Unlike pre-sale buyers, Altaf Kassam’s investments at the Residences at Fairmont Pacific Rim have turned out OK.
The affable 57-year-old structural engineer is pleased with the project that he excitedly shows visitors and admits to bragging to friends about because he loves the place so much.
Other buyers have not been as lucky.
Kassam knows of recent sales at prices that are about 12% below the pre-sale price.
Original buyers of the multi million-dollar units would have also had to pay the goods and services tax among other costs that would have deepened their loss.
Indeed, the project owns the distinction of being at the centre of a precedent-setting BC Supreme Court lawsuit last year. The court allowed buyer Soroor Essalat to get out of a pre-sale contract and get her deposit back from developer 299 Burrard Residential LP because, contrary to B.C. law, she was not told that the project would be completed later than September 2009, which was the promised completion date.
That decision enabled all buyers to get their deposits back if they knew they had that right, Harper Grey LLP partner Bryan Baynham told Business in Vancouver.
Buyers at other delayed high-end developments, such as the Residences at the Hotel Georgia, subsequently launched similar lawsuits.
But Kassam skipped the 2007 pre-sales and started buying units in 2010, after the 2008 global economic downturn jettisoned the value of high-end condominiums in Vancouver.
He bought two units from the developer and one unit from a private owner. Property values bounced back, and he sold his smallest unit.
He is selling a 1,305-square-foot unit while he lives in a 1,850-square-foot unit that has a southeast corner view that stretches from North Vancouver to English Bay.
“I sold my house in Richmond two years ago when I was a typical couch potato who had little activity,” he told Business in Vancouver. “Now, if I don’t feel like stepping out of the building, I can put my party gear on, take the elevator down and I’m in the lobby lounge. I can dance my heart away, have drinks, order sushi or go to Oru Restaurant for dinner.”
He raves about how close his home at the corner of West Cordova and Burrard streets is to the seawall and claims that he has lost 20 pounds in the past several months from all the jogging, walking and cycling he has been doing.
However, strata fees are high – in the $0.60 to $0.65-per-square-foot range – largely because the residents pay half of the hotel’s costs. That includes the cost of towels, robes and the BMW vehicles that pick up hotel guests.
Kassam said people who dismiss the project for that reason don’t understand the value of what they are getting.
“I had to go to the doctor the other day and talked to the doorman, who greeted me. They took me in the BMW limo – is what we call it. It’s the 7 series and there are three of them. They dropped me at the doctor’s office, and it was all included.”•
