City of Coquitlam is offering zoned and serviced townhouse development opportunity

City of Coquitlam
Western Investor

 The City of Coquitlam’s City Lands Division is excited to announce the release to market of a fully zoned and serviced townhouse parcel with a size of 2.58 hectares (6.38 acres), with the intent that construction of townhomes begins as soon as possible.

Located at 1295 Rocklin Street in the Partington Creek Neighbourhood on Burke Mountain and just a five-minute walk to the future Burke Mountain Village, this offering is a unique opportunity in the region.

“We’ve pre-zoned and serviced the site, so it’s ready for development,” the City Land Division’s manager of development Curtis Scott says.

“It’s a great opportunity for developers to bring their vision to this site for homes for families.”

The townhouse development site is a 10-minute drive from Coquitlam City Centre, SkyTrain, and West Coast Express. It is adjacent to the 40-acre planned Fremont Park, more than 17 km of existing and future planned hiking and walking trails, and features bike friendly streets and multi-use pathways.

The Burke Mountain neighbourhood is full of amenities, with 180 acres of active parks, 23 acres of future planned parks, and an active mountain biking and hiking community. Education for all ages is accessible, with two elementary schools to the west of the site, an elementary school to the north under construction, and a future middle and secondary school in the planning stage.

The fully zoned (CAC’s paid) and serviced site is ready for a Development Permit Application.

“As quickly as a developer can get development plans together and submit them to the City for approval, the quicker they can start construction,” Scott says.

The City’s initial concept plan anticipates 117 units.

“The site offers great views and really elevates above developments to the south,” Scott says.

“Some units will have great views of the Fraser Valley. You’re really getting the best of both worlds. You can get your urban fix right up the street or head to the east and you’re in the forest.”

The site is at the centre of everything that makes Coquitlam’s Burke Mountains such a unique and rewarding place to live.

Once fully developed, Burke Mountain will be home to over 50,000 residents and surrounded by a thriving commercial district and plenty of community and recreational amenities.

There is lots of active construction happening in the area, building the community and serving the growing demand for family-oriented housing.

“It’s been great to see different developers on the mountain that bring diverse housing products to the area,” Scott says.

“It’s moving very quickly, and I think it’s one of those areas that creates homes that are in high demand. We’re in a market where there aren’t a lot of green field development opportunities. But Burke Mountain is one of them.”

A major selling feature of the townhouse parcel is its proximity to the future Burke Mountain Village, which will be the commercial and social hub of Burke Mountain in Northeast Coquitlam.

The 39-acre site is located east of Burke Mountain Creek and south of David Avenue.

The City of Coquitlam is the primary landowner of the Village lands, which is expected to house over 2,000 residential units (apartments and townhomes) and include 120,000 square feet of retail.

The Village will also be anchored by the future Northeast Community Centre, sizeable public plaza, and neighbourhood park.

“This development site is a unique opportunity across the region for a large acreage to bring development to, with access to amenities and views,” Scott says.

“This is a site that doesn’t come around very often.”

1295 Rocklin Street is available through Request for Offers (RFO) 21-040 and bids are due by June 9, 2021.To learn more, visit https://www.coquitlam.ca/landsales.

 

© Copyright 2020 Western Investor

Toronto home prices surge as debate rages

Ari Altstedter
Mortgage Broker News

 Toronto home values continued to swell in March, bringing annual average price gains to more than 20% and adding fuel to a raging debate about whether policy makers should try to cool the market.

New listings were up 57% from March 2020, when the onset of the pandemic temporarily caused a freeze in real estate activity. But the new supply was not able to keep up with demand spurred by low borrowing costs and demand for bigger homes, especially in the suburbs, a report from the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board said Tuesday.

Across the metropolitan area, the average price of all homes sold was CA$1.1 million during the month, up 21.6% from last March. Detached homes in the 905 area code, which surrounds the city’s core, sold for 31.4% more, an average of CA$1.32 million.

“The potential for double-digit price growth could continue without a meaningful increase in the supply of homes available for sale,” Jason Mercer, the Toronto real estate board’s chief market analyst, said in a news release. “This will become more apparent as population growth resumes over the next year.”

Cheap mortgages and new remote-working conditions have spurred a frenzy for more spacious homes, with house hunters bidding up prices in Canada’s largest cities and then looking further afield when they’re priced out. The resumption of more normal levels of immigration, which was slowed by the pandemic in 2020, is another source of demand.

The rapid price appreciation has spurred a debate among prominent economists at Canada’s largest banks over whether Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government or other policy makers should step in.

