REITS TAKE LONG VIEW OF VANCOUVER’S RENTAL MARKET EVEN AS VACANCIES RISE, RENTS DROP
The COVID pandemic has lowered demand for rental properties and thus what landlords are charging, but investors looking to buy apartment buildings to earn a financial return believe this is temporary, says a B.C. real estate executive. Lance Coulson, an executive vice-president at commercial broker CBRE, sold 15 rental apartment buildings, nine of them of concrete construction and on the west side, for almost $300 million in late January. The deal covered a total of 614 housing units in the...
read moreVancouver Real Estate Board releases 2016 home sales figures
By The Canadian Press, Wed., Jan. 4, 2017 Release wraps up tumultuous year for cooling housing market. VANCOUVER—Home sales in Metro Vancouver dropped by 5.6 per cent in 2016, the city’s real estate board said Wednesday, wrapping up a tumultuous year in one of the country’s most watched housing markets. The composite benchmark price for all residential properties in Metro Vancouver, as measured by the Multiple Listing Service home price index, hit $897,600 in December. That’s a 17.8 per...
read moreA look at key Canadian housing measures unveiled in 2016
It has been a busy year for government intervention into the Canadian real estate market, and not just the hottest Toronto and Vancouver regions as many of the policy changes impact homebuyers across Canada. Below, BNN looks back at the highlights of 2016 Canadian housing policy. Feb. 15 – Down payment hike – Announced in December of 2015, Ottawa raised the minimum down payment requirement for homebuyers to 5 per cent of the purchase price up to $500,000 and 10 per cent of any amount...
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