Great Vancouver Neighbourhoods - Mountain View

Mountain View

Vancouver is a city of neighbourhoods they say. I am not sure who "they" are, but "they" are right. One of the nicest and most under appreciated is the Mountain View neighbourhood. Mountain View is a loosely defined area either side of Fraser St from about King Edward Ave. up to E. 41st. The name Mountain View is most closely associated with the City of Vancouver's cemetary (I see you can now search for where someone is buried using the Mountain View cemetary application on VanMap) and the area does boast some amazing mountain views.

Community Spirit

The community spirit in this area is quite remarkable and the neighbourhood assoication has their own blog and Facebook group. Recent events have included Mountain View's Keep Vancouver Spectacular block party, the McBride Annex Elementary School Spring Fair, and the Earth Hour Hot Chocolate Party.

Country Lane

Mountain View is also home to the first of the Country Lane's to built in Vancouver. You can learn more about the city's country lanes on their website and about Mountain View's country lane on the the blog.Grays Park

Coming up in August they will having a community bbq in the country lane.

Parks

Grays Park is the neighbourhood park and it is a wonderful place with tennis courts, basketball courts, a playground, picnic shelter, wading pool (they are campaigning for an upgrade to spray park) and it is also home to the Vancouver South Lawn Bowling Club.

Mountain View Banners Bayview Food Market Picnic shelter at Grays Park Grays Park lawn bowling Slow down kids at play Traffic calmed streets Slow down more kids at play

So what happened with False Creek real estate (this is for False Creek South) in June. I must apologize for taking so long to get this out this month. Despite the doom and gloom in the local papers though it was a pretty good month for False Creek real estate. Inventory dropped compared to May and a couple more homes were sold than in May. False Creek does look great in the sun and that can't have hurt. The stats were skewed a bit this month by the listing of the some of the units at the new Lumen development on the MLS®.

LISTED IN FALSE CREEK IN JUNE (last month's numbers in brackets)

Freehold Strata Units Listed: 14 (22)
Pre-paid Leasehold Strata Units Listed: 7 (9)
Non Pre-paid Leasehold Strata Units Listed: 2 (actually 1, but there was one listed as a "non-prepaid non strata" and I am pretty sure it is a strata so we'll say 2) (2)
Total Units Listed: 23 (33)

Total Listings Available as of June 30th: 56 (61)

SOLD IN FALSE CREEK IN JUNE (last two month's numbers in brackets)

Freehold Strata Units Sold: 5 (6,7)
Pre-paid Leasehold Strata Units Sold: 6 (3,4)
Non Pre-paid Leasehold Strata Units Sold: 0, (0,1)
Total Units Sold: 11 (9,12)

Average Days on Market: 37 (24,21)
Median Days on Market: 26 (17,14)

Average Sold Price: $490,781
Median Sold Price: $490,000

Absorption Rate: 5.09 months (6.7)
What is the absorption rate. It is the number of months that it would take to absorb, or sell, the present inventory of homes for sale.

If you have any questions about False Creek real estate or a topic you'd like to see covered on the Comet please let me know. If you are interested in seeing what is for sale in False Creek you can always search for False Creek real estate here.

This post originally appeared on my False Creek neighbourhood blog, the False Creek Comet.

New Works is a Vancouver based dance company that "really likes dance. A lot." That is according to the New Works website. Their mission statement is:

To produce and present performance events for the public, and to build audiences for diverse dance forms locally, nationally and internationally. To also provide support to emerging, mid-career and senior dance artists and managers of all cultural traditions in the development of their careers.

New Works is bringing their fun attitude towards dance to Granville Island the next 4 Sundays (at 2pm), and twice in August, with the All Over The Map dance series. All performances take place at Ron Basford Park (beside Performance Works), on the east side of Granville Island.


Here is the schedule:

July 6 World Dance and Music: Silk Road Music and Friends
July 13 African Dance and Music: Miyanda and Kunaka
July 20 Polynesian Dance and Music: Langley Ukulele Ensemble & Kauhane Polynesian Dancers
July 27 Hip Hop: SOULdiers’ Dance
August 17 Flamenco: Mozaico Flamenco Dance Theatre
August 24 First Nations Dance and Music: Dancers of Damelahamid

ENJOY!

