David Paddon
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TORONTO – Royal LePage Real Estates Services came out Tuesday with a revamped property listing website that integrates new Google search features, mobile technology and data supplied through the industry’s main association.

The initiative is part of a technological evolution that’s giving home buyers new tools for tapping property and neighbourhood information, regardless of which devices they use or which brokerage has the property listing.

Phil Soper, Royal LePage’s president and chief executive, said Tuesday he believes the revamped www.royallepage.ca is the best in the Canadian real estate industry “right now” but expects to be challenged by rivals.

“When we’re designing services for market, we benchmark against our competitors and also the service offered by the Canadian Real Estate Association, Realtor.ca, and think we’ve clearly designed something that’s superior.”

Soper said he recognizes there’s “no such thing” as a permanent technological edge and is already working on another generation.

In fact, one of LePage’s big rivals – Re/Max – came to market earlier this year with an updated web portal giving consumers access to MLS market information by adopting the CREA’s data distribution facility standard.

David Brown, executive vice-president for Re/Max in Ontario and Atlantic Canada, said he doesn’t accept LePage’s claim to technological superiority – even now – but added the bigger picture is a change in approach by real estate professionals.

“I think that the underlying story is that the industry is leveraging its own data smarter than it has historically,” Brown said.

“We’re entering an era now where we’re really accommodating buyers in a much better, more sophisticated way with the tools that we’re developing.”

Both Re/Max and LePage use CREA’s Multiple Listing Service to collect other member companies’ listings information and display it through the Internet so consumers have more choice when they’re searching.

“Consumers are looking to see all the listings,” Brown said. “Think of yourself. You’re out shopping for a property. You want to see the listings in the area of your interest and you want to see it on any device.”

“I think our real success has been in mobile,” Brown says. “Forty per cent of our traffic now is mobile.”

He says Remax.ca’s responsive design automatically detects whether the user has a tablet, smartphone or other device and optimizes the format accordingly.

RoyalLePage.ca also has mobile features but uses a different technical approach, in partnership with Plastic Mobile. It also takes a different approach to integrating Google’s well-known Maps and Streetview features.

Among other things, LePage uses an experimental Google feature to display neighbourhood information such as the location of schools but Soper acknowleges it doesn’t have an exclusive arrangement with the search giant.

Royal LePage provides services to about 14,000 real estate professionals in 600 locations across Canada while Re/Max has 19,900 sales associates in more than 700 independently-owned and operated offices in Canada.

© 1996-2013 Rogers Communications

Jim Adair
Other

The Competition Tribunal has dismissed the Competition Bureau’s complaint that the Toronto Real Estate Board’s policies are anti-competitive. It’s a huge win for TREB and for CREA, but that may not be the end of the story.

The bureau’s application before the tribunal requested that TREB eliminate rules that it claimed “denied real estate agents the ability to introduce innovative Internet-based real estate brokerage services, such as Virtual Office Websites (VOWs).”

Although ruling that the bureau failed to make its case under one section of the Competition Act, the tribunal stated in “an observation” that another section of the act “might give the commissioner a means to apply to the tribunal.”

The decision says: “We realize that the remedies are less extensive under section 90.1 but nevertheless the commissioner might be able to seek an order prohibiting the members of TREB”s Board of Directions (who are competitors) from enforcing the restrictions ….However, we note that this observation is not intended to suggest whether such an application in this case would succeed on the merits.”

John Pecman, interim commissioner of competition, said in a statement: “While I am disappointed that the tribunal has dismissed the bureau’s application, we will be reviewing the tribunal’s decision to determine our next steps.”

Lawrence Dale, who was president of RealtySellers Real Estate at the time of the application and was granted intervenor status at the tribunal, says: “This was a classic case of a legal technicality where nothing gets resolved. The tribunal said the case was filed under the wrong section and has now steered the bureau to refile under the correct section.  Once these technicalities are addressed, the fundamental issues still remain to be determined.  How long that takes to get resolved is anyone’s guess.”

Dale, who has now closed RealtySellers and is with Roger’s Zoocasa website, says, “Despite the uncertainty that this decision has created, I am encouraged by TREB’s more recent approaches to balancing the needs of consumers wanting more information with historical practices.”

Vernon Clement Jones
Other

Investors are facing a new kind of competition from condo developers offering rent-to-own programs for young Canadians who’d rather own than lease, despite tighter mortgage rules.

The Toronto’s Cinema Towers is the latest development hawking that alternative, allowing homebuyers/renters to sign purchase agreements for units of their choosing.  When they move into those downtown condos, still under construction, a portion of their monthly rent, “along with the total amount accumulated through” the developer’s deposit payment plan “will be credited toward (a) 5 per cent down payment.”

After one year, it falls to the tenant to come up with the remainder of any funds needed to make up that down payment.

The offer is largely seen as a way for developers to shift new units even as first-time buyers find themselves shut out of the market by more stringent mortgage rules, introduced last summer. It also helps developers compensate for what some analysts are calling a “shrink-back” in investor demand.

Still, condo investors with units of their own to lease will increasingly have to contend with this kind of direct competition from builders, say analysts. If that rent-to-own strategy catches on, it could slacken demand for rental units even in the GTA, helping stabilize rents, says consumer advocates.

But investors remain the great uncertainty, say economists, trying to gauge their long-term commitment to the market and what if effect any pull-out might have on property values.

