The Crossing ideal for families seeking quiet, close-knit community

ROBIN BRUNET
The Province

If you haven’ t yet heard of the Pacific Douglas neighbourhood — located in the southernmost tip of Surrey and a stone’s throw from the border crossing — chances are you will when the final phase of The Crossing by Gramercy sells out and the buzz about its unique surroundings reaches fever pitch.

This cosy nook in South Surrey contains stately new homes and vast farmland with narrow country roads surrounded by tall, dense woods. There’s a golf course beyond the woods, and The Crossing residents need only walk a few minutes to reach the beautiful lawn and garden of Peace Arch Provincial Park, which straddles the 49th parallel.

A little further west you will find the beaches and trendy shops of White Rock. A few minutes north is the district of Grandview Corners and Morgan Crossing, with its big-box retail stores, boutique shops and array of dining options.

Michelle Des Rosie rs, senior project manager for Fifth Avenue Real Estate Marketing Ltd., which is presiding over sales of the 67 townhomes that comprise The Crossing, summarizes the al lure of Pacific Douglas :“It’ s ideal for families who want to go home to a quiet and close-knit community at the end of the day, but have urban amenities at their fingertips.”

However, the opportunity to own a Crossing home is limited. “We’re releasing our final homes on February 11, all of which are street-facing looking on to a quiet cul-de-sac,” says Des Rosiers.

The final release of homes in question are four-bedrooms, starting at $689,900 for 1,706 square feet and rising to 1,948 square feet – each with three full bathrooms and powder room.

From the outside, The Crossing boasts classic East Coast architecture with wood-shuttered accents on the windows and arched portico entries, plus spacious double or single garages with carports. Home interiors feature open living spaces, Shaker panel cabinetry in the kitchens, subway tile backsplashes and soft-close doors and drawers, and deep en suite soaker tubs in the bathrooms along with oversized porcelain tile flooring and polished chrome fixtures.

As with all Gramercy projects, the homes are built to last. Dimple membrane-wrapped foundations come with a 50-year warranty, exterior walls are of two-by-six construction with R20 insulation, and Cat 5 wiring extends throughout each home for Ethernet, telephone and ADSL Internet.

Des Rosiers urges interested buyers to contact Fifth Avenue Real Estate Marketing as soon as possible. “Once The Crossing sells out, there aren’t any other new residential developments in Pacific Douglas to choose from,” she says. “This is truly a unique area of Metro Vancouver, so the time to act is now.”

© 2017 Postmedia Network Inc.

Mary Frances Hill
The Province

Opal

What: A 130-unit development including one six-storey and two four-storey buildings with 44 condos for sale, 56 for rental, and 30 complex-care suites

Where: 438 West King Edward Avenue, Vancouver

Developer and builder: Opal Retirement Inc. and Opal Development Partnership

Residence sizes and prices: one-bedroom condos 612 — 850 square feet, from $732,000;
one-bedroom and den 837 — 922 square feet, $1,150,000 — $1,230,000; available two-bedrooms 938 — 1,178 square feet, $1,056,000 — $1,428,000

Sales centre address: 130 —  555 West 12th Ave. (City Square, upper shops level)

Sales centre hours: Mon — Fri noon — 3 p. m.; Sat — Sun noon — 6 p.m.; Appointments by arrangement

When Diane Shrubb took on the challenge of creating the suites at Opal, a seniors’ community coming to Cambie Village, she knew buyers would be looking for an increasingly easier and enhanced lifestyle over the years.

Functionality in the design would be critical, but she also knew residents wouldn’t want to compromise on comfort and esthetics.

When she first applied her creativity to the notion of luxury retirement — the theme that defines Opal homes — Shrubb considered all the practicalities to be addressed in the display space. Given the homes range from conventional spaces to units designed for those who will need care, she focused on safety and comfort.

