Whistler real estate, and trying to gauge the Olympic effect'
Friday, January 29th, 2010 6:01 pm By Canwest Global
VANCOUVER – Let the sales pitch begin.
With the 2010 Olympics at Vancouver and Whistler's doorstep, one local real estate insider has crunched a decade's-worth of Whistler sales results to make the case that the 2010 Olympics have given the resort's real estate a boost, and that – despite the recent global recession – property there is still a good investment.
"I still think there will be a good positive side to the Whistler story," Rudy Nielsen, president of research firm Landcor Data Corp., said in an interview.
Nielsen chronicles a doubling of Whistler's property values and widening sphere of international buyers there over the last decade to support his case.
Others are skeptical that the massive free-advertising campaign of the Olympics is having more of an effect on Whistler real estate than the improvement of transportation infrastructure on the Sea to Sky corridor, but Nielsen believes the exposure has to count for something.
"I think people will realize that this is a world-class place to be, and not only Whistler but Vancouver and British Columbia," he said.
Landcor, in a report released this week, has compiled a list of trends from examining the resort community's sales as recorded by the B.C. Land Titles office.
Between 2000 and 2010, with the 2008 financial crisis that dented markets everywhere notwithstanding, Whistler saw 8,990 property sales among the 13,134 residential properties within the resort.
And the Landcor data records dramatic price increases over the decade, with a lot of the gains coming in the first half of the decade.
The average price for a condominium, Landcor found, rose 101 per cent over the decade to $380,000 by 2010.
Townhouse average values increased 104 per cent to $677,000 over the same time period.
Detached homes, Landcor said, saw the biggest gain, rising 141 per cent to hit an average of almost $1.4 million in 2010.
And Whistler's global circle has become wider, the Landcor data suggests, with the resort recording owners from 40 different countries compared with 13 countries just a few years ago.
Granted, the number of international owners outside of North America is still small, just 556, but Nielsen sees it as significant that the audience for the resort has widened. Some 83 owners are from South Pacific locales, three are from the Middle East, 13 hail from the Caribbean and even one from Africa.
In Whistler right now, Lisa Bjornson, general manager of the Whistler Real Estate Company, said it is difficult to tell what effect the Olympics are having on the market, but there is an assumption they will.
Bjornson said the community's real estate counterparts in Park City Utah, host of alpine events for the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics, told them to expect sales to dry up in the three months leading up to and three months following the Games, but agents have been making sales.
Bjornson added that the last quarter of 2009 saw Whistler's real estate sales recover from the downturn that hit in the last half of 2008.
And Bjornson said agents in her office have been booking appointments with clients for showings during the Olympics, so they do expect to be open for business.
"We just don't know who, if anybody, is buying after the Games as a result of the exposure yet," Bjornson said. "We just know that a lot of people are going to be here."
However, University of B.C. real estate expert Tsur Somerville expects that the gains Whistler is seeing come more from the improved Sea to Sky Highway and not the additional exposure.
"I'm not saying it's zero," Somerville said in an interview, but he is skeptical that the Games will give Whistler better exposure to the market of buyers likely to buy ski-resort property than it has already had.
Somerville, director of the centre for urban economics and real estate at the Sauder School of Business at UBC, released a report, co-authored with PhD candidate Jake Wetzel, on the effects that staging Olympics have had on property prices in host cities.
In their work, Somerville and Wetzel found that being an Olympic host city did not bump property prices up any more than surrounding, non-host locations.
Any gains, Somerville said, were more attributable to general economic conditions that were shared by non-host regions, or as a result of infrastructure improvements independent of the Games.
However, for Nielsen, who is also involved in developing recreational real estate with his other companies, a bit of a sales pitch can't hurt.
"[B.C.] is the greatest place on earth to live and I'm trying to promote it the best I can," he said.
depenner@vancouversun.com
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Local NewsReal estate boom coming: report Local investor predicts increase in demand, price two to five years after Olympics
Real estate boom coming: reportLocal investor predicts increase in demand, price two to five years after Olympics
March 10,2010 Jennifer Miller jmiller@whistlerquestion.com
According to a recent report by a local real estate investor, there will be more interest in the Whistler market and an increase in real estate values because of the 2010 Olympics — but it will take two to five years for those benefits to be realized.
In the short-term future, the local real estate market will likely remain quieter than a non-Olympic year, said Peter Gorski, owner of Westbound Ventures. It seems to be normal that sales slow down before and after the event in most host cities, he said.
In Park City, Utah, which is often regarded as the closest comparison to Whistler, sales slowed down for up to a year before and a year after the resort hosted the 2002 Winter Games, Gorski said.
According to Bill Malone, president of the Park City Chamber of Commerce, the real estate market was “sketchy” in Park City for about 16 months after the Games. Potential buyers were uncertain about whether prices were good, bad, represented the “new” post-Olympic prices in the months following the event, he told The Question last month.
