Mortgage stress test change what’s been the impact?

Fergal McAlinden
other

Canada tightens rules on riskiest mortgages

Ephraim Vecina
other

“White hot” market sends industrial lease rates skyward

Peter Mitham
Western Investor

Rising interest rates could slow new industrial strata projects

PC Urban and Nicola Wealth plan to build strata industrial units at 2660 Barnet Highway in Coquitlam, and Colliers said strong demand could deliver record-breaking prices.
There’s little relief on the horizon for the Vancouver industrial market, but rising interest rates are creating the potential for an inflection point that could see developers hit pause.
“Vancouver’s industrial market is just blistering white hot,” said Susan Thompson, associate director of research with Colliers International in Vancouver.
Metro Vancouver is ending the second quarter with the tightest industrial market in North America, Colliers reported this week. Vacancies average 0.1 per cent across the region, and availability is little better at 0.5 per cent.
This has fuelled a 22 per cent increase in asking rents versus last year, with landlords now asking an average of $19.19 a square foot. Many buildings are leasing for well in excess of $20 a square foot.
“That’s a direct result of the incredibly low vacancy rate, which is now the lowest vacancy rate in North America, at 0.1 per cent. That’s almost unheard of,” Thompson said. “There’s a lot of pressure on availability and there’s a lot of pressure on prices because there’s a shortage of options.”
There’s also a shortage of new supply. While approximately 7.8 million square feet of industrial space was under construction this quarter, almost all of it is spoken for.
“There’s nothing out there for companies to move around in, so they’re having to do their deals further and further in advance,” Thompson explained. “There’s almost 8 million square feet of new industrial under construction right now, and that sounds like a lot, but with vacancy as low as it is, we’re going to need even more.”
Rezoning of approximately 600 acres in the Campbell Heights area is the market’s best hope for relief right now but there’s no set timeline.
“We’re hopeful that it comes as soon as it can,” Thompson said.
Strong rents mean investor demand for industrial properties is likely to remain strong despite rising interest rates.
Colliers forecast in April that cap rates would hold steady through the second quarter at between 3.25 per cent and 4.25 per cent for Class A buildings.
“Many leasing opportunities are seeing multiple offers being put in by well-established companies and are still achieving lease rates of over $20 per square foot,” Colliers reported.
“It seems to be a transition period in the market while we try to figure out what do these changing interest rates mean, and how are they going to impact various decision-makers and real estate deals,” Thompson said.
New developments, particularly strata-titled industrial units, may be the most vulnerable.
“Developers are working to make economic sense of new and upcoming developments, especially strata industrial projects,” Colliers reported.
But a white hot market could keep things on the boil for awhile yet.
Among the deals done in the quarter was the $24 million purchase by PC Urban Properties and Nicola Wealth Real Estate of 2660 Barnet Highway in Coquitlam for a strata-titled small-bay industrial project for owner-users and investors.
“With increasing lease rates and perpetually low availability, this industrial strata project could very well still experience record-breaking pricing, even amidst rising interest rates,” Colliers stated.