“Many have worked hard and raised families, and now it’s time for them to relax and enjoy,” says Shrubb, principal of Shrubb Design Partnership Inc. “What do they need at this point in their lives? They need less space to live in and somewhere they can live safely and attend to health issues if they occur.”

The details make a big difference in the development, which requires at least one occupant of each unit to be 55-plus years of age. Shrubb hid lighting in the kitchen island and bathroom vanities, while closet interiors allow for built-in storage. Meantime, grab bars in the bath and showers are understated, resembling towel bars.

Even small touches that many would not notice — like a flat-profile flooring that will ease the transition from the carpeted bedrooms to the laminate wood flooring — will help mobility and reduce tripping hazards. Electrical outlets are mounted higher than the standard 12 inches, also an aid to mobility issues, she says.

The biggest challenge presented by Shrubb’s Opal work was marrying functionality with beauty.

“This is the ongoing challenge on almost any design project, and particularly for this demographic,” Shrubb says. “Finding the balance between functional security items, while providing beauty and practicality, must coexist in a successful project. If only functional items are addressed, the comfort and esthetics will be compromised and visa versa.”

To achieve this in the display space, Shrubb kept to light neutrals and simple, clean finishes, introducing a splash of colour via bright florals in artwork.

“These large-format paintings are an uplifting complement to the clean and simple elegant backdrop,” Shrubb says.

The project is also noteworthy for its more than 30,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor amenities. These include a movement studio with a dramatic rock salt wall, a gym, a wellness spa, library lounge and games area, business and IT centre, and an open display kitchen for culinary demonstrations and intergenerational cooking classes.

© 2017 Postmedia Network Inc.

Number of empty homes up 15 per cent from 2011

JOANNE LEE-YOUNG
The Province

The latest census numbers for 2016 show there were 25,502 unoccupied or empty housing units in the City of Vancouver.

That’s 15 per cent higher than recorded during the last census in 2011.

Urban planner Andy Yan of Simon Fraser University’s City Program compared census data for Vancouver over several decades to see how the percentage of “unoccupied” units or ones “occupied solely by foreign residents and/or temporary present residents on Census Day” has doubled during that time. In 1986, it was four percent. In 2016, it rose to 8.2 per cent.

“Exact definitions and measures have changed slightly over 30 years and patterns should be interpreted as directional,” Yan writes in a report, also released Wednesday. 

For Vancouver, the direction is up. The city far outstrips other municipalities with 25,502 units that are unoccupied or owned by temporary or foreign residents. Yan said most of these were concentrated in three areas: Coal Harbour, Marine Gateway and Joyce-Collingwood. Surrey came in second at 11,195, Burnaby at 5,829 and Richmond at 4,021.

The number of unoccupied units or ones occupied by temporary or foreign residents increased 25 per cent in Richmond between the 2011 and 2016 census and by 28 per cent in Burnaby.

However, some of the widest percentage jumps occurred between the 2001 and 2006 census.

The census numbers of unoccupied units are more than double an estimate released by city hall last year because a completely different set of criteria and data were used.

Assessing the extent of empty or underused homes can differ depending on “your measurement tools,” said Yan.

While the census might count a greater number of folks who are, say, on extended vacation during the census period, the city’s estimate was criticized for likely missing the number of units used for only short, seasonal periods, perhaps one or two months in the summer, but then are left vacant for the rest of the year.

There are arguments to be made for and against both, but Yan said the census figures show growing numbers over an extended period.

The census counts the number of “total private dwellings” and “private dwellings occupied by usual residents.” Its definition of unoccupied units means those that were vacant on Census Day, including properties for rent or sale, ones that have been purchased, but whose owners have not yet moved in, as well as furnished units that are second residences.

It also includes units that are used on a temporary basis and/or by foreign residents. In the 2011 census, just over 4,000 of the 22,000 units “not occupied by usual residents” were used by temporary and foreign residents, according to Ryan Berlin, senior economist at the Rennie Group, who made a custom request following the general census release to get the breakdown, which, for 2016, he hopes will be available from StatsCan in a few months.

