Vancouver considers modular housing to boost rentals

Vancouver considers modular housing to boost rentals

City of Vancouver staff are considering fast-tracking permits for standardized, modular laneway homes as a way to help boost the city’s rental stock.  Such a move could speed up the development of backyard homes on the estimated 60,000 lots that can accommodate them in neighbourhoods across the city.

Vancouver Sun

Vancouver renters being pushed away from transit corridors

For all the talk about the affordable housing crisis, the missing link has been transit. When Martin Fernandez faced eviction from his Metrotown rental last June, one of his biggest concerns was moving to a neighbourhood that wasn’t walking distance to transit. Mr. Fernandez, who makes around $3,000 a month and has two small children.

Globe and Mail

Greenwood growing in retirement community market

While Greenwood Retirement Communities is a relative newcomer in the field, the operational arm of Byron Equities Inc. is making its presence felt in Ontario. “At one point we had invested as a partner in a retirement residence, and found this to provide better returns than shopping plazas or industrial buildings,” said Greenwood director of real estate development Andy Bicanic.

Property Biz Canada

How does Airbnb affect rent and sales prices in cities?

Few studies have analyzed how Airbnb is truly affecting rents and sales prices in urban cores, but those that have show the practice is raising both rents and purchase prices in common tourist areas. Inside Airbnb, an organization that uses Airbnb’s website data to analyze the short-term lodging company’s market effect, put together a few maps for Business Insider.

Multifamily Executive

Airbnb says it doesn’t affect Toronto’s rental market

Airbnb is trying to fend off the threat of strict regulations in Toronto with new numbers the company says show its “home-sharing” business is having little effect on the city’s tight long-term rental market. City officials are set to begin drafting new rules to govern short-term home-rental websites which has launched court challenges of new rules imposed on it in New York State and San Francisco.

Globe and Mail

Condo owner does battle with the AirBnB next door

Condo and apartment dwellers across the country are now doing battle in the hallways of their owns buildings, as neighbours grapple with a problem that didn’t exist even five years ago. Edmonton’s Ninetta Tavano is one of those caught up in this latest NIMB — not in my building — issue.

CBC

Students waiting to move into K2 building in Waterloo

University classes have been on for about two months but Terry Wang, a student of the University of Waterloo, is still waiting to move into the apartment he signed a lease for in June. Wang was supposed to move into the new K2 building on King Street and James Street in Waterloo on Sept. 4, along with hundreds of other students.

CBC

Alberta proposing stricter rules due to condo construction delays

The Alberta government is proposing strict regulations that will help protect condo buyers frustrated with construction delays. The rules would make an expected occupancy date mandatory for purchase agreements. If the unit is not ready one month after that date, the buyer would have the option of a refund and walk away, or renegotiate with the developer.

CBC

Hamilton developer of Pigott building proposes 2 new condos

The developer who transformed the Pigott building in downtown Hamilton into condos is back in town with plans for two new projects. One is along the LRT corridor, on the corner of King Street West and Caroline Street North. The other is kitty-corner from the city’s new GO station in the North End.

CBC

Vancouver and Sydney, Australia facing similar issues: expert

As a city planner and housing policy expert in both London and Sydney, Sarah Hill has seen some of the least affordable major cities in the world firsthand. Hill is the CEO of the Greater Sydney Commission and she is among the international experts in Vancouver for the Re-address housing conference, which aims to tackle issues of affordability.

CBC – Business in Vancouver

Canada’s record household debt is threatening its financial stability

Canada’s debt, swelled by a decade-long housing boom to almost triple the size of its economy, is drawing increasing concern from an international banking community that says it threatens growth and financial stability. The combined debt of Canadian governments, companies and households reached US$4.4 trillion in the first quarter, or 288 per cent of GDP.

Financial Post

Why might millennials be better off than boomers

Millennials have better job prospects than their parents ever did, at least according to a new report that says the tech-savvy nature of the country’s largest cohort will serve it well. Laura Cooper, an economist with Royal Bank of Canada, looked at the future for Canada’s 9.8 million millennials.

Financial Post

Home Capital says new mortgage rules would bite business

Alternative lender Home Capital Group Inc. said Thursday that new federal government mortgage rules could take a 60 per cent bite out of its insured mortgage business. Home Capital originated $464.8 million in insured mortgages in the second quarter, under its “Accelerator” brand of mortgages — an increase of 66.3 per cent compared to the previous year.

