Not too long ago, people from across the country or around the world could come to Vancouver, work hard and build a middle-class life. Generations of families invested in homes that helped them establish secure lives in our city, raise kids, and create strong and vibrant communities.
But today, these kinds of communities are becoming hollowed out. People can’t afford to live in the neighbourhoods where they grew up, making it harder for families to support each other.
It doesn’t need to be this way.
With the average price of a detached home in East Vancouver being $1.4 million, the options are now limited to condos, renting, or more and more often leaving town.
Imagine a vibrant Vancouver with more affordable homes in all neighbourhoods.
What if we could introduce a new option? What if instead of building just multi-million dollar homes, we could build more small multi-unit homes instead? Imagine if multi-generation families or groups of friends owned homes together, including households that make just $80,000 a year?
Making HOME (Home Options for Middle-income Earners) is a new program that will:
Make owning a home in Vancouver a reality again for people like teachers, tradespeople, artists, health care workers and small business owners.
Make it easier for seniors to stay close to their families.
And make it possible for the next generation to stay in Vancouver.
How does it work?
Instead of building one big house that only 2.5 percent of Vancouver residents can afford, Making HOME will allow small-scale, multi-family housing to be built on a standard lot, with a set amount of living area put aside for households making a middle-income.
The house would look like any other house, except it might have four front doors. Three for families that make around $150,000 a year (like two teachers, or an accountant and a tradesperson). And one door reserved for middle-income earners – forever.
On larger lots, there could be up to four market homes available, with two set aside for middle-income earners. Again, guaranteed forever.
Meet Sarah, she’s looking to downsize.
Sarah has owned her home for more than 20 years. Her kids have grown up and her home is feeling a bit empty. The neighbourhood is too, because no one’s kids can afford to live where they once grew up.
But Sarah wants to take advantage of Making HOME to change that. She hires a builder to redevelop her one big, empty home into four smaller homes. She keeps one of the units for herself, she sells two of the remaining market homes to a couple of young professionals, and she sells the guaranteed middle-income home to her daughter who makes $80,000 a year.
All of these new neighbours used to rent, but now thanks to Sarah and Making HOME, they can all create a new community and Sarah’s daughter can live really close by!
Meet Devon, Alex, Juan and Jennifer: Four friends with big dreams.
Devon and his three friends always thought they would have to eventually leave Vancouver to buy a home and raise a family. But now, thanks to Making HOME, they’ve decided to buy a home together and build their own small community.
Together, they all qualify for a joint mortgage so they can buy and redevelop a home together. Devon and Alex are both mid-career and can afford one of the market units. Juan owns his own company and can also buy a market unit. Jennifer is an artist and makes around $80,000 with her partner so they qualify for the middle-income unit. The last unit they sell on the market to a family of new Canadians who never thought they would be able to buy a home in Vancouver.
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Mayor Kennedy Stewart announced Monday a new housing program aimed at providing more housing for people on incomes of $80,000 to $120,000 per year | File photo Dan Toulgoet
Mayor Kennedy Stewart announced Monday a new housing program that proposes allowing property owners to build up to six small homes on a standard-sized single-family lot.
The catch is two additional homes — whether they all be built in one big new building or spread across the property — have to be sold to a person or persons with a household income of $80,000 to $120,000 per year.
Under the proposal, owners could convert or redevelop a single-detached house into multiple homes, keep one for themselves or other family members, and sell the remaining homes to middle-income earners.
“Imagine homes where seniors can age in place right next door to their children and grandchildren, close enough to ask for or lend a hand, but with a private home of their own,” Stewart told reporters. “Imagine homes that groups of young professionals can develop together — homes they work out of and build a community around.”
Various scenarios could unfold under the program, with up to six homes built or fewer, but the focus is to ensure one home be affordable to a middle-income household and a covenant applied to make that affordability permanent.
The proposal is called “Making HOME —Housing Options for Middle-Income Earners” and will be introduced in the form of an amendment to a motion from Coun. Lisa Dominato at Wednesday’s council meeting.
If approved by council, staff will explore further details on the proposal, with the mayor wanting to launch a pilot project next year of 100 homes. The pilot would exclude homes with renters, so not to displace them, and heritage homes.
The goal is to create more affordable housing for people who can’t afford to purchase a home in Vancouver, said Stewart, noting such a program would build an inventory of homes not subject to ever-rising property values and harmful speculation.
The average price of a detached home on the East Side of the city is $1.4 million. A buyer would have to be in the top 2.5 per cent of earners to afford such a home, according to information supplied by the mayor’s office.
