Is it now time to rethink Condominium Presale Programs?

This year marks the 55th year during which I have been involved with the development of condominium projects. I started as an architect designing a project in Ottawa while working for Irving Grossman in Toronto . I then joined CMHC where I helped obtain approval for the first condominiums on leased land in Canada (South Shore False Creek). I was subsequently involved with dozens of condominium projects, first with Narod Developments, and then as a developer and planning/development consultant. 

Presale condominiums really didn't become popular until the mid-80s. When I first started in this business, there was no such thing as condominium presale programs. Developers would design a project, undertake market studies, fina a lender to finance the project, and start building. They would start selling three or four months before completion from a model suite on a lower floor of the building.

I can remember when presale programs first became popular. They were the creation of a brilliant Toronto advertising/marketing executive named Stan Kates who started with a project by Tridel on Bay Street in Toronto. He came up with the concept of 'priority marketing' which invited buyers to get on a list so that they would be allowed to purchase a unit in the project. It was a high-pressured approach that included a sales trailer with no door handle, announcements over a loudspeaker each time a unit was sold, and so on. 

What is the definition of Selling? After witnessing condominium presale programs I often quibbed that selling something you have to somebody who needs it is not selling. But selling something you don't have, to somebody who doesn't need it, that's selling!  And that's what presale condominiums are all about. Selling something that doesn't exist to somebody who didn't even know he needed it!

I wrote about this ten years ago when the provincial government was considering the introduction of the SVT and I was writing a weekly column for the Vancouver Courier. 

https://www.vancouverisawesome.com/courier-archive/opinion/speculating-on-a-speculation-tax-3012291

Last year, I elaborated on this history in a blogpost following a CBC radio interview during which I questioned the need for lenders to require presales given that so few projects were proceeding.

https://gellersworldtravel.blogspot.com/2025/08/cbc-early-edition-ways-to-advance.html

The investor presale market is dead. Recently it was reported that presale condominiums are down 95% in Toronto, and the situation is not much better here. According to realtor Steve Saretsky, "there have only been 121 condo units sold in Metro Vancouver this quarter. Down from a peak of nearly 6000 quarterly sales back in the bull market."

Builders are being increasingly cautious about launching new projects and are now focusing on homes for end-users - people who plan to live in them - rather than investors. This is because the investor market is dead. Yes dead.

Why? Because of a plethora of government taxes and initiatives intended to get 'speculators' out of the market. These included the Foreign Buyers Tax (and subsequent ban), Empty Home Tax (in Vancouver), Speculation and Vacancy Tax (SVT), restrictions on short term rentals, an anti-flipping tax, etc.

Furthermore, potential investors had to compete with a surge of 'purpose-built' rental projects encouraged by municipalities through density bonuses and reduced development charges and funding programs offered by senior levels of government.

'End-users don't want to buy years before completion. The other reason projects are not proceeding is that most 'end-users' no longer want to buy a presale unit years in advance of completion. For one thing, most buyers want to see what they are getting. For another, they need to time the purchase of a new home with the sale of their existing home. And given what has happened to prices over the past years, buyers are no longer confident prices will go up. 

So what's the solution? I think it is time for lenders to go back to the future and reconsider the need for insisting on presale requirements. After all, 50 years ago most condominium projects proceeded without any requirement for presales. 

What about GST, DCCs? While eliminating the GST on new units (I was president of UDI Canada when the GST was first introduced in 1991) as well as the HST in Ontario will definitely help the condo markets, as would reducing DCCs and taxes that discourage investors, until lenders start doing their own proper underwriting, rather than rely on presale performance, I don't think we are going to see many new projects launched in the year(s) ahead.