© 2022 Western Investor

Tech companies drive downtown office demand in active market

Tyler Orton
Western Investor

Downtown office vacancies were 7.4 per cent in the second quarter of 2022, according to Colliers data
Renting office space in downtown Vancouver is more expensive than in any other city in Canada, according to Colliers.Chung Chow/Business in Vancouver
Big tech companies aren’t giving Vancouver’s downtown office towers much breathing room.
The city’s downtown office vacancy rate hit 7.4 per cent in the second quarter of this year – up slightly from 7.2 per cent in the first quarter of 2022, according to a report released June 22 by Colliers International.
Only Victoria has a lower downtown office vacancy rate at 6.1 per cent.
Venture into the suburbs and office space in even scarcer, with communities outside Vancouver proper facing an office vacancy rate of 4.9 per cent. Overall, Metro Vancouver has an office vacancy rate of 5.9 per cent as of the second quarter.
Big tech companies are driving demand in the city’s office market, a Colliers representative said in an email to BIV.
Large tenants taking up 50,000 square feet or more are the most active tenants. But they face an ever-diminishing number of options even as remote and hybrid working models have taken off in the pandemic at the same time employers are looking for ways to accommodate workers in a tight labour market.
“Low operating costs contribute to Vancouver’s allure as a tech hub. Vancouver had the fourth-lowest operating costs of the 30 top tech markets identified by CBRE [Group Inc.],” stated an April report from the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association (DVBIA), referring to rankings from the real estate services firm.
“The recent increase in investment from U.S.- based venture capital firms is linked to increases in remote work, with VC firms increasing their investments in Canada-based companies now that geographic proximity is less of a limitation.”
So even though the rise of remote working might lead one to believe that office space would be in less demand, big U.S. tech companies appear to be growing more comfortable tapping workers based in Vancouver offices to exploit lower operating costs.
Vancouver-founded PlentyOfFish (now owned by Match Group), fintech Tipalti Inc., medical devices firm Masimo Corp. (Nasdaq:MASI) and Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq:MSFT) are among the American tech companies that have been expanding downtown over the past year.
And homegrown tech firms that recently reached unicorn status (a valuation of US$1 billion or more) also have a foothold in the city’s downtown core, including Trulioo Information Services Inc., GeoComply Solutions Inc. and Galvanize.
But companies are paying a premium to expand in Metro Vancouver, where the cost of office space per square foot sits at $32.90, according to Colliers’ data.
Only Toronto, at $26.06, even comes close to Vancouver. The net asking rate for office rent in Calgary stands at $14.15.

© 2022 Western Investor

Real estate investment sales surge 60 per cent in first quarter

Peter Mitham
Western Investor

Supply chain issues, geopolitical events create an uncertain outlook
Rising interest rates are among the headwinds commercial real estate faces this year, REBGV chair Daniel John said.REBGV
Strong activity drove a dramatic increase in investment sales across Greater Vancouver in the first quarter, according to Altus Group data.
A total of $4.9 billion worth of transactions took place on a volume of 733 transactions in the first quarter. This was up 60 per cent from more than $3 billion a year ago, when 499 deals were done.
The numbers include share sales, which aren’t registered with the Land Title and Survey Authority.
According to the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver, land remained the strongest asset class in the region in the first quarter.
“Raw land was the most popular and expensive commercial category driving activity to begin the year as companies look for space to expand and pursue their commercial ventures in the region,” REBGV chair Daniel John said.
A total of $2 billion worth of commercial land changed hands in 206 transactions in in the first quarter, a 177.5 per cent increase in value from a year ago. The average value of this deals increased to $10.1 million, up from $6 million a year ago (REBGV excludes share sales from its analysis).
Sales of industrial properties also increased, as tight inventories pushed prices higher.
REBGV reported $673 million worth of transactions in the first quarter, up two per cent from $660 million a year ago. The average deal value was $4.8 million, up from $3.3 million last year.
Other asset classes – office, retail, and multifamily – saw declines in both value and volume, with average transaction values falling in each case.
While economic conditions kept momentum moving as the year began, the latter half of the year presents headwinds.
“Strong economic growth and low interest rates helped keep the Lower Mainland’s commercial real estate market moving briskly in 2021, and this momentum carried into the first quarter of 2022,” John said. “Going forward, we’ll need to see how the rising interest rates and inflationary pressure that we’re experiencing today will impact our commercial real estate market for the balance of 2022.”
An index of commercial activity prepared by the BC Real Estate Association increased 3.4 per cent in the first quarter, driven largely by indicates that commercial activity in the first quarter was driven by rising wholesale trade and manufacturing sales.
Various factors, including supply chain disruptions and the war in Ukraine, contribute to a more uncertain outlook.
“The environment for commercial real estate remains highly abnormal and uncertain,” BCREA said in its analysis.

