Pinnacle seeks to build 54-storey downtown Vancouver tower

Pinnacle seeks to build 54-storey downtown Vancouver tower

A rezoning application has been filed with the City of Vancouver for what would be the city’s fourth-tallest tower. Pinnacle International wants to build a 54-storey luxury high-rise at the north end of Granville Bridge, opposite the under-construction Vancouver House. Together the redevelopment of the Granville loop lands is intended to create the new “Granville Gateway” – a grand architectural entrance from the bridge into downtown Vancouver.

Western Investor

81-storey M3 condos to tower over Mississauga’s M City

Mississauga’s M City will soon be home to the city’s tallest high-rise, and one of the tallest in the Greater Toronto Area. The 81-storey M3 will be the third addition to Rogers Real Estate Development Limited and Urban Capital’s M City development. “It will probably be the CN Tower of Mississauga for many generations to come,” said Urban Capital partner Mark Reeve. “You’ll see it from everywhere.”

Property Biz Canada

World’s tallest residential building launches sales

Nationally acclaimed real estate development firm Extell Development Company Monday announced the launch of sales for the tallest residential building in the world. A beacon of glass and steel rising 1,550 feet on famed Billionaire’s Row in New York City, Central Park Tower was designed by Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture (AS+GG), a firm dedicated to the design of high-performance, energy-efficient, striking architecture on an international scale.

Canada Newswire

Reserve, Westdale bet on LRT to sell Line 5 Condos

Reserve Properties and Westdale Properties are banking on the Eglinton Crosstown light rail transit line bringing more activity to Toronto’s Yonge Street and Eglinton Avenue area, and plan to add to it with Line 5 Condos. Line 5 Condos will be located at 117-127 Broadway Ave., currently home to a rental apartment building which will be demolished. The site, just west of Mount Pleasant Road, was purchased from that building’s ownership group.

Property Biz Canada

Vancouver’s average 1-BR apartment rent jumps to $2,100

The average rental price for a one-bedroom apartment in Vancouver jumped 2.4 per cent last month to $2,100 per month, according to the latest Canadian rankings released by PadMapper. Toronto, with a median asking rental price of $2,230, is the most expensive city in Canada to rent a one-bedroom apartment, followed by Vancouver, Burnaby ($1,580), Montreal ($1,410) and Barrie, Ont. ($1,360).

Vancouver Sun – Canada Newswire – Vancouver Sun

Toronto condo rents jump 7.6% to record $2,385

Renting a condo in Toronto keeps getting more expensive. The average monthly rent for a condo in the city jumped 7.6 per cent in the third quarter from a year ago to a record high $2,385, according to Urbanation’s third-quarter 2018 rental market report. While the number of new condo rental leases signed grew slightly in the third quarter from last year to 8,186, the market still remains exceptionally tight.

Bloomberg – Newinhomes.com – Canada Newswire

QMLP buys 12 St. Catharines apartments from Skyline

Q Management LP (QMLP) has acquired 12 apartment buildings in St. Catharines, Ont. from Skyline Apartment REIT for $213.5 million.  “We’ve been focusing on the greater GTA and our strategy has been to focus on markets where we see long-term strong demand for rental properties before that demand really gets stabilized,” said QMLP president and chief executive officer Dan Argiros.

Property Biz Canada

Landlord investors face bidding wars in Kitimat

Residential real estate investors hoping to make a quick buck in Kitimat are running into veteran property owners who are jacking up prices as the largest private investment in Canadian history avalanches onto the B.C. town of 8,000. “It has been crazy in the last few days. I have been working 16-hour days,” said Shannon Dos Santos of Re/Max Kitimat Realty, one of only seven real estate agents in town.

Vancouver Sun – Globe and Mail (Subscription required)

Ottawa region approves Minto’s 897-home development

Ottawa city council Wednesday approved a zoning change on Wednesday to allow Minto Communities Inc. to build nearly 900 homes as part of its massive Mahogany community in Manotick. However, the decision will attract none of the opposition it did a decade ago. In 2008, the city and community association rejected Minto’s plans, arguing it would quickly double the size of the rural south Ottawa village and ruin its character.

