Archive for February, 2022

24,289 square feet industrial warehouses sells for $14.62 million

Wednesday, February 16th, 2022

Three Surrey warehouses totalling 24,289 square feet sell for $600 PSF

Nationwide Realty Corp.
Western Investor

Trio of industrial properties in East Panorama business park sold for $14.62 million.

Type of property: Industrial warehouses

Location: 100, 109, 110, 15055 54A Avenue, Surrey, B.C.

Number of units: 3

Property size: 24,289 square feet (total)

Zoning: IB (Business Park)

B.C. Assessment value: $9.8 million

Sale price: $14.62 million

Brokerage: Nationwide Realty Corp., Surrey B.C.

Broker: Name not provided.

© 2022 Western Investor

 

Streetworks plans to redevelop Hudson’s Bay store in downtown Vancouver

Tuesday, February 15th, 2022

Creating multi-use spaces that feature a range of services and experiences | HBC

Frank O Brien
The Vancouver Sun

Iconic site spans nine floors at Georgia and Granville Streets in the heart of the city

Hudson’s Bay 636,828-square-foot store in Vancouver. | Leonard Whistler

Iconic site spans nine floors at Georgia and Granville Streets in the heart of the city

Streetworks, the real estate arm of Hudson’s Bay Co. (HBC), says it will submit a rezoning application “in the next few weeks” for a proposed redevelopment of the iconic HBC flagship store in downtown Vancouver.

“The Hudson’s Bay building at 674 Granville Street embodies the rich historical, economic, social, and cultural stories of Vancouver. The site has seen many adaptations as it evolved with the times, and today we are exploring ways to reconfigure the Bay Building by engaging with local First Nations and other partners and communities,” according to a company statement on February 14.

Public information meetings will be held in-person on February 23rd and 26th and virtually on February 24th, and an exhibit about the proposed redevelopment will be on display on the main floor of the Hudson’s Bay store from February 23rd to 27th inclusive.

The historic 636,828 square foot department store was built between 1913 and 1949. The current building spans nine storeys with six of those being above-ground floor plates of more than 70,000 square feet each. 

Due to the rezoning application, it is expected that any redevelopment would include a shrinking of the retail space, with other space reconfigured as offices, as happened during redevelopment of HBC’s stores in Montreal and Calgary, perhaps with a residential mix.

New York City-based Streetworks Development was formed in October of 2020 with the goal to “manage, maximize and enhance” the 40 million square feet of gross leasable space that HBC held across North America at the time.

According to HBC, the goal is creating multi-use spaces that feature “a range of services and experiences across the workplace, retail, residential and entertainment categories.”

The Hudson’s Bay store in downtown Vancouver is currently assessed at $221.1 million but is considered much more valuable. In 2018, a conditional agreement was signed with an offshore buyer to sell the historic site for $675 million, but the deal never completed.

When Streetworks was asked February 14 if the Vancouver redevelopment would include a residential component, and if a joint-venture was involved, a spokesman replied. “Details are to be announced next week. 

© 2022 Western Investor

Analysts expect that supply increases will start to cool the market in the second half of 2022 | RBC

Tuesday, February 15th, 2022

House prices jump, housing starts slide as affordability takes a blow to start the year

Stephanie Hughes
The Vancouver Sun

Home prices rise three per cent while housing starts slow three per cent in January from month before

Homes under construction in a development in Langford, British Columbia. Housing starts declined in January from the month before. Photo by James MacDonald/Bloomberg

Canadian home prices rose by nearly three per cent on a month-over-month basis in January and new home construction trended down to start the year, exacerbating concerns about affordability and housing supply that are being felt across much of the country.

Housing starts came in at a six-month moving average of 254,133 units to start the year, an approximate three per cent decline from 261,352 units for December, according to data from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.

CMHC chief economist Bob Dugan told the Financial Post that though both trend and standalone housing starts have been high from a historical standpoint, a number of factors, including labour shortages, have been weighing on new home construction.

