“My parents toured a show home in a recently constructed, $1 million+ development, and my dad, a former contractor, was shocked at the shoddy construction and low-quality building materials.”

Posted on 4 March 2012 | 37 Comments

“My parents live in South Surrey and my dad is a former contractor. They toured a show home in a recently constructed, $1 million+ development, and my dad was shocked at the shoddy construction and low-quality building materials.
My spouse and I have been looking at condo rentals in Vancouver and we would not even rent, let alone buy, most of the newer ones. I can’t tell you the number of doors askew, floorboards creaking on uneven floors, and paper thin walls we have encountered.
Not to mention the ridiculous floor plans–why do people need 2.5 bathrooms when there no space for a kitchen table? The condos seem to be designed for roommates or childless couples, not families.”
- Sheesh at VREAA 2 Mar 2012 9:52am and 12:28pm

This entry was posted in 12. Effects of Development, 15. Misallocation of Resources and tagged , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

37 Responses to “My parents toured a show home in a recently constructed, $1 million+ development, and my dad, a former contractor, was shocked at the shoddy construction and low-quality building materials.”

  1. JanusHeadStrong | 4 March 2012 at 4:22 pm | Reply

    Vancouver Sun had an article today on the sizzleness of the Vancouver real estate.

    At the end of the day, with all the speculators, and people looking to move up the chain, buyers are not really focusing on the construction quality. It may sound shocking to hear, but quality does not sell – not in this market. One cannot blame the construction industry – it is an amalgamation of factors that is producing long term negative impact, poor quality construction is one small factor.

    If you ever have a chance, check out ‘Yu Living’ on UBC south campus, while under construction – check out the quality of materials going into the building.

    • Gord | 4 March 2012 at 5:34 pm | Reply

      Didn’t The Sun (odd choice of name for a Raincouver paper, isn’t it?) alter that headline sometime during the day to something substantially less “sizzling”?

    • Raging Ranter | 5 March 2012 at 4:49 am | Reply

      Garth’s latest post is interesting. The Calgary Sun ran a gushing article about a new condo development in Calgary, and the line up of people camping out at the sales office. The Herald was also invited to cover the story, but the reporter took a look and decided it didn’t smell right. The story was dropped.

      The other reporter, for the Herald, didn’t impress so easily. “I was assigned to be there,” he told me, “but we canned the story.” With good reason. The frenzy had been largely manufactured. While The Guardian was advertised as being a towering monument to affordability, turns out only one of the 321 units was offered at $150,000 and six more under $180,000. For that, a few people managed to buy 450-square-foot closets.

      So we’re in the era of mass-merchandising condos now, where loss-leaders are used to get people in the buying mood.

      • Airedales | 5 March 2012 at 6:33 pm |

        Difference is people actually read the Herald. Sun might come in handy if you are looking for a used car or a date for the evening.

  2. theragingranter | 4 March 2012 at 7:22 pm | Reply

    They did a complete about face on the headline. ‘Balanced’ conveys an entirely different meaning than ‘sizzling’ doesn’t it? They went from shameless RE pumping, to quickly realizing that they were a little too shameless – the torque just a little too egregious to ignore.

    This would be unbelievable to me had I not seen it so many times before. Bell Globe Media (Globe & Mail and CTV news, among others) for example, are absolutely shameless in running torqued headlines, even entirely torqued stories, only to change them once they are subject to ridicule in the comments section. Most times they will not acknowledge the change. You’ll just notice a bunch of comments referring to a headline or even to entire blocks of text within the story that no longer exist. It’s not surprising then that this is happening with real estate stories.

    • Farmer | 4 March 2012 at 7:38 pm | Reply

      I am guessing the editorial crew is actually tiring of being humiliated by sites like this and not enjoying looking stupid to the man on the street. What worth is news if nobody believes it anymore? They have not left themselves a lot of wriggle room till now to escape having to explain all their unfounded enthusiasm as listings swell leading into spring. While I doubt we will see many retractions coming it is nice to finally see that some writers in the wider media are giving the story of our precarious real estate markets a serious look. At some point a little journalistic integrity was sure to kick in. Better late than never, I suppose. Especially as circulation drops and Joe-typical says “screw the papers, I want real news from now on”.

      And that is why we are here on this site instead of enjoying the Sun with a hot coffee at Starbucks (like we used to do when that paper was still worth an afternoon read).

