Cardero development sets high bar for sophistication

? CLAUDIA KWAN
The Vancouver Sun

Project name: Cardero

Project location: 1575 W. Georgia St., Vancouver

Project size: 119 homes in a 26-storey concrete building

Residence size: 1 — 3 bed, 600 — 2,500 sq. ft.

Prices: Available on request

Developer: Bosa Properties

Architect: Gregory Henriquez, Henriquez Partners Architects

Interior designer: BYU (Bob’s Your Uncle) Design Ltd.

Sales centre telephone: 604-568-8888

Hours: by appointment only

Website: http://www.bosaproperties.com/cardero

Sales begin: Early September

Occupancy: Fall/Winter 2019

Call it inappropriate if you will, but it is exceedingly difficult to stop from playing around while in the show suite for Bosa Properties’ Cardero development. Indeed, it’s clear many of the people there for appointments are allowing themselves to indulge in testing out some of the hidden features of the suite’s kitchen.

 Wave a hand over one part of the handsome dark quartz countertop speckled with chocolate flecks, and a flat-screen TV rises  upward. Walk toward the middle of the wall, do the same thing, and up comes a sleek stainless steel downdraft vent. On the countertop area closest to the integrated refrigerator, yet another wave of the hand conjures a spice rack rising like a genie from a bottle, every container staying perfectly in place through the upward motion. Press two more discreet squares and up pop electrical outlets, which can be put away when not needed.

 “Innovation is something that really is a core part of our business,” says Macartney Tonello-Greenfield, director of marketing for Bosa Properties. “It’s something we’ve really embraced as we continue to try and set the bar higher for multi-family residential homes in this region.”

 In that quest, Tonello-Greenfield and other members of the Bosa team travelled to Italy to source different components for the homes in the downtown Vancouver highrise; they decided it was important to carefully curate all of the elements they wanted, instead of just buying entire collections from one specific company.

 Oak veneer cabinetry features built-in niches rather than handles, creating a sleek, low-maintenance look. Wood and metal inserts mean cooking tools, pots and pans, wine glasses, even cleaning products all stay in place when not in use. Premium Miele appliances include induction cooktops and wall ovens, in either white or black. Certain homes also feature steam ovens and built-in wine refrigerators.

 Massively oversized porcelain tiles — available as big as five- or 10-inch —- evoke the look of calacatta marble, and make a pronounced statement both as kitchen backsplashes and wall-to-ceiling high tiling in bathrooms. Wall-mounted fixtures and vanities, integrated countertops, and mirrored medicine cabinets for extra storage are just as contemporary and sophisticated. Nuheat floor heating is there for toasty comfort on a chilly morning or cool evening.

 Built-in closet millwork thoughtfully designates space for shoes, with glassed-in drawer fronts to see folded clothing, and bountiful amounts of hanging space. Additional shelves can handle handbags and other accessories.

 Other innovations include ‘BosaSPACE’ furniture, which vastly expands the usability of homes, smart home pre-wiring to control lighting, temperature, and music preferences, temperature-controlled lobby storage for grocery deliveries, and electric vehicle charging stations.

 Equal thought and attention has been paid to the architecture of the building and the site, says Gregory Henriquez, managing partner of Henriquez Partners Architects.

 “This is a simple, but complex site at the ‘hinge’ of Georgia and Pender, where two geometries collide,” he points out. “It’s the gateway to the North Shore, as well as an entry point to downtown — you get views to Stanley Park and down Pender to the east at the same time. So we decided to ‘split’ the building.”

 If you’re trying to visualize the bird’s eye view of the site, first imagine a fairly square tower — what Henriquez dubs an ‘urban obelisk’. Then add on a fairly rectangular piece at an angle to the top right hand corner of the square. It is all grounded on a podium, which will likely feature restaurants or cafes, creating pedestrian flow that will spill on to outdoor areas and enliven the area year round.

 To combat the sun exposure in warmer months, Henriquez took inspiration from the seaplanes that take off and land in Coal Harbour, as well as the hang-gliding rigs used at Grouse Mountain; deeply angled V-shapes in white steel serve as solar shades on the square building, with the rectangular building picked out in darker grey, amid glassy minimalism.

