Canadian listings on Zillow now live

Ephraim Vecina
Mortgage Broker News

Last week, U.S.-based online real estate marketplace Zillow announced that thousands of Canadian for-sale listings have finally gone live on its mobile app and website.

Zillow’s data-sharing deals with multiple Canadian real estate firms represent more than 50,000 listings, and these will be rolled out on a continuous basis.

The arrangement will make the properties visible and accessible to the marketplace’s more than 100 million non-U.S. visitors per year.

“It’s an exciting time at Zillow and we’re thrilled to start expanding our listings coverage outside the U.S. and provide the millions of home shoppers who use Zillow every day an easy way to see Canadian homes for sale,” Zillow chief industry development officer Errol Samuelson said.

 “Zillow provides unprecedented global exposure for Canadian listings on a reliable and trusted platform home shoppers love. We’re excited about the momentum we’re making in Canada, and with every new Canadian partnership we build, the home shopping experience on Zillow will only get better,” Samuelson added.

Zillow users will be able to view every Canadian for-sale listing’s price, description, photos, and other relevant facts. Interest would-be buyers can also search for properties by postal code, city, or province.

Copyright © 2018 Key Media

Montreal to build landmark condo tower in downtown core, with no foreign buyers? tax

Ursula Leonowicz
The Vancouver Sun

Starting at the bottom with its historic facade and 10-storey podium on St-Jacques Street and ending at the very top, 200 metres high in the air, Victoria sur le Parc is like nothing Montreal has ever seen, and with its 320,000 square feet of office space, 32,000 square feet of commercial space and 400 condominiums, it’s sure to become a landmark on par with the most stunning residences on Beach Ave.

“Montreal is growing at an unprecedented rate and we have the wind in our sails,” said Jean Langlois, director of communications and marketing for Broccolini, the developer behind the project. “As the largest mixed-use development the city’s core has seen in over a decade, Victoria sur le Parc is going to become its emblem.”

A combination of high-paying jobs and low cost of living are currently making Montreal one of the most affordable cities in North America to live in. The city’s unemployment rate is currently at its lowest recorded level in history, hovering around six per cent, and over the next three years more than $6.4 billion is going to be invested in the city’s infrastructure.

More than $2 billion in foreign investment was brought into the city last year, and unlike Toronto and Vancouver, there’s no foreign buyers’ tax in Montreal, and no tax imposed on vacant dwellings.

“The new light-rail system is another one of the city’s advantages,” Langlois said. “Even though it already has one of the most efficient public transit systems in the world, it’s going to get even better.”

Neighbourhood “People who choose to live downtown do so for the location above everything else, and what they may lose in square footage they gain in lifestyle and quality of living,” he said. “You can walk anywhere or take the métro and really live life beyond walls, exploring everything the city has to offer.”

Located in what’s known as the Quartier international, which is situated at the intersection of the city’s financial district and Old Port, Victoria sur le Parc is adjacent to Square Victoria — a lovely public green space that has been around since the early 1800s — and connected to Square-Victoria–OACI subway station.

Populated by a variety of visit-worthy sites, such as the Palais des congrès de Montréal and the Montreal stock exchange, the area is also home to a variety of mouth-watering foodie destinations, museums, shopping and entertainment options.

Design and architecture Anthony and Michael Broccolini, the two cousins behind the project, grew up surrounded by construction and real estate. They always looked up to the kinds of skyscrapers that helped put New York on the map.

“They think big and they have that sky’s-the-limit attitude, and that’s what Victoria sur le Parc is going to be,” Langlois said. “Broccolini is going to be 70 years old next year and it’s a third-generation, family-owned company — there’s a lot of pride involved in whatever we do.”

To have a vibrant downtown area, you need people who call it home — to make it feel like a place that’s lived in and has a soul. “We’re very conscious of the fact that we’re creating something that’s going to be here for years to come and that we’re changing the city’s skyline, so the responsibility that comes with that is huge,” Langlois said. “We’re proud to contribute to these parts of downtown that become like vertical communities.”

