Metro Vancouver home sales totalled 2,253 in September 2016, a decrease of 32.6 per cent from the 3,345 sales recorded in September 2015 and a decrease of 9.5 per cent compared to August 2016 when 2,489 homes sold.

Last month’s sales were 9.6 per cent below the 10-year sales average for the month.

“Supply and demand conditions differ today depending on property type,” Dan Morrison, REBGV president said. “We’re seeing more demand for condominiums and townhomes today than in the detached home market.”

New listings for detached, attached and apartment properties in Metro Vancouver totalled 4,799 in September 2016. This represents a decrease of one per cent compared to the 4,846 units listed in September 2015 and an 11.8 per cent increase compared to August 2016 when 4,293 properties were listed.

The total number of homes currently listed for sale on the MLS® system in Metro Vancouver is 9,354, a 13.4 per cent decline compared to September 2015 (10,805) and a 10 per cent increase compared to August 2016 (8,506).

The sales-to-active listings ratio for September 2016 is 24.1 per cent. This is the lowest this ratio has been since February 2015. Generally, analysts say that downward pressure on home prices occurs when the ratio dips below the 12 per cent mark for a sustained period, while home prices often experience upward pressure when it surpasses 20 per cent over several months.

“Changing market conditions are easing upward pressure on home prices in our region,” Morrison said. “There’s uncertainty in the market at the moment and home buyers and sellers are having difficulty establishing price as a result. To help you understand the factors affecting prices, it’s important to talk with a REALTOR®.”

The MLS® Home Price Index composite benchmark price for all residential properties in Metro Vancouver is currently $931,900. This represents a 28.9 per cent increase compared to September 2015 and a 0.1 per cent decline compared to August 2016.

Sales of detached properties in September 2016 reached 666, a decrease of 47.6 per cent from the 1,272 detached sales recorded in September 2015. The benchmark price for detached properties is $1,579,400. This represents a 33.7 per cent increase compared to September 2015 and a 0.1 per cent increase compared to August 2016.

Sales of apartment properties reached 1,218 in September 2016, a decrease of 20.3 per cent compared to the 1,529 sales in September 2015.The benchmark price of an apartment property is $511,800. This represents a 23.5 per cent increase compared to September 2015 and a 0.5 per cent decline compared to August 2016.

Attached property sales in September 2016 totalled 369, a decrease of 32.2 per cent compared to the 544 sales in September 2015. The benchmark price of an attached unit is $677,000. This represents a 29.1 per cent increase compared to September 2015 and a 0.1 per cent decline compared to August 2016.

• MARIE JOY DESIGN

Vancouver’s real-estate market is currently nothing short of cutthroat, so if you do manage to get your hands on a property, it’s likely not without some compromise.

But while that ’80s condo may not be the brand-new, open-concept space you had in mind, there are some adjustments that can be made without blowing your already-tight budget out of the water.

“With everything being so expensive, it’s really nice to be able to update your home a little bit to ensure you’re getting what you want in this market,” explains Amanda Severson, one half of local interior-design firm Marie Joy Design, by phone.

Ahead of Severson and her partner Kristina Hibbs’s appearance at the Vancouver Home + Design Show next Sunday (October 30), where they’ll be dishing on the perks of considering design elements before a renovation, the designer duo shares some tips for transforming your condo on a budget.

MARIE JOY DESIGN

Overhaul cabinetry

If you’re stuck with weathered wood cupboards but don’t have the resources for an entire kitchen gut, painting your cabinetry is an easy fix. You can go for an eccentric look by opting for a bright red or pewter blue, though Severson and Hibbs suggest sticking with a clean white when working with limited square footage.

“If it’s a smaller space, doing white makes way more sense,” explains Hibbs. “It will make it feel way larger, and you can add your contrast with the backsplash or countertop and things like that.”

Faced with updating melamine cabinets? Keep the boxes, says Severson, and simply replace the doors. Swapping out your knobs and pulls—in both the kitchen and bathroom—is another DIY move with big impact.

