48 BCBusiness January 2016
who lives on
Angus
Drive?
A BCBusiness investigation
into 40 transactions
along one iconic Vancouver
street—who's buying,
who's paying cash, who's
tearing down and
building anew—reveals a real
estate market unhinged
b y J A C O B P A r r Y
A
s far as overheated markets go,
Vancouver's is without equal in
Canada. The average sale price
for a detached house in the city
proper stood at $2.2 million in Sep-
tember 2015; in the city of Toronto,
by comparison, the equivalent
number was $1.05 million while in
Calgary it was $523,434. And nowhere has the
action been more intense than on Vancouver's
west side, where the median sales price was
pushing $2.87 million by September 2015
and where most of what might be considered
"luxury" homes—those selling for over $4 mil-
lion—were sold. In the first six months of this
year, 206 houses in Vancouver sold for more
than $4 million and 722 for between $2 million
and $4 million. In Toronto, by contrast—a mar-
ket three times as big as Vancouver's—only 70
homes sold for more than $4 million and 790
for between $2 million and $4 million over the
same time period.
