Party in Whistler at World Ski and Snowboard Festival
By Jack Christie from The Georgia Straight
Good things may come in threes, but no one in Whistler ever foresaw anything quite like the trio of events to hit town over the past three months: back-to-back Olympic and Paralympic Games, and now the upcoming 15th World Ski and Snowboard Festival from April 16-25.

There’s one good reason the Georgia Straight has covered every spring bash since the WSSF debuted: snow culture. You either get it or you don’t. If you don’t, you’re likely dead and don’t know it. For Olympic and Paralympic resuscitation, get to Whistler, pronto. The same bonhomie that infused Vancouver streets during the two Games animates the festival. Last April, with Metric lead singer Emily Haines’s over-the-top performance framed against a diaphanous curtain through which skiers and snowboarders could be seen carving their last graceful turns of the day at the foot of Whistler Mountain, it was pure “irie time”. Breathe deeply and feel the peace that comes from being in the mountains on long, sun-drenched days.

When reached at her office, festival communications director Lisa Richardson had some words of advice for those inspired by the feats of athleticism displayed during the Olympic and Paralympic Games. “The highest form of excellence has been on display here for the past two months. People who have been watching and are inspired to join in will find some form of entry. There’s room to be completely free in how to express yourself.” Asked to define snow culture, Richardson said that the festival incubates creativity. “Snow culture is a celebration of taking away the rules, painting outside the lines. The Olympics and Paralympics define excellence. Our festival shows winter sports can be playful, too. The athletes have had their competitive season. April is a time of convergence. There’s a different energy. It’s not about pushing your career to a higher level. Instead, it’s a spring blowout where the vibe is just to throw down with your friends because we’re lucky to be doing this in the first place.”

As much as the WSSF is a celebration of snow-sliding sports, it’s equally about music and culture, whether you’re hitting a dance floor or slipping into a seat at the pro-photographer or filmmaker showdowns. Organizers have put up more than $100,000 in direct funding to athletes and artists. “As members of the community of mountain-sports lovers, we are constantly stimulated by what the artists, photographers, filmmakers, designers, and athletes are doing,” said festival director Sue Eckersley, “so we’re reciprocating by sending some serious stimulus back their way.” That translates as major coin up for grabs, including $85,000 spread among the best skiers and snowboarders. Another $40,000 goes to an array of artists, potentially including two local action-sports photographers, Jeremy Koreski and Mason Mashon, who were selected to compete in the Pro Photographer Showdown. In the spirit of the festival’s roots, several top prizes of $1,000 will be awarded by votes from spectators. Peer play rules the day, both on the slopes at the Orage Masters and the Grenade Games and in the resort’s convention centre at nightly multimedia screenings.

Over the past 15 years, the festival has grown from a celebration of technical skiing to one of the biggest winter sports events in North America. When asked to compare the WSSF to the Winter X Games, Whistler-based freestyle skier Sarah Burke told the Georgia Straight that it would be hard to replicate the X Games “in any shape or form, but the amount of stoke and energy level at the festival’s World Ski Invitational is comparable”. Certainly, support for the three-time X Games winner runs deep among festival organizers. One of the star attractions imported to showcase the half-pipe talents of Burke and her big-air-seeking friends is the newly invented Global Pipe Cutter from New Zealand, whose paddle arms reputedly better maintain the sides of seven-metre walls of snow, create fewer holes, and provide a smoother ride up the pipe. On arrival, pipe-carving maestro Steve Petrie, who built the impressive Olympic superpipe on Cypress Provincial Park’s Black Mountain, will begin shaping yet another on Blackcomb Mountain’s slopes. “Because the pipe skiers missed a chance to show their stuff at the Olympics, they’ll be going huge in the superpipe,” Richardson predicted.

