You seem pretty determined to make the case that anyone who doesn’t agree with you is a “bad journalist.” There’s not much I can do about that.

I will just keep pointing out the obvious facts — an 8 per cent vacancy rate, even if it’s higher than other cities, is nothing like the 25-50 per cent rate that has been the assumption of urban myths about Vancouver condo towers.

Andrew’s figures indicated that 87 per cent of the investors were from Canada, with half of those Canadian investors being from the Lower Mainland.

Once again, I am mystified as to why you think there’s some deep hidden agenda to anyone who doesn’t agree with you. As I’ve said before, if Andrew had found out that, indeed, half the condos were empty and that most of them were owned by a mix of Russian and Middle Eastern investors, that would have been a fabulous story — one I would have got better play for. (It’s never a big news seller to bust a myth.)

In spite of all this, I admire your efforts to fight for a better Vancouver. Just don’t know why you have to attack people who don’t agree with you on every point.

The simple fact is that Andrew Yan’s study found a 5.5-8.5% vacancy rate in the Yaletown/West End condo supply, using very low thresholds on hydro use of 2.5 or 3.4 kWh per day.

This usage, below which an apartment is considered likely empty, compares with BCHydro PowerSmart’s own published average power use profile for 500-999 square foot apartments of 5.0 to 6.8 kWh per day, depending on its use of electric heat and/or hot water, or neither.

But even if we accept this 5.5-8.5% rate of vacancy as the true number, look at the real estate crisis down in America’s worst-hit cities, and you will find these home vacancy rates for the 1st quarter of 2009:
Los Vegas – 4.8%
Phoenix – 2.6%
Orlando – 5.2%
Miami – 5.6%
Atlanta – 4.4%
Source: http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/hvs/rates/index.html

Now, what about this Bing Thom study would make ANYONE write “Empty Condo Myths Untrue,” and dismiss this impending crisis while Vancouver Council debates incentives to encourage the construction of even more new residential units.

Blind overbuilding and overcapacity has plunged the US economy into the worst recession and banking crisis in 70 years. Why are we continuing to stoke the very same fire here, when it is already out of control?

To be sure, Bing Thom’s press release title, did state “‘Empty condo’ phenomenon largely a myth,” but the study itself came to no such conclusion, if anyone–including anyone in the media–actually read it, let alone thought for just a second what this meant.

“Rip and read” is not a form of journalism, but a violation at the very core of journalistic ethics, one all too common in Vancouver, and one that will cost the public dearly.

What is more likely to happen, and does happen is that someone like Frances does a story, the editor approves said story, and it gets published.

During the process of publishing, the sales department reviews the content of the publication or media and subsequently bitches and whines to the editors that the story hurts their business.

Depending on the size of the advertiser and how much money they spend, the sales dept then scrambles to kiss enough ass to rectify the hurt feelings and maintain their business despite the whatever was said in the story.

For those folks who are not major advertisers or have never been in the business, please seek out some help for your conspiracy theories on advertising influencing the media, especially when it’s someone with the reputation of Frances Bula.

I am at a loss as to why you would think that I would have any interest in “spinning” this. It’s a shame when legitimate public debates are sidetracked by attempts to prove a conspiracy thesis about the evil corporate media or whatever is going on here. Why are you trying to prove that I somehow distorted what Andrew and his study had to say.

As you know, I’ve been interested in these issues for a long time. Andrew told me he had a study going. I read the study, talked to him and Michael and wrote my story. I have no interest in “spinning” things — if Andrew had said that, in fact, Vancouver’s downtown condos are three-quarters empty and all owned by Russian gangsters, I would have been thrilled to report that.

Once again, can I remind you that, after I wrote the story, I looked at Andrew’s press release and was amused to discover that I had hit on the same points he had.

