Vancouver Condo Info

Jonathon sent in a link to this great ‘blast from the past’ interview with developer Sam Zell about whether there was a real estate bubble in Miami.  He makes some very compelling arguments about why there is no real estate bubble, and some of them sound remarkably familiar somehow.

Q But U.S. home prices are up about 40% in three years. How can this not be a bubble?

A Econ 1001: Prices have gone up because the demand has been much greater than the supply. The country is producing all it can in terms of supply, but what you see is more demand. Over the next 10 years we’re going to add a million new household, much of that’s due to immigration.

Econ 1001 is very advanced, so you may not understand that.  Here’s something you will understand:

Q How bad could it get?

A Worst-case scenario? A flat housing market. Look, all I can tell you is we’re the largest owner of apartments in the U.S. and among the largest converters of apartments to condos. If there was a danger of a bubble, would we be in this business? I’ve never been accused of being a Pollyanna, I’m the Gravedancer. Americans don’t understand that we have the cheapest housing in the world. London and Tokyo are more expensive than New York. Why do you think everyone is going to South Florida from Europe? It’s because prices here are cheap compared with there.

Understand?  South Florida is cheaper than other places, and everyone wants to live there.  Ergo, there is no housing bubble in Miami condos.  All of those arguments just happen to be applicable to Vancouver BC as well.

Here’s the ‘flat market’ in Miami since that argument was made, but always remember: ‘it’s different here’.

YLTNBoomerang just sent in an update of their Downtown Townhouse listings graph:

Like most other market segments we’ve hopped up close to the high number of listing we saw sitting on the market in 2008, though inventory growth has moderated lately.  YLTNBoomerang attached the following note:

I’ve had some time to update my tracking sheets for townhouses downtown this week and thought you might be interested in the attached graph.  Basically, this is a plot of the number of townhouses downtown that are listed on a daily basis – well it started out as a daily basis in 2008 then slowed down to bi-weekly updates in 2010 as I was working out of town and didn’t have time.  I’m back to weekly updates now…

What a difference a few months can make in the Vancouver real estate market. Inventory is high and prices are falling, no longer are we seeing the bidding wars of the past. In fact, it’s starting to look like reverse bidding wars as sellers compete for sharper pricing to snag the last of the boom-buyers.  We’re starting to see some big asking price discrepancies on similar units in the same building.

Girlbear pointed out this first example in Arbutus walk:

MLS V837889 vs MLS V839019 – both penthouse units.

847 sq feet asking $494,900 vs. 950 sq feet asking $439,000.

Anonymous pointed out this second example down near gastown:

MLS V831995 vs. MLS V831904 – both 5th floor townhouse units.

1,236 sq feet asking $548,000 vs. 1,202 sq feet asking $649,000.

Buyers who bought before the big run up in prices can afford to sell at a much lower price and still make money compared to those who bought more recently.  I guess this is what they mean when they say ‘buy low, sell high’.

realpaul pointed out this Vancouver Sun article. The day after we got the news that house prices are falling in Vancouver, Royal LePage has released a market survey predicting house prices and sales will ‘decline towards the end of the year’.

However, he pointed out, “This should not be interpreted as a severe correction but rather a natural reaction to the market having peaked quite early this year.”

This outlook is at odds with the BCREA and CREA market surveys released a few weeks ago that predict flat or rising prices for 2010 and then falling prices in 2011.

The REBGV stats for June 2010 are now available. If a month ago was a good time to buy some Vancouver real estate, than right now is an even gooderer time! If you were shopping for the benchmark home a month ago, you can now buy that same house and get a FREE CAR with it! Best Place on Meth pointed out some of the more dramatic drops and we’ve put together this handy guide for suggested cars you can get with the price difference.

