The Future Looks Bright for Vancouver
Significant data supports this and other such accolades but most notably the number themselves speak volumes. The strength in the Metro Vancouver economy has bolstered housing demand. Despite eroding affordability, the housing stock provides a mix of home types that appeal to a wide consumer real estate market in Vancouver. 60 per cent of Vancouver home sales are forecast to be either attached units or apartments, and 77 per cent of housing Vancouver starts is expected to be multi-family. Last spring, no fewer than 47 condos in the city were under construction and it shows. Our Vancouver vacancy sign continues to illuminate as an average of 6,000 people move in every year. The City of Vancouver Population and Housing Summary indicates that Vancouver’s population has been growing steadily in the past 30 years, and is now approaching 600,000. It is anticipated that by the year 2021, Vancouver could have a population of over 635,000.
Vancouver continues to be at the forefront of high density residential real estate development. Case in point: Major Sam Sullivan’s progressive EcoDensity plan, which at its core seeks to add a sustainable dimension, a green element to all future city property developments. It’s a program to help Vancouver grow in a way that reduces the city’s ecological footprint, but also protects future livability and promotes more affordable housing. The concept of more condensed, sustainable housing that unites public transit systems with communities in gaining momentum. And it doesn’t hurt to have former US president Al Gore packing the Westin Bayshore conference centre. He came armed to educate over 1,400 Vancouverites including real estate developers, city planners, and the upper echelons of the political sector defining crisis of our time – a “planetary emergency,” as he called it. Gore presented Vancouverites with a call to action, a way to retool our thinking of how we envision the city’s future growth in real estate terms. “Your leadership in Vancouver is really important; I wish it were that way everywhere,” he said.
Known for its idiosyncratic architecture, the heart of Vancouver city real estate combines the elegant, glinting, glass-swathed condo towers that mirror its thrumming metropolis with a soothing backsplash of ocean and mountains.
