Posted Nov 6, 2007, 10:47 AM
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Dérive-r
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Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Vancouver, BC
Posts: 4,446
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From today's Vancouver Sun...
Quote:
Surrey's Sky Towers sell out
By Michael Kane, Vancouver Sun
Published: Monday, November 05, 2007
VANCOUVER - Surrey is Metro Vancouver's new condo capital after the recently announced 901-unit Sky Towers development sold out within 30 hours over the weekend.
A record 545 units were sold on Saturday, surpassing the previous one-day sales record of 536 units set at the Woodwards Towers in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside in April 2006. The remaining 356 units were sold on Sunday.
But there was none of the usual condo-mania with buyers sleeping on the sidewalk overnight, said sales manager Cam Good.
Saturday was an invitation-only affair for realtors and buyers who had done previous business with MAC Real Estate Marketing Solutions, as well as friends of developer Hee Yong 'Edmond' Yang.
"It was a very civilized affair on Saturday," Good said. "On Sunday, the public came and there were only about 15 people in line when I arrived, so I was worried based on past experiences. But by probably 11 a.m., we had 400 or 500 people in line."
The 36-storey and 40-storey Sky Towers in Surrey's Central City area are expected to be the tallest between Vancouver and Calgary when they are completed in 2010.
Designed by Patrick Cotter architects, each will include a 1,000-square-foot rooftop solarium with 50-foot glass atriums, along with a 4,000-square-foot rooftop patio offering unrestricted views.
With studios starting at $179,000 and upper-floor, two-bedroom units fetching more than $500,000, the total dollar value of the weekend sale was $280 million.
"We had condo-mania demand but chose to spread what normally happens in five hours over two days to give us the breathing room to deal with that much real estate," said Cameron McNeill of MAC Realty.
"People are just getting that this is going to be a significant urban centre 10 years down the road and they want to get in now."
Some 150 condos were priced as less than $250,000 - almost half the cost of similar units in Vancouver.
The towers are directly across the street from the five Infinity highrises being built at the King George SkyTrain station. Together the projects are valued at $1 billion and, along with the Surrey campus of Simon Fraser University, are being described as the nucleus of Surrey's first downtown community.
"This is the downtown of Surrey and most of the buyers I talked to believe that prices in Central City are going to close the gap with downtown Vancouver," Good said in an interview.
"About half of the buyers struck out the assignment privileges of their contracts, which would indicate that they are not short-term investors, that they are planning on completing.
"We did not have very many people planning to flip [their units] but we do have a lot of people thinking that they are going to get in now while it's affordable and be able to get some really high rents later."
Yang, the 46-year-old founder of a 2,000-outlet fried chicken franchise in South Korea, moved to Vancouver with his family in 2002. He took over the Infinity project after the previous developer, also a Korean, faltered under a heavy debt load.
mkane@png.canwest.com
© Vancouver Sun
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