As the West End Community Plan is emerging, we thought it would be interesting to take a look at the largest lots in the West End. There aren’t many large lots; in fact, of privately held properties, there are less than 10 of an acre or more.  Here are the 40 largest parcels in the West End, by land area (SF):

All of the above properties are improved with sizable income producing (mostly apartment) properties that won’t likely be redeveloped anytime soon; however, many of these, and many smaller lots (of which there are over 500), will see some activity in the coming years as part of the West End Plan. Here is the City’s depiction of what the West End might look like in 30 years once built out per current policy:

Contact us if you would like to know more about the WECP and where are the opportunities are.

A 36-unit building at the corner of Nelson and Bute Streets in the West End of Downtown Vancouver has sold for $13,000,000. The building was originally constructed in the 1930’s but was fully renovated in 2010/2011. The cap rate was 4.15%. The buyer was Belmont Properties.

News of Cadillac Fairview’s proposal for a 65-storey, 580-unit rental apartment tower at Queen and Yonge St. in Downtown Toronto is interesting for Vancouver observers. The proposal indicates that the development will have zero parking stalls. Instead, it will include 580 bicycle spaces are planned instead. The building appears to be absent of unit balconies as well.

This particular site includes demolition of an existing retail space and preservation of an existing heritage building, and based upon the location, parking probably won’t be necessity for most urban residents.

This begs an interesting question however, would the outright or partial relaxation of parking requirements for a downtown rental project be viable from a rental or construction perspective? There are many buildings in the West End that do not have any parking, and this does not appear to impact rents…

Recent efforts to reduce parking requirements for Vancouver condo projects have yielded mixed results; such as the MC2 project at Marine and Cambie where units sans obligatory parking stall were apparently much slower to sell. Is rental different?

We have sold 425 Twelfth Street in New Westminster. The building is a 34-unit strata titled apartment building that was offered to the market last year. The purchase price was $5,875,000, or $173,000 per unit. We achieved a premium valuation for our client as a result of the buildings age (15 years) relative to the average age of an apartment building in New Westminster (almost 50 years). Contact us for further details.

125 Agnes Street, a 19-unit apartment building in New Westminster has been sold for $2,100,000, or $110,000 / 4.5% cap rate.