© 2022 Western Investor

CMHC: Millions of additional housing units needed to ensure affordability

Ephraim Vecina
other

Ongoing challenges in the construction industry could get in the way of this target

As many as 3.5 million more homes than the currently outlined rate need to be built nationwide by 2030 to ensure affordability, according to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC).
At the current rate of new construction, CMHC said that a total of 2.3 million new homes will be completed across Canada by 2030, bringing the total national inventory to nearly 19 million.
But a previous CMHC report estimated that a total housing stock of more than 22 million units will be needed within eight years to bring down average home prices nationwide.
“Increasing supply will be difficult. Critically, increasing supply takes time because the time to construct is significant, but so is the time to progress through government approval processes,” CMHC said in a new report.
“This delay means that we must act today to achieve affordability by 2030.”
Read more: BoC: Suburban home prices spike faster than downtown property values
However, the Crown corporation warned that construction industry woes could get in the way of this goal.
“There are supply issues, labour shortages at the moment and the cost of financing is going up, so clearly there are short-term challenges,” said Aled ab Iorwerth, deputy chief economist at CMHC.
“The jobless rate in construction is near a record low; vacancies are at a record high, we have a deep shortage of skilled trades, and the cost of building materials is already rising quickly. So, unless the economy really rolls over and is in need of stimulus, effectively doubling the rate of new construction over the next decade will be extremely difficult without significant inflationary pressure,” BMO economist Robert Kavcic elaborated in a separate analysis.

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Canadian banks sink amid recession fears

Stefanie Marotta
other

There has been a staggering drop…

Canadian banks fell about 20% from their record high set in early February as recession fears send investors fleeing.
The S&P/TSX Commercial Banks Index, which tracks the country’s eight largest lenders, dropped Thursday, adding to another day of losses after inflation in Canada surged to a four-decade high and US data pointed to rising unemployment and slumping manufacturing and services activity.
Toronto-Dominion Bank, Canada’s second-largest lender, led losses as it dropped 3.3% to its lowest point in nearly nine months. Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and Bank of Nova Scotia each fell about 3%.
The commercial banks index hit its high on Feb. 8 and was one of the S&P TSX Composite Index’s strongest performers before spiralling as Russia launched its war in Ukraine on Feb. 24 and central banks warned of a potential economic downturn.
Analysts are warning that profits may not be as strong going forward. Canadian bank earnings estimates for 2023 could fall by 16% on average in the case of an economic downturn, according the RBC Capital Markets. Scotiabank and CIBC are among the Big Six bank stocks leading losses this year. Both banks, Canada’s third- and fifth-largest banks, could have further to fall as they rebuild loan loss provisions previously released as pandemic restrictions unwound earlier this year.
Scotiabank’s core earnings per share for 2023 could decline the most out of the group by 22.5%, RBC analyst Darko Mihelic said in a note to clients Tuesday. The bank has released the most performing reserves of the group, while Bank of Montreal and National Bank of Canada would be the least impacted, with each bank’s core EPS estimates falling by 12.6%.
“NA and BMO would be good defensive stocks to own heading into a recession,” Mihelic said. “BNS and CM would likely suffer under bigger earnings declines and some consternation around housing in Canada and generally higher loan loss concerns.”
Inflation in Canada climbed to 7.7% in May, reaching its highest point in 40 years, Statistics Canada said on Wednesday. The jump bolsters expectations that the Bank of Canada will deliver aggressive rate increases next month.
Even so, Canada’s banking regulator left a key capital requirement for large lenders unchanged on Wednesday, indicating that it believes that the banks can absorb potential losses even as economic risks mount.
Investors prefer banks that get a head start on building up their reserves, Mihelic said.
“The banks that begin to proactively build reserves ahead of peers will be rewarded as long as there are not bank specific issues causing the reserve build,” he said. 
As recession fears mount and Canada’s housing market cools, analysts including those at Barclays and Desjardins, have been cutting their price targets on the country’s largest lenders. Since early March 4, the average price target on the commercial banks index fell 6.3%, with CIBC’s target dropping 9.7%.

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StatCan on the national impact of Halifax housing activity

Ephraim Vecina
other

The market is benefiting from increased migration and relative affordability

Halifax housing demand is a major factor driving national home sales upward, according to Statistics Canada.

In May, Halifax registered its largest monthly increase in new home sales (up by 2.4%) since February 2021. This was spurred by steady growth in Nova Scotia’s population, which experienced a net increase of 4,487 in Q4 2021. Of these newcomers, 2,430 people were international migrants and 2,057 were interprovincial migrants, StatCan said.

The benchmark price for a single-family home in Halifax stood at $541,900 in May, much lower than the national composite of $822,900.

