioned to take advantage of this information.”

Eby said the auditor general or conflict commissioner could investigate, or an external party could be appointed. He said parliamentary tradition dictates the finance minister take responsibility for leaks about taxation policy, and the premier must be held accountable as well.

Rennie issued a statement after the news conference: “I did not have or was given any advance knowledge on the Foreign Buyer tax.”

A spokesman for the premier also said in an email that any assertion that Rennie was given advance warning of the tax is completely untrue.

Rennie has since told The Globe that he was making an educated guess about the tax, and that he is willing to step down as the chief fundraiser for the B.C. Liberals if asked to by the party.

The tax that was legislated by B.C.’s Liberal government last week and supported by the Opposition NDP will apply to foreigners purchasing residential property in Metro Vancouver. It was billed as a measure to improve housing affordability in a red-hot housing market.

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