That said, there are a few oddities in local real estate that those not fully involved in the world of property development and investment may not recall or be aware of.
Here are five (hopefully) things you may not know about Vancouver’s real estate.
The Vancouver School Board focuses on schools, but it’s ended up with some land that isn’t always needed for facilities.
The mall looks and feels very much like a throwback to the 1970s and 80s; that’s because it is. Before that, the site was the home to Mount Pleasant School, which stood for nearly 80 years.
The school board didn’t give up the land when the new school was built at a different site, instead they leased it cheap to a company that built the mall.
2. A B.C. premier was brought down by a Metro Vancouver amusement park real estate scandal
A couple of B.C. premiers and politicians have had careers ended by different scandals, but only one (it appears) was due to an amusement park deal.
Bill Vander Zalm was premier more than 30 years ago in the late 80s and early 90s, having become wealthy with a tulip business. After spending a couple of years as the Mayor of Surrey, he rose through the ranks of the now-defunct BC Social Credit Party (aka Socreds).
In 1986, after Premier Bill Bennett announced he was retiring, Vander Zalm won the leadership of the party and therefore the premier’s office; later that year there was a provincial election and he won.
While he became a controversial figure for his social conservatism, what finally ended his tenure was a real estate deal from his private life. In 1984 he bought Fantasy Garden World in Richmond, a commercial nursery that was turned into an amusement park while he was premier.
Issues around a $20,000 payment and conflicts of interest around the land’s development and sale abounded and Vander Zalm stepped down as premier in 1991. The party collapsed in the next election later that year and never recovered.
While it’s obvious that an address in a nice neighbourhood means a price will sell for more, a UBC study involving real estate in and around Vancouver found that the actual numbers matter too.
The 2010 study found “houses with addresses ending in the lucky number eight sold at a 2.5 per cent premium, while those ending in the unlucky number four sold at a discount of 2.2 per cent.”
This was connected to Chinese number preferences, where numbers like eight are considered lucky. Therefore, a premium would be paid for addresses with lots of eights; one realtor even paid the fee (a couple hundred dollars) to change an address to add value to his house.
While Vancouver’s Stanely Park is likely considered priceless by Vancouver’s residents, BC Assessment has a job to do.
The provincial agency assesses the value of essentially all the land in the province, including the park. In their most recent assessment, it was valued at $3.578 billion, with $10 million of that for buildings.
Not all parks are assessed, but other things are. BC Children’s Hospital is valued at $969 million ($567 million is for the buildings), city hall’s property is $143 million ($15.8 million of that is the building) and BC Place is $223 million (with only $55 million of that the land).
5. The West End was sold for $550.75 in 1862
While the West End is worth a couple billion dollars as a whole nowadays (perhaps more), when it was first sold it was a bit more modest.
In the document the land being sold is essentially the area between Stanley Park, Burrard Street and West Georgia down to English Bay; an estimated 550 acres.
The price? In the document it’s written as “one hundred and fourteen pounds eleven shillings and eight pence.” How that traslates to Canadian dollars now is unclear, but in 2013 the city wrote a history of the West End and estimated it at $550.75.
However, the three men struggled with their massive chunk of land, trying to raise cattle and make bricks (a reminder, Vancouver was a big lumber town at the time). It should also be noted that they were the only settlers on the land, local Indigenous people still lived in and around the area.
It took some time, but the area began to develop in the late 1880s into a wealthy neighbourhood.
TORONTO – One expert predicts Ottawa‘s changes to mortgage rules will help spur demand among potential homebuyers but says policies aimed at driving new supply are needed to address the “core issues” facing the market.
The federal government’s changes, set to come into force mid-December, include a higher price cap for insured mortgages to allow more people to qualify for a mortgage with less than a 20 per cent down payment.
The government will also expand its 30-year mortgage amortization to include first-time homebuyers buying any type of home, as well as anybody buying a newly built home.
CIBC Capital Markets deputy chief economist Benjamin Tal calls it a “significant” move likely to accelerate the recovery of the housing market, a process already underway as interest rates have begun to fall.
However, he says in a note that policymakers should aim to “prevent that from becoming too much of a good thing” through policies geared toward the supply side.
Tal says the main issue is the lack of supply available to respond to Canada’s rapidly increasing population, particularly in major cities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17,2024.
OTTAWA – The Canadian Real Estate Association says the number of homes sold in August fell compared with a year ago as the market remained largely stuck in a holding pattern despite borrowing costs beginning to come down.
The association says the number of homes sold in August fell 2.1 per cent compared with the same month last year.
On a seasonally adjusted month-over-month basis, national home sales edged up 1.3 per cent from July.
CREA senior economist Shaun Cathcart says that with forecasts of lower interest rates throughout the rest of this year and into 2025, “it makes sense that prospective buyers might continue to hold off for improved affordability, especially since prices are still well behaved in most of the country.”
The national average sale price for August amounted to $649,100, a 0.1 per cent increase compared with a year earlier.
The number of newly listed properties was up 1.1 per cent month-over-month.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
MONTREAL – Two Quebec real estate brokers are facing fines and years-long suspensions for submitting bogus offers on homes to drive up prices during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Christine Girouard has been suspended for 14 years and her business partner, Jonathan Dauphinais-Fortin, has been suspended for nine years after Quebec’s authority of real estate brokerage found they used fake bids to get buyers to raise their offers.
Girouard is a well-known broker who previously starred on a Quebec reality show that follows top real estate agents in the province.
She is facing a fine of $50,000, while Dauphinais-Fortin has been fined $10,000.
The two brokers were suspended in May 2023 after La Presse published an article about their practices.
One buyer ended up paying $40,000 more than his initial offer in 2022 after Girouard and Dauphinais-Fortin concocted a second bid on the house he wanted to buy.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
