Gibsons Development - Soames Place

[Skook]

December 9, 2015 Update

I remember thinking, “Oh, boy” when first learning of this project. I just didn’t think the demographics were there to make this project fly; plus there were so many other townhouse and condo unit listings in competition. Unfortunately, my thoughts seemed to have been spot on. But, look at The Wharf Place in Sechelt it was dead in the water for two years and then mid-2014 sales took off and now after four years of listing only 2 units of the 24 remain unsold...hmm, guess that is still rather depressing, isn’t it.

Social Media Marketing
The whole social media aspect of marketing Soames Place I found intriguing; but, it was a bust. The Twitter feed was rarely used and is pointless unless you’re a developer with lots of projects on the go and can tweet something new every day to the hundreds who bought pre-construction and wait word on every nail being hammered in. As for Facebook, well in this case most of the likes came from the developer, his family and friends, contractors, local Realtors®, SC agencies and one or two town councillors. My research showed me that unless you’re willing to pay Facebook for targeted ads your posts are going nowhere except to the very bottom of the newsfeed list. Those Soames Place Facebook posts did zip to generate sales, but they occupied a few people for a few minutes when received.

Social Housing Units
Way back at the dawn of time when home prices were sky high, Soames Place like every other development in Gibsons and Sechelt agreed to throw in some social housing units to get re-zoning approval. Soames Place set aside 2 one-bedroom units. Then this spring the developer went back to town council and said the units were discouraging sales; wanted to drop them; and, make a payment to a social housing fund instead. Soames Place was in good company - developers in both towns were asking for the social housing decisions to be reversed since prices had dropped so much since 2007. Council agreed with the Soames Place request and the units went on the market in April. Well, dropping those units made no impact on sales, either. (See: ‘Affordable housing units to be returned to developer', May 20, 2015)

Rental Units
The developer decided to test the waters and put two units, #301 and #302, on the rental market and they popped up on the Holywell Properties website (and Craigslist) July 20th and July 22nd. #301 was set at $1450/mth and #302 at $1550/mth. In addition, a $500 prepaid BC Ferry card was thrown into the mix with a yearlong lease. Not one unit moved and on November 7th the rental price dropped $1000/mth on each. Finally, last week #302 disappeared from Holywell. #301 still remains. Both units remain listed on MLS.

Commercial Units
I strongly support the idea of a commercial/residential mix but you have to have a thriving economy and the population to support it and neither exists on the Sunshine Coast. It’s demographics once again. So, Soames Place has managed to lease only one of its four commercial units. The units went off the market for a few months and then in October were relisted. Holywell is handling the MLS listing but it’s the strangest thing; the MLS listing puts the units at $25/sf while on the Holywell Properties website they’re going for $22/sf.

The Condo Spreadsheet
It’s gotten a bit complex for a number of reasons: units that appeared “sold” on the website (12) but then went up on MLS (5); units that were for Social Housing (2) and then were not (-2); price increases and then decreases; and, the rentals (2). So, I added colour coding to hopefully make sense of it all.

   
(click on image)

The Commercial Spreadsheet
The four units were first listed on MLS in February 2015 and Unit 104 was leased in June. The remaining 3 listings disappeared by mid-August. Holywell Properties Real Estate took over the listing and marketing of the units at the beginning of October and put up one MLS listing covering all three units. Holywell also added the three units to its properties management website on October 17th and in early November lowered the lease price on there to $22/sf.

   
(click on image)

There are some positive signs on the horizon that may help Soames Place. Much of the townhouse inventory has been depleted; there is an effort underway to attract young adults and families back to the coast (website); and, those that left for the hundred-thousand dollar plus per year paying jobs in the oil patch are probably trickling back, too. Mind you, good paying jobs on the SC are in short supply these days so unless those arriving can make a living on their own as “social entrepreneurs” they might have to convert the crawl space under the house or turn the shed out back into something habitable and stick it up on AirBnb.

And, interest rates, we mustn't forget the interest rates. Let's see, the Bank of Canada prime lending rate stands at 0.25% and not long ago, BoC Governor Stephen Poloz said it would never go lower...until yesterday. Now, the guv says negative interest rates are an option should the economy tank which looks like it may well do. So, let's see if those variable bank mortgate rates which were beginning to rise suddenly start dropping again on this good news.




To Save and Print the Spreadsheets:
The best procedure is to save to your hard drive. So, click on the image and after it opens in a new tab, right click and click ‘Save image as...’ (exact wording depends on your browser). With Windows OS, you will save it in your Pictures Library. After saving the image, find it and click on it and it should open in the ‘Windows Photo Viewer.” Click on ‘Print’ in menu bar and then click ‘Print’ again and the print dialog box will open. You want ‘Full Page Photo’ and most importantly at the bottom you want to remove the checkmark for ‘Fit picture to frame’ (click in box to remove checkmark). Set the other options to your own preferences; however, ‘Letter’ size paper works best unless you can choose something larger like ‘Legal.’