 “The design of the building actually helped with the interior floor plate, because it created more opportunities for privacy,” Henriquez explains. “For instance, the units in the ‘middle’ — where the two portions connect – don’t have overlook issues with residents from one home staring right into another. This also creates opportunity for some larger homes, with really great livability and more perimeter to work with — some have windows on all four sides, rather than just one or two.”

 The Tower collection includes one and two bedroom homes, which Tonello-Greenfield expects to be used as pieds-a-terre for people with residences in other parts of the city. The Coal Harbour collection involves sizable two- and three-bedroom units, and is mainly attracting attention from downsizers from the West Side and West Vancouver. Pricing and information about the Estate collection homes is available by request only. Three colour schemes are available: light, grey, and dark.

Cardero residents will also have access to a fitness facility and an expansive landscaped outdoor deck with lounging areas and a barbecue zone.

Tonello-Greenfield says more than 3,500 parties have registered their interest in the 119 homes available; Bosa has actually specified that consumers will only be able to buy one home each right in the sales packet.

 “Some of the interest is coming from the existing Coal Harbour community; people here love having a downtown address without having the hustle and bustle you see in other neighbourhoods. This is really an enclave with quiet, tree-lined streets and lots of water. Cardero is a very special project for a very special site — we will definitely be continuing down this path of innovation in our other projects in the future.”

© 2016 Postmedia Network Inc.

Liu Fei is latest critic to question rationale behind real estate levy

NATALIE OBIKO PEARSON
The Vancouver Sun

China’s top envoy in British Columbia challenged the Canadian province’s new 15 percent tax on foreign home buyers, questioning the justification behind the hastily imposed measure.

“Why a 15 percent tax? Why now? Why this rate? What’s the purpose? Will it work?” Liu Fei, China’s consul general in Vancouver, said in an interview Thursday. “The issue is how to help young people afford housing,” she added. “I’m not sure even a 50 percent tax would solve the problem.”

Liu’s comments come amid signs of the expanding fallout from the levy, which took effect on Aug. 2 just eight days after it was announced and threatened to slow or scuttle many deals. The measure was a response to growing public pressure in Canada’s third-largest city, where the benchmark detached home now costs C$1.58 million ($1.2 million) and anecdotes abound of offshore investors bidding up prices and then leaving homes empty.

Liu said she has expressed qualms to some provincial ministers after receiving calls from distressed Chinese students locked in contracts to buy homes but unable to drum up the extra cash to pay the tax.

The tax appears set to derail thousands of deals, may prompt calls for legal action and will also hit Canadian home sellers who suddenly lose their buyers.

‘No Business’

When the levy took effect, roughly 2,300 units valued at C$1.25 billion had been pre-sold to foreign buyers that may be at risk, according to estimates by Vancouver-based Urban Analytics Inc.

Re/Max Holdings Inc., one of the biggest residential real estate brokerages in Canada, estimates 45 home sales could collapse this month. The tax has suddenly chilled the market and “virtually no business is being done,” Western Canada Regional Executive Vice President Elton Ash said in phone interview this week. Failed deals could have a “domino effect” that potentially jeopardize as many as six subsequent sales, Ash said.

Liu said blaming high property prices on foreign buyers, especially Chinese, is unjustified. While Chinese nationals represent the biggest group of foreign home buyers, they comprise less than 3 percent of total transactions in the Vancouver region, according to government data.

“This is a big country with a small population,” Liu said. “It needs immigration to grow the economy.”

Taller Buildings

Liu called for a more holistic approach to make housing more affordable, such as timelier data to better match supply with demand, a more extensive public transit system and taller buildings to house a growing population.

Many Vancouverites, accustomed to unimpeded views of mountains and ocean, are fiercely resistant to increased high-rise development. About 65 percent of the city of Vancouver is zoned for only single-family homes, according to the Urban Development Institute. Meanwhile, a C$7.5 billion plan to fund public transit was voted down in a referendum last year despite increasingly long commutes that undermine labor productivity.