CBC – Ottawa Business Journal – Canada Newswire

Edmonton grapples with how many towers is too many

Edmonton city council’s history of approving nearly every tower it sees is dangerous and unsustainable, two community leagues are warning as councillors sit down to review yet another request. In the past nine years, council has said no to only one tower rezoning request. And even that, Grandin’s The View, was recently approved on the second attempt.

Edmonton Journal – Canada Newswire

Calgary sales on track for slowest pace in more than a decade

Calgary home sales were expected to be slow this year — but not this slow. “We didn’t expect this much of a decline in sales activity,” said Ann-Marie Lurie, chief economist with the Calgary Real Estate Board, taking stock of the first nine months of 2018. Fewer than 13,000 homes changed hands during that time, down 14 per cent from the same period in 2017, which was itself a slow year.

CBC – Calgary Herald – Canada Newswire

Condo flippers aren’t Vancouver and Toronto housing culprits

Condo flipping was never pervasive in the Vancouver and Toronto housing booms and that sliver of the market has faded over time, suggesting tougher measures to curb speculators won’t make those cities more affordable. Just 3.4 per cent of Vancouver condominiums sold between April and June were units that had been sold over the previous year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg from Teranet Inc.’s land and housing registry.

Bloomberg – Canada Newswire

Condo boards should set out rules before pot legalization: Lawyers

Homeowner groups need to quickly establish rules for marijuana growing and consumption in an effort to nip any problems in the bud, say lawyers who specialize in property law. Robert Noce, a partner with Miller Thomson LLP in Edmonton, said the most common troubles in condominium, townhouse and other mixed-use properties will likely be the smell of smoke and potential mould from growing cannabis.

Winnipeg Free Press – Saskatoon StarPhoenix – Regina Leader-Post

Canadians increasingly live in auto-dependent suburbs

More than two-thirds of Canada’s population lives in the suburbs, meaning policy-makers must deal with the multitude of issues regarding this suburban explosion. In the largest metropolitan areas, the portion of suburban residents is higher than 80 per cent, including the Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal regions. The downtown cores  may be full of new condo towers, but there is often five times as much population growth in the suburbs.

Ottawa Citizen

Live-work units offer ideal option for Toronto business owners

You might do a double-take when you walk into Michel’s Bespoke, a business operating on the outer edge of Toronto’s Fashion District. There’s a fashion mannequin at the front of the store, expensive suits, shirts and ties on racks and in display cases.

Toronto Star

Market Conditions

Housing market not headed for major correction: Moody’s

Barrie and Regina are the most likely locales for short-term house price corrections in Canada, Moody’s Analytics predicts in a new report. “The largest corrections will be in those metro areas that have a combination of recent house price declines, high overvaluation and slower projected income growth,” according to the report from the research arm of Moody’s Corp. “Barrie and Regina lead the list.”

Financial Post – Globe and Mail (Subscription required) – Globe and Mail (Subscription required)

Home buyers continue to catch their breath in Q3

According to the Royal LePage House Price Survey and Market Survey Forecast released today, year-over-year home prices made modest gains in many regions across Canada in Q3 2018. The national trend was largely influenced by price appreciation in Greater Vancouver, while property in the Greater Toronto Area experienced continued year-over-year price declines, with modest gains in value year-over-year.

Canada Newswire – Canada Newswire – Canada Newswire

Home sales continue to slow down: BCREA

Home sales in B.C. continued to drop in the month of September, according to the latest numbers from the British Columbia Real Estate Association. Sales fell 33.2 per cent compared to the same month a year ago, and the average residential price of $685,749 was down 1.1 per cent from September 2017. Total sales dollar volume was down 34 per cent from September 2017.

Global News – Business In Vancouver

U.S. housing market raising serious red flags

Despite a robust U.S. economy, at least as measured by gross domestic product, real home price growth is locked in a cyclical downturn. If that’s not bad enough, it will likely get worse based on the same approach and factors that correctly flagged the housing bust – in real time – in early 2006. Home prices are highly cyclical and their movements can have material consequences for the broader economy.

