Condemnation

A couple of note worthy articles in today's TC.

Four Rental Buildings Condemned. The landlord refuses to perform any upkeep on the buildings, and voila! Let's tear down the buildings and do something different - build luxury condos!

Unbuilt Building Condemned. Well, not quite. The Wing condo project in Vic West continues to be an eyesore, yet the local community association doesn't appear to want to do anything about it. I don't get the statement from Diane Carr "... it's not the community's obligation to make up for a bad investment on the part of the investors. That's not our problem." Alright, then forget about offers from developers who want to do something with that mess, and enjoy your eyesore!

I think that Victoria is being overbuilt at this time, however, I would sooner have a building, that perhaps doesn't please everyone, than an eyesore empty concrete-laden lot. My $0.02.

Condo Prices at the Railyards

June 19th I mentioned how a price review was underway for phase 4 of the Railyards development, titled "The Gateway." The price review has been completed, and prices have gone up. Increases are between $0 and $30000. This increase is a pretty big surprise to me, because of the 62 units available, only 28 have sold thus far. I believe the building is nearing completion. I'm sure that building costs have increased, justifying the price increase, in their minds. But I can't see them becoming more competitive and selling more units in today's condo market through upping the prices. Someone responsible for the increases needs to give their head a shake!

The Julia condo development has been completed. There was a lot of back patting in Saturday's TC for this accomplishment. It's a good thing they are 50% sold already! Get ready for the fire sale! Did anyone get a chance to attend the grand opening?

I think it would be fun to be in the market for a new condo these days. I'd definitely be low-balling the new developments. I wonder what sort of deals could be found!

Deception!

I'm outraged! The latest ad for Reflections in Langford is absolute and total deception! The ad states that you can now buy a 2 bedroom condo valued at $334900 for zero money down, thus giving you a $995 monthly payment for the first twelve months (whatever that means!). First of all, zero money down is a poor financial decision (we are now NO different than what went on in the U.S.). Secondly, $995 a month, yeah right. Put into a mortgage calculator the $334900 purchase price, 40 year amortization, 5.99% interest rate, what do you get - $1823.23 a month! What the...!!! I wonder, is it Peter Gaby or the developers sensing a serious downturn that are willing to pay for half your mortgage for the first year!

People, don't do it! It's all lies!

Sorry, I've gotta take some deep breaths here. If Gaby and/or the developer wanted to maintain a stitch of integrity, they'd simply lower the prices and present the real purchase numbers. However, they know that to present that same monthly mortgage payment, even with the 40 year amortization, the price of that particular condo would have to be $183000. Wow, that's almost reasonable!

Focus on Condo Sales

Using stats given by the VREB, I've done up graphs of median condo sale prices and condo sales numbers for Greater Victoria, Victoria proper, Saanich, and Langford. I was hoping that by creating these graphs, I'd have some great revelation. I didn't, but you might.

Greater Victoria has shown quite consistent sales numbers for the past 2 years. It appears that the median price has or is peaking, as increases since last summer have been marginal.

Victoria proper has seen strong sales thus far this year. There are still some significant year-over-year median price increases.

Sales in Saanich (East and West), with the exception of February and April, have been slightly less than previous years. Median prices appear to have stalled out as well.

Langford sales, thus far this year, have been similar to the past two years. Of course, May 2006 was an anomaly. Prices have been all over, but do appear to still be rising.

I've also thrown together a graph for the year-over-year median price increases. There is definitely a downward trend. This past month, Langford had the first YOY negative median price increase.