Develop more farmland
Richmond council has affirmed last year’s contentious bylaw limiting farmhouses on Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR)parcels bigger than a half-acre to 10,764 square feet. Richmond doubled down and allowed a secondary dwelling of up to 3,229 square feet on the same lot.
The moves came despite city staff recommending limiting the primary residence to 5,382 square feet, in keeping with provincial guidelines. Those guidelines may well become rules in the wake of a provincial consultation on revitalizing the ALR. (Review committee chairwoman Jennifer Dyson was appointed last week to chair the Agricultural Land Commission.)
Advocates for farmland note that Richmond has 61 applications for so-called monster homes, which are less than half the size of many homes owners routinely proposed prior to last year’s bylaw.
Richmond might be the epicentre of angst over residential development within the ALR, but property transfer data points to the Fraser Valley.
B.C. charges the property transfer tax, including the special rate for foreign nationals, on the residential portion of farm properties. And 170 of such sales occurred in the Fraser Valley in 2017, versus 148 in Metro Vancouver.
Compared with the final seven months of 2016, when the former BC Liberal government began tracking property transfer data, approximately 16% fewer farm residences changed hands provincewide in the final seven months of 2017. This was consistent with the shift in the Lower Mainland.
The sharpest decline was in the North Okanagan, the only regional district besides Metro Vancouver and the Fraser Valley to see more than 100 farm residences change hands in 2016. During the final seven months of 2017, just 75 North Okanagan farm residences changed hands – 61% fewer than a year earlier.
Recreational pause
Recreational property is a seller’s market in B.C., according to a national report from Re/Max last week. “Driven primarily by retirees” and “buyers cashing in on expensive urban housing markets,” a lack of listings has constrained sales and boosted prices.
A glance at the province’s property transfer data underscores the sentiment of Re/Max brokers surveyed for the report. B.C. recreational property sales dropped 87% in the first quarter of this year, versus the same period a year ago. In many regions there were no sales.
Provincewide, 1,241 recreational property sales occurred last year. Squamish-Lillooet Regional District, including Whistler, led the way with 244. The only other regional districts to log 100 sales were Alberni-Clayoquot, Columbia Shuswap and East Kootenay.
The lack of deals this year – including zero in Whistler – points as much to a lack of listings as to a hard winter that kept people close to Vancouver, said Elton Ash, regional executive vice-president with Re/Max of Western Canada (1998) LLC in Kelowna.
Ash expects a more complete picture of the market in June, with a comprehensive market report to follow. Spring sales figures should bear out some of the trends flagged in the current report.
“We’re going to see an increase in [sales],” he said.
Downtown downsizers
Retirees aren’t just driving recreational property markets.
Cielo Properties Inc. of Victoria and project marketer George Wong of Magnum Projects Ltd. in Vancouver have enjoyed steady demand for the Customs House redevelopment on Victoria’s Inner Harbour from downsizing baby boomers.
“You’ve got a view of the Empress Hotel, you’ve got a view of the parliament building, Inner Harbour water view – it’s just like the parallel of Harbour Green [in] downtown Vancouver,” Wong said.
Placards on the site announce sales “coming spring 2017,” and a year later the project is 80% sold, mostly to locals with a smattering from outside B.C., primarily Alberta and Washington.
“Victoria had always been a retirement haven for people who are more well-heeled.”
Wong added that buyers are looking for city living rather than a rustic retreat.
“It has attracted a lot more of the wealthy baby boomers, and what this project represents is finally, truly, a high-end urban location.”
Cielo expects to complete the Customs House in spring 2020. •