The City of Vancouver in March 2016 commissioned a private firm to analyze the extent of empty homes by using B.C. Hydro data to see how much electricity was used over a certain number of months. Looking at 225,000 homes over a decade, it found that by 2014, under five per cent or 10,800 units could be considered unoccupied for a year or more. A whopping number 90 per cent of these housing units were deemed to be “non-occupied” and for all condos, the report found 12.5 per cent were vacant.

From this, in November 2016 city council voted to approve a tax on empty homes, the first in Canada. Based on self-reporting owners, the tax is a one-per-cent charge on homes that are not principal residences or are not rented out for at least six months of the year. The goal is to improve Vancouver’s tight rental vacancy rate of 0.6 per cent by encouraging owners of thousands of empty units to offer them up for renting.

The release of Wednesday’s census data from Statistics Canada reinforces the need to address the issue of empty and underutilized homes in Vancouver, and why the city’s new tax is an important step for freeing up rental housing, said city spokesperson Tobin Postma in a statement. 

Postma said regardless of which data set is used, the census or the city’s, both show “there is a significant number of homes that sit empty in Vancouver at a time when we face an affordability crisis.”

© 2017 Postmedia Network Inc.

Laura Kusisto and Kim Mackrael
other

When Anna Riley, a Seattle-area real-estate agent, held an open house for a new $2.3 million listing in the tony city of Bellevue late last month, the pool of prospective buyers was different from the usual assortment of tech magnates, sports stars and chief executives.

Twenty groups of buyers visited the property in the Seattle metro area—and all of them were Chinese.

“Every single one,” said Ms. Riley, an agent at Windermere Real Estate, noting that Asian investors had typically, before last year, accounted for about a quarter of the firm’s prospective buyers.

Chinese real-estate buyers are suddenly descending on the Seattle region. Some are lured by perceptions the coastal city is a bargain, others by warm memories of the 2013 Chinese film “Finding Mr. Right,” which put Seattle on the pop-culture radar there.

The biggest draw, though, might be the fact that it isn’t Vancouver. In August, the Canadian province of British Columbia imposed a 15% tax on foreign investment in the city, which until recently was a popular destination for Chinese. The tax applies to anyone who isn’t a citizen or permanent resident of Canada and buys a home in metro Vancouver.

The provincial government says the tax policy is aimed at making homes in the city more affordable for local residents, who have seen prices soar by nearly 50% over the past three years. The city of Vancouver also introduced a separate vacancy tax of 1% on the assessed value of an empty property.

The moves have had a chilling effect. Web searches in China for Vancouver properties dropped 37% in December compared with a year ago, according to Juwai.com, an online real-estate portal that targets Chinese home seekers.

Seattle, by contrast, is red hot. Searches for Seattle properties in China jumped 125% year-over-year in November, after increasing 71% in October, according to Juwai. They rose 1.8% in December.

Kyle Moss, a real-estate agent at Redfin, said he received a call from a Chinese man within 72 hours of the tax passing who said he represented 20 families interested in buying real estate in Seattle. Mr. Moss said for some, the appeal is being near family and friends who own in Vancouver, 120 miles away.

It is too early to quantify the effect of Chinese interest on Seattle’s home sales, and no one tracks the ethnicities of buyers in particular markets. But the sudden surge in interest in Seattle comes at a time when it already ranks among the nation’s hottest real-estate markets. It led the U.S. in home-price growth in November, according to a report released Tuesday by S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Indices, which found prices there increased by more than 10% over the same month in 2015.

Some places that have been favorites for Chinese in recent years—including London, Australia and, most recently, New York—are rolling out policies that discourage foreign purchasers.

In the U.K. in late 2014, the cost of buying homes valued at more than £937,000, or $1.17 million at current exchange rates, went up on a sliding scale, rising to a 12% tax on the portion of a sale over £1.5 million. In April, an additional 3% was tacked on to the sale price of homes for foreign buyers or for those renting out their properties.

