Vancouver eyes future for 80 acres of waterfront

Mike Howell
Western Investor

City-owned land on False Creek represents some of the most prized real estate in Canada, and current leases are winding down

— South False Creek waterfront: much of the land is leased for 1,800 homes. Dan Toulgoet

The City of Vancouver launched a public feedback campaign February 15 that could lead to redevelopment of some of the 80 acres of land it owns between the Cambie and Burrard street bridges on the south shore of False Creek.

Currently, there are approximately 1,800 homes — both market and non-market housing — on leased lands known as False Creek South which are owned and managed by the city. Most of the 60-year leases expire in the next 15 to 25 years.

“The purpose of this engagement is to explore the future of these lands, for the next 50 years and beyond, while striving to balance the interests of current neighbourhood residents with those of all Vancouver residents who own this land,” the city said in documents released Monday to launch its month-long campaign.

The city said findings of the campaign will aim to give leaseholders and tenants “clarity” about the future of the land. The False Creek South Neighbourhood Association has asked for clarity for at least a decade, according to its website.

The city said one of the guiding principles for long-term planning of False Creek South is to maintain housing that is affordable for diverse groups of people, including options for current residents. 

The public feedback campaign comes as Vancouver continues to grapple with a housing crisis, which has been amplified by the pandemic and further exposed the city’s homelessness issue and affordability problem.

Currently, the neighbourhood has six co-ops, four market-rental buildings, six nonprofit buildings and 13 stratas.

False Creek South, which was transformed in the 1970s and 1980s from industrial land into primarily a residential neighbourhood, has a population of 5,597 residents. Median age of residents is 54.3 and median household income is $78,176, with 13 per cent of the population considered low-income.

No new housing has been built in the False Creek South neighbourhood since the 1980s.

The city’s future plan also aims to make the neighbourhood more diverse and equitable, with only 17 per cent of its current population represented by visible minorities, whereas Vancouver as a whole is at 52 per cent.

Addressing climate change and the city’s economy are also other considerations in any future redevelopment of the land.

The portion of city land excludes Granville Island and Senakw, the property under and around the Burrard Bridge owned by the Squamish Nation. The rest of the land in the area is either privately owned or owned by other levels of government.

© Copyright 2020 Western Investor

Strata revises minutes that detailed window failures at Vancouver’s Shangri-la tower

Jaonna Lee-Young
The Province

Demand for homes in January was really high in the Fraser Valley, Interior and Vancouver Island regions. Photo by Mike Bell /PNG

January was another record-setting month for the B.C. housing market, according to a B.C. Real Estate Association report on Thursday.

The BCREA reports that a total of 7,169 residential unit sales were recorded by the Multiple Listing Service in January, an increase of 63.3 per cent over January 2020 and over 1,000 sales higher than the previous record for the month of January.

The average price in B.C. was $845,169, a 16.1-per-cent increase from $728,269 recorded in January 2020, according to the report.

BCREA chief economist Brendon Ogmundson says while sales were strong across the province, the Fraser Valley, Interior and Vancouver Island regions shattered sales records and “pushed January sales to new heights.”

Demand is outstripping supply, however, with the report showing B.C. listings down 21.5 per cent in January, the lowest level of listings on record.

Ogmundson says with strong sales and so few listings, market conditions are exceptionally tight with less than three months of total supply.

“The supply of listings continues to be held back by the pandemic,” Ogmundson said in a statement Thursday. “With so few listings, markets are starved for supply and prices are under extraordinary pressure.”

The average price of a home skyrocketed year over year in some areas. In the Fraser Valley, the average price for all home types jumped 25.8 per cent to $944,996 and 26.7 per cent in the B.C. Interior to $634,465.

In Victoria, the average cost of a home went up 19.2 per cent to $868.509, while homes on Vancouver Island went up 10.9 per cent to $528,930. In Greater Vancouver, home prices jumped 11.2 per cent to $1,089,096 in January compared to the same month the year before.

