Vancouver's Olympic Village Condos – The Math and the Mayor

Soft Vancouver Condo Market Hampering Sales Efforts

As most of you that follow this blog know, Vancouver's Olympic Village development by Millennium Developments and the City of Vancouver is shaping up be a financial disaster.

Not only was the project more expensive than others due to it's greeness'but the Millennium executives bet on building a larger number of bigger, more luxurious suites. This was an easy gamble to take when the Vancouver condo market was at it's peak,with new units selling quickly for $1,000 a foot or more. Amazing how utterly useless athree-yearold developmentpro forma can be.

City councillors will be sleeping with one eye open knowing that the high-end condo market in Seattle recently tanked as well. Known as one of the few American cities to weather the recession, the fire sale of luxury condos in the new Hyatt hotel (average sale prices of $455 a foot) doesn't represent a positive thermometer of the market to come.

From anumbers point of view this project is hurting, no question about it. Millennium still has 500,000 square feet of condos to sell (480 units). Even if they all sold at $800 a foot (not likely in this market) the tally would be $400 million, still $331 million short of the amount owed to the City. Yes thereis some retail space and rental units but hardly enough to factor into this conversation.

In todays Province, Mayor Gregor Robertson says we all need to be patient as the loan is not yet in default. Not yet. It's been suggested that as part of an incentive to kick-start sales, the City could grant an HSTAmnesty' for the Olympic village. According to Mayor Robertson "no options would be eliminated." An HST amnesty for one project and not for others? Can you say class action law suits and coup deetat at City Hall?

Best of Luck With That!

Vancouver's Olympic Village Condos The Math and the Mayor

By: Greg Mitchell

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