“Without a plan, everything is a disaster,” Liu said. “We can send people to the moon — housing is just a small problem.”

© 2016 Postmedia Network Inc

Housing debate shows erosion of nation states like Canada

DOUGLAS TODD
The Vancouver Sun

Metro Vancouver’s rapidly rising housing prices should not be touched by governments, said high-profile realtor Layla Yang.

“This is Vancouver and Canada — and it’s a free-market economy. No one can stop it.”

Many Canadians share Yang’s resolute free-market worldview, which maintains the unrestricted movement of money and migrants is not only inevitable, but moral.

Whether it’s related that Yang has recently been accused of threatening the life of an ethnic Chinese Vancouver homeowner on behalf of her Mainland Chinese clients, the realtor’s vigorous defence of the unregulated market carries clout in high places.

Supporters of Yang’s view, called neoliberals, include development industry lobbyists who claim the B.C. government’s new 15 per cent tax on foreign buyers of Metro Vancouver residential real estate contravenes the North American Free Trade Agreement.

They’re attacking the tax on foreign owners even while unrestricted economic globalization is increasingly being hammered in other parts of the world, including even in the U.S. — by Donald Trump, Senator Bernie Sanders (D-Vermont) and, mildly, by Hilary Clinton.

In many ways, economic globalization runs against the principle of national sovereignty.

And Canadian sovereignty has been increasingly under threat, particularly since former Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney signed the first U.S. free trade deal in 1988.

At that time, The Vancouver Sun ran a six-part series on the pros and cons of free-trade ideology. Most on the left opposed it because it gave away too much Canadian control over labour standards, resources and environment regulations.

But today the voice of Canada’s centre-left has largely grown silent on sovereignty.

UBC political scientist emeritus Philip Resnick says much of Canada’s English-speaking centre-left (unlike in Quebec) now puts most of its energy into supporting “cosmopolitanism.”

Indeed, Canada’s most vigorous centre-left defenders of sovereignty are literally dying off — such as the late Canadian Encyclopedia publisher Mel Hurtig, who said “I’ve spent an entire life battling like hell against the sellouts in our country.”

An irony is that it is now some noted foreigners — such as Chinese Consul-General Liu Fei, based in Vancouver — who argued last year that B.C. should consider a tax on offshore buyers as well as other measures.

A truly sovereign country, Liu suggested, would impose a variety of regulations to curtail runaway property speculation by offshore rich, regardless of where they come from.

Even though the Chinese consul-general appeared to waver on the details of B.C.’s 15 per cent tax in a news report Friday, most of the world’s countries, especially China, have a variety or rules and taxes to restrict foreign ownership.

That’s what’s happened even among Canada’s NAFTA partners, the U.S. and Mexico, as well as in Australia, Hong Kong, Denmark, France, Switzerland and a host of other countries.

But Canada, under Justin Trudeau, is going the opposite direction, with the federal Liberals in China this week welcoming more “free trade” with the populous country, as well as a doubling of Chinese newcomers to Canada.

Christy Clark reacts to pressure for more sovereignty

UBC law professor Joel Bakan, creator of the acclaimed financial documentary, The Corporation, says “in the past 30 years of economic globalization there has been an attack on the idea of the nation state.”

However, the nation-state, Bakan said in an interview, remains the key structure through which a people can create a democratic community, with all its attendant regulations to protect the common good of its citizens.

In what was for her a sudden turnaround, Clark imposed the 15 per tax on foreign buyers in reaction to the winds of political change sweeping Metro Vancouver, not to mention large swaths of the U.S. as well as Britain and Europe.

More average people are realizing economic globalization creates winners and losers — and that they’re the also-rans.

In B.C. an Angus Reid poll rang a sovereigntist chord when it revealed 90 per cent approved the tax. The tax represents a 180-degree turnaround for Clark, who has until now been actively wooing foreign real estate investors.

The B.C. Liberals also lead one of the few jurisdictions in the world that welcomes foreign political donations — a practice that noted American scholar Robert Reich this month called the worst threat to sovereignty.

