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Premier Gordon Campbell pulls a fast one on B.C. homeownersb
by Charlie Smith Assessed values and market values don’t always match. But for many homeowners, the B.C. essment valuations that occur on July 1 every year provide a pretty good snapshot of the value of their perty. Property-assessment review panels sit from February to March 15 to provide people an opportunity to appeal. This year, there are a couple of twists in the normal order of business. At the B.C. Liberal convention on November 1, Premier Gordon Campbell announced that the government would “lock in assessments” at the 2007 level. The government introduced legislation later that onth requiring assessments to be based on whichever was lower: the 2007 or the 2008 valuation. Another is what has happened in the real-estate market since July 2007. According to news releases the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver, the benchmark prices for various properties are now than they were in the summer of 2007. So if homeowners’ assessments have been locked in at the 2007 valuation level, they likely won’t reflect the current market value of housing in this region. Here’s what the REBGV stated in a news release reporting statistics for July 2007: “The chmark price of a detached unit is $714,810, up 10.9 percent from last year.” And here’s what the RGV stated in a more recent news release about the Janaury 2009 statistics: “The benchmark price for detached properties declined 11.2 percent to $659,638 in January 2009 compared to $742,490 [in] January 2008.” If you compare the two news releases, it’s pretty easy to see that the benchmark price for detached properties fell from $714,810 to $659,638 between July 2007 and January 2009. That’s a drop of $55,172, or 7.7 percent. But the assessed value, according to the premier’s announcement, remains locked in at the July 2007 levels. Don’t be surprised if some people show up at the review panels this month and claim that those levels aren’t fair. Now, let’s look at attached property sales. In July 2007, the benchmark price, according to the REBGV, was $448,383. In January 2009, that price was $425,309—a drop of $23,074, or 5.1 percent. For apartment properties, the benchmark price fell from $364,510 to $334,602. That’s down $29,908, or 8.2 percent. On January 22, area assessor Jason Grant and deputy assessor Grant McDonald gave a presentation on the assessment process to Vancouver city council’s city services and budgets committee. They provided some interesting information, noting that the valuation of all properties in the city is $183 billion in the 2009 assessment roll. The downtown area has the highest value: $16.2 billion. However, Grant and McDonald did not mention the significant drop in the market value of properties between July 2007 and January 2009. None of the councillors raised this issue, either. Grant emphasized that more than 98 percent of the property owners in Vancouver will not see increased assessments this year. McDonald pointed out that the few instances of higher valuations were typically due to an improvement to the property. In addition, McDonald said, the July 1, 2007, valuation date is reflected in the 2008 assessment-roll value. Without last November’s provincial legislation, the 2009 assessment roll would have been based on July 1, 2008, valuations, which were significantly higher than today’s market values. It seems that many homeowners are satisfied with this. Perhaps they haven’t paid a great deal of attention to the REBGV news releases, which chronicle how market values have fallen. McDonald told the council committee that inquiries from property owners were down about 50 percent this year compared with previous years. That means the review panels won’t deal with as many appeals this year. At the B.C. Liberal convention, Premier Campbell said that locking in property assessments at July 2007 levels would create “stability” for homeowners. In reality, the B.C. government’s move created stability for municipal governments, which won’t have to increase mill rates to offset declining property values. Many property owners haven’t paid a great deal of attention to the implications of the premier’s announcement, so they might not realize that their assessed values likely exceed the market values of their homes. Housing starts are a key economic indicator Housing starts are a key economic indicator. New construction means that people are buying homes and spending money on items like appliances. Judging by the 70-percent drop in starts of single detached and multiple-unit homes in urban areas in the first quarter of 2009 compared with the same period last year, things aren’t looking good in B.C. “If you’re looking at the homeownership market and housing starts, that’s really tied to what goes on in the economy,” Tsur Somerville, who is also director of the UBC Centre for Urban Economics and Real Estate, told the Georgia Straight. “So, in a sense, the party that will benefit housing markets the most is the party that will help the economy the most.” He noted that the housing elements in the platforms released by the B.C. Liberals, the provincial NDP, and the B.C. Greens are mostly focused on low-income families and the homeless. The B.C. Conservatives , the fourth-largest provincial political party, have stated in their platform that they want to eliminate the property-transfer tax, a move that Somerville said would have a positive effect on housing sales. This measure goes beyond the recommendation of real-estate-industry associations to restructure the tax. The levy is one percent of the first $200,000 of the purchase price of a property and two percent of the remaining cost. Property values have increased since the tax was introduced in 1987, and there have been many calls for the adjustment of the one-percent threshold to $400,000. Although the three biggest parties have pretty much left the higher-end market to look after itself, they’ve pledged a number of actions on the lower end of the housing industry. The B.C. Liberals have promised to spend $469 million on housing programs this year to break the cycle of homelessness. The NDP promises to build 2,400 social-housing units in the first year it forms a government, and put up 1,200 additional units in each of the succeeding three years. It will also lobby the federal government for tax laws that would encourage developers to build market rental housing. “Back in the ’70s and ’80s, if you bought a rental accommodation, you got a huge tax break,” Coquitlam-Maillardville NDP MLA Diane Thorne told the Straight. “We don’t have that anymore.” Laura-Leah Shaw, the Green candidate in Vancouver-Quilchena and an experienced realtor, noted in a phone interview that her party would allot one percent of the provincial budget to the construction of affordable homes. The Greens would also institute location-efficient mortgages to allow people without cars to borrow more money for home purchases than they are able to now. “Even though you may not be a high earner, you can still afford a home close to where you work, which for so many people is the downtown centre, and that would ease congestion on the roads,” Shaw explained to the Straight. The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation reported on April 8 that new-home construction for the first three months of this year totalled 2,517 units, compared with 8,293 units started in the first quarter of 2008. The CMHC is set to release updated figures on May 8. The B.C. Ministry of Finance projected in earlier budget documents that fewer housing starts would occur this year due to a sluggish economy. UBC’s Somerville said that immediate prospects for the B.C. housing market are ultimately tied to economic conditions that no provincial government—no matter which party is in power—can determine. “When you look at housing markets, we ask the fundamental question: ‘What’s going on with the economy?’ ” he said. “No province is going to boost world commodity prices. No province is going to get the U.S. housing market back on its feet.” Olympic Village LEED the way?
