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Under water: Is the real estate industry waking up to ‘climate risk’? – Global News

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Perched over a harbour across from the bright lights of Vancouver’s city centre, a massive new residential development is pushing the boundaries of what it means to be climate resilient.

The development, called North Harbour, is being built by developer Concert Properties in North Vancouver to a set of novel standards that will mitigate against sea level rise and storm surge.

The new requirement is for the project to be raised 4.5 metres above sea level, well over a metre above the previous requirement. None of the building’s mechanical equipment will be installed below ground, which is the norm, to prevent damage from flooding.

“I think with this site, we really were on the leading edge of thinking about what the next chapter of planning for sea level rise looked like in British Columbia,” says Michael Epp, the director of planning for the City of North Vancouver.

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Construction image of the first phase of Concert Properties’ North Harbour development in the city of North Vancouver, B.C.


Concert Properties

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Final rendering of the first phase of the project in North Vancouver.


Concert Properties

The North Harbour project is a prominent example of a paradigm shift in civic planning to make cities and communities more weather-resistant. The storm that barrelled through Atlantic Canada last weekend swallowed homes in its fury, and was just the latest reminder of the power of nature to eat away at coastlines in the blink of an eye.

Read more:

Hurricane Fiona shows how climate change is fuelling severe weather events in Canada, expert says

Because of climate disasters, insurers, municipal governments, developers and ordinary Canadians are waking up to the real cost of inaction.

A report released today by the Canadian Climate Institute concludes that damage from climate change will take a $25 billion bite out of the economy each year. Then there are costs to health, jobs and overall wellbeing, all of which will suffer as “heat-induced productivity losses and premature deaths shrink the workforce,” the report finds.

In other words, climate change takes a toll not just on the economy, but also on our overall health and well-being.

For city planners in North Vancouver, the flooding that washed out much of Calgary in 2013 was their teachable moment. It forced them to rethink how to deal with rising water and to plan ahead for climate scenarios all the way to the end of the century.

But the unfortunate reality, says Jesse Keenan, a professor of real estate at Tulane University in New Orleans, is that it often takes a disaster where you live to make change happen. The other problem is that information that would otherwise help make better decisions is simply lacking.

“One thing we don’t know in Canada very much about is the benefits of investing in flood mitigation,” says Jason Thistlethwaite, an expert in climate adaptation at the University of Waterloo.

His research has found that just six per cent of residents who live in flood-risk areas know they do, and the majority, 81 per cent, have not reviewed their local flood area maps.

“It’s difficult to imagine a property owner who’s desperately seeking a house to prioritize something like flood risk over, let’s say, a granite countertop or various fixtures in their home,” he said.

But the importance of getting a clear climate risk picture is becoming just as obvious as a home inspection or a study of an apartment’s sightlines.

In the United States, at least $108 billion in real estate valuation is at risk of literally going underwater, according to Don Bain, a senior advisor at Climate Central, a non-profit that looks at the impact of climate change on people’s lives.

“By mid-century,” he concludes in a recent report, “more than 648,000 individual tax parcels, totalling as many as 4.4 million acres, are projected to be at least partly below the relevant tidal boundary level.”

The world is starting to appreciate that there is a financial and health cost associated with polluting the atmosphere with reckless abandon.

“We’re at a phase where the capital markets are really beginning to understand this as a risk,” says Spenser Robinson, a professor of finance and real estate at Central Michigan University.

Large regulatory bodies like the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, he says, are proposing more stringent disclosure laws so that people understand the dangers associated with a range of financial products, including real estate.

But climate-risk factors, Robinson says, have yet to trickle down to the general investor level, and they need to.

“Right now, this is kind of some opaque black box concept that the average consumer can’t really understand.”

To address that, some real estate firms are starting to flag climate risk much like they do walkability scores.

For example, realtor.com has started putting environmental risk scores on some of its home listings.

 

Then there is artificial intelligence, which is being used to assess climate impacts on real estate valuations.

