tagesschau posted:

Answers that can't survive in the face of the Tories being elected more than once in a row are not the panacea they're being presented as.

quote:

(And Singapore as a model? Really?)

Helsing posted:

Whether you'd want to implement that particular system is debatable. But the point is there are contemporary examples of very different approaches to the housing issue so the idea we're stuck doing everything in one specific way is asinine. All we lack is the political will to try and improve things.

quote:

No counterargument? Insult the poster instead! It's the RBC way.

Helsing posted:

quote:

Who’s winning the Toronto condo market?
...
Tony’s investment strategy has allowed him luxuries that few teachers can afford. After a health scare three years ago, he bought himself a $200,000 gold BMW i8, with vanity plates that say “I GR8FUL.” Last year, he spent $33,000 on three Raptors season tickets, as a way to spend time with his family and friends.

His strategy may seem risky, but his teaching salary and generous public pension mean he’ll be financially secure even if the market takes a dip. “I don’t live my life worrying about stuff like that,” he says. “You can’t make money by not taking risks.”
...

Femtosecond posted:

You too can get rich speculating on condos! Look at these people! YOLO!

(lmao everyone bought well before the boom which, uh, helps....)

Femtosecond posted:

You too can get rich speculating on condos! Look at these people! YOLO!

(lmao everyone bought well before the boom which, uh, helps....)

quote:

When he closes on his pre-construction units, Tony will owe about $1.5 million on a property portfolio he values at around $3.2 million. He expects to gross around $8,400 per month in rent, which would leave him with about $1,200 in income after he finishes paying his mortgages, taxes and maintenance fees.

quote:

The idea of having a second mortgage was scary, but they decided to keep the one-bedroom unit, figuring they could rent it out, break even on the monthly carrying costs and eventually sell it for a profit. Britt found a tenant through a friend of a friend, who now pays $1,975. At that price, Britt and Mike are able to cover their monthly payments on the first mortgage, plus maintenance fees and property taxes. They’re left with a surplus of about $50 each month to put toward any surprise costs.
They still have to pay off the $200,000 remaining on the mortgage for their first condo, plus the $450,000 remaining on condo number two—but their monthly expenses, including taxes and condo fees, are a manageable $3,000. The old condo has already appreciated to around $500,000—nearly double what Mike bought it for less than a decade ago.

leftist heap posted:

$1200 a month on $1.5 million in debt (on assets "he values" at $3.2 million ). Seems like there should be easier and cheaper ways to make $1200/month. And that's before getting into the $200k BWM and $30k+ Raptors season tickets lmao.


$650k in debt while clearing with a whopping $50 "surplus" on their first condo. But it's OK because their old 1-bedroom condo has appreciated to "around" $500k, and nothing retains value like a 20+ year old one-bedroom condo.

If these are the "winners" I'd hate to see the losers. Not saying they aren't doing alright for themselves, but uh for starters I don't believe their balance sheets are as rosy as they are making them out to be (a lot of nearlys, almosts and arounds in those numbers) and even then some of these people sound like they're one special assessment and a slow market away from taking a bath.

RBC posted:

YOLO though right. Gold BMW and a toronto life article about you. So glad I left.

RBC posted:

1200/month on the 1.6 million is like a 1% return

quote:

Vancouver sees surge in rental project proposals


Developers have been sounding an alarm for more than a year that city and provincial rules make it almost impossible to develop rental projects.
But Vancouver, where the vast majority of rental housing in the region has been built in the past five years, is seeing an increase in the number of pitches for apartment projects from developers – including some who haven’t built many – or any – rentals before.

“There has definitely been increasing interest from our clients in building rental the last few years and, in particular, the last year,” said development consultant Gary Pooni, who advises companies that range from large, experienced developers to relative newcomers. "It’s not just one thing leading to this, but many factors.

“There is uncertainty in the condo market, even though Vancouver’s [job] economics are strong. Also, some of these second-generation, newer development companies are looking at long-term assets. They see great demand in a market they know they’re going to be in for a long time.”

Added to that, rents throughout Metro Vancouver have risen sharply in recent years, while interest rates are back down again, making it more attractive to borrow for large projects.

And the difference is not just because of the City of Vancouver’s rental incentives, because some projects are going to rental without any kind of subsidy, said Dan Garrison, the city’s assistant director for housing policy.

“We are seeing quite a bit of interest, and some of the proposals are not through our [incentive programs].”