“If you take the standalone numbers for the month of January of (230,754) that’s a very high level historically, it’s not high compared to what we’ve seen over the past year,” Dugan said, referring to the single-month figure reported for January.  “Labour shortages, material shortages because of supply chain disruptions, are surely part of the story.”

Countrywide, single-detached starts were higher overall with nine-per-cent growth from December while multi-family-unit starts lagged in January, dropping by eight per cent. Dugan attributed the faster growth in the single-detached category in part to the speed at which those types of properties can be developed compared to apartment complexes, which take much more time from start to finish.

Montreal was the only one of the country’s three major urban areas to post rising housing starts, largely due higher single-detached and multi-family construction. Montreal’s total housing-start growth hit 16 per cent while Toronto starts decreased by 27 per cent and Vancouver’s fell by 17 per cent.

Low supply has been one of the factors driving up prices across the country, and January data released by the Canadian Real Estate Association on Tuesday bore that out. 

 

CREA’s benchmark home price index rose a record 2.9 per cent month-over-month and a yearly record of 28 per cent. This boost came as the number of newly listed properties declined by 11 per cent and as total national home sales edged up one per cent from December to January.

The actual, not seasonally adjusted, national average price rose 21 per cent to a record of $748,450 year-over-year, the organization added.

A lack of supply has been an often-quoted culprit in the country’s housing affordability crisis. During a Feb. 3 interview with Financial Post’s Larysa Harapyn, RE/MAX Canada president Christopher Alexander pointed to record-low inventory as a factor keeping prices lofty, particularly in recent months.

“The frenzy that we’ve put in for the last six, seven months with inventory being so tight and demand being so strong, it has been frenetic in a lot of ways and, nationally in January, we had less than 1.6 months of inventory across Canada,” Alexander said. “That is huge. We’ve never seen anything like that.”

Alexander added that high demand and low inventories are putting buyers in a difficult position when it comes to finding a home.

“If we can, you know, get that inventory up to just over two months to three months on average would be a good thing for everybody,” Alexander said. “You don’t get into buyer’s market territory unless you have over six months of inventory and we haven’t seen those levels in Canada for a very long time.”

Royal Bank of Canada senior economist Robert Hogue also identified lack of supply as a problem in an RBC Economics report in late January, in which he estimated that the Canadian market was short between 180,000 to 250,000 listings at the end of 2021, and would need triple the number of active listings to bring it closer to balance.

“The supply side will continue to be crucial to Canada’s housing story. So far in the pandemic, supply has been dwarfed by supercharged demand,” he wrote.

RBC analysts expect that supply increases will start to cool the market in the second half of 2022, though activity is expected to remain strong throughout the year.

A more recent RBC report revealed that Toronto recently took the top spot as the country’s priciest market, which had been held by Vancouver for decades. The Greater Toronto Area’s composite MLS HPI benchmark edged over Vancouver with a $1.260 million average price compared to Vancouver’s $1.255 million.

Supply issues prompted the recently formed Ontario Housing Affordability Task Force to recommend 55 new measures in a report released in early February. Some of the measures include overcoming NIMBYism (not in my backyard) to fast-track housing development and overriding municipal policies that prioritize preserving “neighbourhood character” over bringing new developments to market.

Overall, it would be a strategy to reduce red tape and tackle exclusionary zoning. It’s a strategy that Alexander argues is a step in the right direction.

“There sounds like there’s going to be some out-of-the-box thinking when it comes to zoning,” Alexander told Harapyn. “So, on the surface, it all sounds very encouraging because we have such a backlog to get projects approved for development and finding a way to speed those up is a huge step in the right direction.”