Still, regardless of Clark’s motives, her government’s latest gesture strikes a small blow for what she is now turning into a “B.C. First” campaign theme, which ostensibly protects regional sovereignty.

To be sure, promoting sovereignty can come with a potential downside.

As Resnick says, “nationalism has a Janus face.” That is, like the two-faced ancient Roman god, it can have negative and positive aspects.

The dark side of nationalism is the chauvinism of Naziism and Japanese imperialism, and the truly racist outbreaks that have occurred in countries such as Cambodia, Rwanda, Russia, China, India and elsewhere.

“But the more positive face of nationalism is it gives people a sense of rootedness,” Resnick said. “People are upset because locals are being forced out of the housing and rental markets by ridiculously inflated prices, much of it coming from the wealthiest one or two per cent in Mainland China.”

If the money was flooding in from Caucasian-majority countries such as Russia or Britain, Resnick says residents of Vancouver or Toronto would still be justified in wanting action to curtail it.

“It’s affecting the lives of people who would normally be putting their roots down here,” Resnick said. “Citizenship matters. Like it or not, people identify with people they are like and with whom they share a common space.”

But the sovereignty discussion, especially in higher education, Resnick said, is often stifled by fears of falsely being labelled “racist” (which is properly defined as discriminating against members of an ethnic group based on a sense of superiority).

Left and right can stand up for sovereignty

One of the paradoxical things about the concept of sovereignty, says Bakan, is that support for it can come from both the left and the right.

Politicians like Trump, as well as Euro-skeptics in Britain, Europe and elsewhere, are becoming more nativist, meaning they want public officials to favour native inhabitants rather than foreign migrants or foreign wealth.

But left-wing politicians in Greece, France, Germany and the Nordic countries are also increasingly worried about globalization, because they realize free-trade ideology weakens regional welfare societies.

In Britain, Bakan says there was little question during the Brexit debate that “globalization had led to a lot of job loss, poverty and dislocation — not only for poor people, but for what used to be the middle class.”

While Bakan acknowledged the liberal-left is often distracted by identity politics related to ethnicity, he notes some left-wingers still lead battles against free-trade deals, such as the looming Trans-Pacific Partnership.

The UBC professor-filmmaker echoed Nobel Prize economist Joseph Stiglitz, who wrote this month that globalization will only benefit most members of a nation if it puts strong social-protection measures in place.

And that requires a sense of sovereignty. Nations, provinces and cities are virtually the only bodies that can provide citizens with education, health care and redistributed wealth for the disadvantaged.

A 15 per cent tax on foreign buyers in Metro Vancouver is just one way — out of many more pieces of legislation still required — to protect those who already live and work in Canada.

© 2016 Postmedia Network Inc.

High room rates, occupancy pull in investors from home and abroad as ?enormous activity? helps offset industry?s poor performance in cities hit by oil slump

Evan B Duggan
The Vancouver Sun

Strong performance in B.C.’s hotel industry is helping to offset losses elsewhere in Western Canada’s hotel market caused by weak oil and gas prices, according to a new report by global commercial real estate firm CBRE.

Pain in the oilpatch was the major cause of a 26.1-per-cent drop in per-room revenue in Calgary for the first quarter of this year, according to the 2016 Canadian Hotels Outlook.

Meanwhile, Toronto and Vancouver have been experiencing high room rates and high occupancy figures. Revenue per available room rose 16 per cent in Vancouver in the first quarter of 2016 and nine per cent in Toronto.

The Canadian market has also built on 2015’s record investment volume of more than $2.3 billion, the report said. Annual transaction volumes of roughly $2.5 billion is the new normal for the Canadian hotel market as strong revenues pull in more investors.

So far this year, there have been 45 hotel transactions across Canada worth $600 million. That is down from the same period last year when there were 65 deals worth $920 million. But the second half of this year is shaping up for a “significant amount of activity” that will rival or beat last year’s totals, said Bill Stone, executive vice-president with CBRE’s Hotels Capitals Group.

