High Street: City living in South Surrey, with everything just outside the front door ›› p.4
June 10, 2010
Buyers’ market in Metro Vancouver TRICIA LESLIE
G. Wilson Construction president Gordon Wilson, left, and son Blair Wilson, project manager, at the custom home they built for a client on Vancouver’s West Side. Building a brand-new custom home means homeowners gets exactly the house they want. Rob Newell photo
Custom: new and stunning Hire a custom builder and get the brand-new home you want MAGGIE CALLOWAY After years of tearing pages out of magazines, watching endless installments of home and garden television, and innumerable family discussions, you are ready to start the adventure of a lifetime ... building a family home from scratch. So: where to start? The two most important decisions any homeowner must make, which may take as
long as a year while doing intensive research, will be choosing both an architect and a builder. If either of these decisions are wrong from the start, the project may be fraught with problems and could potentially turn the dream into a nightmare. A good place to start is the twice-a-year Open House: A Showcase of New Homes, which is put on by the Greater Vancouver Home Builders’ Association every spring and fall. The event showcases several new home projects throughout Metro Vancouver – all built by local, reputable developers – and gives people a chance to see what’s new and
cutting-edge in condos, apartment, townhomes, single-family homes and even estate homes. Potential homebuyers can walk through homes and get a real sense of the quality of both the design and the build. In many of the Open House homes, the builder is present to answer visitors’ questions, which allows the potential homeowner to get a sense of whether there is a compatibility of vision. Even if a family is not at the final design stage of their new home project, this is a CONTINUED ON P.2
British Columbia’s housing market is good news for those planning to purchase a home right now. Although residential sales are expected to ease back by three per cent – from 85,028 units in 2009 to 82,350 this year – they will increase by four per cent in 2011, to 85,900, reports the B.C. Real Estate Association. In its second-quarter forecast, the BCREA says eroding affordability will trim sales by three per cent this year despite improving economic conditions and related employment growth. But the push and pull of economic growth versus rising mortgage interest rates is expected to keep B.C. home sales near their 10-year average this year and next, says BCREA chief economist Cameron Muir. Sales have been moderating in Metro Vancouver since the beginning of the year, after “record-pace sales” in 2009, so the market moved from a strong seller’s market to a strong buyer’s market, says Muir. “It’s really good news for buyers,” he says. Homebuyers have more time to look through all the selection in the market, more time to decide what Cameron Muir they want, and there’s less chance there will be others bidding on the same home, he notes. “Sellers have to be a little more cognizant of their competition ... of what’s going on in their neighbourhood.” The average B.C. listing price is forecast to climb six per cent to $494,600 this year and increase by another one per cent, to $499,700, in 2011. “Strong consumer demand in Vancouver, Victoria and the Fraser Valley was largely responsible for driving the average home price in the province higher over the past three quarters,” Muir says. “However, demand has moderated in those markets and a larger inventory of homes for sale has pulled market conditions into balanced territory, providing less upward pressure on home prices.”