Bob Ransford
Sun
As the year draws to a close, there is a collective sigh of relief that we made it through what could have been a much scarier year when it comes to real estate markets, housing challenges and urban development realities. In fact, the year turned out to be a period when a number of opportunities, issues, projects and challenges moved in a direction where they are now positioned at turning points, making the year ahead a pivotal one.
Metro Vancouver’s real estate market weathered the storm much better than most. Low interest rates, measurable bargains, combined with an improvement in local employment conditions, saw buyers flock to the new-home market over the last six months.
New housing inventory is dwindling and developers are beginning to look at new plans and restarting once-stalled projects. Pre-sales are in vogue again as nervous lenders want to prove out market demand before they finance a development. Only experienced developers able to risk a substantial portion of their own equity are going to be bringing projects to the market over the next year, which should provide some comfort to buyers who fear a project failing halfway through construction because the developer is inexperienced and overextended. Weeks away from the Olympics, we all seem to recognize that our saving grace from what could have been a much tougher ride has to be that boost of anticipation in welcoming the world. At the same time, there is an unspoken fear of the unknown post-Olympics. The post-Olympic doldrums will be a fear that’s unfounded if the current trend, based on market fundamentals of supply and demand, continues.
Those market fundamentals might be the saving grace for the Olympic Village project. This massive project, in what is an important experiment in sustainable urban development in Southeast False Creek, has seen its twists and turns, with Vancouver taxpayers on the hook for tens of millions of dollars. If the upward market trend continues, the condos on this site will fetch the prices the city and its private partner, the Millennium Group, need to call the project a financial success.
Over the next year, that experiment should be assessed as to whether it can rightly be called a model of sustainable urbanism. Certainly, the new development pattern set by the project, with midrise density, tight streets, ultra-green building technology and unique mix of uses, is a huge success and a template for the future evolution of what is called “Vancouverism.” But it can be deemed a model of sustainable urbanism only if it can be replicated; for it to be replicated, it needs to be financially successful.
The focus for planning new development will turn somewhat, in the coming year, away from large projects like Southeast False Creek and toward neighbourhoods farther from Vancouver’s downtown. This will present new challenges and opportunities for planners, politicians and citizens, who care about housing affordability and neighbourhood evolution.
Vancouver will begin to see the first laneway houses likely completed over the next year. Surrey will begin to see the emergence of a truly urban town centre and Metro Vancouver’s second downtown as substantial development is sparked in the Surrey City Centre area over the next year.
The region itself–Metro Vancouver’s regional government — faces a huge challenge as it grapples with updating the long out-of-date Livable Region Plan with a new regional growth strategy. Politicians who can’t seem to think beyond their parochial interests have ignored the real challenge of managing growth in Metro Vancouver — tackling the governance system and coming up with a workable model that sees land use and transportation governed by an accountable body that has real power to make long-range planning decisions. Housing affordability will continue to dominate challenges in Metro Vancouver next year if we can’t come up with a system of planning sustainable land use, making tough decisions that flow from those plans and financing the vital public transportation infrastructure that supports those land-use decisions. The next year is a turning point for this and many other important issues.
Bob Ransford is a public affairs consultant with CounterPoint Communications Inc. He is a former real estate developer who specializes in urban land use issues. E-mail: [email protected]
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