Wednesday, August 30, 2006

China/Canada Visa Agreement Will have a Huge Effect on Downtown Vancouver Real Estate

The faltering Canada/China Tourism agreement that will give Canada approved destination status for Chinese tourists will have a vast impact on Vancouver's real estate market.

With the worlds largest population and an economy growing at a blistering pace, China is quickly developing a an entire demographic of people with the means to invest in overseas property. The experience of the 1980's with people from Hong Kong moving here to hedge their bets over the 1997 Chinese take over of Hong Kong will be small potatoes compared to what is coming.

I was a Cascadia Forum talk given by Harmony Airways CEO Gary Collins and he said the biggest obstacle to an agreement was the Canadian government rather than the Chinese.

I have seen a small example of this with the growing numbers of Korean investors buying on Marinaside Crescent. This was caused after the Korean government imposed a series of tough antispeculation measures to curb rising housing prices in the Korean real estate market. But investment on this scale would have been impossible had there not been an easing of visa restrictioons on South Koreans in Canada during the 90's, much like what is proposed between Canada and China.

When this Canada/China deal goes through we will feel it in the Downtown property market.

Falling Oil Prices May Spur the BoC to Lower Interest Rates as Inflation Pressures Ease

The recent decline in oil prices may speed up the Bank of Canada's plan's to reduce interest rates over the next 6-9 months. The recent run up in inflation in Canada has been caused by the high price of oil in two ways. First it increases the cost of energy to consumers and businesses and second it stokes the economies of the nations oil patch.

The effect of lower energy prices will have a larger effect on energy consumers costs than it will on oil patch revenue, but it will ease inflationary pressures on BoC decision makers concerned about inflation.

What this means for the Downtown Vancouver Real Estate Market;

A drop in rates will increase affordability and I think will create upward pressure on prices, though it may not increase the number of transactions. The market has slowed over the summer as it does in a more normal market, but I predict a hot autumn for the Downtown Market

U.S. economy grows at a 2.9% pace in spring

Associated Press

Washington — The economy grew at a 2.9 per cent annual rate in the spring — better than first estimated but nowhere near the brisk pace logged in the winter, another sign of slowing business growth. Inflation marched higher.

The latest snapshot of economic activity, released by the Commerce Department Wednesday, showed that gross domestic product in the April-to-June quarter increased slightly more than the 2.5 per cent pace first reported a month ago. That upgrade mostly reflected an improvement in the country's trade picture and stronger inventory building by businesses.

The upward revision, though, didn't change the big picture of the economy: In the spring, it slowed sharply from the first quarter's 5.6 per cent pace, the strongest growth spurt in 2 1/2 years, as consumers and businesses tightened the belt.

Gross domestic product measures the value of all goods and services produced within the United States and is considered the best barometer of the country's economic standing.

The second-quarter's showing was slightly less than the 3 per cent pace that analysts were expecting.

Even though the economy lost momentum in the spring compared with the winter, inflation moved higher.

An inflation gauge closely watched by the Federal Reserve showed that core prices — excluding food and energy — advanced at a rate of 2.8 per cent in the second quarter, up from a 2.1 per cent pace in the first quarter.

The second quarter's increase matched that seen in the first quarter of 2001 and hasn't been higher since the third quarter of 1994 when this inflation measure rose at a 3.2 per cent pace.

With the economy slowing, the Federal Reserve earlier this month halted a rate-raising campaign that lasted for more than two years. The decision was a “close call” minutes of the meeting revealed.

The Fed meets next on Sept. 20 and there's uncertainty about its next move. Some economists believe rates will be left alone again, while others think a rate increase will be needed to keep inflation in check.

Fed policy-makers, concerned about inflation, are keeping the door open to a rate increase; but they are betting that inflation pressures will gradually lessen as economic growth moderates.

Oil prices, which hit a new record closing high of $77.03 a barrel in mid-July, have retreated and are hovering below $70 a barrel.

The average retail price of gasoline nationwide has fallen by nearly 20 cents over the past three weeks to $2.85 a gallon.

However, high energy prices forced consumers and businesses alike to tighten their belts in the second quarter, a big reason why the economy slowed so sharply from the prior quarter.

Consumer spending increased at a rate of 2.6 per cent, a tad better than first estimated for the second quarter but a steep deceleration from the first quarter's 4.8 per cent pace.

Businesses, meanwhile, cut spending on equipment and software at a 1.6 per cent pace, deeper than first estimated and a reversal from the 15.6 per cent growth rate of the first quarter.

Spending on home building was slashed at a 9.8 percent rate in the second quarter — a sharper cut than previously estimated and more evidence that the once highflying housing sector has lost altitude.

