BCBusiness

paul joseph (above); courTesy jason soprovich realTy (righT) March 2015 BCBusiness 37 ping out around $22 per square foot com- pared to $40 in downtown Vancouver. Former mayor Dianne Watts is now run- ning for federal office with the governing Conservatives, who just might speed the construction timeline by chipping in a little pre-election transportation cash. Coastal Communities In just the past five years, a benchmark detached house on Vancouver's west side has risen in value by almost 50 per cent while its equivalent a few kilometres away on the Sunshine Coast (albeit some of them via ferry) has dropped almost 10 per cent. Incredibly, the west-side house would cost almost seven times as much: $2.32 million versus $351,000. There are reasons to think the trend might reverse. One is a mild resurgence within the coastal forest industry, which is mostly geared to producing lumber for the steadily improving U.S. housing market. A second is the fall in price of almost every other commodity and the economic wake that's likely to follow, especially a lower Canadian dollar. That should induce snowbirds from the prai- ries and Ontario to once again consider coastal B.C. instead of automatically choosing Arizona or Florida—alternatives that in Canadian dollars have almost dou- bled in price over the past three or four years. A third is the combination of real estate wealth for those who have it and unaffordability for those who don't in Metro Van- couver, since that's where a big chunk of coastal homebuyers originate. Might the better times extend to areas of the Interior that cater to the same mix of rec- reational buyers and lifestyle migrants? Forecasts suggest so, but some cautions should be noted. There's no similar for- estry industry uptick (thanks in part to the mountain pine beetle), and most other local resource industries are flag- ging. As well, housing markets in places like the Okanagan are closely linked to those in Alberta, which are almost cer- tain to sag with the collapse of oil prices. Super-Prime Properties By now it's almost a cliché that Van- couver is an example of that newest phenomenon, the hedge city, favoured by the global super wealthy as a place where money can safely be parked with little concern for short-term returns. In a word, the city is considered to be sus- tainable. Along with Toronto and Cal- gary, Vancouver topped the list in a 2014 survey by U.K.-based property developer Grosvenor, which ranks 50 of the world's cities on their resilience—their ability to cope with adverse events, and by extension, their soundness as long-term invest- ments. There's that consistently high ranking in livability surveys of vari- ous stripes. Even climate change, so catastrophic to many parts of the world, is forecast to go relatively easy on the region. No wonder a Barclays Bank survey in 2014 found that of the astounding 47 per cent of wealthy Chinese who wanted to get out of the country within five years, most preferred Canada (and by infer- ence, Vancouver) as a destination. True, with the cancellation of the Immigrant Investor Program early in 2014, getting from there to here isn't going to be as easy as it once was, but there are ways, and markets in places like West Vancouver and Vancouver's west side have yet to be dented. On the surface, this is a category of real estate that would appear uniquely vulnerable to the unpredictable intricacies of geo- politics and global economics, not to mention domestic policy. Yet for more than a decade it has been the surprising Steady Eddie, striding ever upward (save a months'-long blip in 2008-09) as other sectors f luctuated, sometimes wildly. The same pattern has been evident in other hedge cities, especially for ideally located properties, whether residential or commercial. In turn, that has given rise to yet another new designation, "Super-Prime," a category for which pretty much every forecaster sees blue skies ahead. • UPS AND DOWNS Prices have risen in West Vancouver (right) but dropped on the Sunshine Coast (above).

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