Burnaby is the next municipality to undergo a construction boom with more than 30,000 new all-purpose unites and more than 4,000 secondary rental units being built. It is the largest in Burnaby’s history. The City of Burnaby believe that this is the best way to help make the Lower Mainland affordable since the price of a home and the limited amount of land available is causing prices to skyrocket and bidding wars to break out.
The scale of development is dramatically reshaping Burnaby which used to be a sleepy community built around pockets of low-density housing and neighbourhoods, but are transforming into fast-paced urban communities with towers and skyscrapers that rival Vancouver.
Around Brentwood and Gilmore there are 46 towers ranging from 25 to 65 storeys going up, and at Lougheed at least 23 towers up to 65 storeys are planned with 150,000 square feet of commercial space.
This pace of development highlights the difference between Vancouver and Burnaby. There are, at the moment, only a handful of towers going up in Vancouver. In Vancouver, red tape and lack of space make it hard to build a 40-story tower, even in the downtown core.
The fast-paced development will hopefully help the Lower Mainland become more affordable as people from all over Canada and the world want to move here since the city is located between it’s mountains and the ocean.
To reduce the cost of housing in the Lower Mainland, more apartments must be built. Rental prices will stay high so long as the vacancy rate remains low and the cost of owning will also continue to rise as long as there are substantially more people bidding on homes than there are houses to buy. It’s simple math. However, building more highrises isn’t the only way to address affordable housing.
Vancouver has focused on a diversity of housing types such as laneway houses. There is also a third option that most people don’t know about and that can help you own a home sooner: Rent To Own. This is a great opportunity if you want more space and don’t want to live in a 600-square-foot apartment.
With Rent to Own you don’t have to have a large down payment. It’s just like leasing a car. It gives you time to build equity until you can get financing from a bank. You sign a Real Estate Purchase Sales Agreement with a 5-year closing term to buy the house at a fixed rate. You only have to put a 10% down payment towards the future price of the home instead of the 20-30% most banks require.
You make regular monthly payments just like a rental but with rent-to-own, part of your monthly payment goes towards your future purchase. On top of that, you earn equity from the very start of the agreement which has increased on average in Vancouver increased by 6% a year.
If this sounds like an attractive option and you’d like to learn more get in contact with us HERE.
