TIFFANY CRAWFORD (VANCOUVER SUN) Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson helped break ground Thursday on a new $200-million, 31-storey Credit Suisse office tower in Vancouver’s financial district.
Robertson heralded the project as an end to the city’s business vacancy woes, as Vancouver remains one of North America’s tightest markets for office space. Vancouver’s vacancy rate for class A office space is 5.3 per cent. That’s compared with 8.7 per cent in Montreal and 9.7 per cent in Edmonton. But according to commercial real estate specialists Cushman and Wakefield, Vancouver’s vacancy rate is projected to jump to 7.7 per cent this year and to 10.5 per cent in 2015. The Exchange, which will be joined with the old Stock Exchange building at 475 Howe Street, built in 1929, will be the first LEED Platinum conversion of a heritage building in Canada. LEED Platinum is the highest designation for sustainable building design from the Canada Green Building Council. It is the first B.C. venture for Credit Suisse and will provide 369,000 square feet of office space, or enough space for 1,700 workers. Robertson said the tower will add much-needed office space in the downtown core and contribute to the city’s goal of becoming the greenest city in the world. The six other office towers under construction are: Telus Garden at 448,000 square feet; 745 Thurlow at 365,000 square feet; 980 Howe at 250,000 square feet; The MNP Tower at 270,000 square feet; 725 Granville at 300,000 square feet; and Aqulini’s Tower at 180,000 square feet. “When it comes to the strength of Vancouver’s office market, we’ve come a long way in the last five years,” Robertson said. “A few years ago our economy was being held back by a lack of space, we had a critical shortage, and it’s wonderful to see the market respond.” He said the city has approved as much office space in the past four years as in the previous decade. Until recently, the city was projecting a critical shortage of office space by 2031 if land-use policies remained the same. Robertson said new zoning bylaws enacted in 2009 helped get the new towers off the ground. The seven new towers under construction downtown will provide 2.18 million square feet of new office space. Robertson said Credit Suisse’s decision to build from the ground up in Vancouver signals that international corporations realize Vancouver is one of the strongest office markets in North America. Franz Gehriger, CEO of SwissReal Group, said: “We are creating jobs in heart of Vancouver’s financial district and building one of the most sustainable workplaces in Canada.” Renowned Swiss architect Harry Gugger, who is best known for the Tate Modern Gallery in London and Caixa Forum in Madrid, said he wanted to create a building that respects its immediate environment. Gugger added that the old Stock Exchange building is “a refined and handsomely crafted building,” and said they tried to respect the heritage building as much as they could. HUFFINGTON POST, BC – The Vancouver real estate market continues to grow unabated, with the demand for single family homes particularly strong, according to a new report released Thursday by Sotheby’s International Realty Canada.
The luxury market (defined as properties sold for more than $4 million) is seeing sales growth of 50 per cent, year over year, president and CEO Ross McCredie told The Huffington Post B.C. The statistics belie recurring talk of a housing bubble about to pop, McCredie says, with international “so-called experts” not understanding the very particular Vancouver market. “In the last couple of years, we’ve had a lot of clients come to us and say, ‘Jeez, the Vancouver market is over-inflated. I want to sell my home and when the market corrects I’ll jump back into the market,’” McCredie says. “And that’s a scary proposition, because if you want to stay in the market and time the market, it’s a difficult thing to do. “The so-called experts have been wrong for about seven years straight,” he notes. “Anybody who jumped out of the market at any point in the last couple of years, can’t get in any cheaper than when they sold; in fact, it’s gone up on them.” The market for single family homes is the big news here, says McCredie, with the fall 2012 slump attributed to speculation that B.C. would see a change in government in last year’s provincial election. Now that uncertainty has passed, the prospect of continued low interest rates, continued foreign investment and the potential from industrial growth such as liquefied natural gas (LNG), leaves him confident that demand will continue to grow significantly. On the city’s west side, the single family home in the above $4-million range continues to be sought after by a large number of mainland Chinese buyers, he said. “These are second or third generation mainland Chinese buyers, they are not new to the market,” McCredie adds. ” I think there’s a misconception — especially in the residential side — that people are coming off a plane and buying real estate. That’s not what’s happening. “What they are doing is buying more property as their families are expanding. They’ve been here 10, 15, 20 years and they are still making the majority of their money potentially in China or elsewhere in the world, but their families are here and they have been educated here.” And, while the east side has yet to see prices spike that high, McCredie says it will happen, with the Main Street neighbourhood and surroundings naturally suited to