Parag Khanna, an entrepreneur and author who has written extensively on migration, argues that a warming planet is completely changing the calculus of where people are choosing to live.

His latest venture is a platform – Climate Alpha – powered by artificial intelligence that makes cutting-edge predictions on property valuations based on climate risks and other factors.

Machine learning, Khanna says, can take into account a range of data points, from climate forecasts, to immigration patterns, to the availability of land. These data can then be used to assess property prices in ways that financial data and models simply can’t compete with.

For example, new AI-powered modelling tools can look at how much property prices have been going up or down in a given property market over a period of time, and calculate where those valuations will go in the coming years based on a variety of climate risk calculations and migratory patterns, Khanna says.

Retirees Joan and Rob Boras recently moved to BC’s Okanagan Valley from Alberta, and decided to build their home in the most environmentally sustainable way possible. But part of their motivation was also to ensure their home was resilient, given the hotter summers and more intense wildfire seasons.

“You can’t bury your head in the sand anymore,” Joan Boras told Global News from Naramata, B.C.

They didn’t need advanced technology or fancy financial models to tell them they needed to look climate change straight in the eye.

“You’ve got to look, and when you look, you’ve got to think, ‘OK, what is this area prone to? What are the things that happen?’ We knew it was fires out here. You know that,” Joan says, emphasizing that, “We’re not super wealthy by any means.”

They did their homework and found a contractor who understood the mission. They deliberately picked a lot that was away from the forest edge, and are using a range of energy-efficient and fire-resistant products and technologies to reduce their home’s impact on the environment and make it more resilient.

Read more:

Does your home or office hold the key to solving the climate crisis? Experts say yes

But this kind of forward-thinking innovation by ordinary homebuyers is still more of an exception than the rule. Information, however, is starting to trickle down to the average person, and that means there will be more demand to build differently.

A study led by UBC researcher Markus Baldauf found that flood-prone homes in communities where there is strong acceptance of climate change sell for less than in those communities where climate change is not taken as seriously. In other words, if you know about the climate risk, you’re not going to pay as much for your property.

“The more information we get out there, the greater response we see among buyers and sellers,” Keenan says.

The most forward-thinking municipalities know that as well: getting ahead of climate risk means more investment, not less.

“In the future,” says Jason Thistlethwaite, “we’re going to be looking at municipalities who are recognized for being climate resilient, and their property values are going to go up because people are going to want to live there.”

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Here are some facts about British Columbia’s housing market

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Housing affordability is a key issue in the provincial election campaign in British Columbia, particularly in major centres.

Here are some statistics about housing in B.C. from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s 2024 Rental Market Report, issued in January, and the B.C. Real Estate Association’s August 2024 report.

Average residential home price in B.C.: $938,500

Average price in greater Vancouver (2024 year to date): $1,304,438

Average price in greater Victoria (2024 year to date): $979,103

Average price in the Okanagan (2024 year to date): $748,015

Average two-bedroom purpose-built rental in Vancouver: $2,181

Average two-bedroom purpose-built rental in Victoria: $1,839

Average two-bedroom purpose-built rental in Canada: $1,359

Rental vacancy rate in Vancouver: 0.9 per cent

How much more do new renters in Vancouver pay compared with renters who have occupied their home for at least a year: 27 per cent

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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B.C. voters face atmospheric river with heavy rain, high winds on election day

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VANCOUVER – Voters along the south coast of British Columbia who have not cast their ballots yet will have to contend with heavy rain and high winds from an incoming atmospheric river weather system on election day.

Environment Canada says the weather system will bring prolonged heavy rain to Metro Vancouver, the Sunshine Coast, Fraser Valley, Howe Sound, Whistler and Vancouver Island starting Friday.

The agency says strong winds with gusts up to 80 kilometres an hour will also develop on Saturday — the day thousands are expected to go to the polls across B.C. — in parts of Vancouver Island and Metro Vancouver.

Wednesday was the last day for advance voting, which started on Oct. 10.