The 2.9 per cent growth rate logged in the second quarter was the slowest since the final quarter of 2005, when the economy, reeling from fallout from the Gulf Coast hurricanes, expanded at a pace of only 1.8 per cent.

Voters' perceptions of the economy's health may influence their choice at the polls in November.

President Bush has been touting his economic policies but is getting relatively low marks from the public for his economic stewardship.

Economic growth in the second half of this year is expected to be remain somewhat subdued at a pace of around 2.5 per cent to 3 per cent, according to some analysts' projections.

Falling gas prices reflect break from adversity

PATRICK BRETHOUR

CALGARY — Pump prices have dropped below $1 a litre for the first time in five months -- and the cost of a fill-up is likely to drop even more in coming weeks.

It is a precise reversal from this time last year, when hurricane Katrina battered the U.S. Gulf Coast and devastated refineries in the region. Then, tight supplies swelled the wholesale cost of gasoline -- and the coffers of big oil companies -- and sent pump prices soaring to unprecedented levels in North America, as high as $1.39 a litre in Canada.

But this week, hurricane Ernesto was downgraded to a tropical storm and veered away from the refineries and oil fields of Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. (Last night, it made landfall in Florida, drenching southern counties but causing little damage.)

With last year's disaster scenario averted, oil prices yesterday dipped to their lowest level in more than two months -- an indication of further declines in the cost of gasoline.

The refineries are safe, gasoline inventories are healthy and the margins for oil companies are falling fast. And that gives consumers, hammered by pricey gasoline for much of the last year, a long-awaited break at the pumps, courtesy of the squeeze on industry profits.

Gasoline prices are likely to fall even further, since the summer driving season is gearing down, and the cost of crude oil is drifting downward. "I suspect there's more to come," said Cathy Hay, an analyst at M. J. Ervin & Associates Inc.

Already prices have dropped substantially across Canada, according to the weekly survey by M. J. Ervin. Nationwide, the average cost of a litre of regular gasoline dropped to 96.9 cents, the lowest price since March 14.

The biggest decline was in Victoria, where pump prices fell 8.8 cents a litre. But motorists in Hamilton enjoyed the cheapest gasoline in the country, according to the M. J. Ervin survey, paying just 88.7 cents a litre. Elsewhere in the competitive Southern Ontario market, Toronto declined to 88.9 cents a litre.

In Labrador City, however, where prices are set by a government agency, a litre of gasoline still costs $1.204, unchanged from last week and the priciest in the country.

Ms. Hay said she believes that prices have room to fall in Newfoundland and Western Canada. Calgary and Edmonton, despite being located in oil-rich Alberta, had far higher prices for gasoline than in the East. In Calgary, a litre cost 98.8 cents, while Edmonton drivers got a slightly better deal, at 97.8 cents a litre.

The decline in gasoline prices is just one part of a larger drop in the cost of energy in recent days, as the fears ease of calamitous weather in the United States and apocalyptic confrontations in the Middle East.

Ernesto has turned out to be more bluster than disaster, deflating concerns that hurricane seasons were becoming consistently more destructive, said Kyle Cooper, director of research at IAF Advisors in Houston.

Another major hurricane could yet batter the U.S. coast, but Mr. Cooper said refining operations are better prepared than a year ago, with backup generators and stockpiles of repair materials at hand.

On the political front, the end of intense violence in Lebanon has dampened pressures on crude prices. Even the looming confrontation between Iran and the United States over the former's uranium-enrichment efforts could not halt yesterday's slide in oil prices, which fell below $70 (U.S.) a barrel for the first time since June.

"The tensions in Iran are going to be there for a while, but for now there's nothing that says there's going to be any threat to our supply," said Olivier Jakob of Petromatrix.

And another bogeyman of oil traders from earlier this month was partly banished yesterday, when BP PLC said it had restored output from its Prudhoe Bay field in Alaska to about 200,000 barrels a day, half the capacity lost when the British oil giant said corrosion had forced it to curtail production.

Mr. Cooper said oil prices could drop another $20 a barrel, if the relative calm holds and deprives speculators of a rallying point to send crude soaring again.

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Canadian inflation rises unexpectedly

Canadian inflation rises unexpectedly

RICHARD BLACKWELL

Globe and Mail Update

Higher gas costs helped boost Canadian consumer prices by 0.1 per cent in July, despite a one percentage point reduction in the goods and services tax that took effect at the beginning of the month.

The GST change was estimated to have cut overall prices by about 0.5 per cent, so inflation is actually up fairly sharply in the month. Any tax savings were “more than eaten up by higher underlying prices for some key goods and services,” said Warren Lovely, a senior economist at CIBC World Markets Inc.

