‘Marketing specialist’ Bob Rennie’s quotes extracted from the Vancouver Sun 29 Nov 2010 -
“It has become a do-right or die effort. The village has only one last opportunity to be successfully marketed if it is to escape its vexing image as a troubled neighbourhood.”
“The word ‘Olympic’ is a really, really expensive word. It is wrought with controversy. It can be seen as a weakness. But it can also be seen as a strength.”
“When someone gets into a taxi at the airport and says “take me to the Olympic village” everyone knows where that is. It’s not the same when someone says the name of a residential building downtown.”
“That’s the strength in this project. It is the only Olympic village. But we have to get this one right.”
“We will begin to market about 150 units in two to three waterfront buildings. Half of the condos, which average 1,000 square feet, will be under$1 million, and the other 50 per cent will be over $1 million. I’ve set a target of selling 100 units by June. It will take upwards of three years to sell all of the 473 remaining units in the village.”
“Everything is now on the table. These will be price-competitive to what is out on the market.”
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Addendum:
Regarding the structure in the image above, from Wikipedia:
“The Temple of Olympian Zeus (Greek: Ναὸς τοῦ Ὀλυμπίου Διός, Naos tou Olympiou Dios), also known as the Olympieion, is a colossal ruined temple in the centre of the Greek capital Athens that was dedicated to Zeus, king of the Olympian gods. Construction began in the 6th century BC during the rule of the Athenian tyrants, who envisaged building the greatest temple in the ancient world, but it was not completed until the reign of the Roman Emperor Hadrian in the 2nd century AD some 638 years after the project had begun. During the Roman periods it was renowned as the largest temple in Greece and housed one of the largest cult statues in the ancient world.
The temple’s glory was short-lived, as it fell into disuse after being pillaged in a barbarian invasion in the 3rd century AD. It was probably never repaired and was reduced to ruins thereafter. In the centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire, the temple was extensively quarried for building materials to supply building projects elsewhere in the city. Despite this, substantial remains remain visible today and it continues to be a major tourist attraction.”
LOL.
The biggest pile of smelly rhetoric since the bust of ’81.
A million bucks to live in a sewer like this place?
They won’t sell 20 at that rate.
SLUM in 5 years.
Most of the morons that bought garbage like this to either flip it or rent it to some clown, who wants to pay $2500 a month to live in a shoebox, are going to lose their greedy little undershorts.
The sad part, about the MILLSTONE PROJECT is – you tax payers will get the bill.
I sold all my RE and wouldn’t invest in this City for another 25 years.
O V E R.
$650/sqft is what will move these things IMO, which in retrospect will be a sweet deal in a few years’ time. Anything higher will take a long time to sell and waiting for “conditions to improve” is unlikely to work this time.
… a sweet deal for the City, that is.
… thanks for clarification.
(I had a double-take for a moment there.)
Beautiful addendum. Although, of course, what in today’s architecture is left to pillage to make other structures?
Granite and steel, I suppose…
“It has become a do-right or die effort. The village has only one last opportunity to be successfully marketed if it is to escape its vexing image as a troubled neighbourhood.”
Ya… I would say that if you can’t sell 473 condo units over the course of the next three years (which once you include this year and the pre sale year is almost 5 years), then you pretty much have to conclude the development is screwed. In fact, I would say that if you can’t sell the units by spring the development is pretty much screwed.
Oh right… we’re already saying that.
How vexing.
Checkout this article from the Vancouver Sun.
Almost 2.5 million Canadians can count themselves among the richest 10 per cent, earning at least $63,350 in 2007, and that group accounted for 41 per cent of the country’s $970 billion in pre-tax income.
So if you earn 63K or more then you are in richest 10% of Canadians and still that means that the Olympic Village Condos at $630K would still be 10x income of the richest 10% in Canada.
I don’t think the Olympic village is gonna sell, I wonder who is paying the strata fees on all those empty condos, I guess it is us Vancouver tax payers.
so at 3 times 63K would still give you a entry level house / condo price of $189K which only the richest 10% of Canadians can afford.
As a consumer I am tired of being paid marketed premium fancy stuff. Slap organic on anything and you can jack up the price by 50%, add granite and stainless steel to a condo or house and you feel that hey I can raise the price by 100K what a joke this whole thing is so comical I don’t what to think anymore. Seems it is getting hard to find middle of the line products everything is either crap or premium, I guess the shrinking middle class is no longer worth making products and services for.
It’s always been my dream that taxi drivers know where my home is.
In Kingston you DON’T want cabbies knowing where you house is. When you get picked up to go on vacation they know the house is empty.
$1000/sf……LOL!!
Who in their right mind will pay $1000/sf for these places. They are officially “distressed” assets and are now viewed as such.
A guy on my hockey team is renting one of the 3 bedroom condos in Millennium Water. It is the worst designed layout i’ve ever seen. The “owner” paid $1.3m. My buddy rents it for $2300 a month. The strata fees are $650 per month.
At $2300/month, this place should be worth about $550 to $600k.
I suggest a Dutch auction. Just dump the units and get it over with. Every day that the city hangs on to these units cost the taxpayer more money in interest payments and maintenance fees.
Strata Fees at $650, times 400 units, just keeps adding the City liability.
The City hosed the Citizens on this deal, and no one is being held accountable.
They will NEVER sell these condos at these prices.
I decided to take a look – and I was horrified at how poorly the unit was finished. It seemed to have started settling, already. (*garbage and fill make up False Creek Shore). The layout was terrible and the place reeked of CHEAP. I could just imagine the pressboard, and the glue and the Chinese drywall, that put these place up.
The Agent was rather non-plussed, to give her credit, when I said that the real worth of these units is probably $300 a sq. foot – because of the lack of services, proximity to rubbies and bums on Main – and besides, the neighbouring Wire rope factories and small manufacturing concerns, didn’t make for a great place to hang.
$650 a sq ft is still way too high for the Olympic Village or any home for that matter. One blogger on here said they might be worth that in a few yrs. I disagree. They will be worth less as all real estate in the Lowermainland will be worth much less over the next few yrs. Most people have no idea of what’s coming down the pipe. Now is not the time to buy real estate. China, Australia and Canada are the last bubbles to burst and Canada has begun but not enough to be noticeable yet by the average person. The real estate pumpers will continue to make it sound rosier than it is and our government is using real estate to keep the economy afloat . Recent announcements from that Remax crowd and that silly economist from one of the banks should be ashamed of themselves. Our government announces concern for the amount of household dept but does nothing to put the brakes on. They put a stop to the RE correction which started in late 2008 by lowering the % rates early 2009 to keep the economy afloat.
By the way not all Asians that arrive in Van can affort to buy. Another myth. Asian immigrants to the US did nothing to stop their housing decline.