© 2022 Vancouver Sun

$9.5 million cash to explore and develop helium in Saskatchewan

Tuesday, February 15th, 2022

Global Helium nabs 1.5 million acres of Saskatchewan leases

Ron Walter
Western Investor

Calgary-based Company is spending $2.4 million doing seismic work, acquiring existing seismic data, evaluating the results and drilling a 2,000-metre test well

Helium leases extend from Old Wives Lake to Riverhurst north and south of Moose Jaw. | Global Helium
Calgary-based Company is spending $2.4 million doing seismic work, acquiring existing seismic data, evaluating the results and drilling a 2,000-metre test well
The Moose Jaw region will be part of the ascending helium industry if a Calgary-based exploration company is successful.
Global Helium has acquired over 1.5 million acres of helium leases in Saskatchewan including a core area of 835,000 aces north and south of Moose Jaw.
The move is in reaction to a worldwide shortage of helium. Helium prices have more than doubled since 2019 when the United States ceased selling helium from federal lands.
Those lands produced 21 per cent of global helium output.
The Saskatchewan leases extend from Riverhurst southeast to just north of Old Wives Lake.
The company is spending $2.4 million doing seismic work, acquiring existing seismic data, evaluating the results and drilling a 2,000-metre test well.
The area was chosen as it sits in the “helium fairway” of this region, Global Helium CEO and president Mike Siemens said in a news release.
The fairway ranges from northern Montana and southeastern Alberta to southern Saskatchewan.
A 17,000-acre area near Lawson west of Central Butte, Montana, is a prime target, based on an oil and gas exploration well drilled by Imperial Oil in 1944. That well found no oil or natural gas but flowed non-combustible gas with 95 per cent identified as nitrogen.
Technology either wasn’t available or wasn’t used to identify the other 5 per cent. Global believes much of it is helium.
Seismic work has outlined an apparent structural trap for helium on the acreage near Lawson. Another potential structural trap was identified on the nearby Vermilions Hills, Saskatchewan, lease.
The company has $9.5 million cash to explore and develop helium.
Global also has a 435,000-acre block lease 150 kilometres south of Regina and a 275,000-acre lease along the Montana border east of Climax in an area where other explorers have found helium.
The Saskatchewan Government has an incentive program paying back up to $5 million capital and operating costs for exploration with only a 5.per cent royalty on production.
Canada’s largest helium purification facility is now operating in Saskatchewan. North American Helium Inc. owns and operates the $32 million facility near Consul, where production started in May of 2021.

© 2022 Western Investor

Census released, showing a dropped by 10 percent in Vancouver

Tuesday, February 15th, 2022

‘Astonishing’ drop in number of empty homes in Metro Vancouver: Census

Joanne Lee-Young
The Vancouver Sun

“To have such a sea change is astonishing,” said urban planner Andy Yan of Simon Fraser University’s City Program.

Simon Fraser University City Program director Andy Yan is shown in Coal Harbour. Photo by Mark van Manen/Files /PNG

In a surprising reversal, the number of dwellings in Vancouver that are either sitting empty or not occupied by “usual” residents has declined over the last five years.

This could be due to municipal and provincial regulations and taxes in Vancouver and B.C. that have dampened the demand for housing that’s not used as a primary residence, according to early observations.

Census data released last week show that the number of these dwellings dropped by 10 per cent in the City of Vancouver from 2016 to 2021. By contrast, this number increased by over 40 per cent in the city of Toronto.

For the metropolitan area of Vancouver, the number dropped by 8 per cent compared to an increase of 33 per cent in metro Toronto.

“To have such a sea change (in Vancouver and B.C.) is astonishing,” said urban planner Andy Yan of Simon Fraser University’s City Program.

Yan has been comparing census data over several decades to understand the role of empty or underused homes in an affordability crisis, especially in the years ahead of the 2016 census.

The census releases a measure it calls “private dwellings occupied by usual residents.” By taking the census count of the total number of dwellings and subtracting that number, Yan determines the number of dwellings that are either empty or occupied by “not usual” residents.

It’s a set that includes units used as short-term rentals on platforms such as Airbnb or as a pied-a-terre or second home for people who permanently live elsewhere. There might also be units in new developments that are counted as empty because people are moving in.

Students and workers from other countries with study and work permits are considered usual residents, according to StatsCan.

Overall, the picture has shifted between 2016 and 2021, said Yan.