“Increases to net migration and the relative affordability of home prices in the region compared to the rest of Canada may have contributed to the high housing demand amid a tight supply,” StatCan said.

“Additionally, bidding wars which started last year were still ongoing in Halifax, applying upward pressure to home prices as buyers tried to secure a home.”

Read more: Home sales across Canada – what’s the latest?

The number of homes sold across the province totalled 1,476 units in May, according to the Nova Scotia Association of Realtors.

“Although down 7.3% from the same month last year, sales still managed to post the second highest total for any May on record,” the association said, adding that the sales level was 11.3% above the five-year average and 22.1% above the 10-year average for that month.

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Canada needs 3.5 million more homes than planned to restore affordability, says CMHC

Barbara Shecter
The Vancouver Sun

‘Drastic transformation’ of housing sector called for

 Homes in a neighbourhood in Toronto. Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation says two-thirds of the housing supply gap is found in Ontario and British Columbia, provinces that have faced large declines in affordability in recent years. Photo by James MacDonald/Bloomberg

The projected construction of new homes by 2030 won’t be enough to solve Canada’s supply and affordability issues, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. (CMHC) said in a report Thursday.

In May, CMHC identified supply as “the biggest issue affecting housing affordability,” and that new housing starts have struggled to keep up with the population growth in some of Canada’s large cities.

To “restore affordability, Canada will need an additional 3.5 million units” on top of those already in the works, CHMC said Thursday.

“Canada’s approach to housing supply needs to be rethought and done differently,” Aled ab Iorwerth, CMHC’s deputy chief economist, said.

“There must be a drastic transformation of the housing sector, including government policies and processes, and an ‘all-hands-on-deck’ approach to increasing the supply of housing to meet demand.”

The latest CMHC report projects that the housing stock will increase by 2.3 million units by 2030, reaching close to 19 million housing units, if current rates of new construction continue.

However, that number “would need to climb to over 22 million … to achieve affordability for everyone living in Canada,” the report said.

“Put another way, we need the rate of housing starts to more than double,” ab Iorwerth said.

The housing authority said two-thirds of the housing supply gap is in Ontario and British Columbia, which have experienced large declines in affordability in recent years.

Additional supply would also be required in Quebec, since affordability there has markedly declined during the past few years.

“Over the last 20 years in Canada, housing supply has not responded to demand, especially in some of the country’s large urban areas, resulting in the loss of affordability,” CMHC said.

The affordability challenge is being exacerbated by labour and supply issues that could limit new supply, ab Iorwerth said, adding it is also an economic risk for large cities that rely on attracting skilled and highly skilled workers.

“We need to get faster and more efficient at building housing units,” he said. “This is one of the key questions that we hope will be addressed coming out of our report: It’s not a question of how much housing, but how do we actually do it?”

One of his suggestions is to convert underused retail or office space into residential units, something that would require cooperation amongst the various levels of government and the private sector.

Increasing housing supply in both the rental and ownership market will be “critical” to achieving affordability, the CMHC report said.

Robert Hogue, a senior economist at RBC Economics, said the bank’s aggregate affordability measure surged 3.7 percentage points to 54 per cent in the first quarter of this year — the worst level of affordability since the early 1990s.

“Ownership costs rose in every market we track, though the degree of pain felt by buyers varies dramatically across the country,” he said in a note.

Hogue said the Bank of Canada’s “forceful” campaign of interest-rate hikes will further inflate ownership costs in the near term, putting RBC’s national affordability measure “on a path to worst-ever levels.”

A looming price correction will, however, eventually bring “some relief to buyers,” he said, noting that property values are already slipping and are likely to fall more than 10 per cent in the coming year.

Douglas Porter, chief economist at BMO Financial Group, said he wonders if the CMHC’s estimated housing supply shortfall will be as large a year from now, given increasing interest rates and expectations that the housing market will have “cooled even more substantially.”

What’s more, he said, some skepticism should be attached to estimates of the supply shortfall, given that other tracking suggests there are scores of vacant homes in Canada.

Still, Porter said focusing on the supply side remains important, even though the housing market is calming down from the “blistering” levels of the past year.

“The drive to boost supply by 3.5 million by 2030 seems aspirational, but not realistic, given that it works out to roughly 440,000 new units per year,” the economist said, noting that the all-time high for starts in a single year is 273,00.