So a company like Coromandel Properties, formerly CM Bay Properties Ltd., that has built condos almost exclusively, proposed two rental buildings on 41st Avenue near Oakridge on its website in July.

Another, Aurmon Development Ltd., had pitched a 12-storey, 132-unit condo building near Olympic Village three years ago, but the hoarding outside the site now says it will be rental.

Developer Ian Gillespie, of Vancouver House and Shangri-La fame, has proposed a rental building for Broadway and Alma Street, while Bentall Kennedy is proposing rental for the now-empty Safeway site on West Tenth Avenue in Point Grey, Mr. Pooni said.

The city’s website shows an application from a company called APCanada Investment Corp. for two rental apartments on south Oak Street, while the big Vancouver company Intracorp Homes recently announced it has partnered with a co-op group in Marpole to rebuild its units as well as providing additional rentals in a large, three-tower project.

That comes on top of a peak period of building involving rental projects proposed earlier. About 4,500 rental apartments were under construction as of May this year, according to statistics from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. and realtor Steve Saretsky. Another 500 new apartments are being started on average every month recently.

Some of this is because municipalities such as Burnaby, New Westminster and Vancouver require rental units as part of large projects. Another part is the result of a big effort by the province and the city of Vancouver to build non-profit housing that will be rented at below-market rates.

As of mid-June, the city had 4,000 non-profit and social-housing units approved or under construction, with another 900 in the application queue.

More units may be on the way, as well. Vancouver planners recently asked for permission to amend the zoning on big sites such as the former Oakridge bus barn and the Pearson-Dogwood lands near Cambie Street to incorporate more rentals under a pilot program to encourage projects that include units that can be rented at below-market rates.

A moderate-rental program has already generated 20 pilot projects, including a 28-storey tower at Broadway and Birch Street, a five-storey building in Kitsilano and two large projects on Hastings Street near Vancouver’s eastern boundary.

In spite of all that, rents in Vancouver show no sign yet of coming down.

According to a report this month from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, a two-bedroom apartment in the city rents for an average of $1,842 a month, meaning a person would need to earn slightly more than $35 an hour to afford it. For a one-bedroom unit at an average price of $1,389 a month, it’s $26.72 an hour.

Lead out in cuffs posted:

This is a nice dose of schadenfreude:

https://twitter.com/VanRELeaks/status/1145383397910446080

JawKnee posted:

https://twitter.com/Lidsville/status/1160368145825013760?s=19

Mandibular Fiasco posted:

Chip Wilson is the Worst Person in the World.

UnfortunateSexFart posted:

Mandibular Fiasco posted:

Using proportional changes over time is problematic to say the least

Mandibular Fiasco posted:

Chip Wilson is the Worst Person in the World.

Albino Squirrel posted:

Holy gently caress I looked at the comments. I don't know what I expected - maybe I've been coddled by SA and our penchant for guillotine jokes - but it's like 75% people defending Wilson and decrying degenerate communist art. What the gently caress, BC?

Albino Squirrel posted:

Holy gently caress I looked at the comments. I don't know what I expected - maybe I've been coddled by SA and our penchant for guillotine jokes - but it's like 75% people defending Wilson and decrying degenerate communist art. What the gently caress, BC?

quote:

Vancouver developers delay projects in sluggish condo market
At least 19 Metro Vancouver developments have been postponed or mothballed

Metro Vancouver’s sluggish residential real estate market has caused some developers to pull the plug on projects, while others either delay or “retool” housing developments or switch their firms’ focus to rental housing.

Pre-sale homebuyers at Richmond’s Alfa condominium project were left in the lurch in July when developer Anderson Square Holdings Ltd. sent them notices to say that it was cancelling their contracts for units in the under-construction building because the developer was “facing serious and significant circumstances beyond its reasonable control.”

Anderson’s executives were not available to comment on the decision to halt the Alfa project, but developers across the region are grappling with a sluggish housing market.

"The market is totally in the dumps right now,” said Holborn Group of Cos. CEO Joo Kim Tiah. “I don’t think people are aware or have a full grasp of what is going on. The B.C. economy is headed for tough times. The real estate economy is not going good.”

One project indefinitely on hold is the redevelopment of the Bay parkade on Seymour Street – a site that is connected to the Bay department store by a skywalk above the street. Tiah’s family owns most of the block bounded by West Georgia, Seymour, Dunsmuir and Richards streets, and he has been eyeing redeveloping that land for years.

