and yes id prob move in

From my point of view it just feels like the consensus herd who lined up overnight and buyout the building has not done their due diligence.

Most normal people will only see the conveniences of Canada Line, TNT, Cineplex, Retail, etc but there's alot of trade offs as mentioned earlier.

Having or not having a parking spot is like comparing apples to oranges. Some people can live with one, some can't.

But the main point that was eluded you do at times need a car to go some place to run a special errand. Imagine if you had a Misses and you needed to go to Ikea for a furniture run (as mentioned by Tapioca) do you want to rely on the Canada Line or public transit to take you to Ikea?

To each it's own though people can be bulls or they can be bears

Actually their scale down stove, sink, toilet, fridge, dw, range is the new standard for these size of apartments.

It's been the same for projects in Downtown the last year or so.

Maybe it's just me but I would never buy a house/condo/townhome without seeing the finished product first. Many developers use one company to build the show home ("Look how nicely built this is!") but then use a completely different one for the actual building ("$50 to everyone of you if we can't get this 20 story tower up in two weeks!").

Plus moving into an already established neighbourhood gives you an exact idea as to what your view will be, who your neighbours are, and what sort of things you need to deal with on a daily basis.

I would argue that not having parking hurts the unit's re-sale value or its rentability.

It's not as if this building is downtown where space is at a premium. A parking spot in this area of town should only cost the buyer a maximum $10K. That's essentially one year's worth of payments - I would gladly add that to my purchase price if I were in the market for one of these suites.

Anyway, I'm looking at the floor plans more closely and I have major concerns about the suites per floor and elevators. On the lower floors, there are 16 suites per floor and only 5 elevators. On the higher floors, there are 8 suites and only 2 elevators! And there are 36 floors in total! For the record, my building has 30 floors with suites and the lower floors have 6 suites per floor, while the upper floors have only 4. We have two elevators per tower and I would say on average, an elevator is down at least a couple of days per month. Fortunately, I live on a lower floor which makes taking the stairs an easy option if one of our elevators is down. Good luck to those who live on the 25th floor, LOL.

Yep, there are many pros to buying a used condo. A lot of condos will keep very low strata fees to attract buyers, but when their warranties are over - they will need to jack up strata fees to make up for it because their contingency fund is too low.

Also - some strata's are so mismanaged, they've pissed away their funding. That and you'll end up with Stratas who passed stupid rules. My friend's place is full of old people, so there are stupid rules that basically don't allow you to play music at any time of the day. The wording just allows them to interpret it any way they want.

the most convenient apartments are the ones by richards and davie imo. close to everything and yaletown stn and airport.

Checked this place out with my girlfriend because of the location (close to her work, canada line, proposed T&T, etc.). The 2 Bed display suite was 480k+ (79x square feet, comes with 1 parking spot) and I thought there was a serious lack of usable living space. There's no way you can fit a properly sized dining table (4-6+ people) + sofa (3 or more seats) in the living + dining room and have ample space to move around comfortably. If I had purchased there, i would've had to turn one of the bedrooms into a dining room to have enough space for what I want in a "living room" (ie. sofa/sectional, chairs, coffee table, tv, bar counter + stools). I hate all these small 2 bedroom suites... useless for what I am looking for and my lifestyle.
If you have a lifestyle that matches these types of apartments I would say that there are much better areas than this.

2 bedroom suites in my building for about $400-420K. My building is 5 years old, each 2 bedroom suite is roughly 860-870 square feet with very good floor plans (they're basically rectangles with plenty of usable space.) There are plenty of suites in the Burnaby-Brentwood area which are going ten of thousands less with better floorplans, parking, and access to Skytrain. Property taxes are higher in Burnaby compared to Vancouver, but arguably, Burnaby is the best-managed municipality in the Lower Mainland.

Let's face it - people are buying into hype.

And another thing to all of the potential condo owners out there: buy into a building with as few amenities as possible. They will only cause your strata more headaches in the long-run as the facilities age.

For reference, I was looking at a small downtown victoria (834 Johnson) unit pre construction, 1 bed, 500sq ft, $225k abt 2 yrs ago. A parking spot was $35k.
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I guess that depends on how often you have Ikea runs
they could easily use some of the money from not spending on car payment/insurance/gas to do delivery once in a while?

