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Policy watchers are split on the value of B.C.’s plans for a provincial flipping tax targeting those looking to make a quick buck in the real estate market. Brendon Ogmundson, chief economist of the B.C. Real Estate Association, says the tax could end up reducing the overall number of homes on the market while only applying to a small number of properties.


Paul Kershaw, a policy professor at the University of B.C. and founder of the think tank Generation Squeeze, said while the tax may only impact a small number of properties, it sends an important message that the province is “recalibrating” around the principle of having a home first and an investment second.


“We still need to turn our attention to the here and now, looking back at how much wealth has already been accumulated, and just putting in a flipping tax is not going to address that,” he said. As of Jan. 1, 2025, homes in B.C. sold within the first year after being purchased will face a tax rate of 20 per cent of the profit, while that tax rate drops gradually to zero after two years.


Ogmundson said about 10 per cent of real estate transactions in Metro Vancouver take place within two years of a purchase, and many of those would qualify under a long list of exemptions including divorce or job relocation. He said would-be sellers who don’t qualify for an exemption but are near the end of the two-year window may be tempted to wait it out.


“It’s a very real risk that because of the way this policy is written, how it discourages potential listings, that you could end up with prices higher than they would have been otherwise,” he said. Kershaw said B.C.’s housing situation is caused by more than issues with supply and people have normalized the idea that housing prices will continue to rise.


While crediting Premier David Eby with having “better housing policy than any premier we’ve had before,” Kershaw said it’s not accurate for the premier to blame all of the province’s housing woes on abuse from investors. “What we need to be saying is, hard truth: We’ve created a lot of housing unaffordability in this province over the last many years, but we’ve also created a lot of housing wealth,” he said.



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Mass-timber construction for residential tower uses will be pushed to new limits in British Columbia, following Vancouver City Council’s approval last week of a 260 ft, 25-storey tower project. This represents an upcoming phase of Westbank’s Main Alley tech campus and the first residential addition to an otherwise job-space-focused complex of buildings. The tower, named “Prototype” or M5, a reference to this project being a taller mass timber case study and the fifth building at Main Alley, will replace the surface vehicle parking lot at 2015 Main Street — the northwest corner of the intersection of Main Street and East 4th Avenue on the easternmost edge of the Mount Pleasant Industrial Area.


This tower will carry 100% secured purpose-built rental housing for its residential uses on top of nearly 6,000 sq ft of retail/restaurant uses on the ground level. Like other taller mass timber buildings currently being built in Vancouver, this design uses cross-laminated timber (CLT) components that are pre-fabricated off-site before being delivered for assembly and installation. This project is also made visually distinct with its mass timber checkerboard facade.

 

For seismic and fire safety considerations, taller buildings built out of mass timber have a concrete core, which also serves to conceal the elevator and staircase wells, and Prototype/M5 is no exception to this design. But during the public hearing, the proponents told City Council they were ready to completely drop the mass timber design and revise their project into a conventional concrete tower if they were to be forced to follow City staff’s direction by incorporating traditional private balconies for every unit. Gregory Henriquez of Henriquez Partners Architects made a plea to City Council asking for an exemption from the balcony requirement, asserting that providing private balconies would compromise the design of the building due to water leakage risk into the CLT floor slabs and the significant costs. If private balconies were to be achieved, they would be steel balcony structures bolted onto the building’s exterior.





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In recent years, the "progressive YIMBY” (Yes, in my backyard) movement has embraced the idea that a surge in market-housing supply will magically lead to affordability. However, all housing supply is not created equal. Despite a construction boom building thousands of new market units of multi-family supply, affordable housing remains elusive for over a third of British Columbians. The economic theory is not producing the promised housing affordability.


As the modelling and analysis that Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon used to justify the BC NDP’s mass upzoning of single-family, middle-class neighbourhoods showsit will produce less than half the supply needed to meet the demand. The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation estimates for B.C. to get housing affordability back to what we experienced in the early 2000s, we need to build 610,000 units more than would have been constructed. Tom Davidoff, one of the report’s authors, is cautious in his predictions of both the affordability achieved by the upzoning and the immediacy of the changes. The BC NDP’s approach is not an urgent solution to a housing affordability crisis but rather a short-term communication exercise, increasing the wealth of homeowners and hopes of renters leading into a provincial election.

 

We have an urgent housing affordability crisis and this is evidence of how inefficient it is to wait for the private sector to deliver housing affordability. The housing crisis is more localized for those experiencing core housing need. The core housing needs are the people in our communities whose housing is insecure, inadequate or unaffordable. In B.C., nearly 15 per cent of the population is paying more than 30 to 50 per cent of their annual income on housing. This is the most critical intervention point for the provincial government.