He told Business in Vancouver that he plans to keep his commitment to build a social-housing building at 155 East 37th Avenue, on a 15-acre site that his company owns in Vancouver’s Little Mountain neighbourhood. Market condominium towers on the site, however, are delayed.

“I was hoping to bring [market housing in Little Mountain] to market in the spring of next year but it is now looking hopefully to be in the fall,” he said. “I don’t want the market to tank even further or to go even worse.”

Tiah blames the slowdown on taxes, including the longtime property transfer tax and the goods and services tax and new levies.

One new tax is the B.C. government’s 20% charge to foreign buyers who purchase homes in certain parts of the province, including the Lower Mainland. Another is its so-called “speculation tax,” which is levied on second homes in certain regions of the province. For Canadian citizens and permanent residents the tax on second homes in the province is 1% on the value of the home above $400,000. For non-citizens, and what B.C. Finance Minister Carole James calls “satellite families,” the second-home tax rate is 2% on the value that exceeds $400,000.

The City of Vancouver separately has an empty-homes tax that is 1% of the property’s value.

“Why would investors, or anyone, even want to invest in B.C. anymore?” Tiah asked. “The yields are so low and the taxes that you pay on an annual basis are higher than the yields are.”

Tiah said he fears that developers across the province will have to start laying off staff.

The good news, however, is that there was a 23.5% bump in the region’s home sales in July, compared with the same month a year ago, although sales in every other month this year have been below the pace set last year. Even in July, sales were 7.8% below the 10-year sales average for that month, according to the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver.

Altus Group vice-president Matthew Boukall told BIV that his company is tracking at least 19 Metro Vancouver projects that were supposed to launch either in late 2018 or in early 2019 and that have either delayed their opening date or shifted their marketing message to be “coming soon.”

Out of those projects, at least four have either approved or conditionally approved development permits, he said.

Boukall added that the delayed projects represent around 4,300 units that were supposed to come to market between January 1 and June 1. About 8,700 units were brought to market during the same time period in 2018, he said. That means that the delayed projects have reduced the inventory of new homes entering the market by almost half, he said.

Not all projects are struggling in the current market.

Beedie Living managing partner Rob Fiorvento told BIV that his company sold about 80% of the 39 homes at its Storia development in Burnaby in the two weeks after pre-sales launched July 13.

The development may owe its success to its many larger three-bedroom condos, he said.

Even Beedie has one project that is delayed, however. It had planned to launch pre-sales for its Slate development at Brentwood in September and has pushed that back to early next year.

The solution for some developers has been to pivot their businesses toward purpose-built rental housing.

Coromandel Properties, for example, has primarily built condominiums but plans to develop rental buildings on 41st Avenue near Oakridge.

Cressey now similarly focuses on rental housing.

“In 2016, we became uncomfortable with the home values that were being achieved for condominium product,” said Cressey executive vice-president Hani Lammam.

“We felt it was unsustainable so we shifted our business model at that time to do more rental and more office product, and to step away from condominiums.”

Municipal and federal incentives helped Cressey make that shift.

City incentives usually include lower development cost charges, higher maximum heights and densities and fewer required parking spaces, Lammam said. Federal perks from the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corp. can include lower interest rates and longer amortizations, Lammam added.

The result is that Cressey’s Conrad rental building at 3365 Commercial Drive is well underway, and the company just started building its Wilkinson project at 1715 Cook Street in the Olympic Village neighbourhood. The City of North Vancouver also provides incentives for developers to build rental apartments, and Lammam said that Cressey is going through a rezoning process for a potential rental project on West Esplanade. •

UnfortunateSexFart posted:

It's actually happening.gif. Like actually


https://biv.com/article/2019/08/vancouver-developers-delay-projects-sluggish-condo-market

Note that Joo Kim Tiah is the piece of poo poo who partnered with Trump for the Trump tower, and has also been postponing promised social housing at Riley Park for over a decade now after being allowed to knock down the huge social housing development that was already there.

rhazes posted:

I remember seeing signs and billboards about that housing by QE park. Do you have any articles about the event(s), historical or more recent? I was younger and not a Vancouver resident at the time, but it certainly was off-putting and concerning enough that I have vivid images of it.

quote:

The unveiling of 53 new units of affordable senior housing at Little Mountain was met with mixed emotions Thursday.

The City of Vancouver and B.C. Housing, along with developer Holborn Properties and non-profit More Than a Roof, held a ribbon cutting Thursday to mark the opening of Little Mountain's first new social housing building.