Canada, on Thursday, March 11, 2021. The buying, selling and building of homes in Canada takes up a larger share of the economy than it does in any other developed country in the world, according to the Bank of International Settlements, and also soaks up a larger share of investment capital than in any of Canada’s peers.

The chief economist of Bank of Nova Scotia, Canada’s third largest lender, said policy makers should not rush to act because price gains are being driven by a lack of homes for sale. Many sellers were sidelined by the pandemic last year, but that problem could take care of itself as the traditional spring selling season gets underway, Jean-Francois Perrault said in a report released Sunday.

That came after Toronto-Dominion Bank’s top executive, Bharat Masrani, told Bloomberg that governments should be cautious in taking action. Meanwhile, economists at Royal Bank of Canada and Bank of Montreal are calling for more urgent action to keep prices from becoming completely unaffordable for first-time buyers and head off the possibility of a destabilizing crash later.

Policy makers so far have not signalled plans to take action, but some have expressed concern. Canada Mortgage & Housing Corp., a federal agency that monitors the market, last month raised its assessment of Toronto’s vulnerability to a sudden drop in prices to high, citing the rapid climb in prices. There are five markets in Canada with that designation.

Toronto’s benchmark price index, a measure that takes into account the mix of types of properties sold, has posted a 10.8% gain in the first three months of 2021, the fastest period of appreciation the city has seen since early 2017. Back then, the Ontario government stepped in with a number of measures, including a tax on foreign buyers.

 

Copyright © 2021 Key Media

Platform that uses AI to flag construction mistakes raises $10 million

Kelsey Pudloski
Livabl

Mistakes happen, but when it comes to new construction, even minor blunders can cost builders untold amounts of time and money. Enter Avvir, a startup that uses laser scans and artificial intelligence to identify errors during the construction process. 

Last week, the company announced that it had raised $10 million in a round of funding led by Trust Ventures, a venture capital firm that counts Koch Industries among its investors. Avvir plans to use the money to add more employees and enhance its software.

Founded in 2017 by Raffi Holzer and Tira Odhner, Avvir asserts that its platform can locate problem areas within one-eighth inch of accuracy. The software compares Building Information Modeling (BIM), essentially a high-tech version of traditional blueprints, with laser scans to flag any discrepancies.

The company claims their mobile scanners can be used by anyone to examine 30,000 square feet per hour even if construction is ongoing. Once a problem has been identified, the construction team is able to take action and the BIM is updated automatically. Another useful feature is the topographic maps that are generated from the scans. These can be inspected after a concrete pour to determine whether slabs are level.

The software can also track the progress of a project, measuring it against the estimated schedule to “highlight where the timeline is off target” and readjust completion dates if necessary. Understanding what work has been completed helps subcontractors get paid in a timely manner, too, reducing delays from months to weeks.

New York-based Avvir is currently valued at $40 million and raised an additional $5 million in previous rounds of funding. In a recent interview with VentureBeat, CEO Raffi Holzer noted that Avvir has amassed roughly 12 customers and partners in the past year and expects its valuation to grow to $4.4 million by 2022.

 

© 2020 BuzzBuzzHome Corp.

How likely is a Canada housing crash?

Ephraim Vecina
Mortgage Broker News

Despite concerns surrounding overheated activity, a Canadian housing crash is unlikely unless there’s a spike in mortgage rates or a significant tightening of housing policy, according to a new report by Oxford Economics.

A housing bubble might be forming due to a pandemic-driven shift in buyer preferences, steadily depleting supply, and record-low mortgage rates, but this is ultimately unsustainable. On the contrary, the market’s probable trajectory is an eventual cooling, report co-authors Tony Stillo and Michael Davenport wrote.

“We then expect housing to increasingly reflect slowing underlying demographic fundamentals due to an ageing population that will experience slower growth,” the duo said. “We expect house price growth will slow to below the pace of household income growth for the rest of the decade. House prices should remain within household borrowing capacity despite a forecast of rising mortgage rates.”

Oxford Economics estimated that the nation’s senior population will almost double to nearly 12 million over the next three decades. This will make the elderly’s share of the Canadian population go up from one in five in 2020, to one in four by 2050.

Aside from an aging population, a decelerating trend in the number of new households will lead to a markedly cooler market over the long term.

“By 2050, the average private household will have 2.36 occupants compared with 2.43 people per household today,” Stillo and Davenport said. “Accordingly, we expect the rate of new household formation to steadily slow from its near-term 200,000 annual pace to 130,000 new households in 2050.”

 

Copyright © 2021 Key Media

Bank of Canada issues warning

Ari Altstedter
Mortgage Broker News

 The Bank of Canada is seeing “worrying” signs that some Canadians are taking on too much debt to buy into the nation’s hot housing market.

