50 BCBusiness January 2016 Map: stesha ho
To better understand what is driving
Vancouver's luxury market, BCBusiness
dove deep into a number of transactions
on one west-side street: Angus Drive. We
looked at a random sample of 40 of the
52 homes that sold between 2012 and
2014 on the north-south street bisecting
Shaughnessy and Kerrisdale, and spoke
to seven realtors and a variety of real
estate experts to understand what's mov-
ing the market to unprecedented heights.
What do we mean by heights? In one
case, a house that sold for $2.1 million in
2009 sold again for $6.95 million in 2013.
A property that went for $2.9 million in
2012—with a Tudor teardown quickly
replaced by a "Tudor-inspired" mansion
with double the square footage—went for
$7.96 million two years later. And sales
are far from cooling down. In a normal
six-month period, 20 to 30 houses sell in
Shaughnessy; in the first nine months of
2015, the number was 110. "The market
is crazy, crazy nuts," says Les Twarog, a
realtor with Re/Max Crest Westside who
has specialized in the area for
the last five years.
A key concern with the
rapid rise in prices is the dis-
connect between those prices
and local incomes. The average
household income in Toronto's
pricey Bridle Path and Law-
rence Park neighbourhoods
(the equivalent of Vancouver's
west side) is $205,000 while
the median selling price is
$2.87 million; in Shaughnessy,
where the average selling price
in the first six months of 2015
was $6.5 million, the average
household income is just over
$135,000. According to many
of the realtors BCBusiness
spoke to, it's not local incomes buying
those homes. "Vancouver doesn't pay
steep enough salaries for these sorts of
Regardless of whether they're
wealthy immigrant-investors
or residents trading up, taking
out a mortgage or paying in
cash, what they all have in com-
mon, say realtors, is that they
don't shop at open houses and
they rarely use
MLS. The vast
majority of sales are generated
through referrals: friends, rela-
tives, business partners—and
immigration consultants
NO. ADDRESS SALE PRICE SALE DATE
1 1426 $9,990,000 09-Jun-13
2 1451 $8,100,000 11-Sep-13
3 1527 $3,558,000 09-May-13
4 3689 $8,580,000 26-Jan-13
5 3737 $10,700,000 23-Apr-12
6 3739 $8,488,000 06-Feb-12
7 3898 $4,725,000 11-Mar-13
8 3989 $3,000,000 29-Mar-13
9 3998 $3,100,000 25-Nov-13
10 4116 $3,998,000 28-Jul-13
NO. ADDRESS SALE PRICE SALE DATE
11 4237 $3,530,000 08-May-13
12 4337 $6,620,000 28-Oct-13
13 4418 $3,830,000 21-Jul-13
14 4469 $6,950,000 11-Nov-13
15 4663 $4,800,000 05-Mar-14
16 4811 $3,600,000 07-May-13
17 4861 $3,300,000 28-Jan-13
18 5007 $2,280,000 25-Oct-12
19 5075 $3,020,000 09-Nov-13
20 5726 $2,010,000 16-Apr-14
sales on Angus Drive: 2012-2014
N
ANGUS
DR
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
9
8
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
W
32
N
D
A
V
E
ANGUS
ANGUS
DR
GRANVILLE
ST
GRANVILLE
ST
GRANVILLE
W
KING
EDWARD
AVE
NANTON
AVE
MARGUERITE
ST
PINE
CRES
MATTHEWS
AVE
W
29TH
AVE
W
33RD
AVE
W
34TH
AVE
W
35TH
AVE
W
36TH
AVE
W
37TH
AVE
W
41ST
AVE