The redevelopment of the 15-acre site will involve a mix of subsidized and market housing. Proceeds from the sale of Little Mountain property are to be reinvested as supportive housing for people with mental health problems, addiction, and other chronic conditions.

“As we build on Little Mountain, we'll build more in the city with regards to mental health and addictions and changing people's lives,” said Housing Minister Rich Coleman.

Once completed, Little Mountain will have 1,500 units of affordable housing with 10 reserved for the Musqueam Nation.

The new five-storey building, which is being managed by non-profit More Than a Roof, features 47 one-bedroom units and six two-bedroom apartments. It includes an amenity room, community garden, patio space, a bicycle and scooter storage room and a weekly, low-cost food program for residents.

Ken and Kathy Moore moved from Abbotsford to live in one of the new units.

“For us to take that extremely long bus ride was not only hard but financially hard,” he told reporters. “I want to thank B.C. Housing and More Than a Roof for changing our lives.”

Vision Vancouver Coun. Kerry Jang said the Little Mountain site is “the rebirth of a neighbourhood, the rebirth of an area.”

He added, “I know it's been a long time coming, but we're finally here, and it's finally moving ahead.”

The length of time for development to begin at the site, which was home to a social housing complex for decades before it was demolished, was noted by critics Thursday.

David Chudnovsky, a spokesman for Community Advocates for Little Mountain (CALM), expressed anger at what he calls the displacing of “hundreds” of low-income Little Mountain residents and the fact that they were promised they could move back to the site by the 2010 Olympics.

“They have the nerve to have a celebration, cutting a ribbon on a tiny, tiny, little bit of what they promised was going to be finished in 2010,” he said. “It's craziness.”

Questioned about the delay in having residents returning by 2010, Coleman said, “It didn't work out . . . zoning, development, city hall, whatever the case, it had an effect on the project.”

“We would like to have most of it built by now,” he added. “I believe we're going before city council shortly and that should take us to the next phase.”

Ingrid Steenhuisen, one of the original residents of the original Little Mountain housing complex and a famous holdout against relocation, estimated she’s one of 11 to 13 original Little Mountain tenants who’ve moved into new building. She described living in the new building as “OK.”

“It's large enough to exist,” she said, “but not necessarily be able to live doing some of the same things that I used to do in my larger space.”

UnfortunateSexFart posted:

I can't find much on its history. It was a run down early 1960s slum that was unusual in its huge size for Vancouver (15 acres). There was a pretty notorious gang from there according to my mom, who moved to Vancouver in the 40s. It was demolished around 2008 and supposed to be replaced by a bunch of new condos that in turn financed 1,500 units of new social housing. But only one small 50 unit building was finished in 2015 and the rest is at the concept stage at best. Here's a 2015 article:


https://www.vancourier.com/news/little-mountain-sees-first-new-social-housing-1.1820095

My first ever rental was across the street, I managed to live on about $1,200 per month with two roommates in a three bedroom house back in the late 90s. It was a grimy part of town but, besides having my car stolen once, it was ok. Still mad about losing my first MP3 player in the car through, it didn't even hold a full cd worth of songs but I loved it.

Here's what it was supposed to look like in 2016:



Here's what it looks like now, basically the only empty area in Vancouver proper (my old place circled in yellow, only new building in the bottom right):



Now that the market has collapsed it'll probably be another 15 years before it's done.

Skyscraperpage is still talking about it here on a thread that was started in 2008: http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=156084&page=11

quote:

The Little Mountain Housing Project was built in 1954 and was Vancouver’s oldest and most successful social housing complex.

Then…

In 2006 the Canadian Government divested its Public Housing properties to the provinces.

Then…

In 2007, the BC government embarked on an aggressive plan to demolish its newly acquired public housing properties, and sell the lands to private developers. Little Mountain was to be the first of many to be redeveloped. They argued that it was best to build high density market housing on the property and retain a small portion of the land to be retained as Public/Social Housing (the same number of units as was originally built at Little Mountain. Working on behalf of the BC government, BC Housing claimed that profits from the sale would be spread across the province to other communities suffering similar housing crises, and would be used in Vancouver, to fund the construction of new “Social Housing” in Vancouver, aimed at alleviating homelessness based on mental health and drug addiction issues.

UnfortunateSexFart posted:

Joo Kim Tiah posted:

“Why would investors, or anyone, even want to invest in B.C. anymore?” Tiah asked. “The yields are so low and the taxes that you pay on an annual basis are higher than the yields are.”

Booourns posted:

I mean honestly what's even the point of building housing anything unless rich people can get richer off it