{"id":659,"date":"2016-09-11T23:03:03","date_gmt":"2016-09-11T23:03:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chrisbrownrealestate.ca\/blog\/?p=659"},"modified":"2016-09-11T23:03:41","modified_gmt":"2016-09-11T23:03:41","slug":"vancouver-presales-figures-breaking-records","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chrisbrownrealestate.ca\/blog\/vancouver-presales-figures-breaking-records\/","title":{"rendered":"Vancouver presales figures breaking records"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>

The Residences at Lynn Valley by Bosa Developments. Now preselling in North Vancouver.<\/p><\/div>\n

Presales of brand new condos in\u00a0Vancouver\u00a0have never been stronger, even as\u00a0recent figures show a slump in real estate sales in the wake of\u00a0B.C.\u2019s new 15 per cent tax on foreign buyers.<\/p>\n

At the end of the second quarter there were just 42 presale units for sale in downtown Vancouver, none of which\u00a0were listed for less than\u00a0$1 million, according to Fifth Avenue Real Estate Marketing\u2019s second quarter report.<\/p>\n

However,\u00a0such\u00a0figures\u00a0are\u00a0rarely represented in\u00a0statistics describing the Vancouver real estate market.<\/p>\n

Metro Vancouver real estate sales are usually measured by the sale of new and old detached homes plus resales of older condos, apartments and townhouses as listed in the realty industry\u2019s multi-listing service (MLS).\u00a0But, according to\u00a0developers and the\u00a0Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.,\u00a0MLS doesn\u2019t capture the sales of new condos, usually sold as presales before construction is complete or post-construction by the developer through its own on-site sales centre.<\/p>\n

And those sales broke records in the first half of this year, according to Fifth Avenue, which analyzed every project under presale.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is all the stuff that hasn\u2019t been owned before,\u201d said Fifth Avenue developer Scott Brown. \u201cYears ago, 50 or 60 per cent of the units would be sold at the opening of presales and the developer would sell the rest of the units over the months and after completion.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, more and more people are buying prior to completion.\u2028 The demand for multi-family units is growing and the supply can\u2019t keep up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Almost 13,000 units were presold across Metro Vancouver in the first half of this year alone, surpassing the total for each of the years between 2010 and 2014, Brown said.<\/p>\n

From West Vancouver to Aldergrove, the number of presales for the first six months of the year in various multifamily buildings under construction or planning was 53 per cent higher than the same period in 2015.<\/p>\n

Brown\u00a0said presales are on track for more than 18,000 units this year and could even hit 20,000 for the first time. \u2028He said if there\u2019s a downturn in the market for presales in coming years, it will likely be due to\u00a0a lack of project launches than the effect of the foreigner tax.<\/p>\n

In its report, Fifth Avenue listed several projects across Metro Vancouver, noting three sold out in downtown Vancouver in the second quarter, including Addition, at Hornby and Helmcken, The Jervis at Jervis and Davie, and Concord Pacific\u2019s The ARC Sky Collection.<\/p>\n

An \u201coverwhelming number of these sales are not recorded in MLS data\u201d and don\u2019t make it into MLS sales activity figures, said Fifth Avenue.<\/p>\n

Robyn Adamache, a senior analyst at CMHC, said the federal housing agency does not record presales, and only\u00a0records purchases as sales once the building is complete and ready to move into.<\/p>\n

She said in\u00a0July there were only 296 recently completed units for sale across\u00a0Metro Vancouver, compared with the five-year average of 1,617 available units, confirming Fifth Avenue data.\u00a0\u201cThere\u2019s a very strong demand\u201d for just-built condos, she said.<\/p>\n

At the end of July,\u00a099 per cent of completed condo units\u00a0had been\u00a0sold \u2014 compared with a 76-per-cent average over the previous five years \u2014 while 89 per cent of brand new townhouses had been\u00a0sold, compared with the five-year average of 67 per cent, Adamache\u00a0said.<\/p>\n

At the same time, according to Fifth Avenue Real Estate Marketing\u2019s second quarter report, there were no brand new units available in completed buildings in downtown Vancouver \u2014 from the West End to Chinatown \u2014 except for the penthouse at the Private Residences at the Hotel Georgia, coming in at\u00a0$18 million.<\/p>\n

The sales activity is driving up the per-square-foot price at the high end for downtown Vancouver properties to an \u201cunheard-of\u201d $1,700 per square foot, according to Urban Development Institute president Anne McMullin. That translates to\u00a0$1.2 million for a 700-square-foot suite.<\/p>\n

McMullin\u00a0said the new 24-storey Cardero high rise in Coal Harbour, at Cardero and Georgia streets, sold out in two weeks in July at that price per square foot, well above the average of $1,500-$1,600.<\/p>\n

She\u00a0said MLS shows the market has \u201csoftened\u201d since May, before news of the foreigner tax, but added that\u00a0presales aren\u2019t included in those numbers because they don\u2019t fit the criteria of a sale.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe tried to put the numbers together but because they\u2019re presales and they haven\u2019t closed, it\u2019s apples and oranges,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The UDI is waiting to see post-tax sales figures to see what effect, if any, the tax will have.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe softening had started already so it will be hard to say if (a further drop) is because of the tax,\u201d McMullin\u00a0said.<\/p>\n

Brown said the quick presales and low remaining inventory shows considerable demand for new multi-family homes is still present.<\/p>\n

He\u00a0estimated that only one per cent of buyers of presales are foreign investors, and said he\u2019s optimistic the \u201changover\u201d from the shock of the foreigner tax will start to lighten by the middle of this month.<\/p>\n

More:\u00a0http:\/\/vancouversun.com\/business\/mortgages\/vancouver-presales-figures-breaking-records-despite-softening-in-real-estate-market<\/a><\/p>\n

slazaruk@postmedia.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Almost all of the presale units in projects under construction downtown are spoken for and sales so far this year have broken records, according to developers. Industry watchers say it\u2019s too soon to tell when or how a slowdown in the resale market will catch up with presales.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":511,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,32,11],"tags":[267,210,266,312],"class_list":["post-659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-advice-for-buyers","category-market-stats","category-rebgv","tag-metro-vancouver-presale-homes","tag-north-vancouver-presale-homes-for-sale","tag-presale-homes","tag-rebgv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisbrownrealestate.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisbrownrealestate.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisbrownrealestate.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisbrownrealestate.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisbrownrealestate.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=659"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisbrownrealestate.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":661,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisbrownrealestate.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659\/revisions\/661"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisbrownrealestate.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisbrownrealestate.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisbrownrealestate.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisbrownrealestate.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}