In an interview with the Financial Post, Governor Tiff Macklem said there is evidence that loan levels relative to home values are growing — an indication that some borrowers could be overextending. He also warned people have begun to make purchases based on the belief prices will continue rising.

“Canadians are stretching and that is worrying.” Macklem said. “If Canadians are basing their decisions on the kinds of price increases that we’ve seen recently are going to continue indefinitely, that would be a mistake. They’re not sustainable.”

At the same time, Macklem indicated the central bank can do little given interest rates need to stay low to support the recovery.

His comments come amid increasingly urgent calls from economists for policy makers to cool the market. Over the past week, the Bank of Montreal’s Robert Kavcic and Robert Hogue at Royal Bank of Canada have issued reports warning officials they need to take steps to break the psychology of expecting continued gains in real estate. The ultimate concern is that rapid price appreciation could be destabilizing.

Among policies being suggested are taxes targeting speculators like the one implemented in New Zealand this month, or an end to the longstanding and popular tax exemption for capital gains on primary residences. Another idea getting attention is the elimination of blind bidding for homes that some analysts say unnecessarily inflates prices.

Both Kavcic and Hogue also identified a lack of housing supply as a major driver of the recent run up in home values.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government plans to introduce a tax on foreign non-resident home owners. Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said last week she is watching the market closely, without detailing any specific intent to take additional action.

Last week, Canada’s national housing agency added three more cities to its list of markets highly vulnerable to a sharp price drop, including Toronto. Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. also said the recent broad-based price appreciation means overheating risks are now a national phenomenon, rather than isolated to a few major metropolitan areas.

 

Copyright © 2021 Key Media

VERICO president gives his verdict on what will happen to the housing market

Fergal McAlinden
Mortgage Broker News

The current red-hot housing market is likely to slow down slightly when normal life resumes after the pandemic – although increasing immigration numbers may help offset some of that cooling-off, according to VERICO’s president and chief operating officer.

Mark Squire (pictured) told Mortgage Broker News that the market, while “quite unbelievable right now,” has been spurred largely by high demand for housing linked to the pandemic. “People that are working cannot go anywhere, so they are renovating or purchasing new homes or cottages,” he said.

“Will this continue once things return to normal? My perspective is that the housing market may cool a bit as people find new places to spend their money. That said, as the Canadian economy opens back up, we will start to see an increase in immigration again, which also supports and promotes housing sales.”

Rapidly rising house prices, coupled with that demand far outstripping supply, have led to some calls for the Canadian government to intervene to reduce the risk, raised by the Royal Bank of Canada, of “overheating” in the market. Squire noted that imbalance, not just in the oft-referenced Toronto and Vancouver markets, but throughout Canada.

“The market is quite unbelievable right now, and what I find truly interesting is that it’s not just the Greater Toronto and Greater Vancouver markets – it’s pretty much across the entire country,” he said.

“We’re witnessing a seller’s market, where the active listing to sales ratio is not balanced in seven of the 10 provinces.” 

Still, he said that potential government intervention in the housing market could prove a “double-edged sword” in the long run. “The housing market represents 10% of Canada’s GDP,” he said, “and when you look at it from a global perspective, housing in Canada is considered affordable on the world stage.

“I think something that we all need to come to terms with is that owning a house in Canada is not a right, but rather a privilege, and maybe not everyone will be able to enjoy that in their lifetime.”

 

Squire said that VERICO had seen a strong start to the year, propelled by that red-hot housing market, although he cautioned against making premature predictions for the rest of 2021. “The first two months… have been very strong, but let us keep in mind that the market is extremely hot right now,” he said.

“Our submission volumes for January and February were up over 90%, year over year. It really is hard to wrap your mind around it. We are well on track to exceed our impressive results from 2020; however, those results are to the end of the second month, and there is a lot of year left.”

Squire also weighed in on the debate currently spreading through the mortgage industry about technology platforms and the extent of freedom afforded to licensees to choose their own. “Our belief [at VERICO] has not changed,” he said. “‘Your business, your brand, your way.’ We are about choice – your choice.

“It cannot be your business if someone is telling you what to think or what to do. We say, ‘you’re in business for yourself, but not by yourself,’ meaning we are here to support you and provide you with tools, programs, and technology options all ‘a la carte.’ Most of these options are included in the monthly flat fee that the licensee pays, but again, it’s about choice – the broker owner’s choice, not ours.”

