By Frances Bula – courtesy of the Globe & Mail

A single storey retail building in the Point Grey Village area of Vancouver has sold for $3,108,000, or $1,120 / SF. The building has tenants including Burgoo restaurant and UPS. The frontage is 50 ft and the lot is zoned C-2. The price works out to $204 per buildable SF, indicating that the property was likely bought as a hold with redevelopment potential.

Retail continues to be in high demand in  White Rock as an investment, particularly due to the ongoing demand on behalf of investors to find buildings in well-established safe markets. In particular, White Rock has seen relatively little new construction over the past several years. This is a small market that is difficult to buy into and this has been reflected in increasing rental rates and values.

Retail assets that have traded over the past 10 years have typically been streetfront retail, with most sales occurring in the Marine Drive and town centre areas.

Current cap rates for retail tend to be between 5.0% and 6.0% in this market, and have exhibited gradually increasing average prices over the past 10 years as follows:

Source: Colliers Research

Residential developers continue to look to East Vancouver for new opportunities given the increasing scarcity and rising cost of developable sites in the Downtown and Westside areas.

A landmark sale for East Vancouver was Westbank’s acquisition of the Canadian Tire site at 2220 Kingsway, in the Norquay Village plan area. That site traded at $34,088,000, representing $135 per buildable sq ft.

A review of sales over the past two years shows a general average price of approx. $100 per buildable sq ft., with values varying depending on site specific conditions such as location and zoning. Sites in and around Main Street show prices above $150 per buildable sq ft, where sites along Kingsway have shown a range of $80-100 per buildable sq ft. Other increasingly active corridors include East Hastings and Fraser Street.

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Source: Colliers research.

Courtesy MSN – Full Article: http://realestate.msn.com/article.aspx?cp-documentid=23530429&page=0

“For the 2010 Winter Olympics, about 3,000 of the world’s best athletes (and officials) took over a corner of downtown Vancouver, British Columbia — not to mention the little city that skiers and bobsledders created 70 miles north, in Whistler. Such Olympic villages can be billion-dollar creations that are in the world’s spotlight for just a few weeks.

So what happens to these glamorous villages when the athletes pack up their medals, memories and dirty laundry to fly home?

If the planners have done their homework and everybody keeps their promises, the villages are in for a long and productive post-games life. But that’s not always how it works out. Here’s our look at the afterlife of several villages from the past few decades.

Vancouver: The best (and costliest) village ever?
With its Olympic Village, Vancouver is certainly gunning for one of the most dramatic transformations of a site — and it looks like it may succeed.”