“If you have a decent layout but if it’s a bit dated and the cabinets are fine and a good colour, just switching out the hardware changes it up a lot,” says Severson.

MARIE JOY DESIGN

Switch out lighting

Ditch outdated lighting units—or worse, the builder-grade “boob light”—by installing new fixtures throughout. To keep your budget in check, Severson suggests fitting cheaper options in high-traffic areas so you can spend more in feature rooms.

“Splurge on dining fixtures or pendants that you might have in the kitchen, because that’s an area where you really want to draw your eye up as a focal point,” she says.

For foyers and hallways, a simple flush-mount light—available from $20 at home and hardware stores like Home Depot—will do. You can have more fun in the dining room, for example, with a drum-shade pendant or modest chandelier.

However, try not to go too OTT. “If you add in a very elaborate fixture, it can sometimes take away from the space, and you never want it to feel that way,” adds Hibbs.

MARIE JOY DESIGN

Refresh the basics

Simple finishes like baseboards and casing can easily be overlooked when it comes to partial renovations, but replacing these seemingly small details can make a world of difference. “You’re not removing a wall or anything, but it will make it feel a little bit fresher,” says Hibbs.

In the bathroom, a large, clunky mirror can be replaced with a chicer option from HomeSense, for example. Look for a framed ornate or vintage-inspired piece that will add charm to your space.

Severson and Hibbs also stress the importance of good window coverings. Consider tossing the requisite blinds for airy linen drapery. “Keeping it light in colour just softens the space and adds enough texture without being too much,” says Severson.

MARIE JOY

Streamline flooring

A little bit of vinyl, a dash of parquet, and some questionably clean carpeting seem to be the go-to formula when it comes to flooring in older spaces. To help bring your space into the 21st century, rip out the mishmash of materials in favour of one type all the way through.

Severson and Hibbs recommend laminate wood flooring, which is more durable than many people think. It’s also pretty easy on the wallet and eyes. “People are kind of scared to do laminate in kitchens…but we say install it throughout the whole place just to make it feel larger, more open,” says Hibbs.

The two note that homeowners working with south-facing spaces, which are exposed to more natural light, should opt for flooring options that feature a low sheen. “The shinier you go, the more you’ll notice dirt and marks—especially if you have a lot of windows,” explains Hibbs.

Create a feature wall

While wallpaper can be a big—and costly—commitment, wall decals are an affordable alternative. Whether you go for oversized polka dots, tropical palm leaves, or a cheeky animal print, the patterns help add a punch of personality to any space.

“Something like that, especially for a kid’s room, is really fun to update it, modernize it,” explains Severson, “and it’s totally inexpensive.”

Severson and Hibbs are fans of Urban Wall, a Vancouver-based producer of vinyl wall decals that are easy to both install and remove. When decking the walls in a tighter space, however, keeping the print to one side may work best.

“If your room isn’t huge, you don’t want to do the whole space, because it will just feel too busy,” says Hibbs.

To determine each year’s total, Realtors and real estate offices disclose information about their charitable donations to the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver (REBGV).

The REBGV’s 13,000 Realtor members have collectively donated or fundraised more than $41 million for various charitable causes over the past nine years.

"This program underscores the time and money Realtors across our region contribute each year to help build, strengthen and give back to the communities where they work and live," Dan Morrison, REBGV president said.

REALTORS Care® is the charitable program under which Realtors give back to their communities. Each year, REALTORS Care® initiatives raise funds and collect donations for a wide range of local groups and institutions.

• An agent with RE/MAX Crest Realty Westside is hoping to attract a buyer willing to pay $5 million for this property at 3538 West 29th Avenue.REAL ESTATE WEEKLY

On September 22, the provincial government released its third round of data on B.C. real estate to reveal that sales to foreign nationals plummeted following the introduction of a 15-percent tax on such transactions.