In the City of Vancouver over the last five years, there has been a decline of 15 per cent from 8.2 per cent to 7 per cent in these empty or occupied by not usual resident dwellings. By the numbers, there’s a 10 per cent drop from 25,502 to 23,011.

Across Metro Vancouver, the raw numbers declined 8.2 per cent from 66,719 to 61,213, while the percentage decreased 15 per cent from 6.5 per cent to 5.5 per cent.

Yan also looked at communities with a population of over 100,000 across the country. In B.C., seven out of 10 municipalities showed a decline in the percentage of empty or occupied by not usual resident dwellings. The exceptions were in Burnaby, where there was a one per cent increase, in Langley Township, where there was a 20 per cent increase and in Kelowna, where there was a 39 per cent increase.

During the same period in Toronto there has been a 33 per cent increase from 5.6 per cent to 7.4 per cent in these empty or occupied by not usual resident dwellings. The shift has been a 40 per cent increase from 66,128 to 92,346 units. For the census metropolitan area of Toronto, the shift has been a 33 per cent increase from 99,236 to 131,732 units.

“We know the what, but we don’t know, for sure, the why,” said Yan. “I think the numbers suggest that recent municipal and provincial public policies on housing demand matters and has an effect on who and how housing is consumed in Vancouver and B.C.”

Both western and eastern real estate markets dipped and then soared in tandem during this time, but there have not been the same demand side measures in Toronto and Ontario.

Rohana Rezel, a Vancouver software architect known for his research on the negative impact of short-term apartment rentals on housing affordability in Vancouver, said that it’s clear, “something’s working.”

Some have been calling for measures — mainly, the city’s Airbnb regulations, its empty homes tax and the province’s foreign buyer, speculation and vacancy taxes — to be dropped because they haven’t yielded housing affordability and are seen as a cost burden that developers end up passing to buyers, Rezel disagreed.

“We aren’t seeing rents go down, but if these measures were not in place, they would have gone up more. It’s good vindication for people like me.”

[email protected]

 

© 2022 Vancouver Sun

Canadian home prices rose 3% while housing trended down to start the year

Tuesday, February 15th, 2022

House prices jump, housing starts slide as affordability takes a blow to start the year

Stephanie Hughes
The Vancouver Sun

A Rentals.ca report says last month the average rent for a one-bedroom home in Vancouver was $2,163 while a two-bedroom place cost $3,003.

 Rental costs continue to soar in Vancouver, according to a couple of reports this week. Photo by Getty Images /PNG

Lower-income families are struggling to find a place to live, as Vancouver continues to be the most expensive city in Canada to rent a home, according to a pair of rental reports.

The vacancy rate for purpose-built rental apartments in Metro Vancouver dropped to 1.2 per cent last year from 2.6 per cent in 2020 because of higher demand following economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation report Friday. Vacancy rates for recently completed new units fell to 2.3 per cent last year from 9.1 per cent in 2020.

The tightening conditions intensified existing imbalances in the Vancouver rental market, CMHC said, adding the data show that lower-income households are facing “significant challenges” finding units that they can afford.

The report says less than a quarter of market purpose-built rental units are affordable to households earning less than $48,000 a year, and only one in 1,000 units are affordable to those with the lowest one-fifth of incomes.

Most of the lowest-priced units are small and unsuitable for families, said CMHC.

In another report, on Thursday, Vancouver topped the list of 35 cities for average monthly rent in January for a one-bedroom home at $2,163 and for a two-bedroom at $3,003.

That’s according to Rentals.ca’s February report, which said Vancouver has the most expensive rents in the country for all property types at $2,550 a month, an increase of 16.2 per cent in the previous 12 months. Toronto was the next most expensive city at $2,317 a month, up 14.5 per cent. 

 

Source: Rentals.ca

In Vancouver, average rent for single-family homes was up to $2,987 a month in January from $2,758 the same month last year, a jump of 8.3 per cent.