Increases in energy costs were particularly steep, with the price of gasoline rising 4.6 per cent in July. Fresh fruit was also a contributor, with prices jumping 7.4 per cent between June and July.

The monthly inflation rate was considerably higher than most economists had predicted. The consensus forecast was for a 0.3 per cent drop in the July rate.

But economists said the higher-than-expected numbers are not enough to get the Bank of Canada to change its policy on interest rates, which are on hold for the time being.

The year-over-year inflation rate fell slightly, to 2.4 per cent in July, compared to 2.5 per cent in June and 2.8 per cent in May, Statistics Canada said in its release Tuesday morning.

The annual inflation rate was strongly affected by energy prices, with gasoline up 16.1 per cent from a year earlier. In some provinces, the cost of gas rose even faster — Saskatchewan residents paid 19.2 per cent more in July of this year than they did in the same month of 2005.

Electricity prices also climbed sharply in the year, by 6.3 per cent.

On the other side of the coin, prices of computer equipment and supplies dropped more than 17 per cent over the year, and video equipment fell more than 11 per cent. Men's clothing prices fell 3.7 per cent year-over-year, while women's clothing dropped 3.4 per cent.

Alberta showed the highest yearly increase in CPI, at 4.3 per cent.

Core inflation, which excludes the eight most volatile items in the index — including fruits, vegetables and energy — was at 1.5 per cent on an annual basis, down from 1.7 per cent in June.

Economists noted that the most of the upward pressure on inflation is coming from non-core items.

With the core inflation rate fairly stable, the Bank of Canada is unlikely to change its stance that interest rates hikes are at an end, said Adrienne Warren, senior economist at Bank of Nova Scotia. “The Bank of Canada is pretty firmly on hold for the time being.”

Evidence that Canadian economy activity has some weaknesses — such as Monday's soft retail sales figures — will balance any concerns over rising inflation, she said.

Still, Ms. Warren said, “rate cuts, for the time being, are not forthcoming.

Thursday, August 17, 2006

How the GST cut affects housing prices

By Peter Diekmeyer ? Bankrate.com


For most Canadians, the one-per cent cut in the Goods and Services Tax, or GST, that came into
effect July 1 is unlikely to be as big a deal as politicians are making it out to be. On a $3
hamburger purchase, the cut will save you a grand total of 3 cents. Worse, on items that have the
GST already included in the price, there's no guarantee that these savings will be passed on to
consumers.


But for prospective home buyers, the tax cut could mean thousands of dollars in their pockets.
That said, it's a complex matter, and the implications vary depending on whether you are buying a
new or used home. And strange as it may seem, in theory at least, if you are selling an existing
home, the GST cut could eventually end up costing you money.


Buyers of new homes are big winners


The good news is that the GST cut provides a major benefit to new home buyers, says Dave Benbow,
president of the Canadian Home Builders Association. "The action improves housing affordability
for many Canadians," he says. "It's also good news for owners who are considering home
renovations."


The bad news is that for many home buyers, the GST cut will not be as generous as it appears at
first glance. That's because buyers of new homes whose houses cost less than $350,000 already
benefit from a 36 per cent rebate of the GST they pay on their properties. This rebate is phased
out gradually for buyers of new homes priced between $350,000 and $450,000, and there is no
rebate at all for buyers of homes worth more than $450,000.


The upshot is that the more expensive the home you buy, the greater your savings, both in dollar
and percentage terms. For example, a buyer of a new home costing $350,000 will save $2,310, which
works out to one per cent of the home price, less the 36 per cent of the rebate. However, if you
buy a home costing $500,000, you'll benefit from the full one-per cent cut and will save a cool
$5,000.



Mixed news for the existing home market



Unlike buyers of new homes, people who purchase existing homes don't pay GST. But that doesn't
mean that they don't benefit from the cut. "Reducing the GST rate will have the effect of
reducing the costs associated with buying or selling a home," says Pierre Beauchamp, chief
executive officer of the Canadian Real Estate Association, or CREA. "It would also have an impact
on the associated costs of moving a house."


Last year, CREA commissioned a study from Clayton Research, which listed many of those costs.
Among those cited were renovations, as well as the purchase of furniture and major appliances.
Real estate agents' fees will also cost less as a result of the cut.


In fact, the GST cut will likely lead to downward pressure on the prices of existing homes,
despite the fact that no GST is charged on them. That's because existing homes and new homes
often compete for the same pool of buyers. And although the process is informal at best, price
changes in one category tend, over time, to be mirrored in the other.