A 2021 Statistics Canada report shows the core housing need in Canada is 10.1 per cent, ranging from Quebec at six per cent to Nunavut at 32.9 per cent. B.C. is second worst at 13.4 per cent, followed closely by Northwest Territories (13.2 per cent) and Yukon (13.1 per cent). The next closest province is Ontario, at 12.1 per cent.


A Statistics Canada report published on Nov. 20, 2023, shows unsurprisingly the dramatic intergenerational advantage the adult children of homeowners born in the 1990s have over their peers whose parents weren’t homeowners. Additionally concerning is the findings that “adult children of multiple property owners were nearly three times more likely to be homeowners in 2021 than those whose parents were non-homeowners,” and B.C. has the lowest rate of homeownership of people born in the 1990s in the country.

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New rules protecting workers from asbestos exposure — the leading cause of workplace-related deaths — come into effect for B.C. on New Year's Day. The WorkSafeBC rules, which are the first of their kind in Canada, require workers to go through special training before doing asbestos abatement related to buildings, including identifying, cleaning up or containing asbestos. They also require building owners to hire specially licensed companies if they need asbestos removed.


"Exposure to asbestos and the fatalities that result from those exposures continues to be the leading cause of fatalities for workers in British Columbia, accounting for about a third of all occupational deaths," said Mary Lovelace, director of credentialling at WorkSafeBC. Asbestos, commonly found in roofing materials, insulation, tiles and other building materials, is carcinogenic. When the fibrous material is disturbed, it releases fine particles into the air, which can lead to a variety of cancers when inhaled.


It was formally bannedin almost all products Canada in 2018; however, according to WorkSafeBC it was phased out of commonly used building materials in the 1990s. While many of the most serious asbestos exposures happened years or even decades ago, Lovelace says the new regulations ensure that work happening today won't lead to deaths and illnesses in the future.


Under the new requirement, employers in the field must be licensed by WorkSafeBC, and the workers they hire must be certified. Certification requires training that sometimes includes a practical exam. Licensed companies are now publicly listed on the WorkSafeBC website. Through the training courses, workers learn how to protect themselves and others from inhaling asbestos while working closely with the material.


It's a move that asbestos removal companies say will protect their workers and make competition more fair, but it comes with a price tag. Saeed Dana, owner and director of B.C. Green Demolition, said he's paid $2,000 each for 12 employees to do the training. Despite the cost, Dana says it will make competition more fair. "There are lots of companies, they don't follow the [safety] procedures," he said. In requiring all companies to follow a standard set of precautions, Saeed said that those who previously cut corners to provide a cheaper service are no longer able to undercut companies that operate safely.





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The province’s housing-density legislation unlocks zoning to create tens of thousands of new homes across Metro Vancouver, but that alone might not spur developers to build houses, at least not quickly. Bill 44, which allows for multi-unit construction on previously single-family lots, and Bill 47, which sets minimum standards for increased zoning around transit hubs, have been heralded in many circles as revolutionary changes in the face of B.C.’s housing crisis.


Zoning, however, is still just one element that developers need to consider before building new homes in an environment of high interest rates and soaring costs. “I think the central assumption in all this legislation is that municipalities and zoning are the (main) reasons for inaction” on building more housing, according to Andy Yan, urban planner and director of the City Program at Simon Fraser University. “And I think it’s problematic. It’s the housing system we’re talking about, not just one part of it.”


Yan said the objectives raise questions about whether B.C. will have the construction workforce needed to build the number of units desired and whether the goals are financially sustainable, considering prevailing inflation-fighting interest rates. A modelling exercise commissioned by the province to support its legislation assumes still extremely high prices would be required to entice the levels of development it wants, particularly in high-priced centres such as Vancouver, Burnaby and Richmond.


The scenarios’ report uses anticipated sale prices as high as $1,500 a square foot in Vancouver, $1,200 in much of the North Shore and $1,000 in parts of Burnaby to make redevelopment of single-family lots or transit-adjacent locations attractive.On a theoretical $1,500-a-square-foot, three bedroom unit, that implies prices as high as $2.25 million, with a $12,000-a-month mortgage payment in much of Vancouve or an $8,000-a-month mortgage in big swaths of Burnaby.


Those prices wouldn’t be sustainable and $1,500-sq.-ft units wouldn’t be realistic, according to Anne McMullin, CEO of the Urban Development Institute. “That’s just not happening now,” McMullin said. “Right now, the sweet spot for prices is $750,000 to $800,000, and right now it’s very difficult to build units of a certain size for that amount.”


Besides being too expensive to build, McMullin said buyers typically aren’t interested in three-bedroom, family-oriented apartments. Their preferences lean to townhouses or row homes, which are more likely to be built in suburbs such as Surrey or Langley where land is more available. “Costs have to come down,” McMullin said. “It’s very difficult right now to even build what people can afford and meet the (federally mandated mortgage) stress test.”



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