Here is the news release BTAworks prepared:

For Release
May 25, 2009
Downtown ‘Empty Condo’ phenomenon largely a myth, study finds
Majority of condos, non-owner occupied, but rented.
Vancouver, British Columbia – The popular belief that there are large numbers of
empty downtown condos with offshore owners is largely disproved by a new study
released by BTAworks. The study, undertaken to examine condo ownership in
Downtown Vancouver also confirmed that the majority of the area’s condos are not-
owner occupied.
BTAworks, a new research and development consulting division of Bing Thom
Architects, examined data from the City of Vancouver, BC Assessment, BC Hydro, and
the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation for 2,400 condos in Downtown
Vancouver – almost 10 percent of all the condos in the area.
“Working with BC Hydro data, we were able to determine that only 5.5 to 8 percent of
study condos were unoccupied.” states Andrew Yan, a BTAworks researcher and
Urban Planner who led the study. “While the number of empty condos in Downtown
Vancouver is low, condos in our study were typically non-owner occupied, but rented
out by their owners”.
In addition to an estimate on empty condos, the study found that:
•
Condo ownership is a relatively new form of housing for Vancouver. Over 88
percent of condo units in Downtown Vancouver have been built since 1990.
•
Less than 40 percent of downtown condos have more than one bedroom.
•
The majority of condos are not occupied by the property owner.
•
The majority of non-owner occupied condos are owned by BC residents, with a
scattering of foreign owners, predominately from the western US states such
as California, Washington, and Arizona.
•
Owner-occupied units are typically worth $30,000 to $40,000 more than non-
owner occupied units, and the more bedrooms the unit has, the more likely it is
to be owner occupied.
•
A family with one child in the City of Vancouver earning the median income of
$75,000 a year would have great difficulty in finding and paying for a condo
bigger than one bedroom, even if condo prices were to fall 25 percent below
2008 assessment levels.
The study findings outline some of the elements behind Downtown Vancouver’s
remarkable housing boom and suggests that the majority of growth in Downtown
condos has been dominated by investors and those looking for a second home, rather
than homeowners. These trends signal emerging housing and planning challenges in
providing suitable and affordable housing for working and middle-income households,
especially those with children.
“If Vancouverism 1.0 is embodied by tall skinny towers and one bedroom, investor-
driven condominium projects for Downtown Vancouver, then Vancouverism 2.0 needs
to redress this imbalance by providing more affordable family-oriented housing units
with great supporting amenities,” concludes Yan. “Without this, the sustainable
communities with opportunities to live, work and prosper that the City aspires to are
likely unachievable.”
“We’re proud to fund this study and inform the ongoing and important housing and
planning dialogues occurring in the City” said Bing Thom, principal of Bing Thom
Architects. “Vancouver is often viewed as a global example of downtown residential
development and we must work to ensure that what we are modeling for the world has
substance with a commitment to affordable and suitable urban housing for families
with children to stay and grow with our city.”

A considerable number of posts here, Francis! Clearly you’ve chosen to follow a popular, and highly important, story. Thank you for your interest on this from the very start.

Thank you also to Andrew for obtaining important data openly, which we could not do in our research on a similar topic over two years ago, and before this real estate bubble began to burst. Thank you also, in the most respectful of academic traditions, for acknowledging corrections where appropriate.

Andrew, your conclusions relating to the cost, suitability, and flexibility of what we have built, and the consequent effects on social diversity, are invaluable contributions to our understanding of Vancouver’s most critical social planning crisis: housing affordability. I also noted with interest the reverse ownership skew you found, where downtown towers are majority non-owner occupied, in stark contrast to Vancouver- and Canada-wide real estate owner occupancy rates of 60-75%.

Now turning to the question of journalistic spin.

Andrew’s project title is “Ownership, Occupancy, and Rentals: An Indicative Sample Study of Condominiums in Downtown Vancouver.”

The Globe article title on this same study, and with no other data introduced, was “Empty condo myths untrue, research shows.”

For those who chose to read the article itself, this message is reinforced unequivocally. “Neither of those beliefs is true” is the lead hook of the Globe article, rebutting a suggested myth that a high percentage of downtown condos are empty and heavily foreign-owned.

The article furthermore describes the BTAworks survey as “a representative sample,” when in fact this statistical terminology is never used in the study at all. “Indicative” is not the same as “representative.”

Let us address the question of foreign ownership first. The BTAworks study had no access to data on the citizenship of condo owners, and in fact provided a clear caveat and reasoning for why its “methodology is not necessarily a final measure of foreign ownership.” All that was reported was that 87% of tax assessment bills were posted to Canadian addresses. What is more, the study’s conclusion does not even mention the question of foreign ownership.