“Moreover, the industry already seems to be running into its own supply constraints, whether that’s the lack of skilled workers, rising building material prices, or the cost of land,” he added. “It would seem that a ramping up of homebuilding activity would simply aggravate cost pressures on all of these fronts.”

Thursday’s CMHC report focused on the country’s long-term housing strategy and did not zero in on the “cyclical challenges we’re facing in the short term,” ab Iorwerth said.

“Housing issues are complex and housing supply alone won’t fix housing affordability challenges for everyone,” the report said, adding that continued government support for the most vulnerable will be needed to address “housing inequities” in the system.

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© 2022 Vancouver Sun

Douglas Todd: The hidden climate costs of B.C.’s burgeoning highrises, Part II

Douglas Todd
The Vancouver Sun

Opinion: One study showed a neighbourhood of highrise towers would create 142 per cent more carbon emissions than a Paris-like lower-rise region with the same population.

 Highrises create more carbon emissions than lowrises in part because “to build tall you need heavier structures, chunkier concrete foundations,” says Francesco Pomponi, of Edinburgh Napier University, who has produced an original study on the subject. Pictured here, Singapor construction with a backdrop of highrises. Photo by ROSLAN RAHMAN /AFP/Getty Images

Second in a series. Go here for part one.

While politicians claim they’re reducing the harmful daily pollutants caused by glass and steel highrises, that’s not the end of the climate worry.

Research reveals highrises come with elevated “embodied” costs, which refer to the amount of greenhouse gases they emit in their entire lifetime. That begins with the construction process.

It’s often ignored during environmental assessments. But when the massive concrete foundations of highrises are taken into account, their contribution to global warming skyrockets.

“’Embodied’ carbon emissions have been described as ‘the blind spot’ of the building industry,” says Vancouver sustainability specialist Paul Morris. “We need to consider embodied emissions from extraction, transportation, manufacture and construction. Concrete is the worst material for embodied emissions.”

In a groundbreaking study, Francesco Pomponi, of Edinburgh Napier University, has produced original environmental models that support the building of cities in which more people live closer together — but mostly in buildings of 10 storeys and under.

Given the carbon-intense materials needed to construct tall buildings, Pomponi’s team concluded that a neighbourhood of highrise towers would create 142 per cent more carbon emissions than a Paris-like lower-rise region with the same population. 

A neighbourhood of highrise towers would create 142 per cent more carbon emissions than a Paris-like lower-rise region — pictured here — with the same population. Photo by JACQUES DEMARTHON /AFP/Getty Images

“Our findings show that high-density, low-rise cities, such as Paris, are more environmentally friendly than high-density, highrise cities, such as New York,” says Pomponi, lead author of the 2021 study in NPJ Urban Sustainability.

To put it another way, Pomponi found that, over a building’s projected lifetime of 60 years, dense, low-rise apartments produce 365 tons of carbon dioxide less per person than their skyscraper alternative.

One reason for that, Pomponi said, is “to build tall you need heavier structures, chunkier foundations.”

While Pomponi recognizes highrises can house more people than low-rises on the same footprint, that doesn’t take into account “you cannot put two highrise buildings as close as you can two low-rising buildings … For a lot of good reasons like privacy, ventilation and daylighting, highrise buildings need to be further apart.”

Even though more low-rise buildings might be needed to match the population capacity of skyscrapers, Pomponi says, despite possible extra land being required, low rises still produce less carbon emissions than building taller. He intends further studies on how the highrise-low-rise debate relates to transportation emissions.

Meanwhile, Pomponi’s work is echoed by a study of 650 buildings led by engineering professors Martin Rock, of Austria, and Marcella Saade, of the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec. They found so-called “energy-efficient” residential buildings emit up to 50 per cent more greenhouse-gas emissions during their lifetime. Much of that is due to the “carbon spike” from construction. The authors, in 2019, wrote, “Profound changes are needed in the production and use of buildings.”

Both Burnaby Mayor Mike Hurley and Sean Pander, the city of Vancouver’s manager of Green Buildings, acknowledged the seriousness of “embodied” greenhouse-gas emissions from the construction of concrete-steel-and-glass towers.