Condo apartments average rents rose 7.1 per cent to $2,756 a month in January from $2,573 last year, while condo rents were up 8.4 per cent to $2,456 from $2,265.

Average monthly rent in the whole province for all property types was also the highest in Canada at $2,181, up 9.6 per cent.

 

© 2022 Vancouver Sun

62-Storey Shangri-La residential condo tower located in Downtown Vancouver

Tuesday, February 15th, 2022

Court certifies class-action lawsuit over windows at Vancouver’s Shangri-La tower

Jaonne Lee-Young
The Vancouver Sun

All owners of condo units in the high-end Shangri-La building can take part in the claim.

 The glass-clad Shangri-La building. Photo by Gerry Kahrmann /PNG

A B.C. Supreme Court case alleging that defective glass windows have been fogging, leaking and spontaneously breaking at the Shangri-La residential condo tower in downtown Vancouver has been certified as a class-action suit.

The move allows all owners of condo units in the high-end Shangri-La live/work building, where there are two strata — one for units on floors 16 to 43 and for those on floors from 44 to 62 — to take part in the claim.

The B.C. Supreme Court ruling giving a green light to the class action proceedings was issued in early February by Justice Paul Walker.

The lead plaintiff, who owns and lives in a unit on one of the highest floors, first filed a notice of civil claim back in December 2015.

In September, 2021, the plaintiff sought to amend the claim by expanding the class definition and adding new claims of negligence and a number of new parties, but the court found some of these to be “an abuse of process,” according to a note on the defendants’ lawyers’ website.

The class action certification now comes after leaked strata minutes in recent years had been describing the possibility of the building’s windows cracking as a “real and unacceptable risk.”

The court’s ruling in February gave more details that illustrate the challenging number of stages, components and parties involved when it comes to potentially assigning fault.

It described the building’s curtain-wall system as “consisting of prefabricated panels constructed as distinct four-sided insulated glass units (IGUs) which are said to be integral to the proper functioning of the building and separate the exterior and interior environments. IGUs include inner and outer glass (called lites) separated by a metal spacer bar.” 

 

The Shangri-La Hotel and residential tower at Georgia and Thurlow. Photo by Ian Lindsay /PROVINCE

“The outer and inner lites have different structural attributes. The outer lite is heat-strengthened glass while the inner lite is tempered glass. The inner lite is twice as stiff as the outer lite and unlike the outer lite it is supposed to break into small pieces when shattered. Both glass lites are sealed to the spacer using two types of sealant which are meant to provide an air- and vapour-tight cavity between the glass panes. A chemical known as a “dessicant,” designed to absorb moisture in the air between the two lites, is contained inside of the spacer bar.”

The defendants named by the suit are the legal owner of the land, KBK No. 11 Ventures Ltd., the developer, 1100 Georgia Partnership and its partners, which includes companies related to local groups such as the Peterson Group and Westbank Corp.

“It will be interesting how they identify the reason for the … failures,” said Tony Gioventu, executive director for the Condominium Home Owners Association. “It could be a number of reasons, and it’s not even just thinking beyond the developers and builders to the suppliers, but how the glass and materials were stored and transferred to the construction site.”

The building, which is Vancouver’s tallest tower and known for its floor-to-ceiling ocean and mountain views, was completed in 2009 and is contains some of the city’s most expensive condos.

An initial set of minutes for a special general meeting for the lower floors strata in September 2020 noted that, over the years, shattered inner panes meant some windows had already been removed and replaced on nine floors.

The minutes alleged up to 70 per cent of the windows were failing “prematurely by decades and reaching just a fraction of their expected lifespan of 40 years.”

A few months later, these strata minutes for the units in the lower part of the building on floors 16 to 43 were amended with a more muted version, leaving out the above details and an initial estimate that it could cost $65 million to reconstruct the curtain wall and replace the window units in increments.

Each strata also has two other legal actions underway, one to recover costs under warranty from insurers and the other against developers, builders and contractors.

