Fraser Valley growing too fast for its own good: top realtor

Rick Dubord, a Cloverdale-based real estate agent who’s been working in the area since 1973, said the City of Surrey particularly is addicted to the tax dollars it reaps from residential development, with little regard for sustainability.

“They’re wanting the population to grow because they’re needing the revenue,” Dubord said. “So are we equipped for it? Certainly not. Not when you consider all the services, no, not at all.”

Dubord, who is president of B.C.’s HomeLife Realty Services, and who recently won the Fraser Valley Real Estate Board’s (FVREB) John Armeneau Professional of the Year award, said transportation infrastructure is the most stressed. Traffic on highways leading in and out of cities like Surrey, Langley and Abbotsford is all bumper-to-bumper during peak driving hours, he said. Municipalities in the area would have to take drastic measures to solve the problem, he said.

“They’d have to put a moratorium on development, that’s the only thing that would stop it,” he said. “You drive through Cloverdale or through Langley and there’s one development after another that’s taking place. … I don’t see any holdup at all, and it’s just going to get worse.”

Dubord added most areas and cities in the Fraser Valley are now starting to look like Vancouver during rush hour.

“I don’t know how they’re going to handle the traffic. To start with, we had challenges with all the problems commuting into Vancouver, just trying to get over the bridge. And I don’t know how they plan on handling it; I have no idea.”

City of Surrey Coun. Bruce Hayne said growth is managed in part by Metro Vancouver’s long-term regional growth strategy. The plan was adopted in 2011 by 21 municipalities and looks to find ways to accommodate the projected one million people and 500,000 jobs expected to come to the region over the next 25 years.

“A significant portion of that is going to come south of the Fraser, including in Surrey,” Hayne said. “We have available land so development will continue in Surrey, compared to some of the other municipalities in the area that aren’t growing as quickly or aren’t growing at all. So I don’t think we should be apologizing for that because it’s part of the region’s growth strategy.”

Meanwhile, real estate development and resale south of the Fraser continues to fuel the expansion.

In the Surrey suburb of Cloverdale, where Dubord is based, it is a seller’s market for single-family detached homes, townhomes are moving to the upper end of a balanced market and apartments/condos are starting to sell again after a short drought due to oversupply.

According to the FVREB, realtors gauge the health of a market by comparing the volume of sales to the volume of active listings. In the Lower Mainland, a balanced market is obtained when between 12% and 20% of inventory is selling.

For Cloverdale’s single-family detached home market in February, the ratio was 30%, townhouses were 24% and apartments were 5%.

Dubord said there are bidding wars in the Fraser Valley over single-family detached homes, which has forced first-time homebuyers to look at other options to get into the market.

“It’s definitely a seller’s market. I was talking to one of our sales reps up in the Walnut Grove area [in North Langley just east of Surrey]. He’s been in the market for 15 years and he said he’s never seen anything like this.” •