City of Edmonton – Downtown development site

Twin towers to rise in Victoria

Fifteen- and 17-storey residential towers will rise from a downtown Victoria funeral home parking lot. 989 Johnson will feature a six-storey podium. “We definitely want to do something really creative and different. It’s such an important site for this area,” Dan Cox, co-owner of Cox Developments, said Monday.

Victoria Times Colonist

Multi-res keeps pace in northeast Calgary

Northeast Calgary was the only end of the city to keep pace with new construction of multi-res housing from a year earlier. Construction starts for the multi-family segment, across the Calgary census metropolitan area, dipped 20 per cent to 342 in January from 430 during the same month in 2015, says Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. 

Calgary Herald – Calgary Herald – Calgary Herald

Le Namur adds rental units to Montreal’s ‘Triangle’

The 176-unit Le Namur, the first residential rental building constructed in Montreal’s Côte-des-Neiges area in more than a decade, will be move-in ready this spring. “In several areas of the city, the rental housing stock is not really recent or accessible,” said Serge Rouillard, who co-heads Habitations Trigone.

Property Biz Canada

B.C. homebuyers encouraged to avoid taxes

Some real estate listings in British Columbia are marketing newly built, potentially vacant properties as personal residences, a deceptive tactic that can encourage buyers to avoid paying the GST and enable sellers to avoid declaring capital gains on multi-million-dollar transactions.

Globe and Mail – Vancouver Sun – Vancouver Sun – Globe and Mail

B.C. to help ease costs for first-time buyers

The B.C. government was set to table a budget Tuesday aising to coax first-time home buyers into a red hot real estate market. Finance Minister Mike de Jong Monday offered those glimpses of his budget, which will tackle housing on a number of fronts, including affordability for first-time buyers and stimulating home building to keep prices in check.

Victoria Times Colonist

Independence key in flipping probe: Chair

Carolyn Rogers, the chairwoman of an advisory group tasked with probing real estate in Metro Vancouver says the independence of the body is top of mind as it begins the task of restoring public confidence in an industry battered by allegations of insider trading and fraud.

Vancouver Province – Globe and Mail – CBC News – CTV News

House-flipping sets off alarm bells in Ontario

Ontario’s real estate regulator says it is considering warning agents to play by the rules when it comes to flipping houses, after British Columbia’s move to clamp down on the controversial, but legal, practice of selling assignments. The Real Estate Council of Ontario says it doesn’t believe the practice of assignment flipping is widespread in Ontario, however.

Globe and Mail

Banff man transforms storefront into apartment

In Banff’s cramped housing market, Larry Whan has managed to find a neighbourhood all his own. The businessman is the only legal resident of the town’s industrial park, where he’s constructed a quaint one-bedroom apartment above his woodworking shop. “I’m the first person in the history of Banff to convert commercial space into residential space,” said Whan.

CBC News

Five-storey apartment building proposed for Canmore

A proposal to build a dedicated rental apartment building in Canmore by a hotel owner may result in the tallest building in the entire community. Coast Hotel owner Michael Hannan has proposed a 90-unit rental apartment building to be located on a portion of its property on Old Canmore Road.

Rocky Mountain Outlook

Single rooms sit vacant in B.C.’s private nursing homes

Single bedrooms are sitting empty in B.C. nursing homes while more than 800 seniors are having to live in multi-occupancy rooms of three to five people or waiting for a community placement while staying in an expensive hospital bed. The BC Care Providers Association represents 145 of B.C.’s 331 publicly funded long-term care facilities.

Vancouver Sun

New mortgage rules may be too late for Vancouver

Bankruptcy professional Blair Mantin is seeing surreal financial conditions on the margins of Vancouver’s housing bubble. On Monday new federal mortgage rules aimed at cooling Vancouver’s market took effect. The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) now requires a 10 per cent down payment on the portion of mortgages it insures over $500,000.

Vancouver Province – Financial Post – Globe and Mail – CBC News

Vancouver losing lifeblood to housing crisis

Vancouver is increasingly becoming an investor haven for the rich. For many young adults, the city increasingly represents a place of which they no longer can afford to be a part. Consequently, Vancouver faces an almost existential threat; what happens when the lifeblood of any community, those in their 20s and 30s, decide to leave?