  3. Ralph Cramdown | 4 March 2012 at 8:01 pm | Reply

    Saw a cousin’s new townhouse in Hamilton, and I can assure you that standards are no higher in the low end of the market. Because the door from the den to the utility room was through a bearing wall, a doubled 2×10 header was specified. The HVAC guy must’ve thought to himself “My, that’s an AWFULLY wide piece of dimensional lumber, but my Sawzall will handle it!”

    One area the builder didn’t skimp: The size of the water heater (rental). More appropriate for a five bedroom rancher full of teenagers. I wonder how much the developer gets from the rental company for every first time buyer who doesn’t downsize that in the build sheet?

    • Sterling | 5 March 2012 at 9:52 am | Reply

      Its true what you say, and I think that the expectations when judged against most older style construction aren’t realistic. The cost of living and materials is higher now than it used to be, and homes have more features than they did. Also compare home sizes to houses from 30 years ago. You just can’t get that level of high end construction for dirt cheap. 1 Million bucks though, that should build you an effing palace.

  4. Farmer | 4 March 2012 at 8:15 pm | Reply

    Anyone here who has ever been to Europe can attest to just how shoddy most construction is in Vancouver. It is pathetic all over our country actually, not just the lower mainland. Hell, there are aqueducts over there that were built over 2000 years ago that still carry water. I was in Herodium in Israel and walked on top of perfect stone roofs that are intact and solid after two millenia. They still carry weight and shed water too. Stone roofs. Imagine. But we get 30 year warranties on roofing that leaks as soon as the crews leave the site. Total garbage. High-rises too with bad glass, vapour breaks, slipping panes…… It never ends. You really have to do-it-yourself or live elsewhere.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herodium

  5. jesse | 4 March 2012 at 9:03 pm | Reply

    Demographics seem to support childless development types. In Q3’11 a large % of population growth was in the non permanent resident category.

  6. debtless | 4 March 2012 at 9:05 pm | Reply

    Slap caulk and vinyl on piece of dimensional lumber and sell it to an intellectual. Go trades.

  7. LS in Arbutus | 4 March 2012 at 9:59 pm | Reply

    It’s true, my husband is a tradesman and every time he goes into one of the $3.5 million plus new builds in the ‘hood is astounded at the quality, or lack thereof.

    And some of these construction sites when you walk by them look like garbage dumps. Disgusting. Crap all over the place. My husband says one indication of the quality of the build is how clean the work site is or isn’t.

    • Gord | 4 March 2012 at 11:17 pm | Reply

      Check out some of my pics in VREAA’s Friday post to see just how “clean” the rush-job builders are in my little area.

      • Farmer | 4 March 2012 at 11:49 pm |

        I just want to know how all those buildings are going to hold up in the earthquake when it finally comes. The big 7.5 is coming, you know. Pretty much any day now and all that crap construction is going to become just scrap lumber in the middle of some desolate street.

    • Raging Ranter | 5 March 2012 at 5:01 am | Reply

      Many build sites, it’s a bunch of kids happily chatting and horsing around and pounding nails. Radio blasting at full volume. (They’ve ALWAYS got some effin’ radio cranked up loud enough so they can hear it above the racket.) Crap lying everywhere. Foreman shows up in the morning, and maybe does another random spot check during the day, if he’s not too busy. I saw a four unit condo go up next door to where I was living when I first moved to Ottawa. These two kids, and I mean kids, built the thing with minimal supervision. The units were sold before the construction even started. I wonder if the buyers would have been so enthusiastic if they’d have been told, “The reason we can offer these prices is because we hire 18 year old kids living at home with mom and dad, and they will work for less. Don’t worry though, we check on them every day – sometimes twice. And we don’t let them do wiring or plumbing or stuff like that.”

      • Vesta | 5 March 2012 at 7:19 am |

        I saw many new houses go up in my neighbourhood, and all but two (built by a very well regarded firm) were slapped up by what appeared to me to be amateurs who broke noise laws at every opportunity, and with impunity, and left the sites not only messy every day but sometimes dangerously open (including a resort developer who wouldn’t even fence off a swimming pool when a neighbour with small children asked him to). And a neighbour who’s a contractor even said the houses built by the well-regarded firm were full of junk materials. Oh, and one day we all had to be evacuated because even that firm hired kids who hit a gas line.

      • LJ | 5 March 2012 at 6:26 pm |

        My friend has a son, freshly out of high school, who has now been working as a framer for 3 weeks. Their foreman has 2 (two) months experience and they are putting up a 100 unit, three story, condo building.

        Even he complains about the shoddy materials they are using. Average list price on the units: $450,000 (Above average here in Calgary).

        FAIL!!!

