Sunday, February 25, 2007

City of Surrey Development Permits - SUPPLY, SUPPLY, SUPPLY


I was curious about how many development permits were issued and in process during 2006 in the City of Surrey so I did some data mining and discovered a few things:
  1. There is a CRAP LOAD of development ongong and slated to begin here in the beginning of 2007 (over 11000 housing units in the City of Surrey).
  2. 4000 units permitted in the last 12 months
  3. 7300 units entered into the approval process in the last 12 months (not including approvals)
  4. In North Surrey the story is Condos (over 3500, which does not include those currently under construction)
  5. In South Surrey and Cloverdale the story is townhouses and yet more townhouses (3300 townhouses in development or slated for development in those two areas alone)
  6. A surpisingly large number of senior's related developments (over 1500 units)
Note: Not all of those development permits applied for will be approved but I also did not go farther back than January 2006 to look for applications. Even assuming 1000+ units drop out of the process we are still looking at over 10000 units scheduled to be in construction or begin construction sometime in the next 12 months. I think the introduction of all of this supply will put some very serious price pressure on the market in the next 12 to 18 months.

7 comments:

van-realestate-crash said...

Mohican, thanks for the quality work you share with the readers.

I am dumbfounded and perplexed as to where the land came from.

The RE promoters had me brainwashed into thinking land is scarce 

Unknown said...

Mohican;

Thanks for the great data. Where do you get access to this stuff?

I had already thought that the new supply coming online in Vancouver was going to put a dent in condo prices, but I can see that this is just a drop in the bucket compared to the outlying areas.

Looks like 2007 is going to build a new unit for each and every new immigrant to the lower mainland (if we see net growth according to the charts here: Immigration rates)

Ulsterman said...

Kudos to you mohican for providing some meat to chew on. Kvetches to all those that have given up reading and commenting.

Couple of points:

1) It has been mentioned before that some think that it's the price compression in the burbs that will eventually pop the bubble. You can ALMOST justify absurd prices in Vancouver, but the prices in Surrey? Come on, it's Surrey! Huge commute for many and the joy of living in the one of those souless subdivisions where a car is an absolute necessity.

2) I heard on CKNW this morning a debate on "eco-density". It sounds like the city is really going to become much more accommodating when granting zoning for adding new unit such as basement suits, coach houses, granny flats etc. Apparently someone is trying to zone their garage into a small (i'm sure!) suit.

The city planner acknowledged that this could give housing prices a boost if prospective owners can generate some extra mortgage helpers.

Ulsterman said...

i meant to say suite, not suit

mohican said...

FYI - all of the permit data is from the city of surrey's website.

van-realestate-crash - there is enough land in surrey to accomodate a doubling of the population - there is plenty-o-land in surrey and even more in langley and abbotsford

Warren said...

2) I heard on CKNW this morning a debate on "eco-density". It sounds like the city is really going to become much more accommodating when granting zoning for adding new unit such as basement suits, coach houses, granny flats etc. Apparently someone is trying to zone their garage into a small (i'm sure!) suit.

I thought this had a lot more to do with development practices and "planned" eco-friendly neighbourhoods, not having students live in my substandard garage with a shower and a hot plate.

the pope said...

Great to see you tracking the numbers Mohican - It would be great to see numbers for the GVRD, I know VHB was focusing just on the downtown core and that alone was a huge amount of units coming onto the market in the next couple of years.

In the spirit of VHB, I'm running a monday question topic: Why not buy now?