The remaining Coopers neighborhood buildings are supposed to complete late this year according to the Concord website.

Concord was able to pull off a very rapid completion on the Coopers Pointe building mid-December, 2007. Quality on completion suffered as a result and they had a multitude of deficiencies to fix. They really ought to proceed more diligently on the next buildings before handing over the keys.

When I visited the Cooper’s Pointe building a month ago, Concord still hadn’t completed the painting touch-ups. The common areas had green sticky markers EVERYWHERE! The original paint job was very poorly done. To leave such a visible yet easily fixed mess unattended for a half-year reflects poorly on them. In general, the building was finished to a noticeably lower standard than their earlier ‘SILVER’ standard buildings.

They can’t possibly be running out of money. Even if their building costs are higher than anticipated, they appear to have scaled back on quality to provide the absolute minimum that is expected. Their higher end units sold well over $1000/sqft, and their land was cheap. I’m sure they’re making out like bandits.

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Yes you’re right he is his Son.

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VB - If you don’t feel like starting your own blog but feel like doing a guest post here you’re welcome to. Perhaps we could do an ‘ask a vancouver banker’ thread sometime if you’re into it. No pressure, but you can let me know your thoughts on this either here or via email: vancouvercondo.info@gmail.com

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No, the banks can still come after the corporate officers for up to two years of earnings. It’s ‘limited’ liability not zero liability. It doesn’t matter whether the corporation is numbered or named, just people use numbers when they want a throwaway company they don’t want to bother giving it a name.

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This is only true if it’s non-recourse (no guarantees) lending, which is very uncommon in Canada, fortunately, except maybe for tiny townhome projects, but even that would surprise me.

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LOL you are doing exactly that!

They build dozens of towers in Vancouver and the one you happen to watch progress every day is the one that breaks their back? Come on Ted.. things happen slowly. Think occam’s razor.

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First we’d try to go after whoever guaranteed the project to put in more money and finish it. Could also try to help them find mezzanine/equity financing through our contacts if possible. Next, try to get them to re-negotiate presale contracts, which has been done a couple times already recently as everyone’s heard in the news. Failing that, take over the project and sell it ASAP, which is really the last resort.

For me personally, I haven’t had experience with this type of stuff before, so it’s actually a great learning experience. Learn how to avoid the common mistakes, etc. I plan on getting out of the bank in a few years and getting involved on the equity side of things instead of debt.

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So they erect the building and then have to wait for permits to complete the interior? It’s been over a month since any work was done on the interior.

I know nothing more than any of you but at least I don’t pontificate about their situation! I am simply observing and speculating because the situation seems odd. I also know that cash flow issues happen to the biggest companies and sometimes their parents (Li) let them die rather than throw money after a losing proposition.

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Li Ka Shing sold Concord years ago to Terry Hui

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1. Are you a contractor familiar with projects of that scale? It could be any number of things holding up the project, or maybe they are just working on things that you can’t see. Maybe they are waiting for a permit, who knows?

2. Do you know something about Concord, a private company, that the rest of us don’t?

“if anybody has cash, its Concord” means exactly what it says, they’d be among the last of the major developers to fold on a project.

Craigslist shows exactly *one* unit for sale at Coopers, I’m sure they are well sold.

What is your agenda against this one building? Please, let us know.

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Wow you guys sure know the status of this private company! Li didn’t get rich dumping money into losing companies after they reached their prime. Why is everyone so sure they have endless amounts of cash? Because they are a big Vancouver developer and have ads all over their sites? As mentioned I have a good view of this site and over the past month there has been no work going on in the interior. All work is being done on the ground and as for weekend work there are minimal people on site with the exception of security. Any other explanation for the slow down? Why wouldn’t they want to complete and be paid for the units? Think about it - leaking buildings with judgments against them, investors not completing, a soft market for presales, dud developments (Calgary, Greta Ranch, and Toronto). Seems fairly plausible they have cash flow issues.

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Sales for May rose by 2.7 per cent to $51.4 billion, marking the fourth increase in five months.

http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/.....cture.html

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“what happens to all the partially built condos?… who is actually in posession of them - the bank, the city, the builder who?”

Of course the builder owns them up until they default on payments to the bank and are foreclosed.

The bank obviously doesn’t want the property, they want money. So they sell to the highest bidder. Under the circumstances there won’t be a lot of competition and many times under this kind of circumstances the government steps in (hey, what else are lobbyists for?). I suspect this will be the case for many of the buildings here, either turned into social housing. It’s possible that some of the condo projects may end up converted into office space too.

However, if the bank can’t find a buyer and feels that they can get more money out of the property by waiting, some of them may indeed sit uncompleted until the bank can offload them. This has happened a few places in earlier busts (though I’m not aware of it happening in Vancouver).

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“Canada is not going to have to debase its dollar in order to pay its debts.”

Even if we wanted to Canada can’t play that game. Only the US can because their debt is held in USD. Canadian debt held elsewhere is not in CAD. This is a big part of the reason the US is pissed that many countries are switching to the Euro for their currency of choice for international dealings. In fact it’s possible and by many considered likely that the war on Iraq had as much to do with Hussein switching to the Euro in 2000 as it did with anything else.

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