The overall REBGV benchmark price for all housing in all areas is down just over 1 percent which is a little over $10k. You’re not going to get a brand new car for that much, but you could get this sweeeet 1992 Toyota Supra replete with go-fast fin and still have enough left over for a great little road trip:

The big drop for the month was in the benchmark house price on the west side. You’re not going to want to drive that supra up to your west side bungalow, but with about $90k extra to spend you can arrive in style with this 2005 Aston Martin DB9:

The dramatic percentage drop prize goes to West Vancouver Apartments, where the one month drop saw a loss of $77,664 or 11.5%! Go pick yourself up an apartment and a 2007 Maserati:

Crashcow pointed out that there’s even more drama in the West Van Apartment benchmark if you go back another month to the April Peak.

There are two ways to think about a purchase – you can focus on the price, or you can focus on the ‘value’. Local developer James Shouw points out that you shouldn’t really worry about all the numbers and stats because ‘Value’ is forever.

For example, in April, 2009, the number of real estate transactions both declined and increased locally.

The headlines focused on a year-over-year decline, news that would have certainly concerned real estate agents, but that should not have concerned real estate owners: whatever took place in April 2009 was not a reflection of value. In fact, in that month, the number of transactions increased more than 30 per cent from the previous month and the value of the average transaction increased three per cent.

Those numbers offer important lessons. As a developer, I’m primarily concerned about value. As a real estate broker, I’d likely be more concerned with volume. Value and volume can fluctuate in parallel, or in opposition, depending on underlying market dynamics.

There’s more. You can read the whole thing over at the Vancouver Sun. See if you can find some value in it.

The government of BC has found a terrific new way for you to help out with provincial finances: Buy more stuff.  It doesn’t matter what you buy, as long as you buy more of it and pay more taxes on many items.  Oddly enough not everyone loves this plan.

Oh, and for you sneaky unpatriotic types that were thinking about driving across the border to do some shopping based on new tax loophole, it’s not going to work right now.

We may be running out of land, but we sure aren’t running out of apartments for sale.  Just in case you haven’t noticed, VHB has been tracking downtown / False Creek North condo inventory in the forum and we’re seeing quite a number of places for sale there:

Canadian Mortgage Trends has an article about getting your mortgage approved before prices fall.

When home prices do fall, it makes it tougher for certain people to qualify for a mortgage—especially for refinances. When prices start dropping, appraisals come in lower, insurer valuation systems become more conservative, and lenders tighten up in general.

Vince Gaetano, a broker with Monster Mortgage, tells the Financial Post that people are already trying to get approved “before there is a correction in the real estate market.”

Of course prices may fall in the rest of Canada, but we all know they won’t fall here in Vancouver right guys?

We posted this in the free for all, but it’s worth taking a closer look: Eleven pre-sales buyers at the Vancouver Olympic Village are unhappy with their units and are trying to get out of their contract. They complain about changes to plan and faulty fireplaces. Presales contracts of course always favor the developer, and these issues aren’t enough to break the agreement, so the approach their lawyer is taking is to claim that the City of Vancouver took over as developer. Since they aren’t listed on the paperwork this would be a technicality that could nullify the contract. If they manage to make this argument work and other buyers want a way out of their purchases it could be more trouble for the O.V.

The buyers put down deposits of between $60,000 and $300,000 for False Creek condos priced from a low of $550,000 to units that sold in the millions of dollars.

They’re being asked to close their deals by the end of the month.

On Thursday, Baynham filed writs in B.C. Supreme Court against developer Millennium Water on behalf of six of his clients, who have addresses in Vancouver and West Vancouver.

Baynham says the City of Vancouver is the owner of the property, after bailing out Millennium when it couldn’t get financing. But that’s not disclosed in the sales agreements, he says, so the contracts are invalid and should be rescinded.

The city argues that Millenium still owns the project and is the developer, the city is simply the bank.

We saw a lot of pre-sales buyers try to walk away from their contracts during the mini-crash a few years ago, and developers suing the for the difference between their deposit and the current market value. It’s interesting that these buyers are trying to get out of their contracts while the stats still show that Vancouver property prices are still at an all-time record high.