Property values in Greater Vancouver increased by leaps and bounds last year as interest rates remained low and Vancouver was tabbed to host the 2010 Winter Olympics.

Almost every type of building — especially residential — rose in value, B.C. Assessment Authority numbers show.

The numbers mean people who already own property are laughing, but those who are still on the sidelines will find it more difficult to buy a home.

The authority mailed its annual assessments to property owners last week.

The City of Vancouver saw its total assessed property value rise by 9.4 per cent, to $93.7 billion last year from $85.6 billion in 2002.

It was the biggest jump in more than a decade, area assessor David Highfield said.

The city’s total assessment had been bumping up against an $80-billion ceiling for years, finally broke through to $85 billion in 2002 and kept going into the $90-billion-plus range, “a really significant value shift,” Highfield said.

Total property value includes the effects of zoning changes and of new properties being added to the tax rolls, but mainly reflects changes in property values.

Most residential properties in Vancouver, including strata housing, increased by 10 to 30 per cent. “We haven’t seen that in more than a decade,” Highfield said.

The hottest of the hot spots was Coal Harbour, where many condominium and townhouse properties were resold for 30, 40 and even 50 per cent more than they had been bought for only a year earlier.

Highfield called the Coal Harbour increase “very remarkable.” He cited a six-year-old two-bedroom concrete apartment that sold for $368,000 in May of 2002, and resold for $505,000 exactly a year later, a rise of 37 per cent.

Mid- to lower-priced properties in the city showed more upward movement last year, Highfield noted, while there was relatively less movement in the high-priced properties — $1 million or more — that had been leading the real estate market in recent years.

However, high-end properties with desirable views, waterfront and other popular locations “just kept right on moving,” Highfield said.

Some categories of commercial property did not fare as well. Hotel stock went down in value as vacancy rates went up, largely because of factors such as 9/11, SARS and mad cow disease that reduced the number of people travelling.

Property values in Vancouver‘s Chinatown area were largely unchanged, reflecting the influence of the neighbouring Downtown Eastside, and the fact that much of its business has migrated to Richmond‘s shopping malls.

North and West Vancouver, Whistler and the Sunshine Coast showed similar gains to Vancouver‘s, the assessment authority said.

As in Vancouver, “the top end of the market, although still active and still moving, hasn’t moved as much as the bottom and the middle of the market,” Highfield said.

West Vancouver‘s assessment roll swelled by 9.1 per cent, from $12.1 billion to $12.3 billion.

Squamish and Pemberton were the hot spots in the region, and overtook Whistler to lead the market last year.

“It isn’t that Whistler has cooled off,” Highfield said. “It’s just that their market movement is more in line with everybody else’s now.”

Properties in Squamish and Pemberton that suffered flood damage last fall are getting reduced assessments, “but we don’t expect the market trend to be interrupted very much by the floods,” he said.

In Burnaby, total assessed property value rose by 8.2 per cent to $27.1 billion from $25 billion. New West properties were up 8.4 per cent, to $5.8 billion from $5.4 billion.

Richmond values were up 9.3 per cent, said area assessor Mark Katz, to $24.4 billion from $22.3 billion.

In the Tri Cities area — Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam and Port Moody, plus the villages of Anmore and Belcarra — assessed property value rose by 13 per cent, to $22.8 billion from $20.2 billion, area assessor Kash Kang said.

Figures for Surrey were not available Monday because of a computer glitch.

© Copyright  2004 Vancouver Sun