I recently discussed this Jami Makin at Business in Vancouver 

https://www.biv.com/news/bc-experts-weigh-in-whether-the-condo-presale-model-is-obsolete-12069541

And Monte Stewart. https://www.connectcre.ca/stories/condo-project-lenders-must-relax-presale-requirements-geller/?_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8MaqfQnVQoTKxCSx7_IM46FVAnJFG4aFKJEa3Bgkv605jaIVyVaWnR8C2tHifzMpYQvwipslNkuSK1FmWRt0-C5VgOyQ&_hsmi=411870911&utm_campaign=Connect%20CRE%20News%3A%20Canada&utm_content=411870911&utm_medium=email&utm_source=hs_email

To conclude, while eliminating presale requirements would mean developers and lenders would have greater difficulty testing the market, and more units would likely be unsold upon completion, this would allow many projects that are currently stalled to proceed. It would mean more jobs for those in the construction industry, more tax revenues for the province and municipalities, and over the long term a healthier, less distorted condominium market. I say less distortion since the reason we have seen so many small units in new projects is not simply due to shrinkflation. It is because those were the units that appealed to investors. And now they are gone.

I look forward to hearing what others have to say. 

Gwynne Dyer on the war in Iran.

When I woke up to the news on February 28 that the United States and Israel had initiated coordinated strikes against Iran, I feared this would not go well. I wrote as much on Facebook and was severely criticized for saying so. 

Since then, I have become increasingly disturbed by the loss of innocent lives on all sides, and the incredible damage in Iran, Israel, and other middle east countries. I despise Trump and Netanyahu for causing this war.

Today I came across this article by Gwynne Dyer who knows much more about the history of middle east conflicts and the current situation than me. I found it most disturbing. But, at the risk of upsetting those who think Trump and Netanyahu are to be applauded, I am reprinting it here.

Another Forever War: Fanatics, an Obsessive, and a Belligerent Fool

By Gwynne Dyer

 

We don’t have to look very far to find a useful historical analogy for the current crisis in the Middle East. In 1967 Egypt closed the Strait of Tiran to Israeli ships, and Israel replied with a surprise air attack that destroyed almost the entire Egyptian air force on the ground.

 

Israel followed up with a ground offensive that reached the Suez Canal – which then remained closed for the next eight years. Could something like this happen at the Strait of Hormuz now? Of course it could. In fact, at this point in the confrontation in the Gulf it will require a great deal of forbearance on both sides to avoid it.

 

Unfortunately, forbearance is a virtue conspicuously absent on either side. US President Donald Trump let himself be talked into a surprise ‘decapitation’ attack on Iran by his Israeli partner, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanhyahu, but it did not deliver the promised results. Dozens of Iranian leaders were killed, but the regime did not collapse.

 

So now Trump is desperately looking for a way to get out of the war he started without losing face, but his only available method for putting pressure on Iran is endless escalation. Israel, meanwhile, is determined to press on until the entire Iranian regime – or if necessary Iran’s whole economy – is destroyed.

 

And while the United States and Israel must bear the main responsibility for this increasingly bloody mess, Iran is also behaving badly.

 

Many of the surviving Iranian leaders have lost close family members in what can reasonably be called a treacherous American attack (the US was in the midst of negotiations with Iran). Now they believe that their control of the Strait of Hormuz gives them the upper hand in the struggle, and they are in a vengeful mood.

   

Despite Trump’s ludicrous claims to the contrary, there is no deal on the table, no meaningful negotiations of any kind underway. The Iranian leaders who are in power now are only there because the Americans and Israelis killed everybody more senior than them. They want to watch their enemies twist in the wind for a while before they deign to talk to them.

 

This is almost as childish and brutal as Trump’s threat to “unleash Hell” on Iran if its leaders do not bend to his will, and that is not an empty threat. He has promised to destroy Iran’s electrical power industry, its oil and gas resources, even its desalination facilities. That will mean no electricity, no income, and precious little water for a country of 92 million people.

 

Iran has made counter threats of the same sort, except that the United States is beyond its reach and so instead it promises to inflict the same misery on America’s regional allies: Saudi Arabia, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and of course Israel.

 

These actions are all crazily disproportionate to the issues at stake, but there is a difference between the United States and Israel, which are fully capable of carrying out this programme of mass destruction, and the Iranians, who lack the means to do the whole job. However, the longer-term consequence of that scale of destruction is probably a ‘forever war’

 

Are the Iranians willing to accept the wholesale destruction of their country’s economy in exchange for doing only major damage in return – especially when that damage is mostly being done to Israel’s and America’s local allies, not to the perpetrators themselves? The wisest course would be to stop now, but nobody in this game is showing much wisdom.