“However there are wide variations from the best to the worst,” said Pander, who, along with Hurley, stressed how their respective councils recently committed to further reducing such emissions, including through the use of “greener concrete mixes.”

On May 17, Pander said, Vancouver council voted to make developers cut embodied emissions. “The recommended requirements will come into effect by 2025 and put Vancouver on a path to achieving” a 40 per cent reduction by 2030, he said.

Gareth Sirotnik laments Vancouver councillors no longer seem to expect developers to make significant contributions to community life, to streetscapes or green spaces. Photo by Francis Georgian /PNG

For her part, Councillor Colleen Hardwick said that while other councillors often talk about “green concrete,” her understanding is it “only reduces emissions by about 15 per cent.”

The studies showing strong emissions from highrises are quite credible, said Hardwick. “It does make me wonder why council has only ever been shown a primarily concrete highrise solution to our housing and affordability needs.”

There is another concern — a third way to weigh the environmental impact of highrises, which focuses on their effects on community and the ecology.

“Green overcrowding.” “Density without amenity.” Those were two of the terms that Wendy Sarkissian, an environmental ethicist, used in her study to describe the arguments of those resisting former Vancouver mayor Sam Sullivan’s campaign to use highrises to create EcoDensity.

Sullivan was often accused of “greenwashing” developers’ crusade for more highrises, which are more profitable.

Sarkissian’s concerns are echoed in a recent book by the University of Chicago’s Kheir Al Kodmany. In a chapter titled Unsustainable Tall Building Developments, the professor of urban design joins planning gurus like Jane Jacobs and Jan Gehl in critiquing towers.

Low-rise neighbourhoods “emphasize the value of human scale and provide abundant opportunity for healthy social interaction,” Kodmany writes. “Therefore, in any urban area, no matter how dense, keep the buildings four storeys high or less.”

Kodmany also found tall buildings packed together create an “urban heat island effect … Dark surfaces that absorb heat from the sun, a lack of greenery, and waste heat and vehicles lead to higher temperatures.”

City of Vancouver handout renderings of the Broadway plan, which was approved by a majority of council Wednesday night. These drawings have been criticized for under-playing the impact of the scores of new highrises. See below for an alternative modeling of the  Broadway Plan.

Then there are the wind tunnels. “Tall buildings create an adverse effect on the microclimate due to wind funnelling and turbulence around their bases, causing discomfort to pedestrians.”mfort to pedestrians.”

Birds also suffer. “Bird-glass collisions are an unfortunate side-effect of tall building developments throughout the world,” Kodmany says. Billions of birds perish each year from collisions with glass towers.

To enable people to connect and to combat heat islands, SFU sustainability specialist Alex Boston is among those who would like to see more green space included in the sweeping Broadway Plan, which seeks to house at least 50,000 more residents in highrises in a 500-block area of Mount Pleasant, Fairview and Kitsilano. It was approved Wednesday night in a seven-to-four vote.

Gareth Sirotnik, who lives a block from the first new highrise approved for the Broadway corridor, laments councillors no longer seem to expect developers to make significant contributions to community life, to streetscapes or green spaces.

“I live on the 14th floor of an 18-storey condo at the crest of Burrard-Granville Slopes I bought new 30 years ago. To gain six floors above the 12-floor guideline limit, my building developer signed away nearly 30 per cent of the property as a permanent public park, which we maintain.”

“The days for such amenities are gone. The city just approved a 39-storey building a block away without  almost any public amenities beyond a grocery store.”

Even in the face of strong environmental concerns, some who argue for the necessity of highrises object that those who seek density via shorter buildings seem to want to turn every city into a version of central Paris, with blocks of repetitive six-storey apartment blocks.

However, Pomponi says cities don’t need to become monotonously lowrise. “Each building should not be identical to the next, with a very fixed and prescribed height. It’s more about having an upper threshold that, unless you’ve got a really, really good reason, it should not be exceeded.”

Artistic rendering, by Stephen Bohus, of the Broadway Plan. This “massing model” offers an earial view looking east along 7th Avenue, with Vine St. at the bottom. Bohus is a graphic designer with a degree in landscape architecture. He collaborated with architect Brian Palmquist.

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