Squire said that despite VERICO’s swift reaction to the unique challenges posed by the pandemic, he would welcome a return to normality.  “We quickly adapted to Zoom meetings and hosted various webinars throughout the year,” he said. “We participated in the virtual Mindset conference, and held many sessions with industry leaders, as well as several education sessions profiling some of our members.

“In the end, nothing replaces the human-to-human contact that we are all missing.”

 

Copyright © 2021 Key Media

Mounting debt ‘worrying’ as Canadians stretch to chase rising home prices, says Bank of Canada governor

Bianca Bharti
other

 Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem said he’s seeing “worrying” signs in Canada’s hot housing market, in which households are taking on increasing levels of debt to chase rising prices.

The central bank had largely stayed quiet on the housing market until February, when Macklem said it was showing signs of “excessive exuberance” as national real estate prices jumped 25 per cent from the year before.

“Since then, the housing market has continued to run strong across a variety of dimensions; price increases have continued at a pretty high rate,” Macklem said in an interview with the Financial Post on Wednesday.

“If you look at the household indebtedness, you are seeing, on average, the loan-to-value ratios are getting higher, particularly in the uninsured space. That suggests that Canadians are stretching and that is worrying.”

The central bank and other authorities are facing mounting pressure to address the overheating housing market, which the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation warned last week is becoming increasingly vulnerable to economic shocks.

However, CIBC’s deputy chief economist Benjamin Tal warned that just because the housing market is hot, does not mean the central bank should act.

“That’s not his domain, that’s the finance minister’s domain,” he told the Post. “People have to understand that he will cross the line if he starts talking about microprudential policies.”

Macklem himself stopped short of suggesting a policy response is necessary.

What gets us worried is when you start to see extrapolative expectations, or people starting to speculate on this, and houses become assets as opposed to something we live in

Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem

“From our perspective, monetary policy is a blunt tool. It’s a macro-economic instrument. We have to look at the whole economy. The whole economy needs monetary policy support to support the recovery, get people back to work and get inflation back on target,” he said.

Tal reiterated Macklem’s view.

“The housing market is one part of the economy,” he said. “As a society, we have never been so sensitive to the risk of higher interest rates…. Every small increase in the interest rate can have a significant impact on the housing market and therefore, (Macklem) would like to see the market slow down before we have to raise interest rates.”

While the market continues to rise, some of Canada’s biggest banks have been leading the calls for a policy response of some kind.

In a report on Monday, Royal Bank of Canada senior economist Robert Hogue said the near-term outlook for homebuyers is “grim.”

“Smaller markets are losing some of their affordability advantage, which adds stress to buyers willing to move to a different town to find a home they can afford,” he wrote.

Last week, Hogue said policymakers needed to address the “overheating” in markets as it threatens to destabilize the economy, suck money from more productive areas and exacerbate inequality.

Bank of Montreal senior economist Robert Kavcic, in a Tuesday report, said “policy makers need to act immediately, in some form, to address the home price situation before the market is left exposed to more severe consequences down the road.”

While the state of the market can be explained to some extent by a fundamental shift in demands, there are other factors, like speculation, at play, the governor said.

“What gets us worried is when you start to see extrapolative expectations, or people starting to speculate on this, and houses become assets as opposed to something we live in. There certainly are some signs of extrapolative expectations,” Macklem said.

“If Canadians are basing their decisions on the kinds of price increases that we’ve seen recently are going to continue indefinitely, that would be a mistake. They’re not sustainable.”

 

© 2021 Financial Post

Fraudster gets away with transferring title for B.C. home using forged passport

Susan Larazuk
The Vancouver Sun

Fraudsters impersonated owners of B.C. residential properties to steal the homes’ titles and one of the con artists got away with it, according to the agency in charge of keeping title transfers secure.

The Land Title and Survey Authority of British Columbia announced the fraud attempts, “one of which was successful,” and advised those in the real estate industry to increase their vigilance when dealing with clients.

“Legal and real estate professionals play a critical role in preventing title fraud,” said the authority in a release.

The perpetrator of the fraud laid the groundwork by posing as the owner of a B.C. property, an owner who lived abroad and was renting the home out. He sent the property manager instructions from a phone number and email address that didn’t match the ones authorized by the real owner.

The property managers then “shared documents (with them) that allowed the fraudster to impersonate the owners,” said the LTSA.

“Both properties were listed for sale by realtors,” it said.

The realtors had accepted a scanned copy of the impersonator’s passport, which turned out to be forged, to verify the supposed owner’s identity.

Then a legal professional hired by the fraudster also accepted the scanned copy of the false passport, and he “assisted the fraudster in transferring title to the property.”