 

The people making decisions in Iran are grief-stricken true believers who think it is their religious duty to oppose evil at any cost. Yielding to the demands of the Great Satan is unthinkable, however grave the consequences of resistance may be.

 

Netanyahu is not fanatical, but he is obsessive. He first warned Israelis that Iran was  “three to five years” away from getting nuclear weapons in 1992. He issued the same warning in 1995 (“3 to 5 years”), in 1996 (“extremely close”), 2012 (“a few months”), 2015, 2018, 2023 and 2025. This year he finally got somebody to listen, although Iran still has no nuclear weapons.

 

And Trump is beside himself with rage and fear: “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President Donald J. Trump.”

 

Trump knows he has been suckered into Netanyahu’s war, and he sees defeat looming in the mid-term election this November. The only exit he can see is a military victory that grows less likely by the day. Escalation is his only hope, and we all know where that can end.

Happy April Fool's Day

For as long as I can remember, April Fool's Day has been my second favourite day of the year. (The first is the anniversary of the day I was born.)  I have always enjoyed April Fool's Day pranks and carried out a few of my own.

In the late 1990s, I undertook an apartment development in Kerrisdale, known as Elm Park Place. Prince Charles had recently visited the the city, and rather than a conventional marketing advertisement, The Vancouver Courier allowed me to create an article reporting that during his recent visit, the Prince was rumoured to have purchased a Kerrisdale condominium near a park. 

A number of my purchasers phoned our office to question whether he had bought at Elm Park place. However, my favourite call was from one purchaser who was furious that I would sell to a member of the royal family without consulting the other buyers. "How are we going to afford all the extra security" she asked?

The following year I still had a couple of units left and wrote an 'advertorial' that the provincial government had secretly approved a SkyTrain extension along West 41st with a station next to my project. A surprising number of people were fooled, including one of my daughter's Crofton House classmates who brought in a copy of the Courier as her 'show and tell' story. 

"There's going to be a SkyTrain to Crofton House" she told her classmates. My daughter explained that this wasn't true. It was just one of her dad's April Fools' Day jokes. Unfortunately, the girl had never heard of April Fools' Day.

In 2013 I was developing Hollyburn Mews, a small infill project in West Vancouver. It had been highly controversial with over 150 people writing letters or speaking in opposition. But it was a approved by a 4-3 vote and construction was underway. Once again, I saw an opportunity to market the project and have some fun. Below is an advertorial I purchased in the North Shore News:

    Vancouver developer Michael Geller has been in secret discussions with members of the West Vancouver Council appointed Upper Lands Working Group regarding a proposal to blanket much of the property above the 1200 foot level with duplexes and coach houses linked by a network of gondolas. The housing would be similar to his development that is just now being completed on Esquimalt Avenue, across from West Vancouver United Church.

     While Geller was reluctant to comment on the record, he admitted to attending recent meetings of the Upper Lands Working Group. He observed that given West Vancouver’s changing demographics, cottage-style duplexes and coach houses are a very desirable form of housing. He added that he thinks West Vancouver has thousands of acres covered in trees, especially in the Upper Lands, which should be converted to housing.  If Geller’s proposal is approved by Council, West Vancouver’s population could double over the next two decades.

     Geller is no stranger to controversial developments. In 1989 he managed the failed Spetifore Lands proposal that was rejected by Delta Council following 27 nights of Public Hearings. Since then he has been involved with two other mountainside developments at Furry Creek and SFU’s UniverCity on Burnaby Mountain.

   Metro Vancouver`s Director of Planning Brent Bartholomew applauded the proposal. He said building on mountainsides is preferable to building on farmlands. He also liked Geller’s proposal to link the new housing to Dundarave and Ambleside villages with a network of gondolas similar to those proposed at SFU.

    He noted that for far too long West Vancouver has been an enclave for the rich and very rich. By adding 14,000 new homes in the Upper Lands it should be possible to accommodate more lower and middle income households, including the children and parents of the rich and very rich.