But what is good news for existing home buyers could end up being bad news for sellers of
existing homes. That's because the houses they are selling compete with builders' new offerings,
which are now cheaper due to the GST cut. As a result, existing home buyers will be unlikely to
command as much for their homes as they would have if the GST cuts had not been introduced.


On the other hand, sellers of existing homes have seen their property values rise considerably in
recent years due to other factors that provide direct benefits to existing home demand, such as
cheap interest rates and the strong economy. As a result, most are unlikely to worry too much
about the indirect effects the GST cut may have.


Another cut to come


The key point is that however complex the differing implications of the GST cut are on various
types of homes, the savings are real and could get better.


That's because the recent one-per cent GST cut is only half of what the Harper government
promised during the election. Although a time table for the second cut, which would bring the GST
down to five per cent, has yet to be announced, the good times just may continue to roll.


Peter Diekmeyer is a Montreal-based business and economics writer.

Thursday, August 10, 2006

New housing price index continues to climb

Buying a new house got pricier in June, particularly for people looking in Alberta.

Statistics Canada said Thursday that the new housing price index climbed 1.4 per cent in June from May, the fourth consecutive month the index rose with an increase of at least 1 per cent.

"The new house price index continued to increase in June, rising 1.4 per cent, which boosted the year-over-year rate of increase to 9.8 per cent, the fastest pace since November 1989," Royal Bank of Canada senior economist Dawn Desjardins and economist Rishi Sindhi said in a note.

"Today's report suggests that, although the Bank of Canada's core inflation rate slipped back to 1.7 per cent in June, there are underlying price pressures coming from the housing market that are likely to keep upside risks to the inflation outlook."

The price at which contractors are selling new homes has jumped 9.8 per cent from a year ago, Statscan said.

New home prices rose in 15 of 21 major urban areas. In most of the cities where buying a home got more expensive, land prices also rose.

Calgary lead the price charge with a 6.9-per-cent gain, followed by a 4.7-per-cent rise in Edmonton.

”Continued strong demand, upward pressure due to rising construction materials, and trade labour costs were cited for the increases,” Statscan said. ”In Calgary and Edmonton, increased lot values (due mainly to land shortage) along with prolonged construction times, were also specified as factors contributing to the increases.”

The price of a new home rose 1.6 per cent in Saskatoon and 1.2 per cent in Regina in June. Hamilton, St. Catharines–Niagara, Halifax, Québec, Montréal, Toronto and Oshawa, Kitchener, Windsor, Winnipeg, Vancouver and Victoria also experienced price gains.

Prices in Charlottetown and Ottawa–Gatineau were unchanged while St. John's, Saint John, Fredericton, Moncton, London, Thunder Bay and Sudbury fell because of competitive pricing.

On a year-to-date basis, prices in Calgary have surged 49.2 per cent, Statscan said. Edmonton was once more the second-largest gainer at 28.1 per cent, followed by Winnipeg at 9.1 per cent, Saskatoon at 8.5 per cent, Regina at 7.9 per cent, Halifax at 6.9 per cent and Québec at 6.5 per cent.

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Bank of Canada should lead move to lower interest rates: study

ALLAN ROBINSON

Globe and Mail Update

The North American debate is on over whether it will be the U.S. Federal Reserve Board or the Bank of Canada that leads the move to lower rates early next year as the two economies slow and inflation pressures diminish.

And a recent study by CIBC World Markets Inc. concludes that a drop in domestic retail prices will give the upper hand to the Bank of Canada.

It is only one day since the Fed indicated that it planned to hold the federal funds rate steady at 5.25 per cent after 17 consecutive one-quarter of a percentage point hikes, but already there has been speculation it will have to begin reducing rates early next year.

The strength of the loonie as well as the lower inflation rates in Canada "will continue to allow the Bank of Canada to steer a lower course on interest rates," CIBC World Markets concluded.

Some strategists expect the U.S. economy will slow more than the resource-based Canadian economy and that the Bank of Canada will be less willing to lower rates because of capacity constraints.

However, Avery Shenfeld, the managing director and senior economist of the CIBC World Markets said today that the "Bank of Canada could outgun the U.S. Fed in interest rate cuts in 2007."

Canada's inflation rate is nearly 2 per cent below the U.S. and that cushion should remain as the appreciation of the loonie begins to show up in lower retail prices, he said. It takes up to two-years for the buying power of the loonie to translate into savings on the retail shelves, Mr. Shenfeld said. "But competition, including that from on-line or cross-border outlets, eventually sees the Canadian dollar's appreciation show up in cooler inflation than in the U.S.," he said.

The study found that a 10 per cent appreciation in the loonie lowers Canada's goods price inflation by one-half of a percentage point compared with the U.S. in two years time.