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Abbotsford’s fines townhomes now available

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Upper floors of East Hastings site empty for decades

Mike Howell
Van. Courier

The owner of the property at 71-77 East Hastings plans to develop it into housing and retail. Photograph by: Dan Toulgoet , Vancouver Courier

An iconic set of adjoining buildings on the East Hastings strip most recently home to a pawn shop is expected to undergo a major renovation that will include adding 19 rental apartments and a retail business.

The addition of housing is significant since nobody has lived in the upper floors of the former B.C. Collateral and Loans buildings at 71-77 East Hastings St. for more than 40 years.

The pawn shop on the main floor has been closed for several years and the large neon “loans” sign once mounted on the west building’s facade is gone.

Located near Columbia Street, the C-listed heritage buildings are smack dab in the middle of a neighbourhood desperate for low-income housing and engaged in a mounting debate over gentrification.

But property owner Steven Lippman of No. 380 Cathedral Ventures Ltd., which owns the York Rooms and other single-room-occupancy hotels in the neighbourhood, said his project couldn’t be considered gentrification. “We rehabilitate, we re-energize, we reinvigorate, we re-use, we recycle,” Lippman told the Courier. “It’s an old junky building and we want to fix it up and put people who are low-income back in there. That’s what we do.”

Lippman and his partners want to build 17 apartments ranging from 224 to 301 sq. feet and two others at 357 and 365 sq. feet. Five of the units will be subsidized for seniors while the 14 other apartments are expected to rent from $650 to $750 a month.

The proposal will go before city council Wednesday and city staff recommend the project be given the go-ahead because it’s consistent with council policy that calls for maintaining and upgrading housing in the Downtown Eastside.

In February 2008, the proposal was approved under a previous owner, who never went ahead with the project. Lippman is requesting council simply approve the same project, which called for a one-storey addition over the east side of the building.

The staff report makes it clear that any future application to change the use or “stratify” the buildings will be subject to all necessary city approvals and the council of the day will maintain “unfettered right to refuse such an application.”

The report also noted some members of the Downtown Eastside Local Area Planning Committee were opposed to giving Lippman the go-ahead for the project because they think the $650 to $700 rent is too high.

“You can’t please everybody,” Lippman said.

Wes Regan, executive director of the Hastings Crossing Business Improvement Association and a member of the committee, isn’t one of those opposed to the project.

“It’s going to be an improvement from its current use,” said Regan, referring to the 40-year vacancy of the dilapidated units on the upper floors of the buildings.

Regan, however, is opposed to the city allowing more new market housing to be built in the Downtown Eastside, leaving low-income people seeking the welfare rental rate of $375 per month without affordable housing. In 2011, city statistics show only 24 per cent of single-room-occupancy hotels were renting at or below the $375 rate.

“We shouldn’t belittle developers who are trying to find ways of providing affordable housing or social housing – or whatever it is – but we should also be constantly on our senior levels of government to come to the table with more,” he said.

Council will meet at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday to discuss Lippman’s proposal.

© Copyright (c) Vancouver Courier

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Surrey city council gave final reading to the 160-metre-tall 3 Civic Plaza, giving developer Century Group the go-ahead to start building. The $150-million tower will stand in the heart of City Centre in the 10300-block of City Parkway. Photograph by: submitted , for Surrey NOW

Surrey City Centre skyline will soon be in the shadow of 3 Civic Plaza, a $150-million 52-storey multi-use building that city council approved Monday night. The structure will house 353 condominiums, 144 hotel rooms and five floors of offices. This is an artist’s conception of 3 Civic Plaza at night. Photograph by: ‘, centurygroup.ca

3 Civic Plaza lobby

This is an artist’s conception of the Civic Plaza, with the new City Hall

This is an artist’s conception of the SkyTrain, 3 Civic Plaza and Surrey City Centre.

his is an artist’s conception of the Civic Plaza crowd and Surrey City Centre.

Surrey City Centre skyline will soon be in the shadow of 3 Civic Plaza, a 52-storey multi-use building that city council approved Monday night.

Council gave final reading to the 160-metre-tall development, giving developer Century Group the go-ahead to start building. The $150-million tower will stand in the heart of City Centre in the 10300-block of City Parkway.

Coun. Marvin Hunt spoke to the importance of the structure, which will house 353 condominiums, 144 hotel rooms and five floors of offices.

“Right now, the major hotel that we have in the City Centre is the Compass Point and I think it’s down to the last number of days before it is closed and bulldozed to make way for the new Coast Capital Headquarters,” he said. “We don’t have a major hotel in the City Centre, so that is absolutely critical.”

Hunt also noted that the location of 3 Civic Plaza is ideal as it’s easily accessible by transit and is just paces away from the new city hall, the City Centre Library, SFU Surrey and Central City Shopping Centre.

Plans for the proposed skyline-transforming building have been in the works the last few years. Council gave 3 Civic Plaza third reading at a public hearing last July and Century Group has since made adjustments to the number of parking stalls for residents.

Assuming not all condo owners will have cars, the developers were approved to provide 0.85 parking spaces for every one-bedroom unit, and one parking space for every unit with two or more bedrooms.

The developers have said that they hope to begin construction this summer, with the building scheduled for completion by early 2016.

© Copyright (c) Surrey Now

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