      • nobody you know | 5 March 2012 at 9:08 pm |

        I’m in Victoria. Did an insurance job last month in a newer $600,000 townhouse 45 minutes outside of town fixing flood damage that basically destroyed the entire ground floor. The units at the end of the road I drove through every day weren’t even finished and I was already fixing their shitty work at the other end of the street. I hear horror stories all the time about the quality of the work in the past few years. There’s no way I’d buy a bubble-era house.

  8. Vesta | 5 March 2012 at 1:04 am | Reply

    I just got back from a conference to find that there will be at least five houses, probably six, torn down within the next year within a few hundred meters at the most from the place I”m renting now, and new (doubtlessly shoddy) ones slapped up.

    I moved from another West-Side locale where the last five years were a frenzy of teardowns and rebuilds — everyone on my cul-de-sac and behind it was living in a construction zone: $2-million-plus particleboard mansions went up, only to be stuffed with an average of 3 people each (several were empty, several were sold and resold). Good job with the housing crisis, Vancouver!

    And now I’m in the middle of another construction zone. Just hastening my departure from this insane place. I was thinking when I was in the other city how nice it would be if it were green like Vancouver. I think flowering roundabouts are most of what Vancouver has left going for it.

    I sort of can’t be polite about it any more: what on earth is wrong with people here that they aren’t protesting:
    1). the razing of so much of this city for the sake of speckers, developers, and flippers?
    2). the city’s continuing unaffordability?
    3). the complete cowardice of every branch of government you can think of in aiding and abetting all this? If all these local and emigrant multimillionaires are specking here/buying here, CAN YOU RAISE CITY REVENUES BY PERMANENTLY TAXING THEM TO THE MOON INSTEAD OF JUST RAKING IT IN VIA DEVELOPER PERMIT FEES FROM SHODDY BUILDERS?
    4). What kind of city lets itself be transformed like this WITHOUT A WHIMPER?
    5). Why is this a constant topic of conversation behind closed doors but not out in the open?

    • MM | 5 March 2012 at 3:52 am | Reply

      Maybe RE is the best thing that ever happened to them? Maybe it fills a void in their lives?

    • ETB WATCHER | 5 March 2012 at 5:03 am | Reply

      People are not protesting because they are naive and parochial and this is all going quite well, so far. Protesting would be futile in any case as the centre-left and especially the centre-right are in the back pocket of developers.

      This problem will self-correct, however.

      • Vesta | 5 March 2012 at 7:14 am |

        ETB Watcher, I very much appreciate what you have to say on this blog, and I agree with you that many here seem naive and parochial. But I’m going to argue that:
        a). it’s going well for a minority of lucky homeowners who are ready to sell, and for some builders and investors; it’s going up in flames for everybody else
        b). protests against staggering inequalities have succeeded in other countries. Where there’s a will there’s a way.
        c). it’s not going to self-correct — the city is being sold off to the rich, to investors, and to developers. By the time anyone notices or gets the nerve up to squawk, that’s all who’s going to be living in many areas any more, if parts of Vancouver are even fully inhabited.

    • Nemesis | 5 March 2012 at 7:33 am | Reply

      …”cowardice of every branch of government”…

      Malfeasance, actually… And contempt for, “the little people” – which oddly [if predictably] is precisely how one of the Mayor’s YVR HousingAffordability task force delegates alludes to the ‘peasants’ when they’re out of earshot [and no doubt about it, being one of the "important people" is not without its advantages, Vesta - especially when you allow that the BC assessment authority's appraisal of that delegate's principal and very DezRez is ...curiously... rather lower than its adjacent and surrounding 'homies'].

      Reminds me of something Leona Helmsley once said…

      http://tinyurl.com/7ac7vp6

      FollowTheMoney, Vesta.

      • Vesta | 5 March 2012 at 8:18 am |

        Thanks, Nem. Malfeasance and money indeed. And Leona — apt!

        With your verbal and visual talents, and your range of reference, I wish YOU were publishing articles in the MSM here every day!

    • jesse | 5 March 2012 at 11:22 am | Reply

      It might be the case, Vesta, that despite the public image put forth by certain politicians designed to give them Deus-like qualities, I’m supposing that, just under the surface, they don’t have any more control of the situation than your writing on this well-read blog.

      The only difference, perhaps, is that your dedication to the City is not guaranteed to be lifelong. Nor should it be for mere mortals.

    • Airedales | 5 March 2012 at 6:40 pm | Reply

      4) Ever been to Asia?

  9. Vesta | 5 March 2012 at 8:26 am | Reply

    :P .S. Nem: I’d love to know who that “important person” on the YVR Housing Affordability ‘Task Force’ is. Can you out him or her?