Globe and Mail

Hot markets can expect some ‘payback’: TD

Several of Canada’s housing markets lost some steam in January. Or, as Toronto-Dominion Bank put it in a fresh forecast, some “payback” after the exceptional boom years. According to the Teranet-National Bank home price index released Friday, values across the country dipped 0.1 per cent in January from December, marking the second decline in a row.

Globe and Mail – Buzzbuzzhome.com

The five Cs of credit in apartment building mortgages

Loan underwriters often refer to the five Cs of credit when evaluating and underwriting loan applications. What are the five Cs and how do they affect mortgage lending on apartment properties? The five Cs are: capacity, capital, character, collateral and conditions. We will attempt to explain each of these items and their effect on apartment lending credit decisions.

National Real Estate Investor

U.K. under-35s face becoming permanent renters: Thinktank

Nine out of 10 Britons on modest incomes under the age of 35 will be frozen out of home ownership within a decade, according to a study from a leading thinktank that lays bare the impact of surging property prices on the young. The Resolution Foundation said home ownership was increasingly becoming the preserve of the well-off and the elderly.

The Guardian – The Guardian

RENX Columnists

Understanding cap rates in the apartment sector

Capitalization rates, or cap rates, are a way of estimating the general rate of return of an apartment building by buyers or sellers. The cap rate for an apartment transaction is calculated by dividing a building’s net operating income or NOI into the total value of the transaction or sale (Value = NOI/Cap Rate).

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Market Conditions

Value of Vancouver home soars in January

Surging sales in Vancouver and Toronto last month prompted TD to express concerns Tuesday the cities may be at risk of a home price correction. The Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) reported Tuesday sales of existing homes rose by eight per cent in January compared to a year ago, while the national average home price soared 17 per cent.

Vancouver Sun – Business In Vancouver – Ottawa Business Journal – Reuters

U.S. residential vacancy rate drops in Q1

RealtyTrac‘s Q1 2016 U.S. Residential Property Vacancy Analysis reveals that out of nearly 85 million residential properties (1 to 4 units) nationwide, more than 1.3 million (1.6 per cent) were vacant at the beginning of February, down 9.3 per cent from the last residential property vacancy analysis in the third quarter of 2015.

Marketwired

Multi-family fires on all cylinders for JV buyers

Vacancy levels are tight in Hayward, Calif., and forecast to become even tighter through 2020, as the area continues to add jobs at a projected rate of approximately 110,000 jobs per year. In this supply-constrained submarket with no new rental units completed since 2014, the plans for a repositioning effort on a circa-1986 multifamily property make sense.

Globest.com

Latest reports:

* Peterborough, Peterborough and the Kawarthas Association of Realtors, Peterborough Examiner 

* Yorkton, Sask., ReMax Yorkton, Yorkton This Week

* Chilliwack, B.C., Chilliwack and District Real Estate Board, Chilliwack Times

* New housing prices, Statistics Canada, Reuters

* Reno, Abodo, Reno Gazette Journal 

* San Diego, San Diego Association of Realtors, Times of San Diego

* U.S. homebuilder confidence, National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo builder sentiment index, Winnipeg Free Press

RENX Market Summaries

	REITs & REOCs – Fourth-quarter 2015 report
	RENX has prepared a table with a convenient list of the companies and a summary of links to their reports that will be updated quarterly. Fourth-quarter results are now arriving. Canadian REITs & REOCs – Fourth-quarter 2015 report

 

Renovation, Repair and Maintenance

What ever happened to the Toronto duplex?

Torontonians have renovation fever, yet one type of city dwelling has been largely overlooked by developers and homeowners: the duplex. In cities such as Boston, last century’s humble duplexes have been turned into posh condominiums for young families and empty-nesters in the new millennium. It’s as simple as supply meets demand.

Toronto Star

Old school, new home

Alysa Hawkins was browsing real estate ads on Kijiji when one offbeat listing sparked her curiosity. For sale: South Marysburgh Central Public School, $256,000. Hawkins and her husband, Jesse Parker, had never talked about buying a decommissioned school. They had been ruminating for years, however, about leaving Toronto for a more free-spirited life in the country with their three young daughters.