© 2021 The Province

Cannabis CEO sues federal government over decision to ‘incarcerate’ travellers in quarantine hotels

Christopher Nardi
other

The lawsuit comes at a time of ongoing debate over the extent at which the government should be able to impose harsh lockdowns and travel restrictions on the public. Photo by Jason Payne/Postmedia

OTTAWA – From a house on the Caribbean island of Saint Martin, the CEO of a Canadian cannabis company is asking the federal court to quash the Trudeau government’s “arbitrary and capricious” decision to “incarcerate” travellers returning to the country in quarantine hotels.

“I personally woke up the morning that that was announced, and said ‘Holy s—, I now live in East Germany, and I’m a prisoner of the Government of Canada’,” said Jeffrey Rath, barrister and constitutional law expert at Rath & Company, referring to new quarantine measures announced by the federal government in late January.

Rath filed the lawsuit Tuesday on behalf of Dominic Colvin, the CEO of cannabis company CannaPharmaRx who is afraid of being “unconstitutionally” forced (the lawsuit reads “incarcerated”) into a quarantine hotel if he returns to his home in Kelowna, B.C.

Colvin flew to his home on Saint Martin on Jan. 24, 2021, at a time when a government travel advisory strongly discouraged any non-essential travel due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

A few days later, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced strict new measures to dissuade Canadians from travelling abroad as the country grapples with the spread of the novel coronavirus, including a mandatory three-day quarantine in government-selected hotels upon return at a cost of up to $2,000.

The lawsuit comes at a time of ongoing debate in Canada and elsewhere over the extent at which the government should be able to impose harsh lockdowns and travel restrictions on the public.

Colvin is afraid that if he were to fly back to Canada within the next few weeks, he’ll be forced by the government to quarantine in a hotel (which he calls a “quarantine incarceration facility” in his lawsuit) instead of at home because he says he’s not sure he’ll satisfy the governments’ unclear definition of a “suitable quarantine plan.”

“The decision to incarcerate Canadian citizens returning to Canada made by the (government) puts my right to freely return to Canada at risk as I cannot return to Canada under the threat of arbitrary incarceration for an undetermined period of time,” Colvin wrote in an affidavit submitted in support of his lawsuit.

He was not available for an interview on Thursday, but his lawyer spoke to National Post on his behalf.

“Mr. Colvin is quite comfortably ensconced in a house on Saint Martin with access to a beach every day. So he doesn’t want to leave Saint Martin to come back and face arbitrary incarceration measures that have been promulgated by a government that clearly doesn’t know what it’s doing,” Rath said.

Currently, federal rules allow public health officials to force travellers arriving in Canada to stay up to 14 days (or longer if they end up testing positive for COVID-19) in government-run sites notably if they can’t show a proper two-week quarantine plan.

Trudeau’s updated plan to force all travellers entering Canada to spend three days in a federally overseen hotel has not officially come into force. The government is expected to release additional details as well as an effective date for the new measures as early as Friday.

Holy s—, I now live in East Germany, and I’m a prisoner of the Government of Canada

“By putting in place these tough measures now, we can look forward to a better time when we can all plan those vacations. Our government is committed to the safe restart and recovery of the Canadian travel and tourism sector as soon as conditions improve, ideally later this year,” Trudeau said at the time of the announcement all the while discouraging Canadians from leaving the country during March break.

But even if the mandatory three-day quarantine rule isn’t yet officially in effect, Colvin is asking the federal court to strike it down in advance because he argues that the government is already forcing some people without quarantine plans or recent negative COVID-19 tests into supervised federal sites.

“It’s just completely outrageous what they’re doing,” Rath said. “We’re judicially reviewing that decision to incarcerate people because it’s obvious that they’re already doing it.”

Colvin and Rath aren’t the only Canadians to oppose the government’s efforts to limit travel abroad by enforcing increasingly strict quarantine and travel rules.

Earlier this month, the Canadian Snowbird Association wrote a letter to Transport Minister Omar Alghabra saying it was “firmly opposed” to the mandatory hotel quarantine rule.

‘The CSA believes that the existing quarantine protocols should remain in place and travellers should be permitted to quarantine in their own homes. To force Canadian citizens to pay over $2,000 for three nights of accommodation in a government approved hotel is unreasonable and will be a financial hardship for many,” CSA president Karen Huestis wrote.