Canada's target overnight bank rate stands at 4.25 per cent, a full percentage point below the regulated rate in the United States. The Bank of Canada stopped raising rates on May 24.

Today, the yield on two-year U.S. Treasuries was 4.91 per cent, compared with 4.12 per cent on the two-year Canadian government bond.

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

How the City Changes

Road to prosperity

by Lisa Smedman-staff writer

Back in the 1860s, if you wanted to travel from Gastown to New Westminster by land, there were only two options. You could walk or ride a horse along the narrow trail that had been cut through the forest in 1860 by Colonel Richard Moody and the Royal Engineers, or you could take a boat to the hotel at New Brighton (north of the modern PNE) and travel by horse-drawn stage coach southeast along Douglas Road. The fare was $1 each way, and the trip took two hours.

By the 1880s, the trail that would one day become Kingsway-then known as Westminster Road-was wide enough to accommodate stage coaches. But it wasn't always a pleasant ride.

Muriel Crakanthorp told the Vancouver City Archives in 1938 that her mother recalled travelling by stage coach as an "ordeal." The stages rocked back and forth, and passengers often felt queasy.

"Mother says the trip over was always an ordeal for her; she got 'seasick'-lots of people did... Mrs. Lynn, of Lynn Creek, if she could not have the front seat with the driver, would walk-walk to New Westminster and back-rather than ride on the stage, she got so desperately seasick on the stage."

Sitting up front with the driver solved this problem, but it had drawbacks of its own, especially if the driver was a man named Green. "[He had] a long beard down to his middle, and he chewed tobacco, and he would talk, talk, talk, and the juice got on his beard, and the ladies were feeling squeamish," Crakanthorp said.

Inns sprang up along Westminster Road to cater to travellers. Junction Inn was at the spot where the North Arm Wagon Road (Fraser Street) branched off to the south. Gladstone Inn (at modern Gladstone Street) was, for a time, operated by the brother of Gastown's "Gassy Jack" Deighton. Collingwood Inn (at modern Stamford Street) was also known as the Pig and Whistle, and was in use as a private residence in the 1960s.

Collingwood Inn would give its name to the farming community that grew up around it in the 1890s. Westminster Road, however, was only one of the transportation arteries that helped define modern Collingwood. The second was the "interurban" that began running in October 1891.

This electric railway-which ran through a slash in the forest along a route that is today Vanness Avenue-offered hourly service that whisked Collingwood's settlers into downtown Vancouver or New Westminster in minutes.

At first, Collingwood's settlers simply flagged the interurban trains down, but by the time the Vancouver Map and Blueprint Company published a map of the city in 1912, there were two Collingwood stations: Collingwood East at Joyce Street, and Collingwood West at Rupert Street.

"Each had its own post office, and assortment of necessary stores and services," wrote Barbara Nielsen in her book Collingwood Pioneers: Memories of a Vancouver District. "It was a while before the corner of Joyce and Kingsway took over as the town centre."

It wasn't until 1925, she noted, that bus service began on Kingsway.

Although most of the settlement in Collingwood took place after South Vancouver was incorporated in 1892, the area remained a distinct community for many years-something that's still reflected in the landscape today. Take a look at a map of modern Vancouver, and Collingwood stands out. Its streets are skewed at an angle to the city's usual grid pattern, running northeast and southwest from Vanness. These angled streets stop abruptly at 29th Avenue, which divided the Municipality of South Vancouver from Hastings Townsite to the north, and run as far south as Kingsway.

Many of these streets are named after the settlers who took advantage of what Collingwood offered: a place to farm and raise a family on an acreage that offered a lot more breathing room than a 25-foot-wide city lot in downtown Vancouver.

Like many of the early settlers who gave their names to Collingwood's streets, Phillip Oben had a life that was a classic example of the riches-to-rags-to-riches story.

When he came to Vancouver from Toronto with his wife and her parents in 1887, Oben brought with him more than $20,000. He used the money to purchase lots on Howe Street-then still a rough slash through logged-over forest-and started building houses. He also contracted with the Canadian Pacific Railway to clear its vast holdings in the West End in the late 1880s, overseeing a crew of about 150 Chinese workers who felled and burned the forest with axes and ox teams.

Oben lost money on the land-clearing job. He continued building houses, however, and was in the middle of erecting homes on Pender Street when the depression of 1893 set in.

"...as the financial depression set in, carrying with it everything to the bottom, I lost all the money I made," he would later recall.

By 1894, he was destitute and living with his wife and baby in a "shack."

On one particularly bleak day, Oben trudged along Granville Street looking for work. "I sat there on the corner, feeling pretty blue, no grub at home and no work to be found," he said in a 1932 interview at the Vancouver City Archives. "I looked down on the ground in front of where I sat, saw something that looked like a leaf, reached out and picked up a paper bill; it was for $5. I had a sack full of grub and was on my way home before much time had elapsed."