“We’re seeing enormous activity in … Vancouver and Toronto,” Stone said. “Vancouver has been appealing to a broad array of investors, a number of them offshore and a lot of domestic.”

B.C. hotel profits were up 28 per cent in 2015 and are expected to grow 13 per cent this year. Hotel profits in Alberta fell 31 per cent last year with a drop of another 27 per cent expected this year.

There haven’t been many rooms added to Vancouver’s hotel inventory in recent years, said Cindy Schoenauer, director of valuation and advisory Services at CBRE in Vancouver. “It (new supply) was less than one per cent in 2015, and there was almost negative growth in 2014 and 2013, so it’s a market that hasn’t seen a lot of supply,” she said.

But demand for hotel rooms in Metro Vancouver is strong, reaching 70 per cent occupancy in the first quarter of this year, she said.

The price for a hotel room is also climbing here, she said. “Revenue per available room in Alberta is down 25 per cent, whereas in B.C., we’re up 15 per cent, so we’re really seeing two different things happening when you’re looking at the western Canadian numbers.”

Schoenauer said more hotel rooms are on the way in Metro Vancouver. Nearly 150 rooms are set to open this year at Trump Tower. Parq Vancouver, a new $600-million “urban resort” with two hotels totalling 517 rooms and suites, is expected to open next to B.C. Place in December. She said a 144-room hotel in Surrey is being built by Marriott Autograph Collection.

Suburban markets are feeling the benefit of a tight downtown market, Schoenauer said. “Richmond, North Vancouver, Burnaby and Coquitlam, they all feel the benefit from that,” she said, adding that markets outside of the City of Vancouver have more opportunities for developers to buy land for new hotel projects.

It’s now tougher than ever to book a room in Vancouver during the peak summer season.

“We’re tracking about 9.8 million overnight visitors this year, and we expect that to be a record year,” said Tourism Vancouver’s vice-president of marketing, Stephen Pearce. “Last year was a record year with 9.3 million, and 2014 was a record year as well.”

He said a lot of growth is coming from U.S. visitors and from China, which has become Vancouver’s largest source of visitors outside of the U.S. Pearce said the federal government’s recent decision to eliminate visa requirements for Mexicans is also expected to give the city’s tourism sector a boost.

“Moving people off peak season is one of the things that’s important to us,” he said. “There’s lots of availability and great prices year round, but particularly trying to get people to pay attention to the fall and the spring and winter.”

Pearce wouldn’t say definitively if Vancouver needs more rooms. “There is a lot of availability at other times of the year,” he said.

A relatively low Canadian dollar might not have the effect on local visitors that people expect, he said. “Does exchange rate drive visitation? To a limited extent I think it does. But I think that it’s overrated.”

He said Americans from more distant states are coming here more than ever. “They’re not as dialed into the exchange rate differences,” he said. “It’s not uncommon to get visitors coming into our information centres wondering which way it goes. Do they get more or do we get more?”

Tourism is a business that can turn on or off very quickly, he said. “As ripples of insecurity percolate through one economy, we need to be looking at ways to offset that by an emphasis on other areas.”

© 2016 Postmedia Network Inc.

Foreign-buyer tax puts the ball in Ottawa?s court

The Vancouver Sun

In Vancouver, there’s plenty of worry the 15 percent tax on foreign home buyers could be too successful, chasing away legitimate investors. In Ottawa, the big worry is the tax won’t be enough.

Federal government officials studying the move have doubts about its effectiveness to slow the market, according to two people familiar with discussions on the matter who spoke on condition they not be identified. Offsetting factors include Vancouver’s lack of supply and Canada’s record-low interest rates. The federal government wasn’t involved in the decision, the people said.

It could, however, be a problem for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. He has promised to act on the affordability issue but is worried any full-blown attack to contain Vancouver and Toronto — the country’s two most expensive markets — would trigger declines in the rest of the economy, or even produce a major correction.

“Fifteen percent, when prices have been escalating at more than 10 percent a year, won’t do very much,” former Bank of Canada Governor David Dodge said in an interview. “It will have some initial disruption but it really won’t do very much.”

