Recreational vendors hope recent sale of Kicking Horse Resort signals a new round of investment

BY FRANK O'BRIEN

Calgary-based Resorts of the Canadian Rockies Inc. has purchased the highly succesful Kicking Horse Mountain Resort - the last major B.C ski resort built in the past 25 years - near Golden, from Dutch-based Ballast Nedam. While the purchase price was not disclosed, Western Investor believes it was close to $28 million, based on post-sale filings by Ballast Nadam in Europe.

The sale could signal a long-awaited new cycle in resort investment in B.C., where there is a long list of properties on the market, some of them in trouble.

Steve Paccagnan will remain as president of Kicking Horse Mountain Resort under the new ownership. 

It remains business as usual at Kicking Horse Mountain Resort, and all existing ski packages, passes and joint agreements will continue to be honoured, according to Paccagnan.

About 400 homes have been built and sold at Kicking Horse since the development opened.

Resorts of the Canadian Rockies Inc. is one of the largest private ski resort owner/operators in North America, now owning six ski resorts across Canada, including three on the B.C. side of the Rockies. In addition to the ski resorts, Resorts of the Canadian Rockies also owns and operates a number of accommodation properties, golf courses and a central reservation agency.

Ivanhoe Cambridge speculates on Burnaby highrise beating downtown developers to the punch

BY PETER MITHAM/FRANK O'BRIEN

After a five-year hiatus the rush is back on to complete the first major office tower in Metro Vancouver - and the edge is apparently held by Ivanhoe Cambridge.

Last month, the Toronto-based development firm announced that its Metrotower III will be the first Class AAA office tower in Metro to be completed since 2007.

The $170 million building's completion is scheduled for April 2014. "We have a one-year lead on the downtown projects," said Gordon Wylie, development manager for Ivanhoe Cambridge.

Wylie is referring to triple-A towers by Oxford Properties, Bentall Kennedy and Telus, all of which are expected to complete by 2015 in the downtown core.

Wylie said Metrotower III, which was started and then stopped at the parking-level stage as the recession hit in 2008, is well placed to draw tenants, even from the downtown.

"There is a lot of lease rollovers coming up in the period before 2014 so we think we are well positioned," Wylie said. The tower is being built on spec, and Wylie said there has been interest for space that will come to market with pre-leases around $35 per square foot.

Metrotower III is being built to LEED platinum standards, which will help it attract high-end tenants, agrees Bill Elliott, a principal with Avison Young, Vancouver.

County of Paintearth - long known for big rigs and oil - will soon host Alberta's largest wind farm

BY DAVE HUSDAL

Away from Alberta's increasingly roaring truck traffic on Highway 2, the County of Paintearth might not seem like a development hot spot.

Unless, of course, you consider the energy industry, and the opportunities it presents.

In the Paintearth area, a 75-minute drive east of Red Deer, things are looking up.

Way up, in fact. As in sky-touching up. This year the area will welcome 83 huge wind turbines that will soar roughly 120 metres - the height of a 40-storey office tower - into the sky around the village of Halkirk, population 113.

They'll form the province's biggest single-phase wind farm, and provide 150 megawatts of green generation capacity, enough to power 50,000 Alberta homes.

The $357 million investment in what's known as the Halkirk Wind Power Project will add to jobs in a sparsely populated region, and should help bolster the population.

The project is being developed by Edmonton-based Capital Power, which wants to capitalize on the region's steady light-wind regime and access to major transmission lines.

While huge rotating turbines might not fly so well in the more heavily populated Highway 2 corridor between Edmonton and Calgary, the citizens of Paintearth have been welcoming, says Gary Cook, business development manager for Capital Power.

Metro housing slump won't continue and conditions will stabilize on Island and in B.C.'s Interior

BY FRANK O'BRIEN

The current downturn in Metro Vancouver's housing market won't continue into 2012, and the recession-like conditions from Vancouver Island to the Kootenays will change to a more balanced market next year.

That's the premise drawn by Western Investor from hours of interviews and conferences held over the past few weeks as experts tried to forecast an industry that not only defines Vancouver but is perhaps the most important economic engine for both the city and the province.

At the Housing Outlook 2012 conference in Vancouver last month, analysts from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. (CMHC) sketched a scenario of suprising stability in the Vancouver and B.C. market for next year.

The official forecast is for Metro Vancouver resales to rise 9 per cent and the average overall home price to increase 2.2 per cent from 2011 to $805,000. The average detached house price in the Vancouver area is expected to crack above $1.1 million in 2012.

For all of B.C., housing sales are forecast to increase 7.4 per cent, with the average price flatlining at $559,500, after a 3.1 per cent drop this year, according to CMHC.

Provincewide housing starts are expected to fall 2.5 per cent in 2012, to 26,700 units, though CMHC sees Metro Vancouver starts rising nearly 6 per cent next year to 18,000 units, led by condo and townhouses.