These four other cases will be heard by the court at the same time, starting in September in a trial that is expected to take 130 days, according to the recent B.C. Supreme Court ruling about the class-action certification.

The strata allege “that the systematic dangerous defects pose a substantial risk of physical danger, including to the health and safety of any person in the vicinity of the building.”

The plaintiff, named in previous filings as Amos Michelson, a resident who owns and lives in a penthouse unit, “advances the same allegations in this proceeding concerning systemic defects,” according to the ruling.

© 2022 Vancouver Sun

January 2022 reports sales to new listings ratio shot up to 89.4% | CREA

Tuesday, February 15th, 2022

Competitive Canadian Market Spurs Big Price Gains to Start 2022: CREA

Rachel Rehkopk
The Vancouver Sun

 Buyers from Vancouver to Moncton can anticipate facing a strong seller’s market if they’re looking to buy in today’s market, according to the latest numbers from the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA).
In their January 2022 release, CREA reports that the sales-to-new listings ratio shot up to 89.4% last month, just slightly below the record set last January of 90.2%. For context, the long-term average for this metric sits around 55%.
This means that across the country, new homes are disappearing off the market almost as quickly as they are listed – with almost 90% of the new homes being listed selling within the month. These conditions strongly favour sellers, leading to highly competitive buying conditions where bidding wars and offers well over the asking price have become the norm.

Related Read: Why this might be the best time in 2022 to sell your home

These hot market conditions have continued to put a boil on housing prices in the country. The National Home Price Index Benchmark Price rose 28% year-over-year, bringing the average price across the country to $836,300. When compared to last month, prices are up over $25,000 on average, while sales have remained relatively flat (up 1%) and new listings decline (down 11%).

Industry Leaders are Optimistic for New Inventory this Spring

However, industry leaders are hopeful that with warmer weather will come a crop of new listings that could cool the pent-up demand of buyers who haven’t been successful in getting into the market over the last few months. CREA’s Senior Economist, Shaun Cathcart explains:

“The ideal situation between now and the summer would be that a huge surge of sellers come forward looking to sell in the spring 2022 market. If that were to occur, similar to 2021, we’d likely see a massive number of sales take place which would get a lot of frustrated buyers into homeownership, and we’d likely see some cooling off on the price growth side if those offers are spread across more listings. Those are all things this market needs. It really comes down to how many properties come up for sale in the months ahead.”

When it comes to buyers trying to navigate today’s market, Zoocasa REALTOR Claudio Castro shares, “all the signs are pointing to this spring being a return to a more normal, seasonal real estate cycle where new inventory comes online after March Break. For my buyer clients today, my biggest piece of advice is to stay optimistic –  I’m hopeful that we will see more inventory come onto the market in the coming weeks. But, if you find something you love today, ultimately, the right house is the right house. You should still consider making a move if the right property comes along.”

Small Cities Continue to Lead The Pack in Terms of Price Growth

CREA’s latest release shows that price gains have been strongest in smaller towns like Bancroft, North Bay, Kawartha Lakes, and Brantford Region observing year-over-year price gains of over 40%.

Here’s an overview of the local real estate market in five of Ontario’s most impactful areas:

Greater Toronto Area

Toronto is feeling the inventory crunch just as much as any Canadian city, with active listings down to their lowest levels in more than two decades. The national board reports that the average benchmark price crept up 33.2% year-over-year to $1,275,000 in January, making it now more expensive to buy in Toronto than in Vancouver. With 5,635 homes trading hands last month, CREA reports that transactions are down over 18% from last year, which many industry leaders attribute to the historically low levels of homes available for sale constraining the number of sales that can take place in the market.

Ottawa

New listings in Ottawa dipped by 1.9% from January last year, with 1,183 new properties being listed for sale this month. With a 1.9% decrease in sales over January of last year (961, compared to 980) it means the SNLR has decreased 5.3%, now sitting at 77.9%. The benchmark price has risen by 2.4% from last month to $698,300. Buyer demand due to the shortage in housing supply means that prices will likely continue to increase until the housing stock grows.

