 | Friday, December 03, 2021
Reading this online? Sign up to get this delivered to your inbox every Friday. | | Home prices at record highs in B.C. — but don’t provoke loud political response | | |  | | | Six years ago this month, at the height of the mania around Vancouver’s housing prices — when there were rallies at the Vancouver Art Gallery, national magazine covers and New York Times stories devoted to the subject, a cottage industry of “Why I left Vancouver” essays — the average selling price of a detached home in Greater Vancouver was around $1.6 million.
Now, it’s $2.2 million.
And that’s a relatively small rise, percentage-wise, compared to the rest of Southwest B.C.
In the last six years, the average selling price of a home in the Fraser Valley has more than doubled, from $781,808 to $ 1,633,917. Same deal with Greater Victoria, where it’s gone up from $621,629 to $1,344,918.
And before you say, “What about townhomes and condos?” — they’ve gone up even higher in percentage terms.
In other words, homes in Victoria and the Fraser Valley now cost what they did in Vancouver at the start of the crisis. They’re going up at a faster rate than we saw in Vancouver. And the prices in Vancouver haven’t exactly gone down either.
We wrote about this 10 months ago, and noted the relative lack of “politicians in hot water, or promising to make significant changes.”
That’s still the case: Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart is trying to convince his council colleagues to approve higher density, and West Vancouver’s Mary-Ann Booth is frequently on the losing end of development votes, but for the most part mayors in the region have been able to do what they want on housing issues, only to see prices continue to rise.
Provincially, Finance Minister Selina Robinson said just 11 days ago that “we're starting to see things start to moderate,” but that was based on statistics from September. When pressed by CBC News if the government still feels that way, she said it was “one of several generation-defining challenges'' and “we will continue to make this a priority. There is more work to be done.” She also pointed to legislation coming next year that will introduce a cooling off period for new home purchases.
Which may be a sign that governments realize a bolder approach is needed if they want to keep home prices somewhat tethered to local incomes.
And for local politicians elected to office three years ago on the backs of anger around home prices?
One wonders if they realize that in 10 months' time, when voters head back to the polls, the shoe might be on the other foot. | | |  | | | 1. Flood preparation | | | But there are certain topics that take precedence over housing affordability, natural disasters being one of them, and many cities are currently thinking about ways they can be more prepared the next time a flood comes their way. As but one example, this week Greater Victoria released a new report on which areas of the region were most vulnerable to sea rise, while the City of Victoria began recruiting volunteers for its emergency support team.
Read more | | |  | | | 2. Flood response | The current disaster isn’t over yet though, and this week brought the first real (public) tension between local and regional governments, and the province. As Fraser Valley Regional District chair and Chilliwack councillor Jason Lum pointed out multiple times, the province had delayed or denied funding requests at the start of this emergency, with unfortunate results for homes and infrastructure.
Read more | | | |  | | | 3. Vancouver | Elsewhere, Vancouver began deliberations over its $1.7 billion budget, with two days' worth of discussions over the proposed five per cent property tax hike, with much attention being placed on both the Vancouver Police Department budget and the $10 million/year climate levy that Mayor Kennedy Stewart wants to add. Actual amendments and voting begin next week. Read more | | | | | |  | | | 4. Policing costs | Budget discussions around policing are happening in a number of municipalities right now, but in a slightly different context than Vancouver: the new first union agreement for RCMP employees mean costs are going up more than in previous years, putting many cities in a place where they’re forced to pick up the bill with little recourse but to raise property taxes.
Read more in Radio NL | | | |  | | | 5. Surrey | Speaking of policing: Surrey’s incoming and outgoing police forces held a joint press conference this week, outlining how the deployment of joint officers is going to look. Whether it lowers the temperature of rhetoric between the pro- and anti-Surrey RCMP forces is an open question though, as is what will be the total cost of the transition when everything is said and done. Read more | | | | | | Share this newsletter | | or subscribe if this was
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