Affordable Housing Rally

[logan5]

This city is so land constrained that people are forced to live 30 - 40 km's away from the city centre. That's further out than most of the outskirts of Toronto, a city nearly 3 times the size of Vancouver. We are very land constrained.

[csbvan]

It must be nice to know that Vancouver's Real Estate industry is such a scam, you can make hundreds of millions of dollars off of it by duping sellers:

It is Wednesday night in Burnaby. Real-estate agents and sales teams are gathered in a well-lit office training room. The group, some of them young and hungry to make their mark in the bracing property trade on the Lower Mainland, is there to learn a thing or two from the boss.

The boss is Ze Yu Wu, owner of one of the fastest-growing new brokerages in the Vancouver area, New Coast Realty, which boasts 445 agents and hundreds of millions in sales. It is an informal training session to give some of his new and top performers an edge. He suggests his sales teams listen up, take notes: These tips will help them, and the firm, make more money.

In this October session, one main theme is straightforward: How to move properties briskly by talking clients into selling their houses for less than they want.

“We should sell the house fast and buy the house fast,” Mr. Wu tells them at one point during the evening, underscoring the lucrative nature of speed in a commission-driven business. They joke and chat with him on how to do that.

Mr. Wu offers this advice: “You must consider your own interests.”

Some of his suggestions in the course of the night, however, tread the razor-edge between shrewd salesmanship and deception. One tip he drops casually is how to persuade clients – by lying to them – that the best offer they will get is the first one.

“It is only a saying to the homeowner, but actually, it’s not true,” Mr. Wu says. “The first offer will never be the best offer, I am sure about this. But you have to say the first offer is the best offer.”

.....

Real Estate Board figures show New Coast bought and sold more than a billion dollars in property last year – and that does not include private and pre-sale deals outside the Multiple Listings Service.

A 2014 article in New Coast’s bilingual publication talks about selling to Chinese citizens who want a “safe house for their wealth.”

“The already lively real estate market in Vancouver is further taking giant leaps forward as a result of the Chinese anti-corruption policies,” the article says.

“Experts predict that with the increasing strictness of the anti-corruption policies in China it will continue to cause cash flow into the Vancouver housing market. Tapping into the patterns of these trends will help both buyers and sellers make the right and easy choice.”

....

Back at Mr. Wu’s fall training session, he offers agents suggestions on how to persuade homeowners their house is worth less than they think it is.

For a home in Richmond, for instance, he suggests agents warn sellers that wealthy buyers are afraid of earthquakes and tsunamis. “This reason is very powerful,” he says.

(On its website, the City of Richmond advises that the risk of tsunamis is not significant, despite myths to the contrary.)

Mr. Wu also offers a tip for selling in Vancouver’s west side: “Say that the houses in this area are too expensive, so you can suppress the seller’s bottom price. ...

“If it’s a house by the road, say don’t buy a house by the road next time; if there is a ditch in front of the house, say don’t buy a house behind a ditch or electricity pole next time; if the house is quite narrow, say don’t buy a narrow house next time, it doesn’t look grand.”

He also suggests clients be led to believe that Chinese buyers’ sources of money are drying up, for various reasons – all of them plausible and intended to instill a sense of urgency to the transaction.

The Chinese stock market is down: “How do people have the money to buy the house?”

China is tightening its controls on outflows of cash: “People want to buy the house, but they can’t transfer the money to Canada.”

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/...ticle29578417/

[whatnext]

New Coast is just an odious symptom of the disease.

[mukmuk64]

Originally Posted by Stingray2004

I have said it many times over... back in 1973 the then BC NDP gov't never realized how their then social engineering experiment with the ALR, incorporating Class 1, 2, 3, 4 ,5 and 6 lands, would impact Metro Van housing prices. Metro Van already is confined by the mountains to the north, Georgia Straight to the west, the border to the south, and the ALR and mountains to the east. And now the proverbial chickens are coming home to roost.

Yet, another 1 million are projected to reside in Metro Van within the next 40 years. Where are they all gonna reside with NIMBYism rampant? What will be the impact upon underlying land values in terms of future home ownership?

I have said it many times before... marginal and mostly fallow Class 4, 5, and 6 ALR lands in Metro Vancouver no longer serves the public interest as a result... ya know... those horse hobby farms... cranberry farms (cranberry juice is great and same with cranberry sauce on the Christmas turkey), etc. - but at what current/future societal cost in terms of housing prices?

With prices rising and no real available green fields to build on, it's easy to see why pressure on the ALR is rising. I keep expecting the BC Liberals to start undermining it but it hasn't happened yet. Perhaps when the Massey Bridge is built it'll come hand in hand with a pitch by the BC Liberals to loosen ALR restrictions in Delta to justify the wide bridge's existence.

What frustrates me though is that we actually have TONS of land already available to build on and we really don't need to touch the ALR.

It's only because our existing zoning is set for ultra low density detached housing that we've run out. The massive majority of land area in the City of Vancouver and its surrounding cities for example are zoned to only allow for a large detached home, with huge setbacks and gardens.

The real estate industry are too lazy and set in their ways to think of anything else, and municipal governments are too scared of NIMBYs to introduce any real solutions. If we modified existing detached housing zoning to allow for duplex, triplex, fourplex, row houses, townhouses etc, we could dramatically multiply the amount of residences in the region. These residences would also be at grade and have access to outdoor space just like a single family house and this form of development would not in any way affect heights in the neighbourhood.

I was at a Fort Langley pizza parlor the other day and on the wall they had a zoning map of the town (presumably to help delivery drivers). The map showed Bedford Landing, a newly developed part of town with modern small lot sizes and thin rowhouse lots in contrast with the old part of town with massive part acerage lots. It really showed how much super low density land there is available. If all of Fort Langley had the density of the new Bedford Landing development, it would be probably be able to have 3-4x the population it has now.

A last note on cranberries. Our tiny little lower mainland area provides 12% of the cranberries for all of North America. This is genuinely super productive arable land. There's a reason why the ALR exists. It would be incredibly wasteful to pave over it.

[Procrastinational]

Originally Posted by mukmuk64

A last note on cranberries. Our tiny little lower mainland area provides 12% of the cranberries for all of North America. This is genuinely super productive arable land. There's a reason why the ALR exists. It would be incredibly wasteful to pave over it.

That incredible farmland is certainly worth protecting. Nobody is disputing that. The argument is that class 4-6 ALR (which is only average farmland) should have some development restrictions eased. That would allow for more growth, easing pressure on housing prices, while also protecting the prime lands located along the Fraser river delta.