It’s entirely natural that the majority of new home building starts in metro areas of the country are for multi-family housing and not for detached single-family dwelling homes. After all, it’s not like there’s any new land being created and in areas like Vancouver the decision makers realize that the scarcity of land that is available for development is much better earmarked for multi-family housing developments.
Not only do these types of homes offer more housing in regions where there’s a real demand for it and ongoing shortages, but they also tend to be better uses of the space and often are more energy-efficient housing developments too. Then there’s the more pressing and basic reality that for many qualified home buyers a home in a multi-family development is much more in line with what they can afford.
There is of course a real shift downwards in regard to what that means of commissions earning for realtors who’d ideally sell detached homes, but the market is what it is and that’s always going to be true. Real estate also doesn’t become anything of a less competitive business either. That’s why our online real estate lead generation service here at Real Estate Leads is such a smart choice, no matter where you’re working as a real estate agent in Canada.
Qualified leads on prospective buyers or sellers who are ready to make a move, what’s not to like about the sound of that?
But enough about that, let’s look at what’s behind the swell in multi-family housing purchasing options in Vancouver.
Something of a ‘Back to Normal’
Vancouver’s multi-residential property market is coming back from the COVID pause with an emphatic flurry and an uptick in transaction activity.
Now plain and simple what’s happening here is people are buying and selling for all of the reasons they were before, but the trend is accelerated at this point in 2020 because people want to get back to their lives and arranging their future.
In truth though, the pent-up demand in the multi-residential market goes back to the early part of 2019. That’s when investors and sellers stayed on the sideline waiting for changes in municipal and provincial policies to be clarified, so with all that in place and the ‘worst’ economic predictions for economy and market being disproven it’s now that we’re seeing a really flurry of resumed activity.
Keep in mind as well that there are so many different types of owners, investors, and developers that come from throughout the world, and those people are seeing just how well B.C. weathered the storm compared to the rest of the world during COVID.
Then of course there’s the fact that Vancouver is still seen as one of the most desirable places to live. It’s entirely true that there is a diverse buyers’ market in the city, including professionals such as doctors and dentists diversifying their investments and entrepreneurs seeing value in bringing older buildings up to modern standards and either living in them themselves or reintroducing them to the market at a later date.
Multi-Family Homes Continuing to Go Fast
Multi-family rental is moving especially quickly in Vancouver right now, and that’s being seen in other metro areas of the country too. This is in part because of the Feds’ keeping interest rates low, with the cost of money being low working to insulate the economy at a time when that’s very much needed.
There’s then a direct translation between that and developers’ enthusiasm for building multi-family home developments. Look at these examples of new multi-family developments in Vancouver, ones that if they go ahead (and they very likely will) will see the homes within them purchased quickly and at value in all likelihood.
- Edgewater site on Pacific Street two blocks from Sunset Beach in the Burrard Corridor,
- A 6-storey rental development site at Main and East 33rd that saw a bidding war between five different developers
- A mixed-use high-rise site in Surrey listed at $33.8 million
Among many other examples you can find that highlight the resiliency and ongoing strength of the Vancouver real estate market. Good news for everyone living in Lotus Land and in all the surrounding bedroom communities of Vancouver too, and of course real estate agents included. Sign up for Real Estate Leads here and receive a monthly quota of qualified, online-generated buyer and / or seller leads that are delivered to you exclusively. They are leads on homebuyers and sellers in your area of whichever city or town you’re living / working in, and again you are the only realtor who will receive these leads. From there you have an opportunity to be in touch with these people first and the chance to convince them that you are the professional they need to help them with buying or selling homes.