    • Nemesis | 5 March 2012 at 10:16 am | Reply

      Alas, Vesta… as an adherent of Bushidō [武士道] who is normatively loathe to reveal ‘sources/methods’ I must demur… or to put it another way, chilvaric ‘delicacy’ precludes full disclosure of ‘morsels’ acquired via the Boudoir…

      A parable…

      ..”That’s me in the spotlight
      Losing my religion
      Trying to keep a view
      And I don’t know if I can do it
      Oh no, I’ve said too much
      I haven’t said enough”…

      PS – fomerly an habitué of editorial suites ranging from the AvenueOfTheAmericas to FrontStreet… you could say that I, ‘lost my religion’. A long time ago. Then again, we do have WordPress… and as TheBard once penned, …”but at the length truth will out.” [MerchantOfVenice]

      • Vesta | 6 March 2012 at 8:49 am |

        Nem, thanks, I understand about not outing the source!

        Not surprised you’ve been in editorial suites around the globe….

        And thanks for the Shakespeare, and the link below!

    • Nemesis | 6 March 2012 at 7:21 am | Reply

      Vesta, you may well ‘enjoy’ this… I’m quite certain that you’ll find it instructive. [IllustriousEd/All, you too, may be 'amused'...]

      …”They promised us a leader, and we got a cheap infomercial host. …We live in the most corrupt province in this country, and it makes me almost tear up to say that–but it’s true.” – Alex G. Tsakumis

      [AGT] – Christy Clark Must Resign as Premier of British Columbia (Part I): The Case of the ‘Stolen’ PIN Numbers Finally Revealed

      http://tinyurl.com/7ogkrx4

    • Nemesis | 6 March 2012 at 9:38 am | Reply

      It get’s ‘better’… at the risk of flogging a DeadHorse viz. transnational complex conglomerate networks of cronyism/malfeasance/corruption… (of which, the ‘BubblePhenomenon’ is just one of many symptoms)

      One of the defendants in the following Yanqui human trafficking piece… [hint: starts with "E"] is the very same global logistics outsourcing behemoth lobbying [and 'spending'] furiously to wrest control of the warehousing/distribution operations of BritishColumbia’s ‘favourite’ retailer; aka: Christy’sCornerStore…

      [CommonDreams] – Student Labor Scandal Illuminates the Gray Market for Guestworkers

      http://tinyurl.com/85zuool

    • Nemesis | 6 March 2012 at 9:40 am | Reply

      Closer to home, the phenomenon can be seen playing out on the premises of the same people who cheerfully [if ironically] brought you the slogan, “We’re Cookin’ Now!”….

      [G&M] – Foreign workers allowed to launch class action lawsuit against Denny’s

      http://tinyurl.com/7pw5d4c

  10. roygon | 5 March 2012 at 6:23 pm | Reply

    South Surrey is a big joke. Almost nothing at the mid-high end is or has been selling and prices are as much as 100% above assessment with as many 8′s in the price as will fit. Latest trend is re-listing places at higher prices than they sat for a year at without selling.

    http://remillong.ca/recip.html/evow/details-23222109 is an example. Listed at 2.29M since November 2010 and on the market the entire time. Now relisted at 2.49M… There have been at least half a dozen listings in south surrey that have taken this approach in the last month or so

    Also, check out this awesome listing: http://remillong.ca/recip.html/evow/details-23222089 Listed for a year before finally coming down about 100K but check out the last part of the description “Bring your offer, another two brand new great houses beside are all in the market. Your best friends could be your best neighborhood now! (14095 30A St, MLS F1205330) and (3087 141st St MLS F1201250) are all available for your picking up!”. 3 newish houses in a row sitting there untouched.

    I’m a home owner and own a vacation home off Cultus Lake and still I am hoping for a massive crash. This needs to end

  11. calguy | 5 March 2012 at 6:40 pm | Reply

    Just got back from Portland a while ago. Very nice….lots of neat neighborhoods with nice character homes – you don’t see the tear down effect or asian mansions. http://hqidximages.s3.amazonaws.com/1/689/11231689.1.jpg?listing=1
    $449K. Food – just as good, beer – no comparison – what else do you need?? oh yeah a job – how about Nike, Adidas, Intel, and other head offices.

    • Airedales | 5 March 2012 at 6:51 pm | Reply

      That’s cool. I was down in Portland two years ago (usually only get as far as Seattle or do the jump all the way down to SD) and I was blown away. Really good living down there and Vancouver used to be cool like that. Funny that Vancouver WA is just across the river but couldn’t be more different than the one in BC.

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