Bloomberg

Mortgage and Finance

Expected mortgage-rate hikes may crimp housing market

A newly minted trade agreement between Canada, Mexico and the United States has erased some of the uncertainty hanging over the Canadian economy, but the tentative deal could spell more trouble down the line for the housing market, Capital Economics warns. Senior Canada economist Stephen Brown says the proposed United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) will help to keep economic growth at a healthy clip for the next couple of quarters

Globe and Mail (Subscription required) – Globe and Mail (Subscription required)

OSFI to take new measures to address equity-based mortgage loans

A federal regulator says it will have to take further action to address mortgage approvals by Canadian banks that still depend too much on the amount of equity in a home, and not enough on whether loans can actually be paid back. The Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions telegraphed the move in an update released Monday on the effectiveness of new underwriting rules it announced last year.

Financial Post

U.S. mortgage rates jump to seven-year high

Freddie Mac‘s (FMCC) Primary Mortgage Market Survey indicates mortgage rates have risen to their highest level in seven years. Sam Khater, Freddie Mac’s chief economist, says, “In this week’s survey, the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage jumped 19 basis points to 4.90 per cent. Rates are now at their highest level since the week of April 14, 2011.”

Globe Newswire

New Developments

B.C. FN buys Vancouver Island land to build community

Thomas Smith says his most vivid memory of living on British Columbia’s Turnour Island was watching families leave their homes. Five decades later, that is about to change, Smith said. The nation paid $3.5-million earlier this year for a 257-hectare rural, forested property eight kilometres south of Campbell River. Plans are now underway to establish a community of up to 100 homes, he said.

Globe and Mail (Subscription required)

Natural Disasters

Hurricane Michael devastated entire neighbourhoods

Mary Frances Parrish is expecting to be without electricity for several weeks, or roughly the same time the terminally ill son she’s caring for is expected to live. In the days after Hurricane Michael smashed through her Lynn Haven, Fla., neighbourhood, leaving many of her neighbours’ homes destroyed, she and her son Derrell, 47, were planning to stay, with or without running water and electricity.

Global News – PR Newswire – The Guardian

B.C.’s largest earthquake preparedness drill coming Oct. 18

B.C.’s largest earthquake preparedness drill, the Great BC Shakeout, is just around the corner. To raise awareness of the event, ShakeOutBC is launching a series of sharable videos to remind British Columbians of what to do when an earthquake hits. “Don’t be left out of this year’s Great BC ShakeOut on October 18,” said Dave Cockle, president of the BC Earthquake Alliance.

Canada Newswire

Construction

Moving modular design beyond temporary

Modular housing units are popping up in various unoccupied downtown Vancouver spaces, but their numbers represent only a fraction of the potential total, say industry and government professionals. According to the province’s fall budget update, the province donated $291 million for construction of 2,000 units of modular housing for the homeless. Only 421 units in eight modular supportive-housing projects have been completed and are being occupied.

Business In Vancouver

Affordable Housing

Waves of change on the shores of RE industry

A sea change is washing over the new home building, land development and real estate industries, as affordability deteriorates for first-time home buyers, the baby boomer generation refuses to go away and new technologies influence how homes are bought and sold. These, and many other assertions, are found in the 2019 Emerging Trends in Real Estate report, published by PwC Canada and the Urban Land Institute (ULI).

Calgary Sun – Canada Newswire

Would rent-to-own program improve affordability in Toronto?

Mayoral candidate Jennifer Keesmaat introduced a rent-to-own program to address housing affordability in Toronto. I remember when Daniels had a rent-to-own program at NY2 and Cinema Tower in Toronto. I believe it was successful, so I’m already intrigued by Keesmaat’s plan. The city’s rent-to-own program would be financed by a property tax surtax on luxury homes, which is any home valued at $4 million or above.

Newinhomes.com

How Ontario can help millennials afford a home

Members of the Ontario Real Estate Association (OREA), Ontario Home Builders Association (OHBA) and the Federation of Rental-Housing Providers of Ontario (FRPO) recently gathered at the second annual Housing Summit event to discuss potential solutions. They suggested five solutions that could improve housing affordability for millennials. The first was to speed up the planning approvals process.

Newinhomes.com – Globe Newswire

Buying and Selling

OREA pushes for open bidding process

The Ontario Real Estate Association is making more than three dozen recommendations to the provincial government on how it should update the rules governing realtors, including allowing for a more open bidding process for buyers and sellers. In a report Thursday, the group says the Real Estate and Business Brokers Act (REBBA), which was put in place in 2002, is in need of a revamp.

CBC – Toronto Star

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