The Globe article states “Eight-seven per cent of the units were owned by investors from Canada.” The implication in context is clearly that these investors are Canadians. The study made no such representation at all.

Spin? You decide.

Turning to the question of Vancouver’s empty condos, what are the facts and what was reported?

Let us assume that this survey of just under 2,400 units, clustered in only 13 buildings in an area reportedly containing 27,000 condos, were “representative” as errantly claimed in the Globe article. An ‘unoccupancy rate’ of 5.5-8.5% would be a startling 1,500-2300 empty units just in the downtown core, and by accident in exactly the range of the number of homeless people in our city.

Now, given that the vast majority of recent condo developments have in fact been not downtown but throughout the East Side of Vancouver, could one extrapolate this finding to more of the city’s 285,000 total dwelling units? The statistically honest answer is no.

But if you did, you would find that the “urban myth” of 18,000 empty dwelling units city-wide that Francis Bula and others have cautiously reported since February 2008 is in the lower middle of this study’s distribution, at just 6.3% of the total.

My reservations about BCHydro’s suggested low energy usage trigger still stand, especially given their own PowerSmart apartment profile data. However, I tip my hat to ‘not running for mayor’ for his apparent energy frugality, and wonder if his situation, with no unit Hydro bill for heat, hot water, or cooking (gas), is common in downtown towers.

“Condo Myths Untrue.” You decide if this title is indeed spin, given the facts as presented in this groundbreaking research by Andrew Yan.

Now how about reporting on how Vancouver can recover from building so much “housing product” of a monolithic typology that starves the urban core of its affordability, creative diversity, and perhaps even its celebrated “density”?

That would be reporting worth reading!

Many people have been complaining for years that the policies of the city planning dept are leading to the very opposite of the sustainable, diverse city that they claim to want. Maybe studies like this will actually make them take notice.

His conclusion. It’s not necessary. He also has some very good statistical information on the percentage of condominiums owned by investors, by location and building size and age…It’s worth checking out, if you are interested.

I do however take exception to the suggestion of “spin” in this story. Frances has been very diligent in presenting this story and has NOT in anyway manipulated any of our findings.

It was a bit of a surprise for me at the lack of empty condos based upon these criteria as much as anyone else. However, I stand by the results of this study and how Frances has presented the story as we use one possible measure of quantifying empty condos.

In the face of limited research resources, our indicative stratified sampling technique was to focus on high density towers in Downtown Vancouver (excluding the West End). Any extrapolation on the overall city or even the entire downtown peninsula is NOT what this study examined. Indeed, the interest as articulated in this board and others reflect the need for a much more comprehensive study of the subject on a citywide level muchless a regional wide level to get a complete understand of the housing ecology in the region. Anyone out there up for this?

At the beginning of the project, we explored a number of possible metrics such as water use, garbage weight, photographic analysis, but they were systematically ruled out for practicality as well as responses from folks like Metro Van. Hydro usage emerged as the most feasible metric. This type of research and insight is built on a constructive and collaborative dialogue between researchers and those interested in the area. We just wanted to start this conversation with one attempt to look at empty condos and ownership patterns in Downtown Vancouver condos. I should however caution that the plural of anecdote is not data.

After completing this study, I have concluded that going after “empty condos” may not necessarily solve our ongoing affordable housing problems. Indeed, more towers, if developed and sold like the ones in Downtown Vancouver over the last 20 years with the dominance of one bedroom, non-owner occupied units, might not be sufficient to allow families with children at any income to stay in the city. So given all that is said about Vancouver, the big questions for me are still “what kind of city do we really want to be?”, “how do we get there?”, and “what are we willing to do?”

Also, I believe new york is one of the few markets where craigslist charges for listings, although that might just be for jobs.

Regarding condo rentals, I see more of the opposite thing happening. Unaware owners often ask rents that are much more in line with their mortgage payments than what comparable condos are renting for.

As for newspapers and what they’ll do — yes, surprise, surprise, among the hundreds of newspapers and reporters out there in the land, yes, some of them do sometimes bend to advertiser pressure or get too cozy. Does that mean every last publication does that? No, and it would help promote good journalism if all the media critics out there would learn to distinguish between good and bad. I only started writing for the Globe last year, but one thing I’ve been really impressed by is their enthusiasm for going after news, even if those stories don’t particularly make advertisers happy.