today’s urban buyer unwilling to accommodate a lengthy commute into their lives. “When you’ve lived here for a while, you look at the market somewhat differently to someone who just arrived, whether you’re an immigrant or investor,” McCredie explains. “When they look at Vancouver and they see the east side being Main Street or close by, they see excellent neighbourhoods with great single family homes with views, good proximity to downtown and with the airport incredibly close. “If you look at that in the context of other cities throughout North America, or even globally, that’s a natural market we see is going to continue to strengthen, rather than people going the suburban route to Richmond or White Rock.” McCredie says that the current desire for city-living over the suburbs is evident in Toronto’s traditional CEO commuter community of Oakville, where the luxury market has weakened as people fed up with the traffic, and baby boomers ready to be back in the city, have moved out. While he is bullish on the prospects for single family homes in Vancouver, he says the condo market is a different case. Constant development in the downtown core, and the city’s continued push for density along the Cambie and Broadway corridors means that supply is not an issue and, consequently, no major escalation in prices is expected. “Affordability is important,” he notes. “They’re definitely not cheap condos but they aren’t out of people’s reach – that’s where we’re going.” FRANCES BULA (GLOBE & MAIL) – A decade ago, Vancouver planning director Larry Beasley sent out a message to developers: Go east. It appears they have, along with business owners and home buyers. An analysis of the change in Vancouver property values between 2013 and 2014 shows assessments have risen in key spots in the east, with Chinatown, the Downtown Eastside, Main Street, Kingsway and lower Commercial Drive showing up as distinct hot spots. Values in many single-family areas in southeast and southwest Vancouver have declined as prices have dropped from a previous high. The escalation of east-side property values is raising fears that speculators are buying land at inflated prices. An industrial part of Mount Pleasant near Main Street and Broadway had the highest increase – about 30 per cent, as calculated by the B.C. Assessment Authority on the basis of recent sales. “It could be a new demand for light industrial in the city. Or it could be speculation,” said Andy Yan, a planner with Bing Thom Architects who mapped the change in property values across the city. Vancouver recently rezoned narrow strips of land on either side of lower Main Street and a prominent lot at Kingsway and Broadway to allow greater density, which likely prompted developer interest. Mr. Yan said the city needs to move aggressively to stop speculation and preserve a part of the city that is an incubator for businesses. The area, which has about 8,000 jobs in it at companies ranging from auto-repair shops to architectural model builders, recently became home to the booming tech firm HootSuite and the brewpub 33 Acres. “We need to not only save the offices in downtown Vancouver, but safeguard the economic nursery found in these light industrial areas that create firms that could some day fill these offices,” Mr. Yan said. Former city planner Ray Spaxman, who has been working with communities in the Downtown Eastside and Strathcona, said the signs of price increases in those lower-income areas is worrying. “We know there is speculation going on,” he said. “The biggest issue is the pressure from all the bulldozers that are running in the area and council policies that are focused on densification.” He said he hopes a new city plan for the area will help reduce the speculation. The plan, on which council will vote on March 12, spells out height limits and restricts the amount of condo housing that can be built in some parts of the area. Century 21 realtor Mike Stewart, who advertises condos in the Downtown Eastside and Chinatown on his website, said there is no doubt developers are moving into the area and paying higher prices for land as younger buyers show they are willing to live there. “It’s been going for a few years now, but it’s reaching critical mass. The developers have run out of land in the western portions of the downtown. They’re buying up the land in the east but being quiet about it so their competitors don’t know.” The city’s assistant planning director Kevin McNaney said the department is working hard to stop speculation by spelling out new policies that say exactly where new development will – and will not – go. Mr. McNaney said a new city guideline removed the option for buildings that include a residential component in the Mount Pleasant industrial area. Although likely some speculative buyers thought the land might be converted, he believes the city’s new policy for Mount Pleasant is encouraging people who want to build commercial space. “It’s people interested in investing in and intensifying the area. It’s a very cool industrial area and one of the rare ones close to transit.” Mr. McNaney also said the increase in values in Chinatown and the Downtown Eastside is relatively small but looks large because the prices used to be the lowest in the city. He says the new city plans will, as in Mount Pleasant, bring clarity about what is allowed and actually reduce speculation. “We are starting to send some signals about that.” |
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