Home sales registered on the Multiple Listing Service® (MLS®) in Metro Vancouver rose over thirty per cent in December, compared to the previous year, signalling strengthening demand-side momentum to close out 2024. The Greater Vancouver REALTORS® (GVR) reports that residential sales in the region totalled 26,561 in 2024, a 1.2 per cent increase from the 26,249…
Exciting New Mortgage Rules Effective December 15th Exciting changes to mortgage rules are here! Here’s what you need to know: Key Updates 1. 30-Year Amortizations 2. Higher Price Cap 3. Newly Built Homes Focus • Homes must be owner-occupied and not previously used for residential purposes. What This Means for You
Developer reimagines Capilano Mall with 3,100 homes, 40 storey towers, and new park There will be 11 towers in total and the range of tower heights will vary between 12 and 40 storeys. A massive new redevelopment is planned on North Shore as Capilano Mall is reimagined with more than 3,000 housing units in eleven…
Home buyer demand continues to strengthen in November Home sales registered in the MLS® in the Metro Vancouver1 market rose 28 percent year-over-year in November, building on the momentum of the 30 percent year-over-year increase seen in October. Sales The Greater Vancouver REALTORS® (GVR)2 reports that residential sales in the region totalled 2,181 in November 2024, a…
What You Should Know Before you start looking for a home, it’s important to understand the current real estate market in Vancouver. This gives you an idea of how much a home would cost and how much you would need to save up for. Based on current home prices in Vancouver as of October 2024, the average…
Proposed Anti-Flipping Tax On April 7th, 2022, the federal budget plan proposed a new anti-flipping tax. The tax is imposed on people who own real estate for less than a year. You may lose your Principal Residence Exemption if you buy a primary residence and move for non-exempt reasons. Additionally, if you sell an investment…
If you are interested to have access to all Vancouver Foreclosures MLS® Listings, please click on the “VIP Insider Access” button. In the “Notes” box include the code “Foreclosures” or visit Vancouver Foreclosures and register What You Should Know Foreclosed homes are typically homes put on sale by lenders after the previous buyer defaults on their mortgage. Foreclosures are rare…
The idea is to streamline design and draft common regulations to cut construction time by at least a third Published Nov 18, 2024 • 3 minute read Rendering of six storey design found in Metro Vancouver report on rental apartments made of wood. Credit: Iredale Architecture. Photo by Iredale Architecture When you think of new construction in Metro Vancouver, you think of concrete towers with glass facades. A Metro Vancouver report on rental housing is considering a different approach: Making it easier to build six-storey apartment buildings out of wood. The report’s name is a mouthful, “Streamlining the Delivery of Rental Housing Through Pre-Approved Plans and Off-Site Construction.” THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Vancouver Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Vancouver Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Sign In or Create an Account or Article content But it has a simple goal: making rental housing cheaper to build. Concrete buildings typically cost 20 to 24 per cent more to build than wooden ones. So the report, which will probably go to Metro in January, calls for low-rise wood frame buildings. The report also wants to make it easier to build. “We’re collaborating with B.C. Housing on (ways) to essentially speed up the delivery of six-story rental wood frame apartments,” said Michael Epp, director of housing, planning and development at Metro Vancouver. “One of the key ones is trying to harmonize some of the regulatory approaches for that type of building.” Building regulations vary from city to city. Going through the bureaucratic process can be time consuming — Epp said it usually takes five years from “conception to occupancy” to build a wood-frame apartment building in Metro Vancouver. “Our short-term goal is to try to bring that time down by at least 30 per cent,” he said. “But I think it’s possible, in an ideal state, to cut 50 per cent of that delivery time. So going from five years from start to finish to a 2½-year start to finish.” By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. Article content Article content The idea is to draft regulations for these buildings that essentially pre-approve them, cutting out the need for time-consuming rezoning applications, and to also allow for some prefabrication of the buildings in factories. “Time is a really substantial component of (building) cost, whether or not you’ve got land carrying costs during that entirety of that time,” Epp said. “You’re paying your professional consultants, you’ve got insurance costs, you’ve got (construction) escalation (costs). So the shorter you can make that time, the more you’re saving. “On some projects, this could be hundreds of thousands of dollars a month that can be saved when you’re shaving time off.” Only one rendering of what the six-storey buildings might look like has been released so far. The illustration by Iredale Architecture looks like something you’d see in Vancouver’s West End, a basic apartment block with balconies. The goal is to make regulations that can be adapted to different designs. “The idea here is we’ve got a hybrid approach to building,” said Epp. “This is not a modular building where you ship a shipping container to the site and assemble them on site. It’s more like an Ikea approach to a building, where there would be many components that are flat packed. Article content “Now you’re not only shrinking the time on the approval side, which is huge, but you’re also cutting the time to actually get the project built on site, because you’re able to just bring these components in and assemble them on site.” Eleven municipalities in Metro have signed on as “interested partners” in the study, including Vancouver, Surrey, Burnaby, Richmond, the District of North Vancouver and New Westminster. The study is aimed at non-market rental buildings, but Epp said new regulations could be applied to market-rent buildings as well. Many low-rise market condo buildings are already built with a concrete base and foundation, with wood
If your home ownership dreams have been put on hold, there may be hope on the horizon as Canada’s falling interest rates are impacting how much income is needed to purchase a property. But depending on where you live, it still requires a hefty paycheque to enter the market. According to a new report from Ratehub.ca, the income needed to afford a home has fallen in 12 of 13 cities across the country. This comes after the Bank of Canada (BoC) announced a massive interest rate cut in October. The BoC dropped the rate by 50 basis points, bringing it from 4.25% to 3.75%, which many referred to as a “jumbo-sized” drop. This was the fourth announcement of 2024, and such a low rate hasn’t been seen since December 2022. According to Ratehub.ca’s Penelope Graham, “affordability conditions have been improving since June, when the Bank of Canada first started cutting its benchmark interest rate, easing mortgage costs and the pricing of other borrowing products.” RateHub Vancouver and Toronto, Canada’s most expensive cities, saw the most significant drops in the income needed to purchase a home between September and October 2024. “While both of these cities saw a robust increase in sales activity in October, they remain well supplied, which has helped keep a lid on price growth,” notes the report. Still, prospective buyers in these cities need to take home significant paycheques to get into the housing market. The income required to purchase the average home in Vancouver now stands at $214,000 annually. In Toronto, it’s slightly lower at $195,420. Moreover, Canada’s smaller cities haven’t experienced the softer prices of their larger counterparts. A drop in supply and an increase in buyer activity have resulted in prices going up, as six out of 13 markets across the country saw month-over-month price hikes. Fredericton was the only market where affordability deteriorated between September and October as home prices increased by $16,100, meaning buyers would need $1,890 more income to purchase an average property. Ratehub.ca provided an optimistic outlook for prospective buyers over the next few months as mortgage rates are expected to drop further. The overnight lending rate is predicted to drop by another 25 basis points, bringing the benchmark interest rate to 3.5%. Rates are expected to drop further in 2025. However, lower rates will likely lead to an uptick in prices as more buyers could enter the market. “The national average home price is expected to end the year largely flat at $683,200 – just a 0.9% increase – before rising 4.4% next year to $713,375,” concluded Ratehub.ca.
Current rate:The greater of the mortgage contract rate plus 2% or 5.25%. The minimum qualifying rate (MQR) for uninsured mortgages is a mortgage stress test applied by lenders to borrowers. OSFI obliges federally-regulated lenders to apply this stress test to their borrowers. This helps lenders prepare borrowers so they can continue to make mortgage payments…