Is it true that skiing leads to harder crimes, like snowboarding? Sarah Burke remembered when “new school” skiers weren’t allowed in the half-pipe. “We’d wait until dark for a run and risk losing our passes.” She took part in her first pipe contest at the WSSF a decade ago. “I couldn’t handle one of the old eight-foot pipes today. You have to know how to ride transitions. A half-pipe run is all about linking five to seven hits, building speed as you go. You can measure a good half-pipe by someone who drops in at the top with no speed and finishes their run with a rush.”

A day spent in the spring sunshine puts paid to any notion that the problem with winter sports is that they take place in winter. Most ski resorts across North America called it quits once the Easter Bunny left town. Head for Whistler, where he will be hopping in his ski boots to the unbelievably talented kids in Vancouver’s We Are the City. No one but no one wants this party to end.

ACCESS: A complete schedule of events and performers is posted at www.wssf.com.

Trying to gauge the ‘Olympic effect’ on Whistler property sales
By Derrick Penner, Vancouver SunJanuary 30, 2010
Let the sales pitch begin.

With the 2010 Olympics at Vancouver and Whistler’s doorstep, one local real estate insider has crunched a decade’s-worth of Whistler sales results to make the case that the 2010 Olympics have given the resort’s real estate a boost.

“I still think there will be a good, positive side to the Whistler story,” Rudy Nielsen, president of research firm Landcor Data Corp., said in an interview.

Nielsen chronicles a doubling of Whistler’s property values and widening sphere of international buyers there over the last decade to support his case.

“I think people will realize that this is a world-class place to be, and not only Whistler but Vancouver and British Columbia,” he said.

Landcor, in a report released this week, has compiled a list of trends from examining the resort community’s sales as recorded by the B.C. Land Titles office. Between 2000 and 2010, with the 2008 financial crisis that dented markets everywhere notwithstanding, Whistler saw 8,990 property sales among the 13,134 residential properties within the resort.

And the Landcor data records dramatic price increases over the decade, with a lot of the gains coming in the first half of the decade. The average price for a condominium rose 101 per cent over the decade to $380,000 by 2010. Town house average values increased 104 per cent to $677,000 and

detached homes saw the biggest gain rising 141 per cent to hit an average of almost $1.4 million in 2010.

In Whistler right now, Lisa Bjornson, general manager of the Whistler Real Estate Co., said it is difficult to tell if the Olympics are having an effect on the market, but there is an assumption they will.

Bjornson said the community’s real estate counterparts in Park City, Utah, host of alpine events for the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics, told them sales would dry up in the three months leading up to and three months following the Games, but agents have been making sales.

“We just don’t know who, if anybody, is buying after the Games as a result of the exposure yet,” Bjornson said. “We just know that a lot of people are going to be here.”

However, University of B.C. real estate expert Tsur Somerville expects that the gains Whistler is seeing come more from the improved Sea to Sky Highway and not the additional exposure.

“I’m not saying it’s zero,” Somerville said in an interview, but he is skeptical that the Games will give Whistler better exposure to the market of buyers likely to buy ski-resort property than it has already had.

Somerville, director of the centre for urban economics and real estate at the Sauder School of Business at UBC, released a report, co-authored with Jake Wetzel, on the effects that staging Olympics have had on property prices host cities. They found that being an Olympic host city did not bump property prices up any more than surrounding, non-host locations.

Any gains, Somerville said, were more attributable to general economic conditions that were shared by non-host regions, or as a result of infrastructure improvements independent of the Games.

depenner@vancouversun.com

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

from David Burke, The Whistler Question

Whistler – The Blackcomb Mountain fire is now 100 per cent contained, officials announced late Sunday (Aug. 2).

In a statement issued Sunday at 9:49 p.m., the B.C. Ministry of Forests and Whistler Fire Rescue Service (WFRS) jointly announced that the fire — which burned something like 30 hectares on the east side of Crystal Ridge, just inside the ski-area boundary — fully contained. Blackcomb Mountain is now safe for WB to resume full operations, officials said.

“The Ministry’s initial attack was highly effective and we would like to thank them, along with Whistler Blackcomb staff, for their quick response in containing what could have been a very dangerous fire situation,” WFRS Chief Rob Whitton said in the statement.