More than 180,000 voters cast their votes Wednesday — the most ever on an advance voting day in B.C., beating the record set just days earlier on Oct. 10 of more than 170,000 votes.

Environment Canada says voters in the area of the atmospheric river can expect around 70 millimetres of precipitation generally and up to 100 millimetres along the coastal mountains, while parts of Vancouver Island could see as much as 200 millimetres of rainfall for the weekend.

An atmospheric river system in November 2021 created severe flooding and landslides that at one point severed most rail links between Vancouver’s port and the rest of Canada while inundating communities in the Fraser Valley and B.C. Interior.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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No shortage when it comes to B.C. housing policies, as Eby, Rustad offer clear choice

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British Columbia voters face no shortage of policies when it comes to tackling the province’s housing woes in the run-up to Saturday’s election, with a clear choice for the next government’s approach.

David Eby’s New Democrats say the housing market on its own will not deliver the homes people need, while B.C. Conservative Leader John Rustad saysgovernment is part of the problem and B.C. needs to “unleash” the potential of the private sector.

But Andy Yan, director of the City Program at Simon Fraser University, said the “punchline” was that neither would have a hand in regulating interest rates, the “giant X-factor” in housing affordability.

“The one policy that controls it all just happens to be a policy that the province, whoever wins, has absolutely no control over,” said Yan, who made a name for himself scrutinizing B.C.’s chronic affordability problems.

Some metrics have shown those problems easing, with Eby pointing to what he said was a seven per cent drop in rent prices in Vancouver.

But Statistics Canada says 2021 census data shows that 25.5 per cent of B.C. households were paying at least 30 per cent of their income on shelter costs, the worst for any province or territory.

Yan said government had “access to a few levers” aimed at boosting housing affordability, and Eby has been pulling several.

Yet a host of other factors are at play, rates in particular, Yan said.

“This is what makes housing so frustrating, right? It takes time. It takes decades through which solutions and policies play out,” Yan said.

Rustad, meanwhile, is running on a “deregulation” platform.

He has pledged to scrap key NDP housing initiatives, including the speculation and vacancy tax, restrictions on short-term rentals,and legislation aimed at boosting small-scale density in single-family neighbourhoods.

Green Leader Sonia Furstenau, meanwhile, says “commodification” of housing by large investors is a major factor driving up costs, and her party would prioritize people most vulnerable in the housing market.

Yan said it was too soon to fully assess the impact of the NDP government’s housing measures, but there was a risk housing challenges could get worse if certain safeguards were removed, such as policies that preserve existing rental homes.

If interest rates were to drop, spurring a surge of redevelopment, Yan said the new homes with higher rents could wipe the older, cheaper units off the map.

“There is this element of change and redevelopment that needs to occur as a city grows, yet the loss of that stock is part of really, the ongoing challenges,” Yan said.

Given the external forces buffeting the housing market, Yan said the question before voters this month was more about “narrative” than numbers.

“Who do you believe will deliver a better tomorrow?”

Yan said the market has limits, and governments play an important role in providing safeguards for those most vulnerable.

The market “won’t by itself deal with their housing needs,” Yan said, especially given what he described as B.C.’s “30-year deficit of non-market housing.”

IS HOUSING THE ‘GOVERNMENT’S JOB’?

Craig Jones, associate director of the Housing Research Collaborative at the University of British Columbia, echoed Yan, saying people are in “housing distress” and in urgent need of help in the form of social or non-market housing.

“The amount of housing that it’s going to take through straight-up supply to arrive at affordability, it’s more than the system can actually produce,” he said.

Among the three leaders, Yan said it was Furstenau who had focused on the role of the “financialization” of housing, or large investors using housing for profit.

“It really squeezes renters,” he said of the trend. “It captures those units that would ordinarily become affordable and moves (them) into an investment product.”

The Greens’ platform includes a pledge to advocate for federal legislation banning the sale of residential units toreal estate investment trusts, known as REITs.

