8 things that mattered in real estate

Institutional property owners cash out
The imminent sale of 49% of the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan’s entire $5 billion property portfolio in Metro Vancouver, which includes Vancouver’s Pacific Centre mall, is just the latest exit by big investors. Ivanhoé Cambridge, the real estate arm of the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec pension fund, and the Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan are seeking about $800 million for office towers they own in Burnaby. Analysts say the sales reflect a desire to reap record-high evaluations.

Major mall opens
Tsawwassen Mills, a 1.2-million-square-foot shopping centre in South Delta by Ivanhoé Cambridge, opened in October. It is the largest enclosed mall in BC and the largest built in Canada in recent years. Led by Metro Vancouver, BC is averaging $6.1 billion in monthly retail sales, the highest level in Western Canada, according to Statistics Canada.

Foreign buyers  big investors
The $1 billion sale of the Bentall office portfolio in downtown Vancouver to China-based Anbang Insurance Group Co. and the $480 million sale of Vancouver’s Royal Centre office and retail tower to German-based investor Klaus-Michael Kuehne provided evidence that Metro Vancouver commercial real estate is now on the global radar. These two deals are the largest commercial transactions in BC, so far, in 2016.

Commercial real estate sales record
Commercial property and land sales in Metro Vancouver hit a record $4.28 billion in the first half of 2016, according to Colliers International. Forecasts are that commercial sales could top $10 billion by year’s end, also a record.

Foreign buyer tax
On August 2, the BC government implemented a 15% tax on foreign buyers of Metro Vancouver residential real estate. The first such tax in Canada, it reduced foreign purchases in Metro Vancouver from 13.2% of all home sales to 3% of sales within three months.

Metro Vancouver home sales collapse
Metro Vancouver homes sales had crashed 37.2% as of November compared with November 2015, according to the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver, with detached-housing sales down 52.2% from a year earlier. The benchmark price of a detached house was down 2.2% from October, but remained 23% higher than a year earlier, at $1.5 million.

Housing starts hit record
Metro Vancouver housing starts through 2016’s first 11 months reached a record 25,760 units, up from 18,806 a year earlier, according to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. Starts in 2016 included 4,885 detached houses and 20,875 multiple-family units.

Empty homes tax
Effective January 2017, the City of Vancouver will implement a 1% tax on homes left empty for at least a year, the first such tax in Canada. It means a $1 million home left vacant would be taxed $10,000.

2016 Proved Volatile in Metro Vancouver’s Real Estate Market by Frank O’Brien | Business in Vancouver