It's gonna end up like oakridge, build on top of the mall :lol. Ivanhoe is sitting on prime land, they wont be giving it up.

burnaby councillors are NDPers on crack :lawl:

The most frustrating thing here is Mrhappyslip's verb conjugation, and poor use of English.

I see it more like Marine Gateway but several magnitudes larger; they have a Cineplex and a T&T with enough parking to suit, all on a relatively small foot print.

We also have to face that the generation of kids right now aren't as car obsessed/reliant as my generation (born up to mid 80's) was.

And then you'd have to ask yourself -- has anyone not living close by Marine Gateway ever set foot at Marine Gateway just to stroll around and check things out? I sure as heck have never set foot there just because, but I have been to Metrotown on countless occassions for no good reason other than just go there for a stroll, and many a times, I find myself spending a bit of money while I'm there for whatever.

^Marine Gateway? Just once, and then I found out they charge for parking.

At a mall.

WTF.

oh and LOL if you think this Metrotown demolition will be seen through with it's ridiculous 40 year timeline

As if anyone planning this will still be employed there/alive. Not to mention economic cycles. It seems like everyone is on crack here thinking we're just going to go from Condo boom to condo boom for the next 100 years.

As soon as I found out it was paid parking. I never go there again. Why should I pay for parking when I am already going to spending there (beside there is nothing in Marine Gateway worth going. T&T and Cinplex only and both have other locations with "free parking").

Is all supply and demand. As long as there are more people moving to Vancouver housing will always be expensive.

They do it in phases exactly the same way there doing Brentwood Mall. The mall is still open and there building a new mall and a bunch of towers around it. Once that's done they'll start taking out parts of the mall and building more mall and more towers.

It doesn't happen overnight but a 10 or even 15 year timeline is more realistic then 40. I think the first phase at Brentwood was 3 years? I can't remember exactly it's been a while since I bid it but it hasn't been much longer than that.

Look at it from Ivanhoe's perspective. Traditional brick and mortar's suffering a slow death. Foot traffic's down and there's only a handful of players that could justify the rent. The retail space for what use to be Target, is now a furniture store; I've never stepped foot in it and don't expect to. How long do you expect them to stick around? Were they really on top of their list to occupy that space? One day when Sears shuts down, who's going to take up that space?

The supermall concept's been working up until the last decade. It certainly doesn't look viable long term in today's world. If anything, this plan is a way for Ivanhoe to deleverage their portfolio. And you'll likely see most places follow similar models.

What they need to do is get Amazon to build a massive warehouse/fulfillment centre in place of Metrotown, so we can get all our stuff within 10 minutes of ordering it.

The way of the future, folks.

Correct, that's the pocket.

The idea with Marine Gateway, and other future developments, really is to service those in the immediate area; quite similar to many other major international cities, especially those with expensive real estate pricing. Marine Gateway doesn't really care that you're not coming from Burnaby to check things out and spend $5. The landscape of the city is changing quite rapidly, and I'm afraid we won't be going back to how things were when we were growing up. In 10 years, destination retail centers probably won't exist as we know them now.

This. People want the cheapest, people are lazy. The advent of online shopping allows retailers to get to both of these, and on the cheap too. And the kids today growing up with online shopping will be your mass consumers of the next 50 years, so things will be tailored to their preferences. But when grocery stores are offering online shopping for produce, its a pretty clear indication of where things are headed.

Retail is definitely becoming fractured, mirroring the widening income gap. High end retailers are setting records in sales each year, while Dollarama and Walmart are killing the low end. The only retailer left for the middle class is Costco.

Malls owned by Cadillac Fairview are doing quite well, but they have high end tenants such as Holt Renfrew and Nordstrom. Ivanhoe Cambridge is more mid tier, while Rio Can is starting to suffer.

It's all about the stores as opposed to the space created by a mall. Park Royal's outdoor village seems to be doing well. They have a good mix of stores and parking is sufficient. This is what Ivanhoe Cambridge should model the redevelopment of Metrotown on.

High end retailers will suffer when cheap money and hot RE market party is over.

the market will never go down only stabilize. The sooner you buy the better off you will be.

How long do you think it (low cost of borrowing+hot RE market) will last? Many people I talk to seem convinced that as long as the population increase keeps momentum (50k per annum I believe is the figure) that the RE market will continue as it has been for the past 7-10 years, irrespective of interest rate hikes to come.

^ Fire & Fury :troll:

Get 2 jobs...take your parents equity and get in.

We recently made our first purchase at Wall Centre Central Park (Kingsway & Boundary). Compromised a little on distance to work so we could buy new. Everything we saw around Mt. Pleasant was old and beaten to shit. Not much new and whatever did pop up that was in the 2-6 year range resulted in a crazy bidding war with one place ending at just over $1000/sq ft and 120k over asking.

My question was out of curiosity to hear what other people think who've been living here longer and have seen the market evolve over the past 20 or 30 years.

Long term, as long as demand is greater than supply prices will raise.
This doesnt mean that prices wont or cannot go down in the future. Whar happens in the next 5 or 10 years or 20 years? Best anyone can do is an educated guess.

I honestly think online grocery shopping is just about the stupidest possible online shopping idea in existence. Do people not give a damn about the quality / condition of the produce they purchase? If I can't personally inspect the produce before I buy, I'm not gonna buy them. And if the stuff doesn't look fresh, I am not going to buy them either.

LOL this. For cheap stuff I don't really mind buying online but produce is I have to see it and feel it first.

Obviously you've never tried it. Save-on wouldn't give you rotting produce because their reputation is on the line; it's not some dodgy asian produce trying to cut corners for profit. They want you to develop a habit to keep using them again and again.

$5.00 delivery charge, which is nothing considering your time and gas to drive there and back. And they deliver based on your selected time slot of your choosing (such as early morning or late evening).

Mind me asking what you got and paid?

Looking in the area too. Cheer

Raised in East Van. My dad bought his first house in 1979 - a bungalow deep in East Van on a busy street for about 80K. Sold it in 1985 and upgraded to a brand new Vancouver special with full basement suite which cost 155K. That house is now worth over 1.5 million.

Now, there was a dip in the market in the mid 80s because of high interest rates. But the market started to recover in the late 1980s and to my recollection, it didn't really slump until about 2008. During the 1990s, demand for houses was pretty healthy due to immigration from Hong Kong. It's just that there was more supply because there were still undeveloped areas of Metro Vancouver that had room for detached houses such as Westwood Plateau, Terra Nova, and areas of Surrey.

In most markets, real estate tracks inflation in the long term. The only way Vancouver goes down in the long term is if it becomes undesirable. Given things like climate change and decreasing political stability, there are far worse places in the world than Canada and Vancouver.

We started ordering groceries from Spud recently. I was very skeptical at first (since I'm cheap and Chinese), but because we're juggling two young kids right now, my wife wanted to give them a try. They're not cheap, but the produce that has been picked for us has been very high quality. Too many people here are used to B-grade produce from run down ethnic grocers.