OUTSIDE

OUTSIDE How to get yourself used to sleeping in the snow

by Martin Dunphy

Aprovincial news release about expanded camping opportunities caught our eye recently.

That wasn’t because of where the new campsites were—in popular E.C. Manning Provincial Park, two hours’ drive from Vancouver—but because of when they were open: winter.

It was also notable because of what it offered those who might normally shrink from the mere mention of winter camping: a comfy way to acclimatize themselves to sleeping outdoors during below-zero weather.

It is possible to engage in both camping and winter recreational activities like snowshoeing and cross-country skiing in various provincial parks in the South Coast region. But the opportunities are relatively few when compared to balmy-weather options. In Golden Ears Park, for instance, one campground remains open in winter, but its use is contingent upon sometimes-spotty road access, and water may not be available.

Likewise, Garibaldi Park has one campsite available in winter, with limited facilities, and the much smaller Sasquatch Provincial Park near Harrison Hot Springs normally allows some winter camping, but the park is closed this winter due to wind

Many people who enjoy summer camping might be hesitant to try winter camping because of the cold, so a transition via RV camping might ease any anxieties. Photo by Bondariev/Getty. and flood damage.

Cultus Lake Park has a few sites available for hardy campers who bring their own drinking water and don’t mind pit toilets, and limited water and toilets are on offer during winter at the postage-stamp-size Porteau Cove site alongside the Sea-to-Sky Highway, albeit with limited recreational activities.

But the Manning Park announcement offers a transitional opportunity for those who might have always wanted to try winter camping but were just too afraid of, well, being cold. That’s because the new Skyview Campground is officially touted as an RV site, and a fully serviced one, to boot—the first such winter site offered by BC Parks. This means that adventurous outdoor aficionados can enjoy relatively luxurious winter amenities like hot showers, a heated modern washroom, guaranteed running potable water, electric and sewer hookups, and more.

The campground’s 60 sites can be rented on a nightly, weekly, or even monthly rate (electricity is extra for weekly and monthly stays), and there is even a daily shuttle to the park’s popular lodge and ski area, where alpine skiing and snowboarding get the most attention.

But, conveniently, the park’s main Nordic cross-country ski trail cuts right through the winter-camping site on its way to higher elevations and 60 kilometres of smooth gliding on groomed trails, and the facility’s website envisions that “snowshoeing from this location will be a highlight in the future”.

So drive your (own or rented) RV or camperized van and dip your toes into the winter, so to speak. Bring along a small tent and an approved winter sleeping bag and see how comfy and warm you can be with just some banked snow and body heat. Try it for just one night; you can always retreat a few metres into your toasty vehicle should you get, um, cold feet.

Then maybe you will be ready to try some of the other frozen options scattered around this beautiful province. g

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People who identify as part of the LBGTQ community are invited to apply.

REAL ESTATE The year our housing market became unhinged

by Carlito Pablo

this is an acute situation.”

In the face of a tight market, prices surged. Kavcic noted that the 26.6 percent year-over-year increase in prices in December 2021 represented the “fastest clip on record back to 2000”.

As for investors, Kavcic noted that data for Ontario “show that investors (multipleproperty owners) accounted for the largest share of transaction volume in 2021, and were the biggest driver of the increase in volume from pre-COVID levels”.

Moreover, he cited recent findings by the Bank of Canada that “investor demand” as a whole in the country increased 100 percent year-over-year as of June 2021. This level outpaced “increases among repeat and first-time buyers”.

The BMO economist also observed something about how many home buyers in general were able to make purchases.

“By August 2021, Canadians began taking on more in variable-rate mortgages than fixed-rate mortgages, which is a notable change in behaviour in a market that has traditionally been conservative users of fixed-rate product,” he wrote.

Why?

“Fixed mortgage rates backed up, and buyers had to shift to still-low variable rates in order to meet [affordability] and/ or qualification criteria,” Kavcic stated. He added, “That seems like a market that has been forced to stretch.” g

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A BMO report blames “investor appetite” for the record increases in home sales and aggregate benchmark prices in 2021. This home in Vancouver’s Shaughnessy area listed for $15,880,000.

Last spring, two economists with BMO released a paper asking policymakers to “act immediately” on the housing front.

“Canadian Housing Fire Needs a Response”, Robert Kavcic and Benjamin Reitzes titled the piece.

In it, Kavcic and Reitzes outlined a number of potential measures to cool down a “smoldering” real-estate market.

Policymakers should act immediately “before the market is left exposed to more severe consequences down the road”.

The possible measures mentioned in the March 30, 2021, paper include, among others, a speculation tax that would cover both principal and nonprincipal residences.

Kavcic appears to be referencing the same document in a new report “Canadian Existing Home Sales (Dec.) — Investor Relations” released Monday (January 17, 2022).

“Very early last year,” Kavcic wrote, “BMO Economics warned that policy (starting on the monetary side) needed to tighten in order to prevent the market from becoming dislodged from underlying fundamentals.”

“And,” he continued, “that came from a team that spent many, many years defending the Canadian housing market from wave after wave of bearish assault, as most of the gains were rooted in income, demographic and interest rate fundamentals.”

“Now,” Kavcic stated, “it appears that 2021 was the year the market became unhinged.”

Kavcic released the paper on the same day that the Canadian Real Estate Association released annual sales figures for 2021.

The CREA reported that a total of 666,995 residential properties traded hands last year.

“This was a new record by a large margin, surpassing the previous annual record set in 2020 by a little more than 20%, and standing 30% above the average of the last 10 years,” CREA stated in a media release.

Meanwhile, the aggregate benchmark price of a Canadian home went up by a “record 26.6% on a year-over-year basis in December”.

In another metric, the national average home price was $713,500 in December 2021, up 17.7 percent from the same month the year before..

The 2021 market was so hot that sales from January to October 2021 already exceeded the 552,423 sales for all of 2020.

Kavcic believes that the market became unhinged in 2021 as “demand and investor appetite have taken over”.

“Expectations and investor appetite took over Canadian housing in 2021,” the BMO economist noted.

He continued, “We know it, and policymakers now know it too.”

To illustrate, those 2021 sales that went 30 percent above the 10-year average highlighted the “boom in demand”.

Meanwhile, new listings “came to market exactly in-line with the 10-year average”.

“That distinction between demand strength and very normal resale supply flow couldn’t be more obvious here, and flies in contrast to the popular narrative that we are supply starved,” Kavcic wrote.

He added, “Of course, there are longerterm considerations on the supply side, but

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