Financial Post

B.C.’s new watchdog hits ‘reset’ on province’s real estate council

B.C.’s new real estate watchdog says the public should be confident that realtors are operating fairly, and he says much heavier fines, which have increased to as high as a quarter-million dollars, will help him tamp down agent misconduct in a housing market fuelled by speculation.

Globe and Mail

Moody’s says Canadian housing OK as it’s sued over U.S. bubble

When ratings agency Moody’s offers a positive assessment of a real estate market, it might be wise to take that with a grain of salt. Moody’s recently gave Canada’s housing market a clean bill of health, and says it is about to be sued by the U.S. Justice Department for its alleged role in the U.S. housing bubble that triggered the 2008 financial collapse.

Huffington Post

Market Conditions

Why the Ontario housing market is rigged against millennials

I live in a vibrant Toronto neighbourhood, just across from a university. It looks diverse, because of all the students, but it’s really not. Middle-class families were pushed out long ago – first to Scarborough and Mississauga, then to Ajax and Pickering and Newmarket and Barrie.  A run-of-the-mill three-bedroom house in Ajax (a brutal commute from Toronto) now goes for $500,000 or $600,000.

Globe and Mail

GTA high-rise sales on track for record

Prices for all types of new homes in the GTA continue to set records while sales of new high-rise homes are on pace for an unprecedented year, the Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD) announced today. So far this year, there have been a record 20,596 high-rise homes sold across the GTA.

Canada Newswire

Metro housing starts heat up as sales cool

Metro Vancouver multi-family construction surged in September, pushing provincial housing starts back to the record-high pace observed earlier in the year. Total urban-area housing starts reached a seasonally adjusted annualized pace of 47,500 units, up 39% from August and 72% above a year ago.

Business in Vancouver

National housing policy based on markets in Toronto and Vancouver

They are Canada’s two hottest housing markets, and even some in the real industry don’t question the need to cool prices in both Toronto and Vancouver, but that opinion changes once you get beyond the orbit of those two cities.

Montreal Gazette

U.S. multi-family segment falters

U.S. single-family starts surged in September, pointing to sustained housing market strength even as a drop in the construction of multi-family dwellings pushed overall home building activity to a 1-1/2-year low.

Globe and Mail

Mortgage and Finance

Tory leadership candidate Michael Chong wants to privatize CMHC

A day after the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation announced its first “red warning” for the Canadian housing sector, a Conservative leadership candidate says he wants to privatize CMHC. Tory leadership candidate Michael Chong says “the single biggest factor” contributing to the rapid increase in housing prices has been the “massive expansion” of government-backed mortgage credit over the last 15 years through CMHC.

Calgary Herald – Financial Post

Is your mortgage leaving you house poor?

The Real Life Ratio is an answer to the self-interested housing affordability calculators offered by banks and other lenders, as well as the real estate industry. Their tools look at how much mortgage you can afford without posing a significant default risk. There’s zero consideration of how well you’ll be able to juggle your housing costs, plus expenses like daycare, saving for retirement or children’s education.

Globe and Mail

New Developments

Ashcroft Homes appeals rejection of bid to build Inglis Street high rises

An Ottawa-based developer is before the province’s utility and review board today to appeal a Halifax planning department decision not to allow two high-rise towers to be built on the Canadian Martyrs Church site in south-end Halifax. Ashcroft Homes submitted a proposal to construct the 27- and 31-storey towers at 5900 Inglis St. but the municipality turned it down Aug. 9.

CBC – CBC

Anger flares as Fort McMurray struggles to rebuild after wildfires

Some five months after the wildfires that devastated Fort McMurray, Alta., were extinguished, anger over red tape and the slow pace of insurance payouts and permit issuance is flaring in the remote northern Canadian city. More than 1,900 structures were destroyed by the wildfire last May, which forced the evacuation of about 90,000 residents.

Globe and Mail

Natural Disasters

Forest ecologist says we need to get fire ‘smarter’ in B.C.

You would think after years of dealing with wildfires in the Southern Interior, we would know all about being fire smart. But Lori Daniels says we have a ways to go. She’s an associate professor of Forest Ecology at UBC in Vancouver.

CBC

Legal Issues

B.C. wants to seize realtor’s property after 2011 grow-op bust

Vancouver real estate agent Maurizio Mastronardi said he plans to fight the B.C. government’s attempt to seize a north Burnaby property he owns, which was once the site of a marijuana grow-op.  Earlier this month, B.C.’s Director of Civil Forfeiture filed a claim in the Supreme Court of B.C. seeking to seize a property on Braeside Drive in Burnaby.

The Province

Other

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