Gorski said it will take time for the increased tourism expected because of the Games to translate into a greater demand for real estate in Whistler and increased prices. For example, people who visited Whistler for the first time because of the Olympics will likely “fall in love” with the resort over the course of a year or two and then decide to buy property, he said.
“Research would show that it’s probably in a two- to five-year timeframe from now,” he said.
While Park City saw real estate prices jumped by as much as 250 per cent by 2007, Gorski and at least a couple of local realtors agree that it’s unlikely Whistler will see that kind of increase. Other factors were at play for Park City, such as a “huge real estate boom” in the rest of the U.S. during the same time, Gorski said.
“I personally think the impact here will be less,” he said. “Whistler will outperform other similar real estate markets in the region or in the country, but probably not to that extent.”
Values have come down in Park City since 2007, he added.
Longtime local realtor Craig Mackenzie includes a graph of average real estate prices in Park City from 2003 to 2009 in his blog (whistler-resort-real-estate.com). Mackenzie writes that he doesn’t think Whistler will see as drastic a price increase as Park City because Whistler’s post-Olympic prices are starting at a higher value.
Gorski’s 40-page report is titled The Olympic Effect: Profit From Whistler’s Next Real Estate Boom. He said he’s been doing research on the local real estate market for the past couple of years and has been “really intrigued” by what the effects might be from hosting the Games.
While much attention has been paid to how increased publicity and media exposure for Whistler through Olympic coverage will be positive for the resort, Gorski said his research instead focused on “economic fundamentals” such as the upgraded highway, Games venues, and political policies that will help bring more people to town.
He said he sees the “hype” about media exposure more as “speculation,” while tangibles such as new tourist attractions and data are more appealing to investors.
Improved transportation to Whistler, the appeal of Olympic venues, and the provincial government’s plan to leverage the Games by attracting more sports competitions to the sliding centre and Whistler Olympic Park will all translate into more visitors, Gorski said.
There is a “strong correlation” between the number of visitors and the value of real estate, he said.
“The more people who come here, the more people want to move here,” he said.
Real estate boom coming: reportLocal investor predicts increase in demand, price two to five years after Olympics
March 10,2010 Jennifer Miller jmiller@whistlerquestion.com
According to a recent report by a local real estate investor, there will be more interest in the Whistler market and an increase in real estate values because of the 2010 Olympics — but it will take two to five years for those benefits to be realized.
In the short-term future, the local real estate market will likely remain quieter than a non-Olympic year, said Peter Gorski, owner of Westbound Ventures. It seems to be normal that sales slow down before and after the event in most host cities, he said.
In Park City, Utah, which is often regarded as the closest comparison to Whistler, sales slowed down for up to a year before and a year after the resort hosted the 2002 Winter Games, Gorski said.
According to Bill Malone, president of the Park City Chamber of Commerce, the real estate market was “sketchy” in Park City for about 16 months after the Games. Potential buyers were uncertain about whether prices were good, bad, represented the “new” post-Olympic prices in the months following the event, he told The Question last month.
Gorski said it will take time for the increased tourism expected because of the Games to translate into a greater demand for real estate in Whistler and increased prices. For example, people who visited Whistler for the first time because of the Olympics will likely “fall in love” with the resort over the course of a year or two and then decide to buy property, he said.
“Research would show that it’s probably in a two- to five-year timeframe from now,” he said.
While Park City saw real estate prices jumped by as much as 250 per cent by 2007, Gorski and at least a couple of local realtors agree that it’s unlikely Whistler will see that kind of increase. Other factors were at play for Park City, such as a “huge real estate boom” in the rest of the U.S. during the same time, Gorski said.
“I personally think the impact here will be less,” he said. “Whistler will outperform other similar real estate markets in the region or in the country, but probably not to that extent.”
Values have come down in Park City since 2007, he added.
Longtime local realtor Craig Mackenzie includes a graph of average real estate prices in Park City from 2003 to 2009 in his blog (whistler-resort-real-estate.com). Mackenzie writes that he doesn’t think Whistler will see as drastic a price increase as Park City because Whistler’s post-Olympic prices are starting at a higher value.
Gorski’s 40-page report is titled The Olympic Effect: Profit From Whistler’s Next Real Estate Boom. He said he’s been doing research on the local real estate market for the past couple of years and has been “really intrigued” by what the effects might be from hosting the Games.
While much attention has been paid to how increased publicity and media exposure for Whistler through Olympic coverage will be positive for the resort, Gorski said his research instead focused on “economic fundamentals” such as the upgraded highway, Games venues, and political policies that will help bring more people to town.
He said he sees the “hype” about media exposure more as “speculation,” while tangibles such as new tourist attractions and data are more appealing to investors.
Improved transportation to Whistler, the appeal of Olympic venues, and the provincial government’s plan to leverage the Games by attracting more sports competitions to the sliding centre and Whistler Olympic Park will all translate into more visitors, Gorski said.
There is a “strong correlation” between the number of visitors and the value of real estate, he said.
“The more people who come here, the more people want to move here,” he said.
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