Units and penthouses Units will vary from one- and two-bedroom condos, feature nine-foot ceilings, central air conditioning and engineered hardwood flooring. The penthouses will be located on the tower’s top levels, from the 51st to the 57th floors, and come with 10- to 12-foot ceilings, heated floors and a wine fridge.

Amenities

• 24-hour concierge service
• Lobby with marble floors and floor-to-ceiling windows
• Four elevators
• Owners’ lounge with a fully-equipped kitchen, bar and lounge area
• State-of-the-art gym with yoga and meditation room
• Indoor pool, steam and sauna
• Exterior terrace with an outdoor infinity pool, green space and barbecue area
• Parking and electric car-charging stations
• Bicycle parking and repair
• Dog washing station
• Package delivery area

“All of the services that we’re trying to get on the ground floor, in the commercial area, will act as added amenities to the building and its residents,” Langlois explained. “Like a café, a boutique-style grocery store, and a restaurant — services that cater to making everyday living easier.”

Delivery and sales office Victoria sur le Parc is in pre-construction and is scheduled for delivery in 2023. The sales office is located at 700 St-Jacques St. Montreal, QC, H3C 1E9.

© 2018 Postmedia Network Inc.

50 Electronic Avenue speaks to its Port Moody location

Michael Bernard
The Vancouver Sun

Project: 50 Electronic Avenue

Project location: 50 Electronic Avenue, Port Moody

Project Scope:  A total of 358 homes ranging from one- to four-bedroom units in two six-storey wood-frame buildings. Close to Westcoast Express and SkyTrain, downtown Port Moody, a large green space and waterfront Rocky Point Park

Prices: From $459,000 for a 603-square-foot phase-one one-bedroom home; from $679,900 for a two-bedroom home and $875,000 for three-bedroom units (four bedroom homes available in phase two)

Developer: Panatch Group

Architect: Ciccozzi Architecture Inc.

Interior Designer: BYU Design (Bob’s Your Uncle Design)

Presentation Centre: 50 Electronic Avenue, Port Moody

Centre’s Hours: noon — 5 p.m., Saturday to Thursday 

Sales Phone: 604-492-2202

Website: www.50electronicave.com

Completion: April 2021 (phase 1), late 2021 (phase 2)

Twenty years ago, when Kush Panatch bought a 3.5-acre parcel of industrial land opposite Port Moody’s downtown, he knew it might take a long time for it to appreciate in value. What he hadn’t anticipated was the new SkyTrain Evergreen extension or the nearby Westcoast Express station would make it excellent space for a 358-unit condominium development. 

“I remember coming here. I went down and walked around the park. It was simply a big industrial area with a sawmill,” said Panatch, a first-generation Canadian whose family fled Africa for a better life in Canada.

Called 50 Electronic Avenue, the two six-storey buildings are part of a transformation the former industrial area has been undergoing over the last few years, with some of Metro Vancouver’s best-known developers investing heavily in new projects there.

Panatch’s family business, the Panatch Group, is fuelling that urban renewal with an offer to help young families get started in real estate by offering a rent-to-own scheme for some 30 homes in the complex.

The plan, developed after some Port Moody council members expressed concern about the lack of affordable housing in the neighbourhood, provides below-market rentals for qualifying families. Panatch said those families are given the option two years later to buy the home by applying the money they have saved on the discounted rent and receiving credit for all rent payments they have made.

That offer is just one of several ways the development demonstrates its community spirit. The homes share a 9,000-square-foot amenity building with everything from a doggy wash to separate areas for adults, teenagers and children’s activities.

The project, designed by Rob Ciccozzi and his firm Ciccozzi Architecture Inc., works hard to engage with the community and to “activate” street life on both Murray Avenue and Klahanie Drive which the two buildings border, Ciccozzi said. The east building is entirely residential, while the west building has commercial and retail space on the ground floor.

“I can see a coffee place and a little deli, the kind of commercial spaces that would activate the street,” said Ciccozzi. “We want to encourage the public to walk up and down the streets. You can’t do that without having the critical mass (of residents.)”

