Sharon Brailsford pauses on the grey cement patio and peers at the rest of the surrounding apartments for a moment.
As she walks up a few steps on her way out to the street, I ask her why she’s at the open house.
The Burnaby resident tells me she’s looking for a place for her adult children.
And Brailsford’s story will be a familiar refrain for anyone trying to steer through the Metro Vancouver housing market.
The place her son rents with his partner in New Westminster is being sold from underneath them, and now they need to find a new place to live. She says the owner of the apartment has offered to sell it to them, but the price keeps going up. They have a $300,000 budget, but it’s slim pickings for the couple in that price range.
“It’s ridiculous,” Brailsford tells the NOW, adding when she was selling her own home in Burnaby 15 years ago, it was hard just to find a buyer. “The market was so different 15 years ago.”
She, like many, are questioning where all the buyers are coming from, but she’s not convinced the market is being completely driven by foreign investors from Asia.
Brailsford actually likes the one-bedroom condo in the 41-year-old apartment building on Kingsway she just walked through. The unit was recently renovated and, at $280,000, she thinks it could work for her son, at least for a while until he can afford something better.
The mom vows to press on, and keep looking for a place, while I vow to visit more open houses to get a little glimpse of what’s happening in the Burnaby market.
Brailsford is also the first and last person I speak with who’s in the market for a new home.
As I criss-crossed the city, I learn the first real weekend of summer doesn’t exactly bring the masses out to open houses. But it also doesn’t mean the market has slowed, or real estate won’t sell.
‘I hate it for the buyer’
It’s two o’clock, and the sun is now starting to break through the clouds.
I’m in Capitol Hill looking at my first single-family home. In May, the average cost of a home in North Burnaby crept up to $1.5 million, according to the most recent numbers from Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver.
I’m staring at a 65-year-old house on Howard Avenue listed for $1.2 million.
I expect to see a lot of people since the property is cheapest detached open house of the day, when realtor Anthea Yeo greets me at the front door.
She doesn’t expect anyone to come through today, she tells me, since this is really for a developer. But she welcomes me in to take a look and to chat about the real estate market.
“I hate it for the buyer,” she says, when I ask her about the market. She says the most recent wave in the market started before Christmas in cities like Surrey and swept across the region all the way out to Mission and Chilliwack.
Yeo, a real estate veteran of 26 years, says there is a lot of pressure on the market from foreign buyers, and even suggests there’s something shady going on.
“I feel like they’re laundering dirty money,” she says in a matter-of-fact tone, adding the situation is very frustrating for local buyers.
It’s a sentiment shared by many people around the region.
Burnaby MP Kennedy Stewart has introduced an e-petition that, in part, calls for a requirement that potential buyers register with the government in order to buy a home and consider restricting foreign ownership to those who reside in the city for a certain period of time.
Vancouver’s mayor just recently proposed a tax on vacant homes, and in turn, Premier Christy Clark released a video where she said her government will come up with a plan to address housing affordability. She didn’t mention foreign investment but did talk about protecting consumers from shady practices.
I’m curious to see what a seven-figure tear down actually looks like, so I take a short tour. There’s no doubt the home has been lived in.
Yeo explains a family has been renting the home for 16 years, but they bought a place in Mission recently and now the owner is ready to sell. She says the owner specifically waited until the tenants left on their own.
The home just came onto the market, but the realtor isn’t expecting it to take too long to sell. She says a developer could put up a new home and turn around and sell it for $2.5 to $3 million depending on the market.
Demand is high in Brentwood
I find myself gazing out at the view from the 22nd floor of an apartment for sale on Madison Avenue. I can see southwest across the city toward Vancouver. All the cars from this height look like Matchbox toys. The eight-year-old, two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment in the Brentwood neighbourhood is listed for $549,000. The empty unit feels new and modern, if somewhat cookie-cutter to other apartments built in the last decade, even like my own in Coquitlam.
It’s a quiet open house. Only a few groups have come through to view the apartment, notes realtor Teresa Pang. But the low turnout doesn’t mean there isn’t interest. She explains Brentwood is growing fast and the demand is high. This particular apartment has only been on the market for a few days and she predicts it will sell within a week, above asking price.
So who’s buying, I ask. Pang says it’s mostly young couples trying to get into the market or older couples looking to downsize. She also points out people are willing to pay to live near transit. That’s good news for this owner, because the Gilmore SkyTrain station is only a stone’s throw away for someone with a good arm.
In May, sales of apartment properties increased 34 per cent in the region compared to May 2015, and in Burnaby North the price for the average apartment was $428,000.
After 18 years in the biz, this realtor says the market is strong, but also “unpredictable.” In a rush to buy, she says people aren’t even putting subjects on or inspecting the homes, something my parents back in the day would consider unimaginable. Though it may seem like sheer panic for people trying to buy, Pang says she would advise her clients to take their time.
What do you get for $5.68 million in Burnaby?
By mid-afternoon, I’ve bounced around from open house to open house. I’ve seen different price ranges in different neighbourhoods across the city trying to get as wide a spectrum as I can in a few short hours. There is the “entertainers’ dream” in the Riverbend area for $1.3 million that has a working bar on floor level that looks like a biker clubhouse.
I’ve barely seen anyone, and mostly just chat with realtors at each stop. So much for getting a sense of what common folk are feeling out in the streets. I am told it was busier last week. I also hear that the summer is a slow time in real estate.
With time winding down, I can’t resist seeing how the other half lives. I have to see what the high end of market looks like.
Nestled in a cul-de-sac near the lush green of Deer Lake I discover a stable of ultra-expensive homes.
Turns out there are three open houses on the same block. I have time to see two, including a 5,925-square-foot house on the market for $5.68 million.
What do you get for that? You get six bedrooms, seven bathrooms, a three-car garage and a lot of granite.
Realtor Jenelle Lu is right at the front door ready to greet me. A few people have come through to see it, but big-ticket homes aren’t selling that quickly, I learn.
She explains the house has been on the market for three months, but, at this price range, it takes time to sell. There has been an offer, but it’s still for sale. Lu says the buyer will most likely be foreign, but she suspects it wouldn’t just be for investment and they’ll want to live in the home. Time will only tell, I suppose.
After a quick tour of the home that looks like it was made just for the TV series Million Dollar Listing, it’s time for me to snap back to reality. I am pretty much done looking at real estate, not really sure if I have that much of a better understanding of the market.
One thing is for sure, I am happy I bought my own place a few years ago, when the market seemed a little easier to navigate.