After tighter mortgage rules Finance Minister Bill Morneau introduced in December failed to cool the market, he sought to devolve some of the responsibility to the provinces and cities, with British Columbia’s move the first salvo in those efforts. A failure in B.C. could make it more difficult for the federal government to resist pressure to become more active.

Sousa said Ontario won’t create any “unnecessary walls” for “newcomers.” Still, there are some good reasons for the central Canadian province to follow with its own measure. One of the biggest is that British Columbia’s move will drive foreign flows to other cities, particularly Toronto. Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne isn’t facing an election until 2018, but some sort of tax on real estate would also help her meet a pledge to balance the budget before going to the polls. 

While vowing in last year’s federal election to “consider all policy tools” to make homes in Vancouver and Toronto more affordable, Trudeau’s options are limited outside of leading collaboration with cities and provinces.

The Canadian government’s role as a regulator rests on its ability to manage flows of mortgage insurance. There is still room for Morneau to tinker with mortgage qualification rules but that risks making it more expensive for people to qualify at the lower end of the market.

Morneau sought to get around that problem in December by tightening insurance rules only for homes above C$500,000 ($382,877), yet there was no let up. The cost of a detached home in Vancouver has soared 26 percent over 12 months to C$1.76 million in July, while in Toronto the cost of such homes is up 21 percent to C$952,983.

With the economy struggling through one of its weakest periods of growth, interest-rate hikes from the Bank of Canada are off the table. A federal tax of some sort on property — a provincial and municipal jurisdiction — is also out of the question. “The provinces would go nuts,” Dodge said.

One potential option would be a transaction-based tax implemented at the local or provincial level that tries to target speculators, said Jean-Francois Perrault, chief economist at Bank of Nova Scotia who has worked at both the finance department and Bank of Canada. The sooner you turn over the house, the higher the tax, he said.

The added benefit is it allows you to avoid the discriminatory aspect that makes British Columbia’s measure a blunt instrument. “To the extent you want to deal with speculators, putting a tax on speculation of some kind, whether it’s to foreigners, to Canadians, or everybody is one way to go,” Perrault said.

© 2016 Postmedia Network Inc.

 

Feds concerned about effectiveness of real estate levy and overall economic impact

? David Staples
The Province

The battle over densification just got a lot more interesting.

It seems this fight is not just folks who want lot splitting and highrise apartments pitted against those who oppose such developments.

Former Vancouver mayor Sam Sullivan, now an MLA with the British Columbia Liberal party, says the densification fight is both class and generational warfare. It pits haves against have-nots, old against young, wealthy baby boom homeowners against millennials, poorer young people who hope to live in the city core, rather than commute from sprawling suburbs, but can’t afford to buy into these established areas.

Sullivan knows the fight well. As Vancouver’s mayor from 2005 to 2008, he faced stiff resistance from activist and empowered baby boomers when he tried to combat sprawl, rising greenhouse gas emissions, out-of-control housing prices and the development of prime farmland in the Vancouver area.

I interviewed Sullivan after first hearing his ideas on CBC Radio’s The 180. In his CBC interview, Sullivan pointed out that baby boomers had been inspired by the ideas of urban planning guru Jane Jacobs, who fought against a city redeveloped for cars, with endless freeways and massive highrises.

The fight against highrises started in the 1960s, but continued for decades and it didn’t just halt the neighbourhood-busting mega-projects that Jacobs disliked, it stopped needed densification, kept central neighbourhoods locked into their 1950s suburban form, and enriched the baby boomers who initially bought homes there, Sullivan says.

“It’s been a brilliant financial strategy for them and they’re cashing out now as we speak.”

In our interview, Sullivan describes Vancouver as a Venice surrounded by a Phoenix, where the refusal to densify means that environmentally sensitive areas are getting mowed down to build sprawling, car-dependent suburbs.

Most Vancouverites want change, Sullivan says, but hardcore activists often get their way and block major densification efforts. “People with pretty narrow interests are able to get in the way of the natural densification of cities and in Vancouver it’s created a lot of problems with housing prices.