This post originally appeared on my False Creek blog, the False Creek Comet.

You probably heard about this already, but just in case you haven't I thought I'd better mention it. There is a lot of poo, err fecal coliform (learn more about fecal coliforms on wikipedia) in False Creek, especially at the east end of the creek.

The Vancouver Sun was all over this yesterday with the story on the front page of the West Coast News section entitled False Creek coliform count soars. Bottom line don't put your body in False Creek and especially not your eyes, ears or nose. It seems the "green" development in South East False Creek had done something to cause raw sewage to be flowing into the creek.

This post originally appeared on my False Creek neighbourhood blog, The False Creek Comet.

Okay maybe there is a better name for them, but please read the following anecdote from one of my colleagues about the scary expeience she had last weekend. Ladies don't be going out in the forest alone!

My daughter was with me, and we were just opening a listing on West Broadway, when a fellow came in with us. Appears he had been waiting... We went about opening, and turning on lights, however as soon as I was ready to give him my full attention, he fired off aggressive questions, such as "And so what issues does the Building Engineers Report highlight in this building"? etc., very confrontational throughout our short conversation...I asked him why he was so upset, and he said he had recently had an Offer and Inspection on a property in New Westminster that had turned out to be a leaky condo...He continued for a few minutes and upon learning that I did not know how large the roof was on this building, he stormed out... I watched him from the window, leave the building, and noticed that he was not carrying our data sheet we had given him...In the past, I have had experience where someone would write something nasty, and post it in the Lobby or whatever, so I asked my daughter to go down and check his route, to make sure he had not left any rude or crude messages....She went out to the hall where we had left our shoes to find he had spit in them...

He was a scary, but well dressed clean cut guy....but that rude act was aggressive.

He was very clean cut, 5 ft 9 or 10 " ,late twenties to early thirties, very fit...looked like he worked out regularly, well dressed, short fair hair, striped good quality shirt and beige pants...carried a digital camera.

I reported this to the Board on Monday morning and they said I should let my office know also...

Ok be careful out there everyone.

The Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver (REBGV) released their February 2008 statistics yesterday with the headline "Housing options broaden for buyers in February". Sales across all categories (detached, attached and condominiums) were down 6.2% compared to February 2007 while listings were up 26.2% compared to February 2007. New listings were actually 21.2% higher than February 20006 so I see no cause for panic.

As the headline says this the recipe for a more balanced market, but may or may not be the start of any kind of significant change in the market. Real estate is local, very, very local. Vancouver East saw a year over year increase in listings last month, but Vancouver West actually saw numbers about the same as last year. Multiple offers are still common in Vancouver, as are sales prices well above the list price

Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver president Brian Napthali had this to say:

"We continue to see the market rebalance, particularly with detached properties, where listings climb and sales either hold or decline slightly," says REBGV president Brian Naphtali. "This shift increases buyer options and allows people more time to make decisions when purchasing a home."

The report also mentioned these:

Bright spots in Greater Vancouver in January 2008 compared to January 2007:

Detached:
West Vancouver/Howe Sound..... up 16.7 per cent (56 units sold up from 48)
Whistler/Pemberton........................ up 100 per cent (10 units sold up from 5)
Port Moody/Belcarra................... up 22.7 per cent (27 units sold up from 22)

Attached:
New Westminster......................... up 216.7 per cent (19 units sold up from 6)
Port Coquitlam............................ up 68.4 per cent (32 units sold up from 19)

Apartments:
Burnaby..................................... up 9.5 per cent (150 units sold up from 137)
Whistler/Pemberton....................... up 62.5 per cent (13 units sold up from 8)
Port Moody/Belcarra................... up 27.6 per cent (37 units sold up from 29)

This post originally appeared on my Vancouver real estate blog, the 604homesblog.

CBC reported the other day that Bill Eden's Eden Developments had stopped construction of its only active development, the Sophia. In a situation eerily similar to the Riverbend development that cancelled the contracts of pre-sale buyers earlier this year The Sophia, located in Mount Pleasant, was nearing completion and now it looks like pre-sale buyers who bought 2-3 years ago may be forced to buy back in at today's prices if they wish to keep their units, and if they can afford too.