In 1894, the provincial government amended its Land Act to allow Crown land to be subdivided into small parcels no more than 20 acres in size for lease to British subjects "for the purpose of bona fide personal occupation and cultivation."

These leases had a five-year term, and the first payment wasn't due for 12 months. At the end of five years, the lessee would be Crown granted the land, as long as he or she fulfilled the conditions of the lease by "improving" the property by clearing and cultivating the land and building a residence on it.

One of the first areas in B.C. to be surveyed and subdivided under this scheme lay just east of Collingwood and north of Burnaby's Central Park. For struggling families like Oben's, the 64 acreages offered for lease as part of the Burnaby and South Vancouver Small Holdings offered a chance to rebuild their fortunes.

By 1900, when an inspection tour was conducted of these holdings-most of which ranged in size from five to eight acres-the bulk of Oben's 7.93-acre property had been "cleared, stumped and cultivated." Oben had built a two-storey house, a shop, barns and two cottages.

Oben's homestead was "a thoroughly well improved place in every particular," wrote Arthur Shepherd, an assistant to B.C.'s chief commissioner of lands and works who had been given the task of making sure the leaseholders had made the required improvements to their holdings that would entitle them to land grants.

Oben later said of the small holdings that "[they] were given out as an experiment by the government; it was an idea, I think, of R.G. Tatlow's."

After moving to his small holding, Oben eventually found work with the City of Vancouver at $1 a day. He was "glad to get it" even though the walk to work, along a trail, took him an hour and a half each way.

By 1914, Oben was once again prosperous enough to have his photograph and biography included in the book B.C. From the Earliest Times to the Present, a who's who of its day.

As Oben himself put it, after he "came out into the woods to make a fresh start" he opened a grocery store in the tiny farming community of Central Park, just east of Collingwood. After nine years he sold the store and opened a second grocery store in Collingwood itself, this time on the street that now bears his name.

Oben lived the rest of his life in Vancouver, even though he hadn't been impressed with what he saw upon his arrival in this city in March 1887. But by the time of his death in 1933 at the age of 78, he was proud to call Vancouver home.

The small holdings offered for lease in 1894 drew a number of families whose names would appear, in the years to come, on street maps of what was then the Municipality of South Vancouver. The only street named after a small holdings lessee that still bears its original name today is Battison Street, but others were, for a time, named after settlers John Grant, Joseph Henry Bowman, J. Wilburs and Peter Dubois, whose farm on Westminster Road was home to the area's first school.

South Vancouver was a rural municipality and at first the naming of its streets was very informal.

"All the South Vancouver streets were, in the first place, named as a matter of convenience to men delivering groceries to early settlers," William Williamson, an early settler in South Vancouver, told the archives in 1938. "Fred W. Welsh, the grocer, used to send a buggy out once a fortnight to take your order and whatever road a family settled on, that road got known by his name; that was simple. There was never any formal naming; it was just Wales Road because Mr. Wales lived down that road.

"The [South Vancouver] council liked to keep the names of the old and early settlers, but after amalgamation [with the City of Vancouver in 1929], and all that renaming, dozens of them were changed."

Other Collingwood roads named after settlers include Joyce Street, after market gardener Albert Joyce, who co-owned 10 acres along what is today East 45th Avenue. Earles Street was probably named after Henry Earles, a carpenter who lived in the community of Central Park.

Thomas Winters immigrated to Vancouver from Ireland in 1899 and settled on what later became 5429 Rhodes St.

"They did name a street after me, but it is away down by the interurban station at Gladstone [and] runs from the track to Lakeview Drive," he told the archives in 1938. "They were calling streets after all the old settlers and they picked one after me."

Winters purchased six acres from one of Collingwood's earliest settlers-George Wales, who in 1878 had pre-empted 221 acres of land just east of the street that today bears his name. Winters paid $600 for the property.

"When we went out there, there was nothing, except part of the land had been cleared by George Wales," said Winters. "Part of the six acres [I purchased] was partly cleared, with apple trees between the stumps. We had a well for water, and horse and buggy [and] chickens. I had 30 head of cattle there when I had the milk ranch."

Well into the 20th century, Collingwood was a rural community of dairy farms and orchards. Settlers raised pigs and chickens and sold eggs and produce in Vancouver. They split rails for fences, dug their own wells and cleared land by hand.

In January 1901, farmers in Collingwood and Central Park formed the South Vancouver and Burnaby Horticultural and Poultry Association. Later that year, they held what would become an annual exhibition of produce and poultry in a hall members erected on approximately 17 acres leased from Central Park.