Australia bars foreigners from purchasing resale properties, and some states also have imposed taxes on foreign purchasers. In New York, the mayor last week proposed a 2.5% tax on properties of $2 million or more, a favorite category of foreigners.

Mike O’Brien, a Seattle City Council member, said he is exploring measures, including a vacancy tax, to combat another trend that has irked Vancouver residents: foreign investors who leave homes vacant and untended. “It baffles me that people would buy real estate here and not fill it up,” he said.

Stella Guo, a third-year university student from China, and her family recently purchased two waterfront properties in Seattle for more than $5 million each. The family owns a Chinese development company and is looking at building projects in the northwestern U.S.

Ms. Guo, who attends college in Arizona, said she doesn’t plan to live in Seattle full-time but wanted a place for her and her family to relax on vacation and was drawn to Seattle’s temperate climate, according to answers to emailed questions provided by her real-estate agent, Robert Pong, senior global real-estate adviser at Realogics Sotheby’s International Realty.

Lili Shang, an agent at the Seattle-area agency, said she is seeing many Chinese families and investors looking to sell property in Vancouver and move their money to Seattle because of the tax. “I think people realize that Vancouver is no more a fun place to do investments,” she said.

©1995-2017 National Association of REALTORS^®

Steve Randall
Canadian Real Estate Wealth

Home buyers in the Fraser Valley are considering a broader range of housing options amid tightening inventory.

Home sales in January totalled 976, down 27.1 per cent from a year earlier, the Fraser Valley Real Estate Board reports; inventory was down 8.1 per cent to 4,401.

New listings fell 13.2 per cent year-over-year and a massive 162.7 per cent from December but remained strong at 2,178.

Half of January’s sales activity were apartments and townhouses.

“Notably, the distribution of sales across our residential property types levelled-off even further in January. As well, prices continue to adjust to match more typical demand, albeit slowly,” said Charles Wiebe, Board President.

Prices in the Fraser Valley continue to rise with year-over-year increases of 24.3 per cent for the benchmark price of a single-family detached home ($856,300), 28.8 per cent for a townhome ($420,400) and 27.6 per cent for an apartment/condo ($262,300).

Month-over-month price increases were 1.3 per cent for townhomes, 0.9 per cent for apartments/condos but unchanged for single-family detached homes.

Copyright © 2017 Key Media Pty Ltd

REP

Residential property sales in Metro Vancouver slumped 39.6% in January 2017 compared to the same month last year, figures form the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver revealed.

There were 1,523 units sold last month, below the 10-year sales average for January. It’s a drop from the 2,519 units sold in January 2016, and the 1,714 homes sold last December.

“While we saw near record-breaking sales at this time last year, home buyers and sellers are more reluctant to engage so far in 2017,” said REBGV president Dan Morrison.  “From a real estate perspective, it’s a lukewarm start to the year compared to 2016.”

Metro Vancouver also saw an annualized decrease in new listings. There were 4,140 of them in total last month – that’s 6.8% lower than in January 2016. But the number marked a rise from the 1,312 new listings last December.

January 2017 marked the lowest sales-to active-ratio (21%) since the same month in 2015. Detached homes spent an average of 58 days on the market. The length was lower for apartments (35 days), and townhouses (43 days).

“Conditions within the market vary depending on property type. The townhome and condominium markets are more active than the detached market at the moment,” Morrison said. “As a result, detached home prices declined about 7 per cent since peaking in July while townhome and condominium prices held steady over this period.”

Sales according to property type dropped across the board, RBGV figure’s showed.
 

Property Type	January 2016 Sales	January 2017 Sales	Change
Detached Homes	1,047	444	(-57.6%)
Apartments	1,096	825	(-24.7%)
Townhomes	376	254	(-32.4%)

 
The market saw 2016 as the third highest selling year on record, behind only 20015 and 2005, REBGV said.

