Real Estate

The changing face of Kitsilano

I checked in with the staff at M&J Car Wash down by Granville Island and got some good news: the iconic car wash won't be torn down and replaced with condos... at least not yet. M&J Car Wash has a reprieve, at least through 2015.

On the way back, though, I looked again at the unusual number of vacant storefronts along West 4th Avenue. This stretch of Kitsilano thoroughfare commands the second-highest commercial rent in Vanouver, with only Robson Street being less affordable for a business-owner looking to hang out a shingle.

This means that businesses have to thrive in order to survive: there's no just scraping by on West 4th. In turn, when a storefront becomes vacant, it will more likely be occupied by a chain store, or at least a business with more than one outlet.

That's how a neighborhood homogenizes. Just look at Lower Broadway in Manhattan. It's happening in New York; you think it's not happening in Vancouver?

BC Assessments dropped in some areas.

So, here's a question:

If I have a lollipop I bought for 25 cents but someone comes by that loves the look of it and offers me 50 cents, does it mean it's really worth 50 cents?

Does it mean I could sell another one to someone else for double as well? And if  I can only get 40 cents the second time around, can we say its value has gone down?

Welcome to the world of Vancouver real estate.

The assessments that BC Assessments do are there to tell us what our homes were “worth”—or what they probably would have sold for July 1 of last year.

That information is used effectively for property tax purposes. That information is effectively useless in terms of determining what your home is worth now.

Over the past six months, the Greater Vancouver housing market has seen a reduction in the number of homes listed for sale, a gradual moderation in home prices and a decrease in property sales compared to historical averages.

The Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver (REBGV) reports that residential property sales of detached, attached and apartment properties reached 1,686 on the region’s Multiple Listing Service® (MLS®) in November, a 28.6 per cent decline compared to the 2,360 sales in November 2011 and a 12.7 per cent decline compared to the 1,931 home sales in October 2012.

November sales were 30.3 per cent below the 10-year November sales average of 2,420.

Aside from the words “sold for $100,000 over asking”, nothing makes the real estate junky salivate quite like the term “one day sell-out” – a term that’s thrown around when pre-sale marketing leads to people lining up around the block like West Side families trying to get their kids into French immersion. (Urban legend has it that many of these people risking nerve damage from standing on their feet for hours on end are not, in fact, actual condo purchasers, but are paid by investors who then take their place in line when it’s time to enter the building and sign the contract to purchase).

Well, Intracorp’s pre-sale of their new property at Cambie and Marine didn’t quite sell out; but it far exceeded expectations according to real estate marketer Bob Rennie.

347 out of a total of 443 homes sold on opening weekend, which is certainly respectable given the high amount of inventory on the resale market. Similar to projects around transit nodes like Brentwood and Metrotown, Intracorp MC² project seeks to capitalize on its location close to the Canada Line SkyTrain station.