$462MM-$114MM would be $348MM debt outstanding, some of which is on the land that was overpriced to begin with.

OK so October of last year Ballem claimed there were 310 units left to sell and her presentation slides are offline, or moved.

Are the rental units that are now offered for sale not included in that presentation?

From what I see they’re now on track for about a $150-200MM write-off, which is a bit better than 10 months ago. With every passing sale the final figure becomes more and more certain. If it happens that Vancouver’s market hits a SNAFU, as Ballem alludes, things could be getting more mired going forward.

Not a pleasant position to be in, and a bit more than I would normally shell out for entertainment but hey Vancouver’s not a cheap city any more!

Didn’t some ‘group’ offer to buy out / take over some of the units months back? Last year at some point?

I am pleased the village is coming to life and I know that many people who have bought there are very happy with their purchases. I encouraged some people to buy since they were buying penthouses and very prime units at prices well below the orignial prices and below what they would have to pay in Coal Harbour, or other waterfront locations.

I think the OV and other False Creek developments have the potential to be much better neighbourhoods than Coal Harbour.

That being said, I remain concerned about the city’s financial picture. Frances, you said the sales are happening faster than anyone expected. This simply is not true.

With respect to Jesse’s comment above, my understanding is that the $462MM debt does NOT include any of the outstanding land payment. The outstanding land payment is regarded by the receiver as an ‘aspirational payment’ in the order of $173MM and is never going to be repaid.

This would not be a problem if the money was ‘profit’ but my understanding is that most if not all of it has been spent on the infrastructure, including the community centre, etc. Indeed, many items were upgraded in anticipation of this big land payment.

Now there’s no use crying over spilled milk…this is not the fault of any one person or any one political party…but I do think the city should be doing everything it can to sell the remaining units (especially the less attractive units) in the not too distant future for a number of reasons.

Firstly, there are still unsold units in surrounding buildings that are nearing completion, and many of the units Rennie Marketing and other developers/marketing firms sold in neighbouring buildings will soon start coming back onto the market. Why?

Because they were purchased by investors who now realize that they are not going to realize the capital gains they hoped for, and they may not even get the rents they were hoping for.

While these units do not have the sustainability ‘bells and whistles’ nor the cache of the Olympic Village, they are going to be real competition and appeal to many potential OV buyers.

I fear these resales, and the unsold units will be coming onto the market at prices below the current OV prices.

To address this competition, I would urge the City to be creative with some financing programs….I know….I’ve made the same suggestions before…but the City can offer financing programs that other developers or investors can’t offer. Maybe it is time to consider shared equity, silent second mortgages, and other forms of fettered ownership to move these units, without having to significantly reduce the prices.

That being said, I believe the market is telling us that while the better units are very well priced…perhaps under-priced in some cases….many of the less attractive units with awkward layouts are over priced.

I know the City and marketing team will be furious with me for saying this, but I think it must be said. I’m happy to back up my allegations and know that many other real estate consultants and developers agree with me.

So the City should reduce some prices now to to sell units rather than hold onto them for maybe years. Altho the City’s borrowing rate is very low, there are holding costs, and the city is not even getting property taxes. Furthermore, empty units lead to other problems.

On a different matter, I also feel that the City is not doing everything it can to show off the area. The town square is looking tired…there are weeds growing through the pavers…the banners are starting to fade…the electrical boxes that I was assured would be covered with colourful murals are now a dull, faded green. There’s no excuse for not doing something creative here.

The benches with the awful yellow/white sitting surfaces appear discoloured and some are covered in graffiti…whoever designed these should be shot…they’re just awful!

As you walk down the streets many of the hedges in front of unsold units need trimming…they look wild and unkempt…other plantings are dying and not being tended to…and there are weeds and garbage piling up.

Do these things prevent people from buying…it’s hard to say…but all of these things do affect how the area is perceived.

Moreover, I just don’t understand why this is being allowed to happen. The receiver has been paid $4.2MM according to Frances’ story. For this money his team should be pulling out the weeds.

Finally, more effort should be made to let people know what’s coming to the remaining empty spaces. While some do have colourful signage, many do not. In Ireland, where they have lots of empty storefronts, a company has created clever murals that give a visual illusion of what the empty space would look like if it was tenanted.

This would be appropriate for the Salt building which today is an empty box. I’m told something is coming, but it’s not apparent to a visitor…at least it wasn’t apparent to me when I was there last Tuesday.

So I apologize for the negative tone, but hope these comments will perhaps draw the attention of those in positions of influence. I and other real estate consultants and marketing consultants I know would be happy to walk through the project with the Receiver or City staff or the marketing team to point out the things we think should be addressed in order to accelerate the sales program.

I think it is important that the remaining units be sold in a timely fashion, because if they are not, I worry that the City many may be tempted be simply rent out more units, especially after the HST is withdrawn.

While this will have the affect of filling the project and allow planning for other phases to progress, it will also mean a much bigger financial hit. I understand the city has already taken the Receiver’s advice and rented out some of the condos…but this is a very expensive way to work out of the problem.

As a taxpayer, I would not like to see the city rent out any more units.

I hope this is helpful.

@Michael Geller 5-Tired banners, weed strewn pavement, drcaying street furniture? Sounds like every other city space the Vision dominated Parks board is responsible for!