Then, on October 4, the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver reported that property sales across the Lower Mainland continued a downward trend they’ve been on for six months now and, in September, fell below the 10-year average for the first time since May 2014.

Meanwhile, the City of Vancouver is moving ahead with plans to implement a tax on vacant homes and Ottawa is tightening restrictions on risky mortgages.

All of that might give people hope that the region’s out-of-control real-estate market might soon begin to chill. But listings that some might describe as unreasonable are still easy to find.

Take this four-bedroom, two-bathroom fixer upper on West 29^thAvenue in the city’s West Side.

Asking price: $5 million even.

The author of the listing doesn’t even pretend to care about the house that sits on this 6,540-square-foot lot. Its description makes no mention of bedrooms or bathrooms. Instead, it focuses on the land.

“This is a perfect opportunity to buy a large oversized lot in the Dunbar area,” it reads.

In case you were wondering, 15 percent of $5 million is $750,000. Even for the wealthy, that’s quite a premium to pay on a teardown.

This article is part of a really fun series. Click through similar posts at the links below.

Vancouver has joined a growing list of cities around the world grappling with both the new sharing economy and housing crises, proposing new restrictions for short-term rentals through platforms such as Airbnb.

Mayor Gregor Robertson and staff outlined a proposal Wednesday for new rules that would restrict rentals to homes that owners or renters live in most of the time and only rent out occasionally. Full-time listings in otherwise vacant homes, which have been blamed for taking long-term, stable rental housing off the market, would be prohibited.

“At a time like this, when affordable and rental housing are in a crisis, it’s incumbent upon the city to take bold steps,” the mayor said.

Anyone renting short term would need to get a permit, post the number on the listing site and likely pay some equivalent of a hotel tax. There are 13 short-term-rental platforms now operating in the city, although Airbnb is the largest.

to be rented out to short-term vacationers.

Nor will they give them for basement suites or lane-way houses, even if the owner lives full time in the main part of the house.

The move has prompted praise from housing advocates who say it will help ensure that desperately needed rental units aren’t being turned into hotel businesses.

“It looks like the city is allowing housing to be the driver on this issue, rather than taxes or tourism,” said Karen Sawatzky, a Simon Fraser University graduate student whose research on Airbnb for her thesis helped inform public opinion on the issue the past year.

And it is already generating criticism from those who see it as an ineffective effort to deal with housing problems caused by lack of supply or a bureaucratic intrusion on private-property rights, or both.

SFU business professor Andrey Pavlov said the new rules are an unneeded piece of micromanaging into something the city shouldn’t interfere with – the agreement between two private individuals about renting a space.

He also said the city is using this inefficient tool to solve a problem of its own making – the lack of housing supply.

“The development process in Vancouver is incredibly cumbersome. It’s the City of Vancouver that is in large part responsible for the housing crisis.”

While some will agree with Prof. Pavlov, the political reality that Vancouver councillors are facing is that people are clamouring for instant action to solve a dire housing situation, which has seen real-estate prices rise by an astronomical rate in recent years, while rental costs are also skyrocketing at the same time that vacancies are near zero.

The city’s report on the new regulations says there were about 4,000 Airbnb listings in Vancouver for entire units in June of this year, and it estimates about 1,000 of those could be prohibited under the new rules, potentially opening them up for long-term renters.

Airbnb has denied that its service is having a major effect on housing in Vancouver, suggesting that full-time listings that could otherwise be used as a long-term rental represent just a small fraction of its business. Instead, the U.S.-based company argues that Airbnb allows homeowners to help make ends meet.

The company says it’s reviewing the City of Vancouver’s proposed rules.

Vancouver is far from the first city to bring in new rules to deal with the sharing-economy platforms that have flourished in the past decade, allowing renters and landlords to connect directly for short-term rentals of anything from a bedroom in a shared apartment to a van to an entire house or condo.