On Erick Villagomez’s block near Commercial Drive, seven new construction projects have sprung up in the past year. They’re houses, he explained, crummy, ugly ones with no redeeming, sustainable design. To Villagomez, the owner of environmental residential-architecture firm Metis Design/Build, they symbolize the great divide in Vancouver’s building future. At one extreme, Villagomez said, there are megaprojects such as the Olympic Village in Southeast False Creek, which is on course to set a new standard for B.C. in green planning. At the other extreme, he noted, 95 percent of the city has been built under circumstances that are very different from those of the Millennium Group development. “Go to a spec home builder and tell them you want LEED,” Villagomez told the Straight in a phone interview, referring to the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design green-building rating system. “They’ll be like, ‘What the hell is LEED? I don’t know what the hell that is.’ But the irony is, they’re the ones that build the Vancouver Specials, all these duplexes, that replicate their little models, and they pretty much create the vast majority of the city.” While the average builder is still handcuffed by bylaws that discourage green building through cost and complication, Villagomez said, the Olympic Village is cutting-edge. "It’s doing a good job of what it’s supposed to be doing, which is testing environmental systems,” he said. That’s confirmed by Ian Smith, the City of Vancouver’s manager of development for the Southeast False Creek and Olympic Village project office. Since 1995, the Southeast False Creek site has helped Vancouver define what sustainability is. And, he said, the Olympic deadline helped push the city to make it happen. Because the green components were written into the planning, they materialized before the financing crumbled. So the green part—unlike the affordability and economic stewardship aspects of the plan—was never compromised. LEED Silver for all private buildings on the site? Check. LEED Gold for all civic buildings? Yep. LEED Platinum for the community centre? That’s still the projection. Energy use will be reduced by 50 percent, Smith told the Straight, thanks in part to a sewer heat-recovery system. Water use will be 50 percent lower than normal. “Overall, it just gets better,” Smith said. Even the Olympic Village’s most prominent green critic, John Irwin, says it’s pretty good. Sure, he would have liked to see “green walls”, a more productive community garden, different trees, and a few other features. He pointed out that LEED scores were boosted by two facts: the site is a brownfield (former industrial or commercial land), and it’s close to transit. “It’s a moderated success story,” Irwin told the Straight. He’s the founder of the Southeast False Creek Stewardship Group, an ad hoc think tank of green gurus that advised the city’s planning department on the project. “When you live in a world with cruise ships in the Arctic and freighters in the Northwest Passage, I don’t think we really grasp the ecological crisis we’re in, or we’d be willing to make bigger changes.” Chris Shaw, spokesperson for Olympic watchdog 2010 Watch, said the City of Vancouver isn’t coughing up the goods on exactly which green features are being delivered. All of his freedom of information requests to the city for the minutes of in camera meetings with the Millennium Group have come back blank, he told the Straight. So the public just has to take their word for it. While Smith admits that the site could be improved, he said there’s still an opportunity to do that. The Olympic Village is just Phase 1 of the three-phase project, which will eventually house up to 16,000 people. “Thirty years down the road, the Olympic Village will still be seen as something cutting-edge. And the Olympics made us do it. There’s always some new technology coming out of Germany or Sweden to be better, more green. But taken all together,” he said, “it’s pretty impressive.” As for Villagomez’s point that this pie-in-the-sky stuff doesn’t help 95 percent of Vancouver, Smith said the city’s licensers and inspectors have “had their eyes opened” by the Olympic Village’s green planning process to what’s possible.
Government Of Canada Invests In Solar Hot Water Heating Program The Government of Canada is investing C$400,000 in the Solar Hot Water Heating program through the ecoENERGY for Renewable Heat initiative. The Honourable Lisa Raitt, Minister of Natural Resources, and Ron Cannan, Member of Parliament for Kelowna-Lake Country, announced the investment and launched the program at the recent Kelowna Solar Workshop in British Columbia. "Our government's investment in this program will make it easier for homeowners to reduce their energy costs - putting more money in the pocketbooks of Canadians," says Raitt. "Not only will this project protect our environment, but this green energy technology will also help stimulate the economy and create jobs for Canadians." The Solar Hot Water Heating Program, delivered by FortisBC, is expected to provide a significant boost to the growing clean energy industry in British Columbia. The program provides C$1,000 rebates to help new home developers in the Okanagan and the Kootenays install solar hot water heating systems. The program also provides a $300 rebate for existing homeowners to install a solar hot water heating system. Solar hot water heating systems are also eligible for the ecoENERGY Retrofit - Homes Grant and are eligible under the Home Renovation Tax Credit. source - Solar Industry Mag.com
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