The whole seawall between the Olympic Village and Quebec Street is a chaotic, dangerous mess. Not only grasses and shrubs are dying, so are mature trees. There is is no comprehensible demarcation between pedestrian and bicycle paths – someone is going to be killed or seriously injured. It’s pathetic, embarrassing and sad. Never mind “rebranding”, clean it up and populate it.

“whoever designed these should be shot”

In this blood-soaked age, perhaps some rhetorical expressions are more deserving of being put to pasture than others? I think that words have great power, and positioning a design flaw as a capital crime only serves to dull our senses to the very real violence permeating our culture. In one of my previous incarnations as a video editor for the evening news I’ve had to leave images of shot children on the cutting room floor, so y’all don’t puke up dinner… so I’ll admit to a certain hyper-sensitivity in this regard, but we might consider saving the most extreme sanctions for something a little more earth-shattering than a graffiti-prone piece of public furniture 🙂

Sorry for the derail.

The grass and weeds poking out are the saving grace of the sea of concrete pavers in the square. They add badly needed colour to the mass of grey. Probably by design. This is not uncommon in European streets and adds character.

Fortunately, the Europeans in general, have the common sense not to use concrete pavers. Unlike stone and brick, pavers don’t age well. They just get uglier. Look at Water Street.

Pavers are not pedestrian friendly. Just as anyone with heels or wheels. The cutting edge surface treatments in European cities is precision cut stone like granite set in concrete so it is smooth with no bumps. Great to walk one, great for strollers, walkers, luggage and wheelchairs. Looks fantastic as well.

The smooth saw cut concrete that is being used in many places is a good start. The bike path at the new convention centre is one of the best pedestrian spaces in Vancouver. Unfortunately, the pedestrian path plagued with pavers, blocked with benches and cluttered with signs is not so much a good ped. space.

We seem to be living in a bubble of complacency out here on the Coast: as the current whining over OV demonstrates.

Our problems, sin embargo, are far more persistent . . .
http://kunstler.com/blog/2012/08/male-energies.html
. . . than Michael getting out his shot gun, or a cutting off a bit of grass poking up among the Chick-a-dees will solve.

September 17, 2100 hrs watch Knowledge network: it’s about the semiotics of our misplaced perceptions.

Coast Modern, is a programme revealing a wasteful West Coast modern architecture that should rightfully be called Complacent Modern.

I remember those days. The last thing on our minds was the environment: all we wanted to do was hide our profligate waste and profound lack of creativity behind a grove of trees (if it was lucky enough to survive the chain saw).

It show a mindless few hell-bent on ripping out our forests and wastefully guzzling our fish stock to finance a brief moment of secluded luxury: to say nothing of a dearth of architectural talent and willful ignorance of an urban environment (sprawl was redolent that Coast Modern conveniently avoids), persistent to this day.

The Olympic Village area is not looking merely “tired”, it’s looking abandoned. The mass plantings of black-eyed susans have keeled over dead from lack of water and neglect, the plantings around the public areas have been allowed to die off and will, in short order, be nothing but a blackberry patch and the seawall landscaping has been ignored since last year. The Parks’ Board should be ashamed.

I have never really understood why people want Olympic games in their city. And I was always voicing against it in Vancouver.
We have enough of our own problems so why bother with something so difficult and complicated as the administration, building and keeping diverse sport places etc. You can´t have profit of it, you are going to fall into debts and the amount of problems is just incredible. And what for? Few interviews on the TV, handshaking with presidents and arrival of the sportsmen and sportswomen from countries you barely know.
Now we experience a housing price decreases (Vancouver Housing Market: Developments in 2012) and the city has properties and debts.
The smartest move would be to put everything on sale asap.

I enjoyed the discussion on CKNW this morning between Bula, Geller and Boldt. I am afraid that, while I respect Michael’s comments by the end they were becoming a bit nitpicky. They should do more to sell them like clean up the square before other nearby units come on site but in response to statements to the effect that in fact the units are selling quite well, the response was that many (I assume the high end ones) are underpriced. Huh? If they are at a price where they are moving and the object is to recoup as much as we can as soon as we can, what is the issue.
Overall, however, the discussion was civil and informative. Congratulations.

Interesting philosophy Waltyss #20
“If they are at a price where they are moving and the object is to recoup as much as we can”
Nothing to do with the toddler mayor, with the incompetent Vision Vancouver, their handpicked Doctor Ballem and the rest of Her Court, and the fact they entered a Real Estate deal they should not have … to start with.
Now we minimize the damage, eh?
Nope, Waltyss, Vancouver voters are paying for their stupidity, as they voted the wrong people to take care of this city. That’s all.
PS.
Is it me, or anyone else noticed that Frances Bula’s blog have become a dormitory blog, just like the rest of Vancouver’s lifestyle? 🙁

I saw an advert in the papers the other day of the City of Vancouver flogging ex-Olympic Village developers’ retail property in 1300 block Marine Drive, Ambleside the other day.
Would that money be put into the Olympic Village fund?

And why can’t they have a Corvée to sweep the streets in OV if the Village is that decrepit. Do the “owners” care much? Do they see it at all as they sweep down the elevators to the parking stall to drive their cars off to Choices Organic Market in Kits?