Currently, almost 60 per cent of land in Vancouver is zoned for single-family detached homes, with a total of 68,000 lots across the city, with prices of homes on the West Side considerably higher.
A 2017 study by the city found that 71 per cent of respondents said they moved out of Vancouver because they needed affordable housing. A total of 51 per cent said they couldn’t afford to live in their preferred neighbourhood.
Joshua Gordon is an assistant professor in the Simon Fraser University School of Public Policy.
If you follow the housing debates in Toronto and Vancouver, you’ll have undoubtedly heard the claim that the affordability challenges facing both cities are the result of supply problems. Common complaints include a lack of new housing, burdensome regulation and flawed zoning.
This “supply narrative” has been endlessly repeated. There’s only one problem: there’s no good evidence for it.
Consider the following pieces of inconvenient evidence. First, there have been no major changes to the regulatory framework around supply in either city since the early 2010s. Yet benchmark house prices in both cities have risen between 75 per cent (Vancouver) and 115 per cent (Toronto) since 2010. If there has been no significant regulatory change on the supply side, then this suggests that price appreciation reflects changes on the demand side of the equation.
Second, rates of housing construction have remained very strong for several years. In fact, in Vancouver there were more housing completions from 2015 to 2020, in the midst of the housing crisis, than there were in any five-year period before that. In Toronto, the rate of housing completions in the same recent period was second only, for recent decades, to the pace set between 2000 and 2004.
This broad pattern applies to rental construction too. For example, Vancouver saw more rental completions in the five years from 2015 to 2020 than in the previous 15 years before that combined; Toronto, meanwhile, saw the fastest pace of rental construction since the early 1990s.
Rather than weak supply, then, the issue has been intense demand pressures, including cheap credit, foreign ownership, speculation and high rental demand emanating from a previously strong labour market.
Third, sharp increases in housing prices have happened in many cities surrounding Toronto and Vancouver, even though there are far fewer regulatory and geographic supply constraints in those areas. This suggests that housing prices can rise sharply in the face of strong demand pressures, regardless of the regulations in place.
Fourth is the question of zoning. A common claim by so-called YIMBY (“yes in my back yard”) activists is that single-detached zoning is a central cause of housing unaffordability, since it constrains the land that can be developed and thereby drives up land and housing prices. However, there is no clear relationship between the prevalence of single-detached zoning in Canada and the level of affordability in a city. If anything, Canadian cities with the highest share of single-detached houses have the least intense affordability challenges – the opposite of the hypothesized relationship. Indeed, Vancouver has the lowest share of single-detached housing among urban areas in Canada, while Toronto is fourth-lowest.
Of course, that pattern exists not because single-detached zoning causes improved affordability. Rather, it’s because strong demand pressures tend to cause both denser housing patterns and higher prices.
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Housing form is basically irrelevant to the affordability challenges in an urban area. That’s why Hong Kong and Manhattan are highly unaffordable, even with no single detached houses in sight. Similarly, paragons of “missing middle” housing, such as London and Stockholm, are also highly unaffordable.
The commonality between these expensive cities is very strong demand pressure, not housing form or zoning – and that’s the best indication of what’s driving prices up.
There are several peer-reviewedarticles that document the connection between demand-side factors and housing prices in Toronto and Vancouver, particularly the role of foreign ownership and speculation. Yet that peer-reviewed research is dismissed or ignored by advocates of the supply narrative. In fact, the case for the supply narrative is so weak that, after several years of research in this field, I have yet to encounter a single academic peer-reviewed article which documents a substantial causal link between supply-side factors and housing unaffordability in Canada.
So why is the debate so evidence-averse? Because the narrative is useful to powerful people.
The vested interests behind the narrative are relentless, since there are billions in profit to be had. Why let pesky facts get in the way? Such interests, and their noisy Twitter allies, are trying to win the debate through sheer repetition.
However, housing affordability will suffer to the extent that policy makers either buy into the misdirection, or use the narrative to deflect public pressure to take substantive action. Sometimes, then, it’s helpful to point out that the emperor has no clothes.
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Greater Vancouver detached real estate sales are still enjoying the delayed spring rush this summer. Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver (REBGV) data shows detached sales had the biggest August since 2015. Prices are also seeing growth accelerate as well, but higher inventory levels mean it’s nowhere near as tight as half a decade ago.