Copyright © 2017 Key Media Pty Ltd

Mike Smyth
The Province

 

There are millions of people around the world who can only dream about starting a new life in a prosperous country like Canada, where hard work and talent are welcomed and rewarded.

Nivesh Sharma, 30, was living that dream when he arrived from India in November 2015 with a work permit and visa and found a job as a shipping-logistics expert with a company in Richmond.

His wife, Neha, also had a work permit and found a job as a bookkeeper with a kitchen-supply company in Surrey.

With their application for permanent-resident status awaiting approval in Ottawa, the Sharmas began planning to raise a family. Last April, they put down a $20,000 deposit on a new townhouse under construction in Surrey.

With the townhouse scheduled for occupancy in November, the Sharmas could not have been happier.

“We were renting a basement apartment and enjoying our first summer together in Canada,” Nivesh Sharma told me.

“We had settled in our new country, we both had jobs, friends and a new house to look forward to. It was a joyful time.”

But things took an unexpected turn last July 25 when Premier Christy Clark announced a 15-per-cent foreign homebuyers tax, vowing to “put British Columbians first” in Metro Vancouver’s overheated housing market.

Because the Sharmas had agreed to buy the townhouse for $361,000, it meant the government was now demanding an additional $54,000 from them.

They did not have the money and the bank would not loan the additional cash. Heartbroken, Sharma tried to get out of his purchase contract, but the townhouse developer would not refund his $20,000 deposit.

“We had two options: Lose $20,000 and our new townhouse or try to come up with the $54,000,” he said. “We had many sleepless nights over it.”

He eventually scraped up the money by securing six separate personal loans. He borrowed money from his father and his father-in-law (both back in India), two friends and from his boss and his wife’s boss.

Now he is working long overtime hours to pay off the unexpected debts.

“We somehow managed it, though it’s been extremely difficult and stressful,” he said.

But then came another twist. On Jan. 29, Clark suddenly announced the government would eliminate the tax on foreign homebuyers living, working and paying taxes in B.C.

“We believe that people, the best and the brightest, should be able to come to British Columbia,” Clark said.

© 2017 Postmedia Network Inc.

Sam Cooper
The Province

A B.C. Securities Commission hearing has found a formerly high-flying Vancouver real estate developer committed fraud.

In a notice of hearing that was issued in 2015, the commission alleged Brendan James Schouw solicited $1 million from an investor for the Artemisia project at Hornby and Helmcken, promising to use the money to advance the development, but using little of it for that purpose.

The fraud allegations against Schouw, who has developed high profile projects in Vancouver, came after his downtown project hit rocky times during the post-recession real estate bust in 2009.

In its 2015 notice of hearing allegations, the Securities Commission said Schouw issued an investment certificate in November of 2009 promising that the $1 million would be used to pay for building permits, demolition and construction costs while earning the investor 18-per-cent interest.

Instead, the commission alleged that Schouw transferred about $750,000 into an account associated with a previous development and into a personal account, and by Dec. 31, 2009 had spent $453,155 on expenses not related to Artemisia, including a payout of another legal judgment, payments to other investors, and mortgage payments for his own residence.

However, the commission hearing panel ultimately dismissed allegations that about “$440,000 of the investor’s funds were improperly diverted,” a Feb. 2, 2017 statement says.

“The panel found that after depositing the investor’s money into (Schouw’s development company’s) bank account, Schouw redirected certain of the funds to his own account,” the statement says. “Schouw spent approximately $75,000 of the investor’s money on his personal mortgage payments and on his separate property management business, despite representing to the investor that all of his investment would be used for the development of a Vancouver real estate project.”

The hearing panel found that Schouw and Hornby Residences Ltd. perpetrated the fraud, and as Hornby’s sole director and officer, Schouw “permitted or acquiesced to Hornby’s misconduct and is thus liable for Hornby’s fraud.”

The panel directed the parties to make submissions on sanctions. 

© 2017 Postmedia Network Inc.