A pamphlet for the September 1902 exhibition boasted that "throughout the districts of South Vancouver and Burnaby many valuable improvements are noticeable. Clearings are being extended, new and large homes are being erected, and last but not least, many of our settlers are taking an interest in beautifying their homes by the planting of ornamental shade trees and shrubs which tend to enhance the value of the property, make the home life more cheerful and add a charm to the home which it would not possess if the grounds were left in their natural state or in a state of cultivation.

"It is an accepted fact that nowhere in British Columbia will be found a more prosperous, contented and as thickly settled district as the district immediately adjacent to the home of our Association."

The 1902 exhibition featured displays of poultry, apples, pears, plums, potatoes, turnips, cabbages, onions, peas, corn, radishes, tomatoes, herbs and cut flowers. Members competed for prizes-$1 for a first-place finish and 50 cents for second place-in such categories as ladies' fancy work, men's drawing and boys' and girls' writing.

Maxwell Smith-a poultryman who also sold real estate-advertised in the pamphlet, offering 1.5-acre and three-acre lots in the Inman property, which had recently opened for settlement. Smith was also Central Park's first postmaster.

M.J. Henry of 3009 Westminster Road (Kingsway) advertised seeds, trees, plants, roses and bulbs for sale, as well as agricultural implements, bee supplies, fruit baskets and fertilizers. His ad promised "white labour only."

A B.C. Electric Railway ad promoted the company's "magnificent passenger cars" which ran hourly from Vancouver and New Westminster, stopping at various settlements along the way, including Cedar Cottage, Gladstone, Collingwood, Central Park and Royal Oak. "Specially cheap rates to settlers and special cars to Central Park from 5 to 7 p.m. daily except Sundays."

By 1905, Collingwood was starting to grow. Collingwood Pioneers: Memories of a Vancouver District cites a 1905 newspaper article as noting that, three years previously, Collingwood had consisted of a small store, a barn, and a few houses. The business community grew after J.M. MacGregor (or McGregor) built a commercial block at the corner of Vanness and Joyce streets.

By 1905, the article continued, the population of Collingwood East was 5,000. The area around MacGregor's block was home to a grocery, butcher shop, drug store, hardware and dry goods stores, as well as a branch of the Bank of Vancouver (which collapsed in 1914).

Water had been installed, and the streets were illuminated by 80-candlepower incandescent lamps. Sewers, however, had yet to reach the area.

South of Collingwood, the main roads through South Vancouver were called simply No. 1 Road (today's 45th Avenue) and No. 2 Road (today's 54th Avenue) and River Road (Marine Drive).

By 1907 J.K. George Co. was offering 10 acres in Collingwood for $1,800. A newspaper ad noted the property was close to school, store, and Westminster Road (Kingsway). "Will make a lovely home and be easily cleared."

As land values gradually rose and the city of Vancouver first amalgamated South Vancouver, then expanded into it, the settlers who had been granted land under the small holdings plan subdivided and sold their acreages. These included William John Battison and his wife Ann, who had come to Vancouver in 1886. In 1946, their son Charles Alexander Battison told the archives, "We moved out to Westminster Road, now Kingsway, and Father pre-empted seven acres under the Small Holdings arrangement..."

Like many of those who took up farming on the small holdings, William Battison had also held down a job in the city. He worked as a planer at a sawmill on False Creek. "He walked in night and morning to the Leamy and Kyle mill-seven miles-and worked 10 hours," said his son.

"[My family's] original seven acres was subdivided and sold; the family own none of the original grant now," his son told the archives.

Although South Vancouver and Burnaby each incorporated as a separate municipality in 1892, people flowed back and forth across the street that marked the official boundary between the two-Park Avenue, today known as Boundary Road.

The communities of Collingwood and Central Park were only a half mile from each other along the interurban line, with the Collingwood stations in South Vancouver and the Central Park station in Burnaby.

Oben, when describing where his small holding was, referred to it in 1932 as being "on the other side of Park Avenue, formerly in South Vancouver, now in the city [of Vancouver]"-a description that seems to imply it lay both east of modern Boundary Road, in Burnaby, and in South Vancouver at the same time.

Yet both the Henderson's B.C. Directory of 1898 and the William's Official B.C. Directory of 1899 list Oben as living in the community of Central Park, whose interurban stop was inside Burnaby. From this evidence, it would seem that the boundary between the two municipalities meant little to Oben.

The community of Central Park got its name from the former military reserve that was designated a park in 1891. As to how the park itself was named, there are two different stories.