This is the third new housing policy that Lower Mainland residents have seen in recent months, as both provincial and local politicians have bowed to popular opinion. The province introduced a stiff 15-per-cent sales tax for foreign buyers of residential real estate as of Aug. 2. And two weeks ago, Mr. Robertson announced the city would be implementing a tax as of 2017 on secondary residences left vacant for lengthy periods during the year.

Many cities in Europe and North America have been moving to regulate Airbnb-type platforms, demanding that they have special permits or limiting the number of nights per year a unit can be rented out.

Vancouver chose not to put a cap on the number of nights, although staff considered that seriously.

“Other cities we looked at said that it was difficult to monitor,” said Kaye Krishna, Vancouver’s general manager of development services.

Ms. Sawatzky said that, although the Vancouver policy is generally good, it did avoid tackling two problems.

The city’s policy will allow someone to rent out a spare bedroom in their house or condo. That takes away much-needed, cheap space away from low-income workers, she said.

“Lots of people in this city are working full time for minimum wage and they can’t rent something on their own. So where are those people supposed to live?”

The city also didn’t propose fining the platform operators if individual owners don’t get the required permit, something that Barcelona has done.

Most days, when I get to the office, I sit down at a desk and write about the latest news in Metro Vancouver. But for the past few weeks, work consisted of putting on a lot of makeup and meeting men for coffee dates.

My pseudonym was April Lim. I posed as a young woman looking for a place to stay in Vancouver’s hot housing market. The men I met up with were offering just that – but at a price.

In simple terms, it’s prostitution. These men are asking women to have sex with them in exchange for rent.

 

A CTV hidden-camera investigation has found that some Vancouver landlords are advertising free rent in exchange for sex.

Ads have been popping up on Craigslist, some with careful wording suggesting that a discreet deal could be made if you’re the right candidate. Others were more blatant, asking for “friends with benefits” or a “sexy slut.” It seems the men behind these ads have found a new way to get Vancouver’s expensive housing market to work for them.

The first man we met with was from Croatia. He’s waiting for his permanent residency in Canada, and lives in a basement suite in Burnaby. He explained that he hadn’t been successful in relationships and that he was looking to try something new.

He treated the rendez-vous almost like a first date, asking about my background, my family and what my hobbies were. He seemed nervous, and said his mother was waiting for him in the Metrotown mall. I almost felt sorry for the guy – until I realized I shouldn’t.

The reality of the situation remains: this man was setting himself up in a power position to prey on women. When the exchange of goods stops, he’ll want money – or kick the woman out onto the street. I met with Janine Benedet, a law professor at the University of British Columbia, who explained it very clearly.

“It’s not all men who are overtly violent or discriminatory,” she said.

“But it doesn’t mean even the confused ones, even the ones who want to set themselves as unlucky in love aren’t engaging in behaviour that’s exploitative and predatory.”

That man quickly became explicit and very specific about his sexual needs the next time I was in contact with him over the phone, and suggested that I wear clothing that would be easy to take off on certain scheduled nights. He then asked for rough sex on the couch. I felt even less sorry for him then.

The second man we met up with owns a place on Burrard Street in downtown Vancouver. He’s from Turkey and works in a restaurant. His ad described the situation as a “room share,” but in the e-mail response he revealed it was actually a “bed-share.” He claimed more than a thousand women emailed him in hopes of staying at his condo. When I asked why he decided to meet up with me, he said it was because I stated in my email that I was “open-minded.”

“I ask if you’re open minded, none of them says I am open minded,” he said, describing the other candidates. “And then [I say] is it possible to share a bed? They say: if I put a small blanket down [on the floor] I can sleep there. So they’re not open minded.”

He explained that he didn’t want women paying rent because then they would ask for privacy – and then told me about a previous tenant, whom he had kicked out for that exact reason. She was paying $350 monthly and he decided to ask her to leave in the middle of the month. He wasn’t clear about the entire situation, but told me that she had asked him to be quiet in the mornings. When she threatened to call police for kicking her out, he dared her to do so. She didn’t.

