Howard Chai

I went down the rabbit hole this weekend and found concrete evidence that Jeffrey Epstein was in Vancouver from March 17-20 in 2014. I pieced together his full trip, including what room(s) he booked, where he went, and who he met with: howardchai.substack.com/p/jeffrey-epst…

The City of Surrey recently paid $5.2 million for a TOA development site that was under foreclosure, paid double the assessed value, and is planning to instead use the site as a new park. #vanRE Full story: howardchai.substack.com/p/city-of-surr…

QuadReal has initiated foreclosure against Keltic's 27-acre Brighouse West Business Park in Richmond. QR sold it to Keltic in 2021 for $300M + provided the financing. Property has been on the market for a year already. #vanRE Full details: howardchai.substack.com/p/quadreal-kel…

Weed Bros & An Art Guy Convince The Ontario Government To Come Up With Something About Condos Gotta be a sure thing right? Sorry to be cynical but I have to wonder why a group with no clear Real Estate Operatons background is suddenly doing this? storeys.com/gta-rental-aff…

@DouglasTodd There are always exceptions, but the established developers are not trying to flip development sites. They would prefer to build. That’s why they’ve been shouting about costs for the past few years.

@Howard__24 HI Howard, I would guess many landowners and developers who may want to re-sell are just waiting for an upturn in the market. What think?

Metro Vancouver city councils have approved a whopping 132k housing units. But developers haven't started to build them. Much money can be made by monetizing such "entitlements" through a resale or flip. 1/2 #vanpoli #vanre #bcpoli vancouversun.com/opinion/column…

Real estate insolvencies are on the rise, and the worst isn’t over theglobeandmail.com/real-estate/ar…

Canada’s solution to the housing crisis: Build homes so expensive that local households can’t afford to buy them Then have private equity and the government step in to buy thousands of them, and call it a success story storeys.com/gta-rental-aff…

My latest for @storeyspub is about the Government of Ontario (through the Building Ontario Fund) partnering with a private capital firm to buy completed unsold condos in the GTA and convert them to rental. Could we see something similar in BC? #vanRE storeys.com/gta-rental-aff…

Development industry comes out against B.C.’s planned tax hikes theglobeandmail.com/real-estate/va…

Every journalist today

Here's my second story for @globeandmail, which is about BC's proposed PST expansion. #vanRE This is a bit different from other upfront costs because there is a back-end impact on property values, which affects the amount of debt developers can access. theglobeandmail.com/real-estate/va…

NEW: Vancouver developer ASPAC has cancelled their Signature at River Green condo project in Richmond, citing market conditions. ASPAC started returning deposits (with interest) this week, according to a notice shared with me. The intention is to redesign the project. #vanRE

The #vanRE insolvency story I teased earlier this week is Wave Developments, who is facing insolvency on The Fifteen and Chroma, two projects in Vancouver that have completed construction. Full details: howardchai.substack.com/p/wave-develop…

If you did a 77-Point Game Draft in September, Bam would not have been one of the first 50 picks.

@gambled0r Nope!

@Howard__24 Its on oak ;)

A developer is facing insolvency on two projects in Vancouver, with $100 million owing in total. Notably, both projects have completed construction. #vanRE Subscribe to my Substack to get the story delivered to you (later this week): howardchai.substack.com

@miriamjw @BcarmB I don’t believe so!

@Howard__24 @BcarmB I think I may know who this is. Do they have a third project that hasn’t launched yet?

@Sumskillz Bigger developers can, but it’s much harder for smaller developers. It’s the smaller/inexperienced developers that are in trouble.

@Howard__24 so these firms can't sit on 100-150+ unsold apartments for a few years? What changed? Developers always held lots of unsold units. Is it all the buyers who can't close? busting the math?

@SteveSaretsky Yup. Seems to be a growing trend.

@Howard__24 Even completed projects are in the crosshairs these days