Affordability and new mortgage rules may not only result in a pronounced exodus from Vancouver into its surrounding municipalities this year, they could drive people into smaller abodes, too.<\/p>\n
Alture Properties CEO Peter Cheung has noticed Vancouverites bolting for the suburbs out of necessity rather than choice, and the metropolis\u2019s outskirts, like Langley and Abbotsford, are seeing a surge in preconstruction condo activity.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s where Cheung says micro-suites\u2014which are currently prohibited in Vancouver, but not in Burnaby or Victoria\u2014could prove to be sound investments.<\/p>\n
\u201cMicro-suites are all based on affordability\u2014that\u2019s the attraction\u2014and the trend has been going smaller and smaller in terms of size, so those products are economically attractive,\u201d said Cheung. \u201cIf it\u2019s well-designed, it could be a good investment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stringent mortgage stress testing has also come into effect this year, and it could further exacerbate migration to the suburbs.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe people who need the most help in terms of mortgage, they\u2019ll be hit the hardest,\u201d said Jason Turcotte, Vice President of Development at Cressey Development Group. \u201cThe people stretching to get into the bottom end of the marketplace will be pushed out. They may need to look at a suburb or two out of Vancouver, and it will further complicate the demand for sub-markets.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe demand is still there, but it\u2019s just going to get moved around.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vancouver\u2019s condo market is expected to remain robust through 2018. That\u2019s good news for renters because the city\u2019s vacancy rate is under 1% and condos are helping keep inventory afloat, albeit just barely.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re already seeing strong activity in the first week in terms of acquisition of condos,\u201d said Cheung. \u201cI think there\u2019s going to be continuous demand with condos over single-family detached, similarly carrying from the last two quarters of 2017, when the single-family sector softened and multi-family condos have been quite in demand.\u201d<\/p>\n
Two events to watch this year are the municipal election and the new provincial NDP government\u2019s housing strategy, but Cheung thinks the market will remain stable.<\/p>\n
\u201cNothing has dramatically changed to shift the landscape of construction or building,\u201d he said. \u201cCost is going up, and because of that you\u2019ll see the impact of prices going up potentially.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nRelated stories:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n \n\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Affordability and new mortgage rules may not only result in a pronounced exodus from Vancouver into its surrounding municipalities this year, they could drive people into smaller abodes, too. Alture Properties CEO Peter Cheung has noticed Vancouverites bolting for the suburbs out of necessity rather than choice, and the metropolis\u2019s outskirts, like Langley and Abbotsford, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":20048,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7631"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7631"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7631\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20842,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7631\/revisions\/20842"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}