Affordable mortgage rates and low numbers of residential vacancies are making 2014 “a breakout year” for sales of apartment buildings across Metro Vancouver.

The Goodman Report, a local newsletter covering multi-family investment property, notes that selling volumes have been robust, with prices per-suite in suburban Vancouver markets up 22 per cent over 2013, 13 per cent for buildings in the city.

“Sensing that business, political and economic signs remain positive, new buyers both offshore and local have been relentlessly pursuing older three-storey frame and highrise buildings for retrofit opportunities,” says the report.

Written by father-son realtors David and Mark Goodman, it predicts 125 apartment buildings will sell through 2014, with a total value exceeding $800 million.

With 61 buildings sold as of July, the pace of sales is 36 per cent ahead of a year ago, signalling what the Goodmans are labelling “a bullish breakout”.

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/Barbara+Yaffe+Bullish+market+Vancouver+apartment/10253586/story.html

Here is an update of 980 Howe Street; an office building being built by Manulife at the corner of Howe and Nelson:

A walk-up apartment building in Metrotown has sold for $10,400,000, or $216,667 per unit. The building is located on a 32,500 SF site at 6425 Silver Avenue, just south of a number of large-scale developments on Beresford Street. The zoning for the property is RM-3 and it is not known if the OCP will permit a higher density when the new Metrotown Area Plan is released. The buyer was a local investor.

Allied REIT isn’t quite as active in Vancouver as out East, but a notable buyer nonetheless…

By Paul Brent

For many real estate companies, it has been a tough year to complete acquisitions.

That has definitely not been the case for Allied Properties REIT (AP.UN-T), which last month announced two more deals to increase its 2014 tally to $225 million.

While the frenetic deal-making activity may have taken many observers by surprise, Allied anticipated the dam would break this year, according to Michael Emory, the REIT’s president and chief executive. “We got a sense late last year and early this year that the pace of acquisitions was going to pick up. It was more a function of availability than anything else.”

The REIT, known for acquiring older, trendy office space in the downtown cores of major Canadian cities, has racked up seven purchases so far this year, the latest two in Toronto: 555 Richmond Street West and 460 King St. W.

That’s a change for Allied Properties REIT.

Stabilized rental property

“I don’t think that we acquired anything much in Toronto, especially in terms of the stabilized rental property portfolio, last year or the year before that,” said Emory. “We did, of course, acquire The Well with RioCan and Diamond …read more

Source:: RENX