Toronto’s landmark House Strip program has spawned a pilot project in Metro Vancouver that aims for a 60% cut in the waste home renovations generate.
House Strip, launched by the Greater Toronto Home Builders Association (now the Building Industry and Development Association), has been cited by groups including the National Association of Home Builders in the U.S. as a model recycling program for renovators.
The project in Metro Vancouver is the brainchild of Peter Simpson, president and CEO of the Greater Vancouver Home Builders Association, who previously helped initiate the Toronto program, and Helen Goodland, executive director of Vancouver’s Sustainable Building Centre.
The year-long project is funded by Metro Vancouver and kicked off an extensive renovation of a house in East Vancouver the week before Christmas. Valued at $250,000, the renovation will remodel and expand the home’s interior while diverting as much waste as possible from landfills. Renovation waste typically accounts for 27% of construction materials entering local landfills.
“There really isn’t any recycling at this point,” Goodland said. “It’s the one area that has had negligible attention.”
The pilot project will help Metro Vancouver devise a set of policies to promote home renovation waste recycling. Goodland said planners want first-hand experience to help gauge needs.
“They just need to understand what’s happening on the ground,” she said, “and it’s only by doing a project that you really get that sort of information.”
The policies Metro Vancouver eventually develops may require changes at the regional level, in terms of waste transfer station upgrades or a suite of incentives, while municipalities may be encouraged to amend policies (such as the practice of charging parking fees for recycling dumpsters) to promote waste diversion.
Sales of apartment blocks might not have been booming in 2010, but investors were keen on the class as per-suite prices increased across the region.
Veteran broker David Goodman of Macdonald Commercial Real Estate Services Ltd. reports that Greater Vancouver saw 84 buildings sell in 2010, up 10% from 74 sales in 2009. Suburban markets saw the greatest increase in activity, with 44 sales – up 28% over 2009.
While the total deal volumes dropped to $403.5 million, the average price per suite in Vancouver rose 4% to $211,595 from $204,163 in 2009, while suburban prices averaged $137,021, up 12% from $122,099 a year earlier.
Driving investor activity was a strong belief in the opportunities upgrades offer to maximize cash flow on a relatively fixed supply of product. With few new purpose-built rental units being added to the market, and newer units typically renting at higher prices, older properties offer investors significant upside.
“Available rental inventory continues to hover near all-time lows with little likelihood of change – read supply – forecast,” Goodman said in his latest survey of the rental market. “Apartment owners for the most part are risk adverse. This asset class provides a stable commodity with a structurally built-in finite supply.”
One of the notable trends in the closing months of 2010 was the number of projects being touted before a formal application to the city was made. Examples included the planned Pattison Group-Reliance Properties venture Burrard Gateway and some of the new office towers anticipated for downtown, while the city (for its part) was attracting attention for sites where tall building could help break up the city’s skyline.
The disclosure shows responsiveness to the patterns of discourse new media have encouraged, said David Allison, president of Vancouver marketing and ad house Braun/Allison Inc.
“You don’t hold back any information you have today as you did in the past,” he said. “It’s important to go out today and make people understand what your position is.”
Allison added that a similar approach applies further down the development timeline to sales strategies. While it’s important to get communities on board with projects at the planning stage, ensuring buy-in when units come to market also depends on awareness.
This is why being able to position projects from the start with a clear vision of what could be is important (Allison declined to single out individual projects, but Rize Alliance Properties Ltd.’s colourful display at the corner of Kingsway and Broadway, where it plans a 26-storey tower, is illustrative with its series of profiles of local personalities.)
Allison’s own clients have been paying attention to sales pitches, honing the stories about projects about to come to market in anticipation of a competitive season.
“Competition will be a major factor, and all of our clients are working very hard to make sure that the product offerings brought to market are stellar,” he said. “I’m seeing a heartfelt desire from the development community to offer information, and products, that will make life better for buyers.”