I'm not assuming. You would be surprised at the questions that come up at strata meetings and AGMs. The things I pointed out, are common things to look for whether or not you are an investor or just buying a primary residence. I've been to so many pre-sales in the last decade that I can safely say, most of the buyers, do not ask many questions aside from, can I get the "dark" interior finishing option. Do they ask, who is heading up the building maintenance contract? Who did the HVAC? These are questions that should come up when you buy a house, yet a strata unit gets a free pass.

Uh, I give a fuck about parking when I'm being charged the same amount as elsewhere, but without the spot. Even if I don't USE the parking spot, you can rent it out. Without a parking spot, you limit yourself to potential buyers down the road.

I'm sorry if people are stunned by nice finishings but aren't aware of what the bones of the structure are, but you would be surprised what shit gets by city inspectors on full-building walkthroughs. There are many things behind the scenes that don't even make code, yet pass inspection.

oh god there is social housing? expect to see tons of vandalism in the lobby/elevator/common areas.

I can't wait for the day interest rates go up and irresponsible people go under and blame Vancouver/politician/economy when it's actually their fault.

And you know this because you've talked to most of them, right? Many of them? A few of them? ANY of them??

How about car2go and similar services? I know plenty of people living in Yaletown who got rid of their personal cars years ago and just use these services when they need wheels. In fact, this concept of not needing a car or parking space is hardly new. I know it's a difficult concept for a car forum to grasp...

Only to someone who can't live without a car. Again, some people have a lot of priorities that come before their cars. And again, I realize this is a difficult concept on a car forum, where most guys would probably choose a car over a girlfriend...

I'm kind of in the market for a condo/town-home, just wondering if you'd be able to share info on where you're building is exactly? Or any building similar to it in terms of price/floor plans etc.

I was seriously considering the MG location, and had a realtor all set-up to do a pre-sale buy last week.. The units I wanted (B-design) on the south tower were gone 2 weeks before the line up even began. =(

I think a bunch of people did get jipped though, especially if they didn't study the entire floor plan. Some of the kitchen plans are not practical at all.. (not all the kitchens looked like the ones on display.. those were the good ones). :rukidding:

After I saw the floorplans, I chuckled and that disregarded the entire project. Not having nice rectangular units bugs me a lot (I did look into why the building is shaped the way it is so I expected as much before the floorplans were released). Waiting to see how the housing situation turns out to decide whether it's better to rent or buy.

The scaled down appliances are called 'european style' or 'condo sized'

It was something I wasn't aware of until my gf told me. A lot of the smaller 1BR condos nowadays will use that because it saves space. Make sure you ask if they're full sized appliances because a condo sized range isn't even big enough to fit a turkey into the oven :lol

Just an fyi for peeps asking regarding appliances: Industry standard on appliances: 24" for 1 bedroom, 32" for 2 bed +
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And nothing says "I don't have a real home" like cooking on a 24" stove. That's what we use in all the 1 bedrooms and most of the 2's in our rental building. Our apartment has the full 30"(not 32) and its a night and day difference.

The apartment sized fridges and stoves are crap. They are built like crap and work like crap. Same with the smaller fridges. I'm sure there are a higher end unit out there that we obviously aren't in the market for, but I haven't seen them personally.

Myself, whenever I look at developments such as these I think if I wanted to buy something, don't I want to live in something more than what is available in a typical rental one bedroom?

I don't think there will be social housing in this project as the floors 1-6 will be retail and commercial

Yeah as per the project i believe both 1 & 2 BR uses the same 24" appliances.

They definitely aren't your run of the mill cheapest GE kind. They are the better "blomberg" ones with a few bell and whistle features

I'm surprised people are so eager to buy pre-sale condos to live in (lots of younger people actually want to live in it). The fine print allows the developer to modify your suite as they construct the building, or reduce your square footage etc.

People test drive cars and do thorough research online, but only go take a look at the floor plan for a purchase that is, at a minimum, 5 times the value and a 2-3 year wait :fuckthatshit:

they're keeping some units for market rental

I don't think having a few units of social (or non-market rental) housing is as bad as one may think. People tend to adapt to their surroundings and if you're a small fish in a big lake of well-to-do yuppies, you're likely to keep a low profile and try to blend in.

In fact, having some people on social assistance living in a building with well off people will only motivate them to improve their lives.
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