To encourage that interaction, Ciccozzi broke down the massing of the two buildings with a walkway between the two, complete with a water feature. There are exterior details, such as glass railings, balconies up to the fourth floor and a parapet for top levels that makes the building heights a little less imposing. The materials used— red brick, steel and rough timbers —also make the buildings attractive, while paying homage to the industrial history of the rapidly evolving neighbourhood, where a brewer’s row and accompanying restaurants have popped up over the last few years.

The building interiors were also designed to combine traditional elements with modern innovations to make family living more convenient and practical, say Cheryl Broadhead and Nicole Duval of BYU Interiors.

“We had a lot of conversations at the beginning with the developer about how to build community into the project, making sure that neighbours knew neighbours, and that they had comfortable homes that had character that they were proud of and that really worked for them,” said Broadhead.

“People have space within their units that can really house their belongings or display them if they want,” she said. “Family values really seem to come through. It’s a joy to work with a developer that is like that.”

 A tour of the two show homes — a two-bedroom unit with a rooftop patio and a one-bedroom unit — illustrate how the firm maximized the use of space. The homes make liberal use of pantry cupboards extending into the space adjacent to the kitchens. The two-bedroom home features his-and-hers closets and drawers in a corridor leading to a spacious ensuite bathroom, leaving the bedroom free of a space-hogging chest of drawers or other furniture. Medicine cabinets are incorporated into all bathrooms, as are the accompanying niches for storage and design appeal around the mirrors.

 “People have space within their units that can really house their belongings or display them if they want,” said Broadhead. “It’s kind of like boat design: you try to use every little bit because every bit counts when condos are selling for so much.”

Broadhead said BYU also tried to mix the old and the new, building in details such a small-scale hexagons on the bathroom floor and in the tub surrounds, reminiscent of the traditional “penny rounds” of yesteryear. In the kitchen, the team made use of subway tiles at counter level, a throwback to another era, as a complement to the clean lines and background colours of the cabinetry.

The two-bedroom model also shows off the convenient staircase that leads to a spacious, tiled private roof garden on top of the buildings.

BYU was also responsible for planning the use of Club 50, the three-storey shared amenity building, which allocates a separate area for children attached to an outside playground, a video arcade for teens and a lounge area for adults.

The amenity also has a fitness facility, a yoga studio, a dog-wash room, a bicycle repair room, a media room and co-working space with two boardrooms. Outside, there is a one-acre elevated private backyard that includes a dog park and children’s playground, green lawns and quiet courtyards.

The well-planned kitchens come with premium Bosch high performance wall oven, a 30-inch gas cooktop, and quiet dishwasher with custom panel, a 36-inch Fisher & Paykel french-door refrigerator with ice maker, a Panasonic stainless steel microwave and Venmar hood fan. Countertops are quartz with a waterfall edge and porcelain tile backsplash. 

The homes come in light and dark colour palettes and have open floor plans with nine-foot ceilings. All closets include custom millwork organizers.

© 2018 Postmedia Network Inc.

Some cities with high housing costs boast high incomes to match ? but not Vancouver

PETER KENTER
The Vancouver Sun

The Vancouver housing market has made home ownership unaffordable for many people, as the gap between wages and house prices widens. Skyrocketing housing prices contribute in large part to the disparity, but the region’s relatively low median household income could also be a significant factor.

Andy Yan, director of The City Program at Simon Fraser University, sifted through census data from a wide range of 117 North American cities to determine that the gap between median income and house prices, his Affordability Index, was the highest in Metro Vancouver. He calculated that the median home price here was $800,220, 11 times median household income of $72,662 in 2015.

Some cities with high housing costs boast high incomes to match. Vancouver doesn’t. Median housing prices are more expensive in both San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara and in San Francisco-OaklandHayward, but incomes are also significantly higher. Vancouver ranked 50th in median household income in 2015.

Using data from the 2016 Census, Vancouver’s median pre-tax household income fell well behind 14 other metropolitan regions in Canada alone, including Calgary ($99,583); Edmonton ($94,447); Regina ($84,447); Ottawa-Gatineau ($82,053); Toronto ($78,373); Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo ($77,229); and Hamilton ($75,464). It barely crested the Canadian household median income of $70,336.

