since its first condo in 1970 vancouver has become the poster city for a global phenomenon
douglas todd: condominiums now make up 30 per cent of homes across metro vancouver, the highest proportion in north america. hundreds of millions more have been recently built in japan, china and other nations.
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the city of vancouver’s first condominium complex is a modest, pleasant-looking six-storey building. built in 1970 at 5350 balsam, it continues to provide 24 units on a quiet, leafy street in the kerrisdale neighbourhood.
you could say it’s a historic site.
balsam house, as it’s known, marks the dawn of vancouver’s remarkable condo revolution, which has gone on to change the face of many of the world’s major cities.
balsam house is the prototype for a strata property scheme that now governs 33 per cent of all housing units in the city of vancouver, as well 30 per cent of those across metro vancouver.
that’s the highest ratio of any north american urban region, making vancouver the poster city for condos.
vancouver-style condo mania is global. the world’s highest building, the 828-metre burj khallifa in dubai, united arab emirates, is in large part a residential condominium complex.
and no longer is new york city characterized mostly by commercial office towers like the empire state building. the megalopolis’s most notable landmarks are now pencil-thin glass condominium skyscrapers on so-called billionaires row, such as the steinway tower and 98-storey central park tower.
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the condominium model, also known as strata ownership, has provided the basis for the swelling of vancouver, toronto and many other cities since the second world war, according to douglas harris, a university of b.c. property law professor who cheerfully acknowledges he has a fixation with the phenomenon.
it’s “one of the defining institutions of our time,” said harris, who describes the condominium structure as technically “a form of land ownership that combines private ownership of an individual unit in a multi-unit building with a share of the common property… and a right to participate in collective governance.”
harris persuasively argues the novel legal structure has changed the face of home ownership. “the numbers are staggering.” among other things, “condofication” has inaugurated a global shift to much more dense urban living, he says, which has greatly inflated land prices.
condominiums, harris says, have also generated a “massive” transnational movement of wealth and people into cities, inaugurated a heightened level of real estate capitalism and, in effect, created a new form of private governance.
the sun sets on central park tower and the steinway tower on billionaires’ row in new york city, making these residential condominium projects more notable landmarks than the city’s commercial office towers, like the empire state building.
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michael mityok, interviewed as he emerged from his 800-square-foot condominium unit in vancouver balsam house, was largely unaware of the historical importance of the place he has lived for seven years.
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mityok simply expressed contentment with his condo complex, with its mature strata council members and sound-muffling concrete construction. “it was actually built properly,” he says, unlike many that followed, resulting in — among other things — the city’s notorious leaky condo crisis.
mityok also enjoys his ethnically mixed kerrisdale neighbourhood, in which nearby condo projects built decades ago, in contrast to those constructed today, come with expansive gardens. he estimates the two-bedroom unit he bought for $700,000 is now worth just under $800,000.
that price tag is nothing compared to the many glamorous newer apartment units in condo towers throughout metro vancouver that reach 45 storeys and higher. some can sell from $5 to $15 million each. pricey or otherwise, condos have transformed city skylines, sometimes in contorted ways.
condofication gave vancouver the trump tower, before it was renamed, plus many other architectural statements, like twisted vancouver house or the blocky alberni. as harris and others make clear, condos, whether attractive or ugly, lure capital and well-off migrants from around the world.
a block of giant condominium towers at brentwood in burnaby.
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while the prices of condominiums have been softening in the past year, units generally remain “highly attractive to investors,” says harris.
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more than one third of condos in metro vancouver and greater toronto are not lived in by those who own them, but typically rented out.
indeed, condominiums “now dominate residential property markets in many cities around the world,” says harris.
“there are millions of condo developments producing tens of millions of parcels of land, inhabited by hundreds of millions of people, and almost everywhere these numbers are growing.”
in one of his many pioneering articles, harris notes there are at least 1.9 million condo units now in canada, 2.9 million in australia, 6.7 million in japan and 11 million in the u.s.
“in china… condominium development has soared to become the dominant form of privately owned housing in urban areas,” he writes.
“for the vast majority of people in most of the world it is the only attainable form of privately owned housing.”
it’s not possible to do justice in this space to harris’s wide-ranging, seminal scholarship on condominiums, other than to point to a few more of his insights:
• condominiums represent a new form of “neo-liberal ideology,” he says, which basically leaves it to the market to resolve housing and affordability difficulties. condofication has often been promoted by governments that want to restrict state intervention and back away from providing social housing.
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• condos have inspired a new form of self-government, in which members make their own rules (within human rights law). in china such mini-democracies are seen as a potential threat by the communist party. in canada strata communities are beginning to emerge as rural single-house property developments, like at arbutus ridge on vancouver island. they’re similar to the private, gated community model that pervades suburban u.s.
• potential buyers can be either attracted to, or afraid of, handing fellow owners the power to set common rules about pets, swimming pool times, renters, exterior colours and age limits for residents, harris said. it can be “intrusive” when your neighbours decide you can’t smoke or use cannabis in your own home. at the same time it can be enticing to be part of a stable self-governing community.
when postmedia ran an unscientific poll a few years ago asking readers if they think “condofication” has improved metro vancouver in the past five decades, 57 per cent said no, 35 per cent said yes and eight per cent were neutral.
the informal poll suggests the jury is out on the condo explosion.
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