Louisa Russel from Vancouver Rape Relief says women face these kinds of situations too often in Vancouver’s expensive housing market, where vacancy rates are at a record low and competition is fierce. It’s left them desperate, and with not many options.

“We receive calls from women phoning us complaining about predatory landlords,” she said.

Russel says the sex that’s being exchanged for rent can’t be seen as consensual. She explained that single women in poverty receive $375 per month for shelter from the government – an amount that wouldn’t get them anything in Metro Vancouver.

“It’s under these coerced conditions, these unliveable economic conditions that women are responding to these ads because they’re desperate and they don’t want to be homeless,” Russel said. “That’s why they’re responding.”

So why do these women need to stay in Metro Vancouver? Iglika Ivanova from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives says it’s because most of the jobs that have been created in the past year in B.C. are located there. She also says women earn less than men in this province and more of them live in poverty.

“It makes them susceptible to abuse,” Ivanova said. “Especially in Vancouver, the gap is very high.”

The women I spoke to are all looking for systemic change; whether it’s the local police force to start cracking down on the men behind these ads, or our governments to take steps to ease the housing market.

In any case a solution has to be found to help women who are turning to these coercive situations because although I get to forget about these men and go home to my family at the end of the day – many women in B.C. don’t.

Vancouver’s west side exists in a parallel universe, and it’s located in a sprawling gated community in Beijing.

Vancouver Forest is a Chinese interpretation of Vancouver’s west side, designed by a Vancouver firm to look like the old houses of Dunbar, Shaughnessy or Kitsilano.

Each house is different from the other, in old-world styles typical of Vancouver: the Craftsman, the Tudor, the Story Book, with some Victorian thrown in. The garages are out of sight, the streets are in a grid, and they are tree-lined, with gardens. They don’t have the lush, world-famous gardens of Vancouver’s west side, but they are still pretty green for a project 30 minutes from Beijing’s airport.

It’s a rare thing to have an area filled with trees that are decades old – mature by Beijing’s standards – but urban designer Paul Rosenau designed around those trees specifically because they are so rare. Mr. Rosenau is based in Vancouver, but 15 years ago when China began its massive economic growth he spent about 200 days a year there. Their housing economy softened two years ago, but he still spends half the year there.

Vancouver Forest is a residential project with 900 luxury single-family homes on 55 hectares. Developer Beijing Capital Group built it in phases, starting in 2002 and completing in 2015. It was Mr. Rosenau’s first project in China, and it launched his company, EKISTICS, into the Chinese market. He was one of several B.C. firms involved with the project, which is made up of houses 3,000 to 5,000 square feet in size.

His firm, EKISTICS, designed every aspect of the community, including the master planning, architecture and landscape architecture. When it came time to market the project, the developer insisted on calling it after its inspirational westcoast city. Vancouver conveys positive things to the Chinese, enough so that the name also shows up in many condo developments around China.

Charles Pittar, chief executive officer of Chinese real estate website Juwai.com, says it’s popular for developers to build entire communities with international themes. The country has famously replicated even cities, such as Paris, with an Eiffel tower of its own.

“The developer claims to have traveled to Canada more than 10 times to learn more about North American homes and lifestyles,” he said in an email. “They hired Canadian architects to design the whole community and claim to have planted 10,000 trees to give it a suitably leafy environment.”

 

Like all single-family homes in China, they were marketed to a wealthy buyer. The average price at Vancouver Forest is about $3-million (Cdn.).

“We didn’t like the Vancouver reference but they did,” Mr. Rosenau says of the project name. “It’s based on this notion that a certain look transfers into a certain lifestyle, and a foreign lifestyle is what they want.”

Mr. Rosenau is seated in the boardroom of his Main Street office, having returned from China the day before. Many times, he’s tried to convince developers to go for designs that make sense in China, but foreign house designs, especially Tuscan, which tops the list, are hugely popular there. Only recently, he says, has he seen a little more interest in traditional Chinese home design.