As one of the principals of MountainMath, a Vancouver-based company specializing in data, analytics, modeling and visualization, Jens von Bergmann loves to go down the rabbit hole of statistics, including those surrounding the area’s housing market.

He notes that the statistics could mask other economic data. For example, median Vancouver household incomes skew somewhat lower for a reason.

“That’s because there are a lot of one-person households in Vancouver, compared to Toronto, for example,” he says. “But even if you adjusted for that, Vancouver would still come out terrible on housing affordability.”

Median incomes might also present a misleading figure. The top 50 per cent of income earners could continue to get richer — and continue to buy homes — while the bottom 50 per cent might continue to become poorer, leaving the median income figure exactly where it is. For top earners, housing prices might be considered affordable.

While efforts to cool off the housing markets have succeeded to some degree, they’ve also affected only a limited segment of the housing stock.

“My research shows that it’s primarily affected the prices of homes valued at more than $2 million,” says von Bergmann. “That doesn’t make lower-priced homes any more affordable.”

In recent years, Tom Plumb, president and CEO of Victoriabased Kinetic Construction Ltd., has been trying to convince workers to relocate, so that they can work on projects in the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island. It’s a tough sell.

“It’s not just a construction problem,” he says. “It’s restaurant and retail and a host of industries. Tradespeople are probably the best paid members of the working class, and we’re trying to stay ahead of the market with wage scale, but still not getting any traction.”

Plumb says that the construction workers Kinetic hires reinforce the divide between homeowners and non-owners.

“The workers we engage are almost exclusively living in the area already,” he says. “I couldn’t go to Calgary or back East to find tradespeople to relocate. We could use more workers, but we have to make due with who we already have.”

The gap between wages and house prices hasn’t yet resulted in a significant number of insolvencies, says Lana Gilbertson, a licensed insolvency trustee for MNP LTD in Vancouver.

One likely explanation is that there are two groups, those already in the market, and those who will never get into the market. If homeowners are funding their debt by borrowing heavily on rising equity, the strategy could result in major financial distress should property values tank.

“I don’t believe that homeowners are any better at keeping up with expenses than the rest of us,” she says. “But we’re not seeing people who own a home coming to us about insolvency. That may be because homeowners in the Lower Mainland are using their growing equity to meet their other consumer debt obligations.”

For many people who have been through an insolvency proceeding and are trying to rebuild a credit rating, homeownership in the area is now out of reach.

“Credit ratings can be rebuilt, but they can’t come up with the large sum of cash required for a down payment,” Gilbertson says. “They also can’t demonstrate the income that would support the mortgages required to buy a home.”

Gilbertson notes that a collapse in housing prices, sharp increases in mortgage rates or an economic slowdown could change the financial picture for homeowners who might find themselves holding more debt than their equity will support.

“If any of that happens, we may begin to see homeowners in trouble or unable to keep up,” she says. “What goes up must often come down, and it can come down hard.”

© 2018 Postmedia Network Inc.

Canadian delinquencies on the rise

Chris Fournier and Erik Hertzberg
REP

A slowing economy and rising borrowing costs will probably push Canadian delinquency rates higher in coming months, according to the country’s largest credit reporting firm.

Bill Johnston, vice president of data and analytics at Equifax Canada, predicts the rate of late payments on consumer debt — credit cards, auto loans and other non-mortgage liabilities — will begin rising in late 2018 or early 2019. Delinquencies reached 1.06 percent in the second quarter, close to the lowest level since the 2008 financial crisis.

The Bank of Canada has raised rates four times since mid-2017 and is widely expected to do so again next week as it seeks to normalize the cost of borrowing. Johnston said higher rates, slowing economic growth and a reduction in mortgage volumes will likely strain household balance sheets.

“We are probably hitting that level out point, and maybe even a bit of a backup as we go forward now,” Johnston said in a telephone interview, referring to delinquency rates, which peaked at 1.65 percent in early 2010 and have since trended steadily downward. “We are starting to see interest rates have an effect,” he said.

Equifax tracks the proportion of people who fully pay off their credit cards each month, data that provides a good measure of cash flow, Johnston says. The proportion has declined on a year-over-year basis every month since August 2017, shortly after the Bank of Canada started hiking rates again after a seven-year hiatus. “We do think cash flows are starting to be impacted,” he said.

