Signs of the Times on Oak Street

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It is now 11 months since the bubble began to burst in Vancouver. The benchmark price for a SFH has collapsed over $121,000, a drop of over $10,000 a month. Think of it, that's a decline that is greater than the average yearly income of most lower mainland families.

Vancouver is curently dropping faster than many of the most bubbly American cities in their first year of collapse.

A quick drive down Oak Street in Vancouver these days gives you a glimpse of the changing face of Vancouver Real Estate. As soon as you come off the Oak Street Bridge (which connects Vancouver to the suburbs of Richmond and Delta), you immediatly come across this poster child of desperation (click on image above to enlarge).

If you look closely you see this building has nine seperate 'for sale' signs plaster around it. And that's after the developer had previously taken down two of them!

It isn't the greatest location either. You have virtually no yard (all you get is what you see in the front) and the view? You look out onto the escalating ramp of one of the busiest bridges in the City. Hopefully the townhomes are soundproof, unless you consider the gentle lullabye of the Detroit River outside a selling feature to insomniacs.

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The asking price...

Who said you had to go to California to visit Disneyland?

Further north, at about W. 43rd Ave is the Carrington. The site's original developer went belly up last year at the start of the collapse. At the time the story got a lot of media attention as the developer had to cancel his contract with pre-sale buyers and give them their deposits back.

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Another developer bought the empty site and build these condos. Recently these banners were festooned around the site. Clearly sales are not going well...


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Email: village_whisperer@live.ca