The party has also proposed a two per cent tax on homes valued at $3 million or higher, while committing $1.5 billion to build 26,000 non-market units each year.

Eby’s NDP government has enacted a suite of policies aimed at speeding up the development and availability of middle-income housing and affordable rentals.

They include the Rental Protection Fund, which Jones described as a “cutting-edge” policy. The $500-million fund enables non-profit organizations to purchase and manage existing rental buildings with the goal of preserving their affordability.

Another flagship NDP housing initiative, dubbed BC Builds, uses $2 billion in government financingto offer low-interest loans for the development of rental buildings on low-cost, underutilized land. Under the program, operators must offer at least 20 per cent of their units at 20 per cent below the market value.

Ravi Kahlon, the NDP candidate for Delta North who serves as Eby’s housing minister,said BC Builds was designed to navigate “huge headwinds” in housing development, including high interest rates, global inflation and the cost of land.

Boosting supply is one piece of the larger housing puzzle, Kahlon said in an interview before the start of the election campaign.

“We also need governments to invest and … come up with innovative programs to be able to get more affordability than the market can deliver,” he said.

The NDP is also pledging to help more middle-class, first-time buyers into the housing market with a plan to finance 40 per cent of the price on certain projects, with the money repayable as a loan and carrying an interest rate of 1.5 per cent. The government’s contribution would have to be repaid upon resale, plus 40 per cent of any increase in value.

The Canadian Press reached out several times requesting a housing-focused interview with Rustad or another Conservative representative, but received no followup.

At a press conference officially launching the Conservatives’ campaign, Rustad said Eby “seems to think that (housing) is government’s job.”

A key element of the Conservatives’ housing plans is a provincial tax exemption dubbed the “Rustad Rebate.” It would start in 2026 with residents able to deduct up to $1,500 per month for rent and mortgage costs, increasing to $3,000 in 2029.

Rustad also wants Ottawa to reintroduce a 1970s federal program that offered tax incentives to spur multi-unit residential building construction.

“It’s critical to bring that back and get the rental stock that we need built,” Rustad said of the so-called MURB program during the recent televised leaders’ debate.

Rustad also wants to axe B.C.’s speculation and vacancy tax, which Eby says has added 20,000 units to the long-term rental market, and repeal rules restricting short-term rentals on platforms such as Airbnb and Vrbo to an operator’s principal residence or one secondary suite.

“(First) of all it was foreigners, and then it was speculators, and then it was vacant properties, and then it was Airbnbs, instead of pointing at the real problem, which is government, and government is getting in the way,” Rustad said during the televised leaders’ debate.

Rustad has also promised to speed up approvals for rezoning and development applications, and to step in if a city fails to meet the six-month target.

Eby’s approach to clearing zoning and regulatory hurdles includes legislation passed last fall that requires municipalities with more than 5,000 residents to allow small-scale, multi-unit housing on lots previously zoned for single family homes.

The New Democrats have also recently announced a series of free, standardized building designs and a plan to fast-track prefabricated homes in the province.

A statement from B.C.’s Housing Ministry said more than 90 per cent of 188 local governments had adopted the New Democrats’ small-scale, multi-unit housing legislation as of last month, while 21 had received extensions allowing more time.

Rustad has pledged to repeal that law too, describing Eby’s approach as “authoritarian.”

The Greens are meanwhile pledging to spend $650 million in annual infrastructure funding for communities, increase subsidies for elderly renters, and bring in vacancy control measures to prevent landlords from drastically raising rents for new tenants.

Yan likened the Oct. 19 election to a “referendum about the course that David Eby has set” for housing, with Rustad “offering a completely different direction.”

Regardless of which party and leader emerges victorious, Yan said B.C.’s next government will be working against the clock, as well as cost pressures.

Yan said failing to deliver affordable homes for everyone, particularly people living on B.C. streets and young, working families, came at a cost to the whole province.

“It diminishes us as a society, but then also as an economy.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2024.

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