In 1936, Florence Oben told the archives that, "After a number of settlers came onto the Government Small Holdings about 42 years ago [in 1894] the need of a post office for the district was felt, so a meeting was held and a petition to the Postmaster General was drawn up. Then the question as to what it should be called came up. Mr. William [G.] Alcock, one of the first settlers on the holdings, who had been to New York, suggested naming the park... Central Park as it is located halfway between the two cities of Vancouver and New Westminster, and the name seemed very appropriate..."

An alternative story, told by George Green, a councillor for Burnaby, attributed the name to Julia Oppenheimer, second wife of David Oppenheimer and originally from Brooklyn, New York.

Whoever suggested its name, the park itself was not only home to the South Vancouver and Burnaby Horticultural and Poultry Association but also to a rifle range used by local militias.

The rifle range, which opened Oct. 1, 1895, was a 100-yard-wide "slit" in the forest with canvas targets set up at 200, 500 and 600 yards.

Militia volunteers from both Vancouver and New Westminster practiced at the range on Saturday afternoons from April to October. Some shot with Lee Enfield .303 long rifles, but a few still had black-powder Snider rifles that emitted a cloud of white smoke every time they were fired.

The B.C. Rifle Association, a civilian organization, also held shooting matches in Central Park. The range closed in November of 1904.

As years went by, automobiles gradually replaced horse-drawn wagons and carriages on Vancouver's roads. By the time Westminster Road was renamed Kingsway, in 1913, automobiles were increasing in popularity. A photo taken on Sept. 30 of that year shows crowds gathered near Boundary Road for the opening ceremony-people who had travelled to the celebration by such varied methods of modern transportation as interurban, bicycle and automobile.

The October 1913 issue of B.C. Magazine reported on the new highway. "It is a broad, magnificent road, and by none would it be more appreciated than by motorists who, to the number of 600, made the trip between the two cities on the day the road was opened."

Today's Kingsway is a busy thoroughfare choked with cars, trucks and buses-a far cry from the trail that Colonel Moody and his Royal Engineers hacked from the forest nearly a century and a half ago. Paralleling it where the interurban once clacked along railway tracks, the SkyTrain slides along elevated rails today.

Moody pre-empted land in 1861 around a long-vanished lake in what is today the heart of Collingwood. He sailed back to England two years later and let this claim lapse. Were he to peer forward in time he would never have recognized the Collingwood of today.

For more information on how Vancouver's streets got their names, the book Street Names of Vancouver, by Elizabeth Walker, is an excellent reference. Copies are available through the Vancouver City Archives at a cost of $15.

published on 08/04/2006

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Private Client Services Gives Full Access to Greater Vancouver Real Estate Listings

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Housing Starts Move Higher in June

OTTAWA, JULY 11, 2006 — The seasonally adjusted annual rate1 of housing starts was 232,200 units in June, up from 222,200 units in May, according to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC).

"Although housing starts moved higher in June, much of the increase came from the volatile multiple segment of the new home market," said Bob Dugan, Chief Economist at CMHC's Market Analysis Centre. "Even with the strong showing in June, housing starts ended the second quarter more than nine per cent below their first quarter level. The bellwether single detached component came in at their second lowest level of the year, only marginally above their May level. We expect the level of activity to moderate in the second half of 2006 as rising prices and marginally higher mortgage rates result in a softening of demand for both existing and new homes."

The seasonally adjusted annual rate of urban starts increased 5.2 per cent to 201,100 units. Urban singles were up 1.1 per cent to 92,400 units comparing June to May, while multiples jumped 9.0 per cent to 108,700 units.

Urban housing starts increased in June compared to May in all five regions. British Columbia recorded the strongest increase, with urban starts rising 14.8 per cent. The Atlantic region followed closely with starts up 12.3 per cent. In the Prairie region, Ontario, and Quebec, urban starts were up 6.0 per cent, 2.8 per cent, and 0.3 per cent, respectively.

Rural starts in June were estimated at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 31,100 units.

In the first six months of 2006, actual urban starts were up 4.8 per cent compared to the same period last year. Year-to-date actual urban multiple starts were up 7.7 per cent and singles were up 1.9 per cent compared to the same period in 2005.

Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) has been Canada's national housing agency for over 60 years. CMHC is committed to helping Canadians access a wide choice of quality, affordable homes, while making vibrant, healthy communities and cities a reality across the country. For more information call 1-800-668-2642.

1 All starts figures in this release, other than actual starts, are seasonally adjusted annual rates (SAAR) — that is, monthly figures adjusted to remove normal seasonal variation and multiplied by 12 to reflect annual levels.

Information on this release:

Bob Dugan
CMHC
613-748-4009
bdugan@cmhc-schl.gc.ca