Vancouver planner wants to end ad hoc approach to developer fees.

Vancouver’s new director of planning wants to get rid of the city’s contentious method of negotiating with developers over fees they are required to pay for public services.

Brian Jackson, who starts his job as the general manager of planning and development Aug. 27, said the current “one-by-one” method of negotiating so-called community amenity contributions with individual developers is both unproductive and divisive. Instead, he wants the city to institute a system that allows developers to know up front what they’ll have to pay for parks, daycares and other needed community services.

A review of resales data for newer condos in Downtown Vancouver (2 years old or less) shows that sales activity has slowed since the beginning of 2012 but pricing has maintained an average around $800 per sq ft.

The vast majority of sales are between $600 and $1,000 per sq ft depending on the building/unit quality and location, with some sales such as units in The Erickson and Fairmon Pacific Rim showing sales values above $2,000 per SF. One can speculate that given a slowdown in sales activity, pricing will be affected eventually, particularly at the lower end of the spectrum where there are competing new developments in presales and/or under construction.

Source: MLS

“The owner of Vancouver’s Oakridge Mall is proposing a major expansion of the 56-year-old shopping centre that would transform the 11.5-hectare site into more of a community.

Ivanhoe Cambridge Inc. wants to build a broad range housing ranging from luxury to affordable, as well as more office and retail space, parks, bikeways, walking paths and a library, Senior Development Director Gordon Wylie said Monday.

Wylie said most of the development would occur on what are currently the mall’s massive parking lots.

“We’ll be building new parking underground and then on the surface area will become retail and residential areas.”

The city approved a similar plan in 2007, but since then, policies have opened up and Oakridge wants to take advantage with a new concept that goes beyond a modest expansion.”

Courtesy of the CBC: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2012/07/23/bc-oakridge-mall-expansion.html

1635-1637 West Broadway has sold to a local private investor for $5,150,000, or $445 per sq ft.

The building, formerly occupied by Liberty furniture, is a single storey retail building that had undergone renovations in recent years and was available for lease. The building totals 11,583 square feet.

Canadian pension funds increasingly turning to Canadian real estate as source of income and long-term protection against inflation

MONTREAL, July 25, 2012 /CNW Telbec/ – Standard Life Investments, a major global asset manager, today announced that the Standard Life Real Estate Fund (“SLREF” or the “Fund”) now has over CDN$1 billion in assets under management. The Fund’s latest acquisition is 8 West in Calgary, AB.

Real estate houses the economy

“Our Fund’s milestone is symbolic of the growing importance of real estate as a source of income and as a hedge against inflation for Canadian pension fund investors. A strong real estate portfolio can protect value through economic cycles because well-situated, high-quality real estate literally houses the economy,” stated Peter Cuthbert, Head of Canadian Real Estate with Standard Life Investments in Canada.

Since inception, the SLREF has earned an annualized return of 9.4%¹, and has only ever had one negative annual return in its 29-year history. Due to its limited use of debt and the fact that it seeks investment returns primarily through income, the Fund has experienced very low volatility of returns for its pension clients.

Not just a milestone, growing beyond the $1 billion mark reduces risk and enables Standard Life Investments to seek out a greater spectrum of opportunities for corporate funds looking for exposure to real estate in the Canadian market.