© 2021 National Post

Strata revises minutes that detailed window failures at Vancouver’s Shangri-la tower

Jaonna Lee-Young
The Province

Surrey office market tightest in Metro Vancouver

Frank O’Brien
Western Investor

Another record-setting month for the B.C. housing market: BCREA

Tiffany Crawford
The Province

 Demand for homes in January was really high in the Fraser Valley, Interior and Vancouver Island regions. Photo by Mike Bell /PNG

January was another record-setting month for the B.C. housing market, according to a B.C. Real Estate Association report on Thursday.

The BCREA reports that a total of 7,169 residential unit sales were recorded by the Multiple Listing Service in January, an increase of 63.3 per cent over January 2020 and over 1,000 sales higher than the previous record for the month of January.

The average price in B.C. was $845,169, a 16.1-per-cent increase from $728,269 recorded in January 2020, according to the report.

BCREA chief economist Brendon Ogmundson says while sales were strong across the province, the Fraser Valley, Interior and Vancouver Island regions shattered sales records and “pushed January sales to new heights.”

Demand is outstripping supply, however, with the report showing B.C. listings down 21.5 per cent in January, the lowest level of listings on record.

Ogmundson says with strong sales and so few listings, market conditions are exceptionally tight with less than three months of total supply.

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“The supply of listings continues to be held back by the pandemic,” Ogmundson said in a statement Thursday. “With so few listings, markets are starved for supply and prices are under extraordinary pressure.”

The average price of a home skyrocketed year over year in some areas. In the Fraser Valley, the average price for all home types jumped 25.8 per cent to $944,996 and 26.7 per cent in the B.C. Interior to $634,465.

In Victoria, the average cost of a home went up 19.2 per cent to $868.509, while homes on Vancouver Island went up 10.9 per cent to $528,930. In Greater Vancouver, home prices jumped 11.2 per cent to $1,089,096 in January compared to the same month the year before.

© 2021 The Province

What January slowdown? Greater Vancouver real estate started year hot and continues to accelerate

Peter Kenter
The Vancouver Sun

The Greater Vancouver real estate market recorded 2,454 home sales in January, the third highest of all time. Home supply remains limited, however, with a trend toward multiple offers. GETTY IMAGES

The early new year is a typically slow period for real estate. Not so in Greater Vancouver this year, where demand for properties remained strong through January — and appears to be accelerating. Supply, however, remains limited, resulting in substantial interest in available properties and a trend toward multiple offers.“With very few people heading for sunny destinations, the market started hot on January 1 and has picked up steam, week over week,” says Kevin Skipworth, owner/broker and chief economist of Dexter Realty. “We saw a strong market for detached homes as we closed out last year and that market is going into overdrive. Not to be left behind, the townhouse market is following closely and the apartment market is also a contender, with buyers seeking apartments more than they have been in previous months.”Buyers are largely motivated by a desire to live in different accommodations with some remaining in the same general area and others looking to relocate. Having spent so much of 2020 at home during the pandemic, many simply want a change, while others are making a shift to quarters that will better accommodate a home office or better suit a family spending more time at home.

“We’re seeing a broad range of buyers,” says Skipworth. “Renters looking to own, buyers who are looking to move into larger quarters, and others who are downsizing. There’s demand across all housing types and all demographics.”How hot was January’s real estate market? There were 2,454 properties of all types sold in Greater Vancouver, compared with 1,602 sales in January of last year and 1,120 sold in January 2019. This January recorded the third-highest number of sales of all time, nuzzling up to the record high of 2,574 in 2016.

However, the market continues to experience a shortage of properties of all types, resulting in significant buyer attention for properties offered.“Buyers in Greater Vancouver are demonstrating an insatiable demand for homes and there just isn’t enough supply to keep up,” Skipworth says. “For example, we saw a large number of showings requested for a house in Burnaby last month, with a significant number of offers following those showings. Multiple offers were becoming common in the latter half of 2020, but they’re now making up the majority of transactions. If you’ve considered selling your property, now is a good time to look at what the market is offering.”

© 2021 Vancouver Sun

David Rosenberg: For now, only a Black Swan could stop this rally ? but get ready for a July reckoning

David Rosenberg
other

Cryptocurrency boom is ‘speculative mania,’ Bank of Canada deputy says

Shelly Hagan
other