2009 Municipal Update
I was at a breakfast meeting yesterday with the mayors and city planners of the Tri-Cities: Kenji Ito and Shawn Natrasony, Burnaby; Beverly Grieve, New Westminster; Jim McIntyre and Wayne Beggs, Coquitlam; Tim Savoie, Port Moody; and, Laura Lee Richard, Port Coqitlam .These representatives each gave a half hour talk about development and plans for their municipalities. The overview highlighted how VERY quickly Metro Vancouver is changing. With a steady immigration of 65,000 to B.C. and 30,000 per year, that is half of these settling in the Lower Mainland. Growth is steady. Our housing prices have fallen even though we have a positive growth in population due to the current economic downturn. Prices have fallen 15% overall compared to this time last year. New projects are on hold awaiting current inventory to be completed and sold. House prices are back to the 2006 levels BUT this is still high compared with the rest of Canada. In summary, the prediction is for softer housing demand, but prices should level off by year's end. For more information on this topic, the last speaker at this breakfast meeting Robyn Adamache from CMHC has excellent information on their website: http://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/