Residential outlook for 2012 positive for both home sellers and landlords right across the Prairies

BY DAVE HUSDAL, CALGARY
GEOFF KIRBYSON, WINNIPEG

After a slower start to 2011, housing starts are ratcheting upward in Alberta's two largest cities.

Calgary's housing starts were up in August 2011 over the same month a year ago - marking the first month in a year that single-family housing starts have increased over the previous year.

Overall, according to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation data, Calgary area housing starts were up 44 per cent to 1,237 units in August 2011, from 858 a year ago.

While that's a positive trend for builders and developers, year-to-date housing starts in the region were off 18 per cent for the first eight months of 2011 to 5,425, down from 6,641.

Single-family starts comprised 3,350 units, or a little more than 61.7 per cent of starts.

Things were also looking up in the Edmonton region in August.

Edmonton area housing starts were also up in August, from 690 starts for the month last year, to 805 units this year. That 17 per cent hike is below Calgary's, but still positive.

Discounted house prices - and Canadian developers - offer the best potential for rental investors

BY FRANK O'BRIEN

Foreclosures are accelerating in most U.S. states and the knock of the sheriff on the door is tattooing across the Sunbelt - yet one recreational developer is gambling on building in the U.S. as Canadian investors look south for bargains with positive cash-flow potential.

And there are bargains once you get past the heartbreak.

In Nevada, a staggering one out of every 11 households received a foreclosure filing in 2010; one out of every 17 did in Arizona and one out of every 18 in Florida, and it looks like it could get worse this year.

The number of U.S. homes receiving a foreclosure notice rose 33 per cent in August from July, the biggest monthly gain in four years, according to California-based RealtyTrac Inc. Banks were on track to repossess about 800,000 homes this year, but with 222,000 homes receiving a default notice in August, 2011 could be the highest on record.

"This is really the first time we've seen a significant increase in the number of new foreclosure actions," said Rick Sharga, a senior vice president at RealtyTrac. "It's still possible this is a blip, but I think it's much more likely we're seeing the beginning of a trend here. 2011 is going to be the peak."

The "bloated foreclosure pipeline now presents the greatest obstacle to a housing market recovery," said Josh Levin, a Citi Bank analyst. Across the U.S., 3.7 million more homes are in some stage of foreclosure than in a normal housing market, he said.

Western Investor's first annual pick of the top 10 towns for western Canadian real estate investors

BY WI STAFF

No. 1: Surrey

When Mayor Dianne Watts opened Surreys' $36 million City Centre library in September, it underscored what may be the smartest town for real estate investing in Western Canada. Just days earlier, Ivanhoe Cambridge had announced a $220 million expansion of its Guildford Town Centre mall.

The 77,000-square-foot library forms a key part of the giant Central City complex in Canada's 12th-largest city, the second biggest in British Columbia. The centre includes a new city hall, a new campus for Simon Fraser University and the Central City shopping mall. Close by is the sprawling new headquarters of the RCMP, the largest joint federal government/private-sector project in the Pacific Region.

The expansion of the Surrey Memorial Hospital, with a satellite campus for the University of BC, part of a $239 million care and surgery centre, is another link in the outstanding infrastructure in the fastest-growing city in B.C.

Surrey attracts 1,000 new residents every month, which convinced giant developer Concord Pacific to launch a five-tower master-planned community of 3,000 homes in the heart of Surrey's once-troubled Whalley area. More new homes were started in Surrey this year than in Vancouver, and Surrey accounts for one-third of all detached housing starts in B.C.'s Lower Mainland. Yet, at an average price of $569,000 for houses and $222,370 for condos, Surrey homes are half the price as in the City of Vancouver.

Resource agreement will let Territories keep up to 10 times more of their mining and oil royalties

BY WI STAFF

When Prime Minister Stephen Harper touched down in Whitehorse to end his annual tour of Northern Canada this August, his government had already delivered what the Yukon government had long demanded: a better deal on royalties from some of the richest resource fields in the world.

The Yukon will keep a much greater share of its resource royalties thanks to the proposed new deal, according to Yukon Premier Darrell Pasloski, who has called a fall election for this year where the agreement is expected to be a cornerstone of his campaign.

Currently, the territory can only keep the first $3 million earned annually from mining royalties. Anything more is clawed back by Ottawa. The new agreement would be far more generous, allowing the territory to keep annual resource revenue of up to $41 million.

The deal is similar to one reached earlier with the Northwest Territories (N.W.T.) and is a signal that the vast northern resources, which include gold, diamonds, oil and gas, are meant to fuel northern development.

Currently, most Yukon residents - 80 per cent of whom live in the capital of Whitehorse- rely on paycheques from various levels of government, or First Nation transfers, which make up the bulk of Yukon income.

But with the Arctic ice melting, a global push for access to resources and the potential of at least three new mines opening, the Yukon may be experiencing another private industry "gold rush" like the one that first made it famous.