Hamilton Burlington

Hamilton-Burlington home prices continue to break records for residential properties, hitting a new benchmark price of $1,055,400, up 32.7% from January of last year. Sales continue to dip, down 14.8% from last year but this can be attributed to the continued dip in new listings, with only 856 new homes added in January, down 12.6% from last year, as well as the continually low stock, with inventory currently sitting at 0.6 months.

Kitchener-Waterloo

Low inventory is still a major factor in the Kitchener-Waterloo housing market, with only 0.3 months of inventory on the market. The continued scarcity of listings in the region means the benchmark price has risen by 36.9% last year, to a figure of 916,800. And, with 397 sales this month, an improvement of 9.7% on last year’s sales figures, it means the SNLR has increased to 83.4%, up 2.8% from last year.

London St. Thomas

Extremely strong buyers’ demand coupled with a shortage of housing supply continues to put upwards pressure on pricing in the London region, with the MLS HPI edging up to $693,100 at the end of January, an increase of 37.5% from last year. CREA reports that residential new listings are down 7.4% while sales have remained relatively flat, contributing to a strong competitive landscape for buyers with an SNLR of 85.1%.

 

© 2015 – 2021 Zoocasa Realty Inc., Brokerage

Canadian real estate supply remains tight, continued imbalance between supply and demand

Tuesday, February 15th, 2022

REALTOR.ca Insights Report

Realtor.ca Staff
other

 2021 By the Numbers:

REALTOR.ca continues to exhibit record growth

REALTOR.ca’s brand trust and awareness among Canadians continues to grow; in 2021 the site experienced its most significant traffic increase to date reaching a new milestone of more than half a billion visits, by 111 million visitors.

The substantial growth in traffic seen in 2020 persisted throughout 2021 and was particularly strong early in the year. On the other hand, the supply of listings continues to dwindle with even fewer available listings for sale on the market compared to last year. As real estate supply remains tight, there is a continued imbalance between supply and demand.

Visitor Trendline

The number of visitors to REALTOR.ca increased 53% over 2020.

 

Listing Trendline

The number of listings decreased 24% on average when compared to 2020.

 

Find out how these trends affected the Canadian real estate market in our 2021 Housing Market Snapshot. Plus, check out CREA Stats for the latest monthly snapshots, quarterly forecasts and more.

87%

According to a 2021 Nanos research study, 87% of Canadians who are in the market for a new home are aware of REALTOR.ca.

6.2 million

REALTOR.ca sent 6.2 million leads to REALTORS® in 2021. That’s a 36% increase over last year!

On average, 59 leads are sent to REALTORS® every five minutes! These leads are exclusively available to you as a benefit of your CREA membership.

23%

Despite already being the No.1 real estate platform in Canada, REALTOR.ca saw a 23% rise in market share in 2021, increasing to encompass almost 50% of all activity in the Canadian real estate industry for similar platforms.

53%

While the overall online Canadian real estate landscape saw 13% more visitors than in 2020, REALTOR.ca visitor growth significantly outpaced that rate with a 53% increase.

 

©2022 The Canadian Real Estate Association.

5 units retail strata sells for $11.5 Million located in 6333 West Boulevard, Vancouver

Saturday, February 12th, 2022

Five Vancouver retail strata lots under 10,000 square feet total sell for $11.5 million

Western Investor Staff
Western Investor

New West Boulevard ground-floor retail lots were fully tenanted at time of sale by Kerrisdale Lumber.

Type of property: Retail strata

Location: 1 to 5, 6333 West Boulevard, Vancouver

Number of units: 5

Property size: 9,593 square feet

Zoning: C-2

Year built: 2019

Sale price: $11.5 million

Brokerages: CBRE Limited, Vancouver and Marcus & Millichap, Vancouver.

Brokers: Seller: Jack Allpress and Adrian Beruschi, CBRE.

Brokers: Buyer: Martin Moriarty and Mario Negris, Marcus & Millichap

 

© 2022 Western Investor