     Councillor Craig Cameron, one of two council members on the Upper Lands Working Group, said it was premature to comment on Geller’s massive proposal. “The Working Group has only just started its deliberations” he said, although he acknowledged more projects like Hollyburn Mews might be preferable to  the sprawling monster homes being built around the District.

     Geller will be presenting his proposal to Council at its meeting tomorrow on April 1^st. aka April Fools’ Day!  

Unfortunately, many readers did not get to the end and became most incensed. As a result, I had to purchase space in the following week's edition to apologize!

In 2014 I spent April Fool's Day in Odessa Ukraine. I was suprised to discover that April Fool's Day is a big deal in the city, featuring a Humorina Festival and parade through the town.

Last year, as the war in Ukraine continued, and with everything else going on, I wrote that April Fool's Day had been cancelled in Odessa and Vancouver. As CBC Early Edition host Stephen Quinn quibbed, with so many foolish things happening in the world, April Fool's Day pranks seemed superfluous. Here's hoping we can get back to having a bit more fun in years to come.

https://gellersworldtravel.blogspot.com/2025/04/april-fools-day-is-canceled-in-odessa.html

HAPPY APRIL FOOL'S DAY.

Anniversary Weekend at Poets Cove Resort - Pender Island February 1, 2026

The lodge building at Poets Cove. Unfortunately the lower level marina pub was closed but the spa and restaurant were open.

A view looking towards the separate structure where a cafe and second outdoor pool are located

Introduction.

Sally and I met at a party at her apartment on February 1, 1976. I can remember it as if it was yesterday. At the time she was living with Maxine and I immediately liked both of them since Maxine was just like me, and Sally was the exact opposite. (I suspect I made the right choice, although I do enjoy getting together with Maxine whenever I am in London.)  

While we got married on December 3 five years later, we celebrate both dates as anniversaries.

Since there wasn't anything in my diary for the weekend and February 1st was the 50th anniversary of the day we met, I proposed a last minute weekend getaway. I also like to mix work and pleasure, so I proposed  two nights at Poets Cove, a resort that I have often thought would be a model for a resort which we are planning in the Furry Creek community. We booked the ferries and the resort for Friday and Saturday nights at an exceptionally low winter rate.

It was therefore a bit of a shock when, on Thursday afternoon, I received an email from a colleague to tell me that there was now a waiting list for my forthcoming Friday evening Terminal City Club dinner talk on the Downtown Eastside's past and future! I had agreed to do this last year, but didn't put it in my calendar, and completely forgot about it. Fortunately, a colleague with considerable experience owning and renovating SROs in the DTES agreed to fill in for me. Thanks Robert!

Poets Cove. The Poets Cove Resort & Spa on Pender Island is generally considered to be the Gulf Islands' premier luxury resort. As noted on the Tripadvisor website, it is tucked away in Bedwell Harbour and offers a combination of 22 well-appointed Lodge Rooms, 9 Villas and 15 Cottages. The resort also has a spa and offers a full-service 110-slip deep-moorage marina and a Canadian point of entry customs office for CanPass users.

The resort is on the South Island, about a 22 minute drive from the Otter Bay Ferry Terminal. Unfortunately, there is no signage along the route to let you know you are heading in the right direction. There isn't even a sign just before you need to make a sharp right hand turn into the driveway. I suspect I am not the first person to drive right past the resort, and did suggest to the weekend manager that it would be a good gesture to add a couple of signs on trees along the route and at the turn. If nothing else, it's good marketing!

We decided to stay in the main lodge where there are well-appointed rooms but no suites. We booked a standard king bedroom and it was just fine. It had many attractive design features including a toilet separated from the vanity and bathtub. There was also a large separate walk-in shower. The room included a small refrigerator, coffee service, and a large desk with plenty of outlets to charge things. And of course, a gas fireplace. There was also a large partially covered terrace overlooking the ocean.

The resort also offers larger two and three bedroom villas and cottages, but we didn't really need that much space. Also, I liked the idea of being able to walk down the corridor to the dining room that served breakfast, lunch and dinner.(My daughter and some friends and children did book a cottage last summer and very much enjoyed it.)

