by Ephraim Vecina
Canadian Real Estate Wealth
The latest Goodman Report on the apartment sector in Metro Vancouver highlighted the area’s lack of supply amid the ever-growing demand for rental housing in the city.
“It’s anticipated that the regional population will increase by an average of 35,000 per year until 2040,” authors David and Mark Goodman wrote, as quoted by the Vancouver Sun.
Outsized demand has inflated Vancouver’s average price per suite to $377,000 in 2016, up by 52 per cent compared to the year before that. The report authors dismissed the possibility of this trend ending any time soon.
“The Goodman Report expects local landlords to remain insulated from any apparent decline in tenant demand or softening of rents,” the duo stated.
And while 9,470 purpose-built rental units across the Lower Mainland are either in the pipeline, have already been approved, or are now under construction, the report authors warned that this would not be sufficient to address the demand.
“You can’t just have condos and have a viable society,” David Goodman said. “You need rentals. And if you are not building enough rentals, people are going to throw their hands up in disgust … and they are going to leave our city. These are often people who are educated and have lost all hope of even renting, so they’ll go to Alberta or back east … where they won’t have such a stressful time finding a roof over their heads.”
The situation mirrored that of the city’s industrial real estate sector. A fresh report from CBRE predicted that the Vancouver market will suffer accelerated price growth in the very near future, as the city’s supply of industrial space is unable to cope with current and projected levels of demand.
The Q4 market review of Vancouver’s industrial real estate sector warned that the city, along with Burnaby and Richmond, has only less than 10 years of land supply left for industrial purposes. Clients who might have normally considered Vancouver are now looking for space in Surrey and Delta, CBRE said.
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