Sechelt Development - Edgewater at Porpoise Bay

[Skook]

September 5, 2015 Update

Folks, my gut tells me this project's in trouble. The first alarm bell went off on July 27, 2015 when I saw this rental listing on the Holywell Properties website.

This is a waterfront unit! Could this be an investor putting the unit up for rent? Well, all doubt was removed when I saw that “incentive” added to the bottom of listing after the August 1st long weekend – that’s the second alarm bell.

No, the developer is behind this rental listing; and, the incentive hasn’t worked. Yesterday, the third alarm bell sounded - Onni dropped unit sale prices. It’s knocked -$30,000 off the cheapest townhouse unit (Plan C). You can see how that’s played out on the development’s website homepage...

(Note: Edgewater’s first “MOVE IN TODAY” announcement appeared in a full page ad July 3, 2015 on page 2 of the Coast Reporter weekly. This page 2 full page ad ran every week up to and including August 21st - that's 10x.)

Prices on its largest unit (Plan D – 1840sf) began at $514,900 in September, 2013; dropped to $495,000 in June, 2014; went up to $510,900 in December, 2014; dropped down to $485,000 at the end of May, 2015; and, yesterday...slid down to $449,000. That’s a total drop of -$65,900 or -12.8% on a brand new never lived in townhome in the hottest Sunshine Coast real estate market since 2007! (We need to think about this folks. This is telling us something about the Sunshine Coast RE market and I don’t think it’s a positive message.)

So, here’s the Edgewater site plan and updated spreadsheet. Bear in mind, Onni plays its cards close to its chest. It has its own Realty firm (Onni Realty Ltd) and will list only 4 units at any one time. So, it started out with 4 listings in September 2013 and they were removed in June 2014 and replaced with four different unit listings. Those June listings were removed in December 2014 and replaced with 4 different unit listings. In May 2015, 3 of the listings were removed and replaced with 3 different units, but 1 unit listing was relisted (first time Onni broke its pattern). The advantage to this method is it creates uncertainty as to whether or not a unit has been sold plus you can muck about with pricing without raising eyebrows.

       
(Click on each image to open in a new tab and clicking on that image will enlarge it. Easiest to view if you save that images to your computer and print it off.)

As of this date, not one of all these many listed units has sold; however, that doesn't mean there were no buyers if they took the “contract to purchase” route. That being said my guess is that despite the fancy brochures with the vials of sand passed out at the 2014 “pop up” sales centres in West Van; despite its May 2015 long weekend BBQ; and, despite the day after day manning of its Sunshine Coast Sales Centre, Onni’s sales goals have not been met. As a result, I think Phase 2 has been put on hold; not one new construction pic has appeared on the Edgewater website since October 14, 2014 nor gone out on Onni’s Instagram/Twitter feeds in all of 2015.