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13 and 4: Real estate's unlucky numbers and what cities like Vancouver are doing about it

A few years ago, city officials in Vancouver began seeing a rise in special applications by commercial and residential developers asking for permission to skip any floor that contained the number four, in addition to the 13th floor.As the city continued to build up, this meant that more buildings were shooting up without a fourth floor, a 13th floor, a 14th floor, 24th floor and so on.
 
What began as an accommodation soon became a bureaucratic headache for city staff and a glaring safety risk for emergency personnel.
 
“It happened with just one or two buildings at first and then spread rather rapidly. So before we knew it, it was being applied to most new applications coming in,” said Pat Ryan, Vancouver’s chief building official.
“It was starting to spiral out of control.”
 
In 2015, Vancouver announced it was banning the practice of leaving out floor numbers in new condo and office tower developments.
 
The biggest concern, says Ryan, was that fire crews and condo owners were being put at risk by the unpredictable numbering system, noting that firefighters climbing stairs in a smoke-filled environment could easily be off by a number of floors if they’re not in sequential order.
 
“On a fire truck, you also put the pressure of the water hose to match the floor of the building. If you’re off by 10 stories, that could create confusion,” he said. “Basically, it just wasn’t worth the risk of continuing.”
 
Vancouver buildings that were already missing floors were not required to re-number, but they had to add extra signage and lighting on the floors, in the stairwells and in the elevators to assist emergency personnel.
 
Ryan said the city didn’t want to continue to allow the long-held practice of doing away with the 13th floor, but not allow the same practice to be applied with any floors that contained the number four, for fear of being seen as favouring one cultural group over another.
 
“So we put all the numbers back. It just made our lives so much simpler,” he said. “We were expecting backlash, but it just didn’t happen.”
 
Edmonton says it also has a similar policy in place. But just north of Toronto, which allows irregular address numbering, the town of Richmond Hill, Ont., approached this issue in a different way: it has banned outright the number 13 and four from any new housing developments. The town was getting inundated with special requests from homeowners to add suffixes, like an A or B, to addresses containing the number four because they were having difficulty selling their homes.
Richmond Hill council passed a resolution in 2013 to disallow the number four to be used in any new ground-level housing developments. ” The number 13 had already been banned from addresses for at least 20 years, said Gus Galanis, director of development planning for the town.
 
“What really prompted the change was the frequency in requests,” he said. “They said it was basically for cultural reasons, they didn’t want to go into details but said it was because of bad luck.”
 
Galanis says it came down to the council providing good “customer service” to its constituents. “We’ve been trying to work with the public to see where we can accommodate, and I think in my mind, we’ve been very flexible,” he said.
For real estate agent Tina Mak, she says cultural superstitions — whether it be a property address or the way a front door is lined up with a backdoor — can be an immediate deal breaker for her clients, and her.
 
“I’ve done it a million times… (I’ve told them) I don’t want you to buy this because I see that you will have a hard time selling it in the future,” she said.
 
“If you want to buy it, I’m not going to give you any advice because I don’t believe this is the right purchase for you.”
To read the article click here
 
What's your opinion? Should the municipal governments consider requests of this kind? Please comment.

Tibor Bogdan & Associates
*Personal Real Estate Corporation
Sutton Showplace Realty
cell: 604-855-2521
TF: 1-877-858-2408

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What is a pre-sale?

Example scenario: When the developer intends to build an apartment building and applies for financing, the bank will grant financing under certain conditions. One of them will likely be a certain percentage of pre-sales the developer will need to secure before receiving the funds.
It is common practice for a developer to approach several real estate investors and offer them an opportunity to purchase units of the non-existent building at a discounted price, and on good terms.

Once the number of pre-sales is accomplished, the developer goes ahead with the construction, which will likely take two years or longer to complete. During construction, their marketing team offers the remainder of the units for sale at market value to the public.

If you are a RE investor, you know that it is preferable to be buying at the pre-sale prices, not market value prices.

The question is, how do you get the invitation to buy a pre-sale?
In the past many years, investors have made substantial income by buying at wholesale prices and selling at retail prices even before they needed to complete their purchase. I saw many of them lining up and sometimes even camping overnight in front of the sales center to get a chance to buy at lower prices, but not everyone was lucky enough. You needed to be well-connected to get an opportunity, and you had to act fast.

Today is a bit of a different story. Several projects in the Lower Mainland and Fraser Valley offer really good prices and incentives to secure a unit now and complete the purchase two or three years later. The list of incentives varies from one project to the next. Besides attractive prices, you can get low deposit amounts (5-15%), low or no assignment fees, free updates, a mortgage rate buy-down program, extra parking and more.

A month ago, I helped a few of my clients purchase a presale in Surrey that sold out in 2 days, and I know of another good developer that will be offering a few units for sale as well.

If you would like to know more about these opportunities, I would encourage you to call or email me, and I’ll be happy to send you details on those projects.
 
Kind regards,
 
Tibor Bogdan
Century 21 Creekside Realty Ltd.
45428 Luckakuck Way #190, Chilliwack, BC V2R 3S9
cell: 604-855-2521
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