Vancouver Condo Info

TD has just put out their forecast for a canadian housing market soft-landing that will be softer than the soft landing currently not being enjoyed in the USA.

The gloom and doom from down south:

An ever-deepening housing correction is scarring the economic landscape. A sharp backslide in residential investment shaved 1 percentage point off real GDP growth in the third quarter, which marked the largest drag from this sector in 16 years. TD Economics expects to see a repeat performance in the final quarter of this year given that housing starts plummeted 13 percent in October. Moreover American shoppers are already contributing about half a percentage point less to GDP growth. And, estimates show that it takes at least one year for the full impact of a change in real estate wealth to feed through to consumption behaviour.

Bah! That’s merely semantics. If we only look at the US market 1 month at a time it IS the soft landing that everyone was predicting there a year ago. Its only when you look at long stretches of time (several months in a row) that the US housing crash looks bad.

The Canadian market is doing pretty good so far though:

Any drag from cooling housing construction will be mild in comparison to the U.S. This is not to say that the Canadian economy is free of housing risks. For instance, residents in Vancouver dedicate an inordinate amount of pre-tax income (+50%) to housing costs, while Alberta’s double-digit price growth won’t be sustained. However, a boom-bust cycle can be avoided if price growth cools in the near-term, which seems quite possible given ongoing supportive fundamentals.

Some hopeful signs for a potential soft landing have already emerged. New listings are up substantially in Calgary (51% y/y), Edmonton (27% y/y) and Vancouver (19 y/y), which should help alleviate price pressures in time. If a hard landing were to befall the western provinces, it would likely be due to the ripple effect of an unexpected collapse in the U.S. economy, rather than a sharp reversal of domestic fundamentals.

So as TD sees it, the only real risk to the canadian market is the US economy. And hows that going so far again?

South of the border, however, the U.S. economy will fall short of its potential pace (3.3 percent) by a full percentage point, resulting in a greater degree of economic slack. Moreover the American slowdown has only reached its halfway mark.

I’m sure many Americans would be dissapointed to hear that they’ve only reached the halfway mark in their economic slowdown. That’s a strange thing to state as fact. Is the TD bank perhaps controlling the US market? Or else they’ve hired some new soothsayers.

Either way, you may find it useful to know that both ‘defuse anthropomorphic assets’ and ‘forecasts hide upon metaphors‘ are anagrams for ‘the prophesies of nostradamus‘

Break out the champagne and poutine! Montreal has just paid off the olympic stadium built for the 1976 games, previously nicknamed ‘the big owe’. Thirty years is a nice round number don’t you think?

The original estimated cost for this beauty was $250 million, but the final cost came in a teensy bit higher at $1.5 billion. Now that they own it, whats the plan?

The Canadian Olympic Committee would not comment on the final payment. But CTV Montreal’s Tania Krywiak said “they did tell us they would continue to use the Olympic Stadium as a venue to host sporting events as well as commercial events.”

As far as the City of Montreal is concerned, “they tell us they are just not ready, they are not willing and don’t want to take over the Olympic stadium.”

Meanwhile here on the westcoast we’re gearing up for our own little party in just a few years, and despite the negativity of an earlier report from the BC auditor general, Vanoc CEO John Furlong says we’re on schedule and under budget!

Furlong said that despite the conflicting numbers, VANOC is still on track to finish on time. His assertion the project is so far under budget comes partly from the fact VANOC has yet to rely on any contingency money..

VANOC said it will try to finalize a detailed business plan next month, but it won’t be release the plan to the public until February or March 2007.

Asun sent in this shot of the residential tower at 1188 Richards currently under the leaky condo raincoat. Apparently this building was constructed with rainscreen technology.

The most recent info I can find on these apartments is in this post on pricetags from september:

on the matter of whether the designers and contractors of 1188 Richards have paid for the repairs, the answer is… not yet. Legal action is being initiated, which involves restoring many of the entities involved to the provincial corporate registry as they were evidently dissolved to try to avoid liability. I wouldn’t anticipate a settlement until the $8 million job is pretty much complete.

So its not just woodframe and stucco buildings that have water problems, concrete towers leak as well, and they’re expensive to fix.

send your leaky tarp covered condo pictures for the repair photo album to: vancouvercondo.info@gmail.com

Apparently some people just don’t get the concept of a Vacation. VHB has stopped posting on the Vancouver Housing Blog, but we still see him lurking around the comment sections of boards around town. Clearly someone forgot to take his internet connection away.

I got a note from VHB just yesterday pointing out that Yaletown Park is now showing up on MLS. He’s also seeing a 25 unit jump in rental listings downtown, not including craigslist. I just checked craigslist and I count at least 15 units in Yaletown Park up for rent right now, most offering ‘free rent until Jan. 1st’.

News on the Canadian housing market is getting more bearish across the board: Reuters leads with the headline Canada’s Housing Sector Stalling, while over on the CBC it’s Average resale home price drops $3,500 in November. Thats the average drop last month in Canada, and though we’re still #1 for unaffordability in Vancouver, we’re also leading the way with the largest average price drop. November saw our number of sales decline by 21% while the average house price dropped by almost $29,000.

Thanks to ‘anonymous’ for the links.

Whether you rent or own, last night was a good one to have shelter. Heavy rain and wind up to 157 km per hour (!) battered this little seaside town, stress-testing our construction and leaving thousands without power (i’m guessing you’re not reading this if you’re one of those). There’s trees down everywhere, the skytrain was down in surrey and a belltower blew off a school house downtown. Looks like the worst of it is over, I just hope this doesn’t mean more turbidity.

This weekends forecast: slushy snow.

Uncertain Buyer has started up a BC housing blog at http://bchousingblog.blogspot.com/ and is off to a great start. This blog is written from the perspective of someone who has just cashed out of the Real Estate market and will be renting for a while as prices are just starting to drop.

He/she covers topics ranging from the difference between renting and buying, mixed messages from realtors, and general BC housing news. If you’re interested in BC real estate this site is a great read and well worth checking out.

This little unit on west 7th in Fairview is looking sassy in blue with a bit of an ‘over the shoulder’ effect working for it. The flat roof says ‘I don’t give a damn about the weather’ while the stucco says ‘let the sun shine!’. This is a stylish and daring look, but I can’t imagine that the fully blue view from inside would be all that great.

send your leaky tarp covered condo pictures for the repair photo album to: vancouvercondo.info@gmail.com

Here’s a shot of a dapper white plastic balcony cover at 1234 West Seventh Avenue in Fairview. Looks like this one is getting some attention to its decks on the front. The clean white with wooden framing is a nice change from the dark green mesh or blue tarps you usually see on condo repairs. If we had a sunny day this would also provide shade to these suites.

send your leaky tarp covered condo pictures for the repair photo album to: vancouvercondo.info@gmail.com

Apparently the Koret in gastown sucks. This according to Matthew Good, whose blog has a great rant about Vancouver Real Estate:

This building is just a gong show, I can’t believe people in this town pay these sorts of prices for new places like this. My flat is so cheaply built you’d think a 12 year old did it. And it’s not just here, it’s a problem all over the city. No one can afford to buy because most simply buy apartments to flip in an attempt to make money, driving prices up and out of the range of young families that aren’t pulling in half a million dollars a year. One of these days Vancouver’s real estate market is going to crash, and when it does I’m going to build a giant float shaped like a cock in an ass and throw a parade.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m just going out to buy some Matthew Good CDs so he can afford to buy here. I’ve always maintained that if we can’t house our rock stars in style then there’s something seriously wrong with this town.

(apologies for mixing cake with matthew good)