Sunshine Coast, BC - Its collapsing real estate market.

[Skook]

October 9, 2013:

This post kicks off my tour of the SC as I look for developers and ‘wannabe’ developers, who have folded, want to cash out and leave the Sunshine Coast RE ‘Hold Em’ game table. We’re heading due north to Sechelt’s ‘The Shores’ area bordering West Porpoise Bay. Below, I’ve put together a collage of all the Realtor ads in this month’s Sunshine Coast Real Estate Guide’ - the only exception was the ad for Lot 16 Crowston Rd which I pulled from last month’s edition. Accompanying the ads, is a RE map and on it I have indicated the lot locations.

So, I am looking for lots that specifically show some development planning that the seller is giving up on or lots of 5 or more acres in close proximity to larger developments where it appears the seller hoped to benefit from that growth in the future. I am creating a small spreadsheet for each post and will add notes about the listing if need be. I won`t spend a lot of time of this as the purpose is just to give an overview of larger land holdings that are now on the market.

This East Porpoise Bay land sell is an odd one. It looks like the owner has been trying to sell for some time. I found previous listing info from August 2010; however, if you look closely at that 2010 listing on the right it gives a total of 158 acres whereas the October, 2013 RE Guide advert says 170 acres.

To get an idea of this holding, I went to the District of Sechelt Zoning Map and pulled that image below. I also included the land holding for the `Silverback at Porpoise Bay` development for comparison (the orange lots - total 396 acres). Now the best that I can determine is that a `standard` rectangular District Lot = 60.2 acres and if you add up the Silverback holdings (minus that hashed triangular area) this seems to be correct.

The Lot 4681 ad says there is 51 acres of waterfront included. Now the zoning map shows that Lot 4681 has been subdivided into two parcels and Lot 4690 has been subdivided into 3 parcels and the latter have been given DOS address numbers. So, this would definitely work out to 5 titles, but this wouldn`t give 170 acres. So, maybe he owns only one title in Lot 4681, has a title to one of the other full lots and the three titles in Lot 4690…or…

I think I can see why he hasn`t been able to sell. There must be something about the complete package (he stresses it is being sold as “ONE” property) that is less than appealing despite the 51 acres of waterfront.

Next, I will head south to see what large holdings are on the market there.