Globe and Mail

Alberta firm restoring Tuscan villas

Stephen Petasky and Fulvio di Rosa are debating the minutia of a spacious shower that’s yet to be constructed and, at times, feels hard to imagine inside the rustic 16th-century Tuscan farmhouse that was falling apart only a year ago. Petasky, president and founder of Luxus Group, foresees a modern washroom that’ll meet the tastes of wealthy Canadians.

Globe and Mail

Affordable Housing

P3 important in affordable housing financing

In the U.S., the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program is an excellent example of a successfully coordinated and robust public-private partnership structure. This federally supplied and state-administered program works exceptionally well because private investors provide all the equity and bear the financial risk.

Commercial Property Executive

Vancouver family-friendly condos rare, expensive

For the average young family living in Metro Vancouver, price tags for detached homes are out of reach. Condos or townhouses with enough bedrooms for the children are hard to come by. The Canadian National Occupancy Standard says only about a 10th of Metro Vancouver’s housing stock in 2014 was in condos or townhouses that met that standard.

Vancouver Sun

Mental health of tenants a struggle for TCHC

Hundreds of tenants of a Toronto Community Housing building, displaced from their homes after a six-alarm fire in 2010, recently saw another balcony go up in flames. A disgruntled female tenant who had received an eviction order allegedly pushed her own furniture onto her balcony and set it alight in the early morning hours of Jan. 30, causing $100,000 in damage.

Toronto Star

Cities, Towns and Urban Issues

Vernon’s small-town appeal calls to Calgarians

Vernon, a North Okanagan Valley city, is listed among the top five fastest-growing communities in B.C. with a population of 25,000 or more. Vernon, which has long been a destination location for Albertans looking for part-time or fulltime homes, saw its population gain 3.4 per cent last year behind only Langford, West Kelowna, Chilliwack, and Langley.

Calgary Herald

Calgary architects look to kickstart shift to laneway housing

Matthew Kennedy grew up in a suburban Calgary neighbourhood, but when he returned to his hometown after studying architecture in Halifax, he was looking for a small, efficient and affordable space with a short commute to work. So Kennedy, alongside friend and architecture classmate Mark Erickson, turned his attention to an oft-ignored Calgary space: the alleyway.

Globe and Mail

Montreal, Winnipeg among top seven smart cities

The Greater Montreal area has been named one of the seven smartest communities in the world by the Intelligent Community Forum. The New York-based think tank cited the creation of a Smart City plan, its focus on extending its wired and wireless broadband infrastructure and new technologies to make city services more efficient.

Montreal Gazette – Winnipeg Free Press

OCPM rejects Wanklyn housing project in LaSalle

The city is shelving a controversial housing development in LaSalle after a damning report by the Office de Consultation Publique de Montréal (OCPM). The borough had billed the proposed nine-storey, 755-unit development in a former industrial zone as a “transit-oriented development” (TOD) that would breathe new life into the area.

Montreal Gazette

Buying and Selling

Tiny Point Grey home sells above asking price

A tiny home in Vancouver’s tony Point Grey neighbourhood that caused a stir when it was listed for nearly $2.398 million is now listed as sold. Sources told The Province the home received three offers and sold for $2.48 million, a little more than $80,000 over the asking price. The house was listed by The Kavanagh Group through ReMax.

Vancouver Province

B.C. mortgage brokers should disclose commissions: Regulator

B.C.’s financial services regulator is proposing mortgage brokers disclose their commissions, a move the agency says is necessary to protect consumers but that brokers across the country argue will undermine confidence in their industry. The province’s Financial Institutions Commission issued an open letter on its website last month detailing a proposed plan.

Globe and Mail

Big Fat Deal: East Van hipster haven

Address: 4728 Main Street, Vancouver
Price: $5,988,000
MLS: R2025444
The skinny: Three-bedroom, eight-bathroom, 9,440-square-foot live/work space on a 5,635-square-foot lot on Main Street.
The bling: A bona fide multi-million-dollar pad on the east side’s hippest street, no less. And it’s a bohemian enough live/work space to pass even the most rigorous keeping-it-real test. 

BC Business

Other

Mattamy Homes Jacksonville honoured

Mattamy Homes, North America’s largest privately owned homebuilder, announced  its Jacksonville Division has been named the 2015 Builder of the Year by the Northeast Florida Builders Association (NEFBA). Mattamy Jacksonville was recognized for its dedicated involvement from a number of employees, and participation in the Parade of Homes as well as other events.

Canada Newswire

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