 

Some of the larger villas and cottages have their own hot tubs.

Some of the villas that offer two and three bedroom accommodation

The restaurant menu was limited, but the choice was varied and the food was very good. I highly recommend the seafood chowder and west coast pasta with mussels, scallops in the shell, salmon, shrimp in a cream sauce. The first night I ordered the striploin steak on the chef's recommendation, and he was right. It came with a delightful sauce. Prices were very reasonable.

Next to the restaurant was a cozy bar area where an intriguing menu was offered including seasoned popcorn, yes popcorn, devilled eggs with smoked tuna, olives, excellent chicken wings

While the dining room was empty when I took this early morning photo, it was generally full when we enjoyed breakfast and dinners

The spa features this hot tub set amongst the rocks and also a steam shower set into the rocks.

Although the spa was open, it was fully booked for the weekend and I was unable to have a massage, which I would have liked since since earlier in the day the price of gold and silver had crashed and the TSE was down 3.3%. 

When I booked the accommodation I asked whether I needed to make restaurant reservations but didn't think to ask if I needed to reserve spa facilities. I suggested to the front desk they might mention this to future guests, especially when the spa has limited staff.

A view of the children's pool which was closed for the winter

Since it is winter, other facilities were not open including a lower level pub, cafe and children's outdoor pool. Also, the tennis court was too wet to play. There is golf on the island near where the ferry comes in, but unfortunately there was so much rain the course was closed when we hoped to play. 

Notwithstanding these shortcomings, Poets Cove and Pender Island was a most enjoyable place for a romantic anniversary weekend. There are some very nice shops and facilities on the island including another pub where sadly we missed their first Friday night Drag Show, and a community centre where a belly-dancing event was held Saturday night. There is also a winery, cidery, and distillery. (Given the weather and driving conditions, we preferred to simply walk down the corridor to the restaurant where we didn't have to worry about having too much to drink.

This summer we will hopefully return and enjoy more of what Poets Cove has to offer. But I can highly recommend the place for a weekend getaway, especially in off-season when the rates are very reasonable. You can find details here: poetscove.com 

Another photo from the website. 

Vancouver Sun: How B.C. real estate is shaping up for the year ahead. December 20, 2025

During the past year, I was often asked what I thought would happen to Vancouver’s housing market. My response was simple. There is no Vancouver housing market.

There is a downtown highrise market which differs from the Fraser Valley townhouse market. Similarly, there are rental housing markets and ownership markets catering to first-time buyers, move-up buyers and last-time buyers.

That said, industry associations and experts often generalize about overall sales, housing starts and prices.

At the end of 2024, the B.C. Real Estate Association (BCREA) predicted realtors would enjoy a 13 per cent sales jump in 2025 driven by lower mortgage rates and government policies. Prices were expected to rise modestly.

However, due to U.S. President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs announced in early February, it soon became apparent sales were falling far short of expectations and BCREA revised its outlook.

It is now estimated that 2025 will be the year during which the Lower Mainland experienced the lowest number of home sales this century.

While home sales dropped off significantly here, it was even worse in Toronto. In October, only twenty-five new condominiums were sold in the city. To put this in perspective, it is less than the number of players on the unforgettable Toronto Blue Jays baseball team.

Trump’s tariffs also impacted new housing starts. In January 2025, MLA Canada, one of B.C.’s most successful project marketing firms, predicted 125 condominium projects would launch across the Lower Mainland.

However, by year end, MLA tracked only forty-nine launches, sixty per cent below their forecast and only half the Lower Mainland’s ten-year average. However, some of these were subsequently put on hold or converted to rental.

MLA has not issued a 2026 forecast. However, it expects that the coming year could look a lot like last year. For one thing, investors are almost non-existent due to declining rents and a plethora of government policies that discourage investment.

Furthermore, Rennie Intelligence, estimates there could be 3,400 completed and unsold condominiums on the market by year end, and many more thousands still under construction but not yet sold.

In 2026, thousands of purpose-built rental units are also scheduled for completion which could further bring down rents. While this is good news for renters, it is bad news for developers.