“Forged South African passports were used in both cases but (fraud) can come from anywhere,” said the LTSA, which is responsible for the security of titles to B.C.’s private real estate properties.

The LTSA didn’t return a request for comment and it’s unclear how the fraudster was able to persuade the professionals to bypass the requirements to verify identity set out by the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC), whose role it is to detect, prevent and deter money laundering.

LTSA, in its release, advised local industry professionals to “be suspicious of requests from clients who live abroad to change their phone or email address.”

They should also “be careful of clients who express urgency or provide unusual instructions, such as listing the property for below market values or instructing you not to use the multiple listing service (MLS) or for sale signs.”

A company that sells title insurance to protect buyers and owners against title fraud said an identity of an out-of-country seller is required to be verified by a professional third party because “someone needs to see the ID.”

“But this could be a professional fraudster and they’re good at what they do,” said Tony Spagnuolo of Spagnuolo and Co.

He said the title would remain with the rightful owner and the buyer would likely have insurance as it is required by most lenders as a condition of the mortgage.

FINTRAC said in a statement it doesn’t investigate cases so couldn’t comment on the details of the case, including whether or not the professionals were fined.

 

© 2021 Vancouver Sun

Canadas housing market set for “significant cooldown” after homebuying frenzy: TD

Sean MacKay
Livabl

The current furious pace of homebuyer activity, along with rapidly accelerating price increases seen since mid-2020, are unlikely to last into 2022.

While the Canadian housing market’s strength was a major contributor to the country’s economic recovery following the devastation experienced last spring, TD Senior Economist Sri Thanabalasingam believes a “significant cooldown” is coming over the next six to nine months.

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In commentary exploring Canada’s “pandemic economy” after a year spent coping with the myriad effects of COVID-19, Thanabalasingam writes that the initial fears at the onset of the pandemic around the country’s housing market were focused on risks of collapse rather than of overheating.

But while they generated some alarming headlines based on inaccurate predictions, fears of collapse quickly faded through the summer as homebuyers took the market by storm.

“Rock-bottom mortgage rates, relatively secure employment for higher paid workers, and a desire for more space while working from home, generated extraordinary homeownership demand beginning in the summer of 2020 and has yet to fade,” writes Thanabalasingam.

Now concerns around overheating have taken over, as single-family home prices at the national level have gained $100,000 in value on average just over the last six months amid historic demand and limited supply. Market experts are now penning what essentially amounts to open letters to policymakers on actions they can take to cool the market.

Thanabalasingam believes that some segments of the market “have moved well above their levels supported by [economic] fundamentals.”Mortgage rate increases and a lack of affordable housing options for many buyers should lead to a “tapering off of price growth,” he writes.

If this doesn’t take enough steam out of the market, the economist predicts that regulators and governments will spring into action on the policy front with measures to protect the financial system from a runaway housing market. 

“Either way, we are likely to see a significant cooldown over the next 2-3 quarters,” writes Thanabalasingam.

Earlier this month, RBC Senior Economist Robert Hogue recommended an array of policies to stabilize the market that included increasing the supply of housing through new home and rental construction, rolling out measures aimed at discouraging speculation and potentially tightening up mortgage-lending rules even beyond what was enacted by the federal government in 2018.

 

© 2020 BuzzBuzzHome Corp.

CIBC’s Tal: Red-hot activity posing significant long-term risks to housing

Ephraim Vecina
Mortgage Broker News

Is the currently overheated activity in major markets undercutting the housing segment’s future prospects? Benjamin Tal of CIBC Capital Markets Inc. seems to think so.

Tal noted that this alarming trend is especially apparent in Toronto, where low interest rates have pushed property investors towards the condo market despite the spectre of considerable losses in the near term.

“It’s really about the supply-demand mismatch and people are looking at interest rates, they know … interest rates will rise,” Tal said in an interview with BNN Bloomberg. “So basically, they’re stealing activity from the future in order to be part of this low interest rate environment and take advantage of it.”

The market’s condo sales activity increased by 85.5% annually in January, according to the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board. A major driver of this is the fact that the asset class represents “a more affordable entry” into the market compared to single-detached units.

Tal cited recent CIBC research that found investors were being forced to absorb losses to the tune of hundreds of dollars monthly, and yet choosing to keep their hold on the properties due to expected longer-term value.

Such is a recipe for significant price growth, Tal cautioned.

“If you think that Toronto is unaffordable now, you wait,” Tal said. “Toronto is becoming like Berlin, like London, like Manhattan. It’s becoming more and more unaffordable, and therefore we know that our kids will struggle.”

 

 

Copyright © 2021 Key Media