The Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver announced record sales in Squamish for the month of June, despite record prices that have some worried about a disappearance of affordable housing.
June sales for attached homes, which have a benchmark price of $284,352, jumped from 15 units in June 2005 to 26 units in 2006. June sales of detached homes, which carry a benchmark price of $418,247, went up 30.4 per cent to 22 units.
"Squamish has been discovered," said ReMax Sea to Sky Realty manager Pat Place. "The whole province is just seeing phenomenal increases in real estate. We still have great value for the dollar here in Squamish."
But despite that relative value, members of the affordable housing task force are working to address what some call a local affordable housing crisis.
"It's an issue," said task force chair Corinne Lonsdale. "You can't grow industry if you don't have employees, employees need places to live. That's the crux of the whole matter. Unless you want to become a community that relies solely on commuters, well we better put our heads around how we're going to find affordable."
Lonsdale said if the rise in real estate prices could have been foreseen, Squamish would be in a much better position.
"It's too bad we didn't start on this a number of years ago, but a number of years ago no one ever envisioned what was going to happen here," said Lonsdale. "So we're behind the eight ball, there's no question about it, and I'm very concerned."
At the moment, solutions are limited, said Lonsdale. Council has requested that all new development proposals include an affordable housing component. That can be in the form of low priced units or cash in lieu, which the district would use to purchase land, hopefully from the province, said Lonsdale. Council recently passed a motion to solicit the province for local Crown land.
"If we can acquire Crown Land it becomes easier to partner with somebody else to do something that works," she said.
The task force is in the midst of gathering information to add to the already established affordable housing strategy. Upcoming discussions and forums with the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation, the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver and the Surrey Housing Authority, to name a few, will allow the task force to present the best recommendations, said Lonsdale.
Affordable housing is also on local real estate offices' agendas, said Place. ReMax is working on an affordable housing project and another is looming, said Place. And an in-house mortgage broker is considering introducing 50-years mortgages.
"What that means is first time buyers are able to come in and are able to buy their first home at an affordable monthly mortgage rate," said Place.
Despite the affordable housing downside, the booming real estate market means exciting times for the future of Squamish, said Place. There's a rise in international buyers now calling Squamish home along with an influx residents from the Fraser Valley taking advantage of the highway expansion.
And there's no sign of a slowing down of sales or rising prices.
"There's still a lot of activity happening and I see it remaining active," said Place. "And I would say in the next 18 months we'll see, again, a jump in the prices."