According to Johnston, about 43 percent of all non-mortgage debt is lines of credit, much of it home equity lines of credit, which is variable rate. Every time borrowing costs rise by 25 basis points, “your monthly payment changes. We’re starting to see that flow through a little bit, because people are still using a lot of lines of credit.”

There’s also a “lag effect” of about 3 months to 6 months between when credit growth slows and when delinquency rates rise, he said. Johnston declined to give an exact forecast for delinquencies, saying the timing is tricky, but probably in the fourth quarter this year or the first quarter next year, the rate will start to tick higher “by a few basis points.”

“We don’t see it spiking or whip-lashing back up,” he said. However, “we’ve become used to seeing this down trend where it’s been improving every single quarter. That’s sort of where we see it coming to the end.” 

Copyright Bloomberg News

Copyright © 2018 Key Media Pty Ltd

other

The latest Facebook breach has bigger implications for business users who represent their organizations on Facebook, or for organizations that have their own Facebook account. This is because the risks of a presence on Facebook can damage your organization’s reputation if you’re not careful. 

In extreme cases, the damage could be worse. This means that there need to be rules for business on Facebook. Here are some examples: 

• Do not assume Facebook is secure. Despite the company’s assurances, its record indicates that any information on Facebook is at risk of public disclosure. This is probably not an issue for most customer service uses, but not for anything beyond that.

• Never believe that your Facebook account can’t be (or won’t be) compromised.

• Don’t expect Facebook to come to your assistance. While the company does make global changes to react to security incidents, helping individual users can be problematic.

With those issues in mind, here are some practices to keep in mind:

• Don’t use your Facebook login anywhere except Facebook. This may mean having to set up a special email address just for Facebook use.

• Don’t use your Facebook password anywhere else. Have your password manager generate a unique password that’s hard to guess, and then have the password manager log you in.

• Don’t fall for those offers to use your Facebook login on other websites. This is where those tokens come into play.

• Use two-factor authentication for your Facebook account (and for your other accounts as well). It’s free, and it can help protect your account against credential theft.

• Make sure you control access to the company account so that you can prevent unauthorized employees or others from posting as if they were speaking for the company.

• Ownership of the company Facebook account belongs to the company. Your social media staffer shouldn’t be able to simply leave and take your followers.

• Require that employees who post on behalf of the company know your social media policy and agree to adhere to it. 

Of course, none of these steps will necessarily protect you if your information is taken in the next breach, but at least you can minimize the damage. For example, if you only use the Facebook login information on Facebook, then it won’t matter if it’s stolen, because the thieves can’t use it elsewhere. But even then, you should change your password from time to time. 

A Lot of Good Reasons to Use Social Networks in Business 

All of this is enough to discourage companies from using Facebook or other social media, but it shouldn’t. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram along with other such sites are effective and efficient ways to reach your customers. Your discussions and interactions with them can also help instruct others who have questions, and you can provide product and service information in a casual, non-threatening way.

But with that in mind, there are a few more rules: 

• Never use Facebook to accept personal information, payment information or anything else that can’t stand being completely public.
• Never use Facebook or other media to make any future-looking statements unless you’ve already issued the press release. If you want an example of how bad that can be, just refer to Elon Musk’s $40 million tweet.
• Never assume your competitors aren’t reading every word of your Facebook page. 

If the Facebook breach has done nothing else, it has demonstrated that there’s a huge potential for security risks there, and you can’t just cruise along thinking that it’s a form of recreation. For your company, Facebook is a totally serious but highly effective tool. 

The social network can be highly effective in providing customer support, provided you use it to make initial contact but then handle the details elsewhere. With Twitter you can take it to a DM. With Facebook, perhaps you can use Messenger. 

Facebook can also be effective in introducing potential customers to your company and all of the things your company cares about. You can demonstrate products, show videos, even set up meetings for your sales department. 

Depending on the type of business you have, Facebook can be your primary face to the world, and it can be very good at that. 

But like all powerful tools, you need to be careful how you use it.