“It’s a great financial strategy to grab the land when it’s cheap and when you’re the only one around and lock it in, and then circle the wagons. Because the city will grow and if you can restrict supply, the only thing that can happen is the price will go up. So there’s a great wealth transfer from young people who are trying to find a way to live without pretty long commutes and living in a way that is more environmentally sustainable, and the older generation that is sitting on this land and stopping everything that would make the lives of the young people easier … (Young people) either pay it in money or they pay it in time. They will live off in a distant suburb and pay it in the time that they have to get to work, get to the things they want to go to.”

Sullivan points out that some resistance to change is be expected. “There’s a fear of change. People generally, naturally, like things to stay the same once they’ve established their living pattern. They see the downsides of change.”

Sometimes change is resisted by people claiming they don’t want to wreck the historic nature of the area. Sullivan doesn’t buy that these areas are full of endless numbers of important historic homes. Yes, he says, some historic sites must be preserved, but this isn’t an argument to prevent densification in mature areas. 

What to make of Sullivan’s theory? It’s based on his experience as mayor. It’s a voice from the front lines of a fierce densification fight. I put a lot of weight in his take. 

Jane Jacobs has had massive influence. The activists who took up her fight have always believed they were on the side of the angels. In taking dead aim at the monetary and anti-density consequences of Jacobs’ legacy, Sullivan serves us all. It’s useful to point out to folks convinced they’re right and on the side of the good that they’re also getting rich off their principles.  

In the end, though, the far more crucial point that Sullivan makes is that if we want a greener, less sprawling, more efficient, more affordable city with lower property taxes, densification is the way to go.

That will work for young people, but also should work for most baby boom homeowners, at least if they are sick of pollution, traffic jams and ever rising property taxes, the byproducts of a sprawling city. 

© 2016 Postmedia Network Inc.

An investment without appreciating the bundle of rights attached to the investment is not being duly diligent

Justin da Rosa
Canadian Real Estate Wealth

The Court of Appeals upheld a strata bylaw that permits only one unit to be rented at any one time within a Vancouver condo building.

A total of 158 units comprise 1445 Marpole Avenue, Hycroft Towers, in Vancouver. And of those units, only one can be rented out at a given time, despite an appeal.

The appeal was brought forth by four family member investors who, together, own three units in the building. They had previously rented out one of the three units, despite their application to do so being rejected by the strata council. That was in violation of the strata bylaws, which were upheld by the ruling.

And according to one investor, there is nothing th investors can do.

“The bylaws were in the condominium documents when the owners bought the property. Each condo board has its own by-laws which must follow the Strata Property Act,” Tim Mangat, a seasoned investor, told CREW sister publication, MortgageBrokerNews.ca. “It’s always the owner’s responsibility to understand the rules and regulations and adhere to them.”

It’s an interesting case that certainly draws attention to the importance of thoroughly reading strata agreements prior to selling.

As Mangat points out, property purchasers have a “bundle of rights,” which includes the right of possession, control, exclusion, enjoyment disposition.

However, this particular ruling is the result of British Columbia’s government prioritizing the rights of the collective condo board than the individual owner, according to Mangat.

“The BC government has more of a socialist view for the rights of a condo owner, stripping away individual rights and allowing more control to the condo board under the protection of the Strata Act,” Mangat said.

 Copyright © 2016 Key Media Pty Ltd

Steve Randall
REP

Measures to cool Canada’s two hottest housing markets could have a negative impact on the wider economy according to CIBC economist Avery Shenfeld.

He has added his voice to those demanding that the issue of supply should be the main focus of officials rather than the dampening of demand.

While he cautioned of the effects of cooling markets, Shenfeld wrote in a client report that rising house prices in Vancouver do not boost the wider economy as many are forced to tighten their belts to save for a downpayment.

“The lack of affordable housing for the next generation of workforce entrants could act as an impediment to business growth, or encourage businesses to locate elsewhere,” Shenfeld warns.

He also argued that housing markets do not have to see a boom and bust cycle, if the right policies are in place.

Copyright © 2016 Key Media Pty Ltd