Greater Vancouver Detached Real Estate Prices Rise Over 6%
The price of a detached home in Greater Vancouver has gotten a boost during the pandemic. REBGV’s detached benchmark reached $1,491,300 in August, up 6.6% from the same month last year. In the City, prices in Vancouver East hit $1,502,700, up 10.1% from last year. In Vancouver West, the benchmark reached $3,084,600, up 5.6% from last year. The increase marks the fastest price growth in years for detached homes.
Greater Vancouver Detached Benchmark Price
The price of a typical detached home across the Greater Vancouver Real Estate Board, in Canadian dollars.
Greater Vancouver detached prices are rising rapidly, but are still down from just a few years ago. All three of the above regions have seen the rate of growth accelerate, and REBGV is growing at the fastest pace since 2018. However, REBGV data shows prices are still down 6.5% from just three years ago. In the City, Vancouver East is down 3.1% and Vancouver West is down 15.7% from three years ago.
Greater Vancouver Detached Benchmark Percent Change
The 12 month percent change of a typical detached home across the Greater Vancouver Real Estate Board.
Greater Vancouver detached sales had the best August in years. REBGV reported 1,095 detached sales in August, down 2.3% from the month before. The increase works out to 55.1% higher than the same month last year. That makes this past August the busiest for detached sales since 2015.
Greater Vancouver Detached August Sales
The number of detached homes sold in the month of August, across Greater Vancouver.
Sales20092010201120122013201420152016201720182019202002004006008001,0001,2001,4001,600Detached Units
Year
Sales
2009
1,367
2010
893
2011
1,020
2012
624
2013
1,018
2014
1,158
2015
1,494
2016
715
2017
901
2018
567
2019
706
2020
1,095
Source: REBGV, Better Dwelling.
New Inventory Is Hitting The Market Very Quickly As Well
Like most markets and segments, Greater Vancouver is seeing a significant increase in sellers hitting the market. REBGV reported 1,837 new listings in August, down 3.57% from the month before. This works out to an increase of 41.85% from the same month last year. Despite the flood of new listings, it was lower than the rise in sales, pushing total inventory levels lower.
Greater Vancouver Detached Sales Vs. New Listings
The total number of detached sales, compared to the number of new detached listings per month.
Active listings, or total inventory, for detached homes is significantly lower this year. REBGV reported 4,614 active listings for detached homes in August, up 3.45% from a month before. This number is still 21.84% lower than the same month last year though. While that makes the market tighter, it’s nowhere as tight as it was back in 2015 when sales were last this high.
Greater Vancouver detached real estate prices have been rising at the fastest pace in years. They aren’t quite back to where they were a few years ago, but price growth is undeniably accelerating. New listings are also rising quickly though, making it a very different market. Sales are the highest since 2015, but the level of inventory is nowhere as low as it was back then.
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Greater Toronto real estate has seen sales surge, and the detached market is leading the way. Toronto Regional Real Estate Board (TRREB) data shows detached sales nearly reached a record high in August. Most of the activity surge has been in the 905 suburbs, but the City’s buyers don’t seem to have noticed. The City is seeing prices rise at the same rate, despite the market not being nearly as tight as in the suburbs.
Greater Toronto Detached Prices Rise Over 11%
The price of a typical detached home is soaring, and it doesn’t really matter where in Greater Toronto. TRREB’s detached benchmark reached $1,054,300 in August, up 11.79% from the same month last year. The City of Toronto benchmark reached $1,267,200, up a relatively similar 11.85% from last year. Both numbers aren’t just very high, they’re growing at a much faster rate than when the economy was doing “well.”
Toronto Detached Benchmark Price
The price of a typical detached home across the Toronto Real Estate Board, in Canadian dollars.
The benchmark price of a detached home is growing at the fastest rate in years. Both TRREB and the City of Toronto’s benchmarks are growing at a similar pace. This is the highest rate of growth since 2017, when the market actually saw new restrictions to contain price growth.
Toronto Detached Benchmark Percent Change
The 12 month percent change of a typical detached home across the Toronto Real Estate Board.
The median sales price was less, but increased much more than the benchmark price. TRREB’s median sale price increased to $1,010,000 in August, up 18.77% from a year before. The City of Toronto median detached house went fro $1,200,000, up 24.10% from a year before. This means over half of homes in the 905 went for 4% above the benchmark, and more than half in the city went 5% below the benchmark. A bit of an oddity.
Toronto Detached Average Sale Price
The average sale price of a detached house in the Toronto Real Estate Board.
The average sale price for detached homes made a similar increase to the median. TRREB’s average sale price reached $1,172,880 in August, up 19.9% from last year. The City of Toronto average increased $1,505,100, up 21.4% from the same month last year. The City’s average is much higher than the benchmark, indicating a rise in luxury sales.