Dozens of other condominium and rental projects have approvals in place but are not proceeding since they are no longer financially viable. This is due to a low level of consumer confidence, excessive municipal fees and high interest and construction costs.

To encourage some of these projects to get underway, Vancouver recently agreed to a myriad of measures that include reductions in development fees and engineering requirements, and deferred payments of fees.

I agree with this approach, since fees charged to condominium developers are usually passed on to new homeowners. It seems misguided to expect those who do not own homes to finance the costs of growth, rather than those who already own homes. Especially since based on 2021 Census data analyzed by SFU’s Andy Yan, nearly 50 per cent of Vancouver homeowners have no mortgage.

While condominium living offers many benefits, people moving out of these mortgage-free single-family houses are often apprehensive about moving into a development that might be run by a strata council whose president may have wanted to be prime minister of Canada but ended up overseeing eighteen townhouses.

For these reasons, I have been urging governments to make it easier to build ‘fee-simple,’ individually owned townhouses as an alternative to condominium townhouses. Although commonplace in Toronto and elsewhere around the world, they are rarely developed here.

The same applies to duplexes. Many people buy a duplex without realizing they are buying into a strata development. Even though it is made up of only two strata lots, the owners are required to abide by the rules and regulations of the Strata Property Act.

There is a ‘fee-simple’ alternative to the duplex — a ‘semi-detached’ house — one of the most common forms of housing in the U.K. and elsewhere around the world. But like fee-simple townhouses, they will not be built here until municipalities make it easier to subdivide properties into smaller lots and establish reduced permit and hook-up fees.

Now that the provincial government is aggressively mandating small-scale, multi-unit housing throughout the province, fee-simple townhouses and semi-detached homes could be attractive alternatives to strata-titled four- and six-unit multiplexes.

Although fee-simple townhouses did not become popular in 2025, another type of housing which I have often promoted in these year-end columns did finally gain popularity. I refer to factory-built modular housing which was recognized by Prime Minister Mark Carney as an effective way to build new homes.

While we will not likely see the 4,000 modular home starts promised by the Prime Minister, I agree with him and federal Housing Minister Gregor Robertson that factory production offers many benefits in terms of construction quality, speed of erection and cost effectiveness.

I would like to conclude with something completely different.

Last year, several reports surfaced linking reduced fertility rates to a lack of suitably designed and affordable family housing. The result was that Canada’s fertility rate hit a new record low of 1.25 children per woman. This did not surprise me.

For years, young couples have told me they were not having children because they could not afford family friendly two- or three-bedroom apartments. While a house with a basement mortgage-helper would be perfect, that was completely out of their price range.

To address this concern, twenty-five years ago during the planning of SFU’s UniverCity community, I proposed designing apartments with a second or third bedroom with its own door to the corridor that could serve as a basement suite equivalent.

Initially, the suite could be rented out as a mortgage-helper. Over time, as the family grew, it would revert to a second or third bedroom.

Fortunately, the City of Burnaby agreed to change its zoning so that a percentage of the apartments could include these lock-off suites.

Former Tyee journalist Monte Paulsen, who sadly died in 2024, called them ‘basement suites-in-the-sky’ and they have subsequently become quite popular. An increasing number of municipalities now allow them.

In 2026, it is my hope that more developers will consider incorporating lock-off suites in their apartment buildings, especially since lenders now recognize the rental income when determining mortgage amounts. This could allow more households to enjoy future holiday seasons with their children.

On this happy note, my best wishes for a healthy and prosperous 2026.

Michael Geller FCIP, RPP, MLAI, Ret. Architect AIBC is a Vancouver-based planner and real estate consultant. He also serves on SFU’s adjunct faculty. You can reach him at geller@sfu.ca and find his blog at www.gellersworldtravel.blogspot.com.

 

My 2025 Holiday Greeting Card - Wishing for better planning in 2026.

While my 12 ideas for the 12 days of Christmas may be getting a bit tiresome, I'm pleased to offer these ideas related to projects with which I have been involved over the past 55 years! Happy Holidays and best wishes for 2026.