I have a thank a few people for the heads-up on this one. Firstly a commenter, the mysterious mr. x, from my post about the cancelling of Eden Developments other projects, the Elyse and Montgomery Estates, mentioned this on the 21st, and yesterday I first found news of the CBC story (which I can't find on their site) about this on Yatter Matters. Thanks guys, and good luck to you Sophia pre-sale and especially assignment buyers.

This story originally appeared on my Vancouver real estate blog, the 604homesblog.

Last night I attended a Vancouver marketing un-conference called Case Camp. The event was very interesting and I chatted to some of the same people I had met at Tuesday night's Third Tuesday event. There were some interesting presentations and I won't bore you with a run down of them all. They weren't boring at all, but I am sure that me writing about them would be. Case Camp presents marketing case studies, but each one is only 8 minutes and then there are two minutes.

TWO OF THEM MENTIONED IT

The most interesting and real estate tech related thing I learned was mentioned by two of the presentations. They both mentioned the same tool and I thought that it could be very useful to realtors looking at the design of their website home, or landing, page. The first presentation I wasn't too organized for and wasn't taking notes so I can't tell you who was giving the presentation and where she worked. I'll try to find out who she was.

The second presentation was by Chris Goward of a company called Wind Tunnel. Their slogan is "Squeezing more value from your website" and that is what realtors® are always trying to do. Getting the visitors there is hard enough, but whats the point if they look around and then leave. We are here it make a living, not as a community resource. Thats what we pay taxes to the city for. So Chris and Wind Tunnel were looking at redesigning a companies homepage in order to get more visitors to register for their trial software.

WHAT WAS IT?

What both of these presentations mentioned that the tool that they used to test these sites was the FREE Google Website Optimizer. First you will have to decide what it is you want to your site visitors to do. You want them to leave their information, but what are you going to offer in return. Most likely this will be to register for your IDX or VOW for access to MLS® listing info. You will then have to create two test pages to see which one Google says is the most effective at converting visitors into leads.

Good Luck!

This is the 4th year for the BC Real Estate Convention and it has gotten bigger every year. It must be the cost of admission. It is free!

There will be exhibitors from many different real estate related fields, including developers both local and international), lenders, renovators, insurers, and of course some REALTORs will be there as well. My office, Royal LePage Westside will be there and you can find me there from 4-6pm on Tuesday, February 26th. There are a series of free seminars throughout the day each day as well, but I can't find the schedule online.

The Vancouver Sun wrote a piece on the convention that was quite enthusiastic. The convention's own website is quite good, but annoyingly keeps asking me to install Korean characters on my PC and I have no use for them. Just click cancel if it happens to you and move on.

Say hi if you are there. I'd love to meet you.

This post originally appeared on my Vancouver real estate blog: the 604homesblog.

The Winterruption festival starts tomorrow on Granville Island. There are great sounding activities, performances, art and music happening all around the island from Thursday through Sunday the 24th.

Some of the highlights that struck me were:

Family Winter Carnival False Creek Community Centre
Sunday 10:30AM-12:00PM - $5 per family member, children under 1 are free

Children's Activities Kids Zone
Workshops: Saturday & Sunday 10:30AM - 4:30 PM FREE

Market Arts Granville Island Public Market
Saturday & Sunday 11AM, 1PM & 3PM - FREE

Video Winterruption Workshop
Emily Carr Institute of Art & Design Theatre 301
Saturday 10AM-4PM, Sunday 10AM-2:30PM, Screening & Celebration 2PM - FREE

Vancouver Writes
Performance Works
Thursday 7:30PM - $20 adults, $18 Seniors & Students

Panel Painting
Net Loft, 1663 Duranleau Street
Saturday & Sunday 11AM-5:30PM - FREE

Aerial Dance: Cold Hands, Warm Heart
Under the Bridge
Saturday & Sunday - 10 min sets between 5:45 - 7PM - FREE

Cirkids' Perfect World Festival Garage
Saturday & Sunday 12PM & 1:30PM - FREE

You can find more information on the Winterruption festival on their website. There are pages for Activities, Art, Music and Performances. There is even a guide on how to get there by car, bus, bike and even boat. If you are having trouble dressing yourself they even have suggestions on what to wear.

This post origianlly appeared on my all False Creek neighbourhood blog, the False Creek Comet. Go there for pics and links to the Winterruption festival events.