Toronto Detached Average Sale Price Change
The 12 month percent change of average sale price across across TREB.
Detached homes sales are still enjoying a delayed spring market. TRREB reported 5,429 detached sales in August, up 50.6% from last year. The City of Toronto represented 1,099 of those sales, up 65.3% from last year. This is just a few units under the record set for August in 2016. Once again, the demand shift from spring to summer due to the pandemic means this is a very different reason. However, to current buyers, it feels the same.
Toronto Detached August Sales
The total number of Greater Toronto detached sales made in the month of August.
Detached Sales200520062007200820092010201120122013201420152016201720182019202005001,0001,5002,0002,5003,0003,5004,0004,500Detached Units
Year
Detached Sales
2005
3,546
2006
3,231
2007
3,728
2008
2,841
2009
3,772
2010
2,832
2011
3,489
2012
3,029
2013
3,635
2014
3,551
2015
3,669
2016
4,449
2017
2,578
2018
3,001
2019
3,618
2020
4,445
Source: TREB, Better Dwelling.
New Inventory Is Rising Much Faster In The City
The number of new listings failed to keep up in the suburbs, but showed similar growth to sales in the City. TRREB reported 8,301 new listings in August, up 33.54% from the same month last year. The City of Toronto represented 1,862 of those sales, up 63.52% from the same month last year. This means more pressure on inventory in the suburbs, reflected in the number of active listings.
Toronto Detached Sales Vs. New Listings
The total number of detached sales, compared to the number of new detached listings per month.
The number of active listings, or total inventory, made a significant decline. TRREB reported 7,395 active listings in August, down 25.41% from the same month last year. The City of Toronto represented 1,675 of those listings, down 6.32% over the same period. The 905 is seeing detached inventory fall much faster than the City.
Greater Toronto real estate has been extremely busy this summer, and most of that activity has been in detached markets. Despite the 905 becoming a much tighter market than the City, both are seeing prices rise at the same pace. This likely indicates cheap money and exuberance are much bigger influencers in the City than the suburbs.
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Listed at $69,900, the cellar space is located in the underground parkade of Vancouver House, at 1480 Howe St.
The realtor says the room has water and power connections, and is therefore "the perfect place to store a wine collection, seasonal wardrobe, tools, luggage, and any other items that one needs to stow out of view and to reduce clutter in their home."
Renderings included in the listing on Realtor.ca show the space as a wine cellar, luxury closet, and tool and sporting goods storage space.
However, the future buyer must either own or be buying a home in Vancouver House.
They'd also have to arrange any customization, for example, shelves for wine bottles, with a third-party supplier, the listing says.
Condo Smarts: How much is enough for strata's contingency fund?
The key to planning is to ensure the years ahead will be appropriately funded to reflect the projected renewals in your depreciation report, and you approve sufficient funds in the annual budget to meet all of your operations and service requirements.
Author of the article:
Tony Gioventu
Publishing date:
Aug 20, 2020 • Last Updated 13 days ago • 3 minute read
The contingency reserve fund is intended to fund a variety of circumstances.PHOTO BY GETTY IMAGES
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Dear Tony:
Our 25-year-old apartment building recently completed several planned major upgrades. Our roofing system was replaced, we had an elevator overhaul, and our boiler was upgraded. All of this depleted our contingency fund down to 25 per cent of our operating fund, or just under $100,000.
Our next major upgrades are planned for 2028 to start the replacement of our exterior doors and windows, and we approved a significant increase in contingency contributions starting this year to cover those estimates.
Three of our fiscally conservative council members suggest that we should have a special levy to top up the contingency fund by another $250,000, to ensure we have sufficient emergency funds, claiming 25 per cent of the operating fund is the only minimum amount.
The legislation does not actually state what the minimum is? How do we assess what is sufficient in our funds?
— Carolyn B., Vancouver
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Dear Carolyn:
The Strata Property Act has a simple formula to determine the minimum contingency contribution each year as part of the annual operating budget, but not the minimum balance.
As in your case, if the balance of the contingency drops below 25 per cent of the annual operating budget, the strata corporation in the next fiscal year must contribute at least 10 per cent of the annual operating budget value to the contingency fund. If your annual budget is $400,000 and your contingency balance is below 25 per cent or below $100,000, the contribution for your operating budget in the next fiscal year is a minimum of 10 per cent of the proposed operating budget for the next fiscal year. If the next year’s budget is $400,000, the minimum contribution, in addition to the operating budget, is $40,000.