 

 

And he does find it ironic that many Chinese foreign buyers who come to Vancouver are demolishing the historic houses that were replicated at Vancouver Forest. But new is better than old. And so is concrete. The big difference between Vancouver houses and Vancouver Forest is wood. Wooden houses are a hard sell in China, so the houses are built using concrete, including concrete mouldings, which don’t have the softness of detail, says Mr. Rosenau. Only the show houses at Vancouver Forest were built using wood.

Mr. Rosenau has a unique perspective into the Chinese housing market because it’s occupied so much of his business – about 70 per cent, which is why he keeps an office in Shanghai. Developers often invite him to speak at design conferences in China. He’s worked for eight out of 10 of the biggest developers in that country, and he’s more famous there than here, he says.

“We hit the market there almost at perfect time,” he says. “It was very lucrative, and it still is. We had some very good years.”

Mr. Rosenau started his company, EKISTICS, in 1992, and he has designed communities in Whistler, the Okanagan and around the Lower Mainland.

 

Mr. Rosenau figures he’s designed about 500 housing communities for Chinese cities – and he also estimates that about half of them are empty. That includes Vancouver Forest.

“A lot of our projects sit 50 per cent empty, not because they’re not sold. They are sold overnight. What’s interesting about the Chinese market is – and this is very different than here, very different than our culture – is people don’t really believe in putting their money into the bank. Anyone who has money, as soon as they have enough saved up, they buy a piece of real estate. These are middle- to upper-middle-class people. A lot of my friends in China, professional designers, someone like me, the boss of a [boutique] company like this one, they all own 15 or 20 apartments or houses. I have a friend who’s the equivalent of me in China, and he has about 20 pieces of real estate. I asked him, ‘Why do you keep buying property?’ He says, ‘how else would I invest my money?’”

In hindsight, Mr. Rosenau can see the appeal. China’s housing market was a sure bet for 15 years, with prices going up as much a 50 per cent in one year. He bought an apartment in Shanghai n 2004 and sold it in 2011, for $1.5-million, five times what he’d paid for it 

“My friends over there said, ‘you should have done that 20 times. When you have extra money you just buy another place.’”

He says it’s difficult for Vancouverites to understand the incredible wealth in China, or the building spree the country had been on for 15 years.

To put it in perspective, he describes a high-end project in the city of Shenzhen, involving 27 homes hanging on the side of a mountain. It was 2005, and the developer wanted to sell them for $20-million (U.S.) each.

“I said to him, ‘do you really think you can find 27 people that can pay $20 million for a second home?’ These were vacation homes. They had done a market study, and he said the market study indicated there were 150,000 families in China that could afford a $20-million second home. And that was 2005.”

Vancouver Forest couldn’t be built today, says Mr. Rosenau. The government doesn’t allow low-density single-family projects like Vancouver Forest any more, what with the shortage of affordable housing for so many people. Detached houses are also seen as an elitist form of housing, he says.

As for Vancouver’s impact from Chinese wealth, Mr. Rosenau says it saddens him to see nice old character houses coming down. He’s also concerned about his kids’ futures. But he doesn’t see any way around the forces of a free market economy. In fact, one possibility is that Vancouver could become even more of an attraction for the rich Chinese market. He sees a general distrust of the current government, and concern about the devalued Chinese currency.

“All my personal Chinese friends say they are looking to get a significant portion of their total assets out of China,” he says. “It is pretty common knowledge in China that in order to become rich, most businessmen have more than a few skeletons in the closet. In other words, getting rich had a lot to do with knowing the right government officials at the right time and greasing the wheels where necessary. Many of these same businessmen are now so worried by the federal government’s witch hunt to root out corruption that they are looking abroad to get their money out in case of the need for a quick exit. It is surprising how many Chinese actually think this way.

“When and if the real estate market totally crashes in China then the economy will totally grind to a halt. If this happens, there is nothing to hold a rich business person in China, and at that time I could see a lot of the wealthy people in China flocking to Vancouver to permanently live and retire in a more desirable and livable city than any city in China.”