The contingency reserve fund is intended to fund a variety of circumstances: planned renewals recommended by the depreciation report, emergency repairs including emergency costs for insurance renewals, common insurance deductible costs, and approved costs for projects and costs approved by a three-quarter vote of the owners at a general meeting.
Minimum funding is simply bad planning and deferral of the real value of strata fees. There will be times when a strata corporation significantly reduces its funds in cycles of repairs and maintenance or emergencies. The key to planning is to ensure the years ahead will be appropriately funded to reflect the projected renewals in your depreciation report, and you approve sufficient funds in the annual budget to meet all of your operations and service requirements.
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The days of “keep your strata fees low, so it doesn’t affect property values” are history. Underfunded strata corporations are routinely identified as undermaintained properties. Low strata fees result in low contributions to the contingency fund, which end up being frequent special levies for deferred repairs that are often delayed by defeated votes of the owners. This can result in more costly repairs and an increased risk of insurance claims or serious implications on the cost or limitations of insurance renewals.
Many communities across B.C. have implemented their deprecation reports actively for renewals planning and funding and have not required special levies for over 10 years, all due to prudent planning.
The additional administrative costs for collections of unpaid special levies consume a significant amount of strata council and management time and resources that may otherwise be dedicated to the more critical tasks of maintenance, renewals, and operations.
What is the right amount of funding? Start with your depreciation report. Look at what you will need over the next 10 to 30 years. Assess those values every year, and that’s your starting place to determine your contributions.
In ageing buildings, the immediate costs may be out of everyone’s reach, but even a 50 per cent increase in your contributions will make a significant difference in 10 years.
Tony Gioventu, Executive Director CHOA
Tony Gioventu is executive director of the Condominium Home Owners Association. Email tony@choa.bc.ca
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Realtors point out rise in condo listings even as sales and prices increase
TheVancouver housing market is recovering from the pandemic, but it's not a straightforward, bounceback story
Author of the article:
Joanne Lee-Young
Publishing date:
Sep 05, 2020 • Last Updated 18 hours ago • 2 minute read
Condos in towers along Coal Harbour in Vancouver are a bit a glut in the real estate market.PHOTO BY EKASH /PNG
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Home sales and prices are up and the housing market is recovering from the pandemic shutdown, according to the latest reports from the Metro Vancouver real estate sectors.
But it’s not a straightforward, bounce-back story and there are nuances in other recent numbers, according to realtors.
“The market is very segmented right now,” said Vancouver realtor Steve Saretsky, “not like 2016 where everything is going up and it doesn’t matter what it is.”
He said one of the best ways to see the trend is to examine the so-called number of months of inventory. This is the number of sales listings divided by the number of monthly sales.
“Right now, in Greater Vancouver, in the detached market for (homes) under $2 million, there are 2.8 months of supply for sale. Anything under four, it a seller’s market. So that explains the multiple offers everyone is hearing about.”
It’s a different story when it comes to condos. There are around fours months of supply listed for sale, tilting that market to one that favours buyers, said Saretsky.
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Ian Watt, a Vancouver realtor who specializes in Yaletown condos, said people need to look beyond the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver’s headline numbers, which highlighted August home sales hitting 3,047, nearly 20 per cent higher than the 10-year average for August, though slightly lower than the 3,128 homes sold in July.
The Board’s August benchmark price for all homes in Burnaby, Coquitlam, Maple Ridge, New Westminster, North Vancouver, Pitt Meadows, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Richmond, South Delta, Squamish, Sunshine Coast, Vancouver and West Vancouver was 5.3 per cent higher than last year and slightly higher than in July.
However, when you drill down into certain areas, such as condos in downtown Vancouver, there are signs of things going the other way, said Watt.
“This is the first time since May 2014 that we have seen over 1,000 active (condo) listings in downtown Vancouver.”
He compares that to the 382 listings in August 2017 “when the condo market was quite hot” and condos priced between $600,000 to $700,00 were selling fast, with 47 per cent of available listings selling each month. Today, he said, there are 1,085 downtown condo listings with just 15 per cent selling each month.
The number of listings in the downtown condo market represents a whopping six months of inventory. With sales normally quieter in the winter, the inventory could rise to eight months.
“Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not saying the market is crashing, but it’s a great time to be a buyer.”
Watt added that five large sales propped up the August median sale price for downtown Vancouver condos, and it’s telling that listings not only increased 12 per cent last month to 1,085, but they have gone up by 54 per cent since August 2019.
“Obviously, (more sellers) are feeling the effects of COVID-19 and deciding it’s time to unload their debt.”
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