With home sales — and prices — dropping in B.C., is now a good time to invest in real estate?

The B.C. Real Estate Association says it just might be, pointing to a large drop in carrying costs for an investment property today compared to a year ago.

“It doesn’t matter what the market is doing, I don’t say whether or not it’s a good time to buy,” association chief economist Cameron Muir said in an interview Monday. “That being said, I would suspect investors are actively looking in the marketplace for bargains. If you compare today vs. a year ago, investing in real estate is more attractive than it was then.”

Muir made the comment after the release of an association housing survey Monday that concluded the residential sales dollar volume on B.C.’s Multiple Listing Service declined 61 per cent to $873 million in January, compared to the same month in 2008 when sales totalled $2.25 billion. In the Metro Vancouver region, the sales volume was down 62 per cent over the same period, to $413 million from $1.09 billion in January 2008.

Muir — who said he also believes sales activity in the province will pick up in the spring because of improving affordability resulting from lower mortgage rates and home prices — cited a typical mortgage payment for a property in January 2009 compared to January 2008.

He said the benchmark price for a two-bedroom condo in Metro Vancouver was $334,602 in January, 11.5 per cent less than the $378,336 the same condo would have sold for 12 months earlier. A typical posted five-year fixed-term mortgage stood at 5.79 per cent in January, much lower than a similar mortgage rate of 7.39 per cent the previous January.

Therefore, he said, a condo with a 10-per-cent down payment (on a 25-year amortization) would have resulted in a monthly mortgage payment of $1,890 this January, nearly $600 less than the January 2008 mortgage payment of $2,468 (property taxes, maintenance fees and mortgage insurance fees not included).

On top of that, he said, there’s upward pressure on rents with the same two-bedroom condo renting in October 2008 for about $1,507 a month — a five-per-cent increase from October 2007.

“For both investors and home buyers, your mortgage payment would be several hundred dollars less than a year ago,” said Muir, who noted that investors have so far not been very active since the economic downturn started last year. “As an investor, the cash flow from the rent will more closely match your mortgage payment on the property.”

The BCREA survey also showed that residential unit sales fell 57 per cent to 2,115 units during the same period.

The average price on the MLS in B.C. was $412,934 in January, down nine per cent from the same month last year, the survey noted.

Muir said that home sales were sluggish in January, reflecting an overall malaise in consumer confidence and a weaker provincial economy.

Muir said that first-time buyers are especially affected by the economic news and are holding back because of a lack of confidence. “Demand from first-time buyers has been off significantly. First-time home buyers tend to be younger and not have years of experience in their occupations. Therefore, they have more concerns around job security. They’re more vulnerable to layoffs.”

Despite that, he said, the BCREA expects sales to rise this spring because of greater affordability and lower interest rates.

Muir noted that realtors are reporting increased activity from buyers over the past three weeks, but that it hasn’t yet materialized in sales statistics. “By all accounts, there’s increased interest. There’s more showings and more buyers kicking tires.”

Meanwhile, an Ipsos Reid poll released last week showed that a growing number of British Columbians think this is a good time to buy a home, though most say it isn’t a good time to sell.

The poll found that some 71 per cent of respondents said it is a somewhat good or very good time to buy real estate. In November, only 60 per cent of respondents told Ipsos Reid it was a good time to buy.

In the latest poll, though, 82 per cent said this is not a good time to sell a home.

The poll also found that British Columbians’ expectations for falling prices are changing, with just 42 per cent of respondents saying they expected prices to be lower 12 months from now compared to 57 per cent in November.

The association represents 12 member real estate boards and about 18,000 realtors.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

As published in the Vancouver Sun, Saturday, January 10, 2009 Section H, page 1 by Gillian Shaw

…If there’s a silver lining to the cloud, it’s that for those with money in their pockets, now is the perfect time to score a deal on a vacation. And if you have lots of money, that deal could be a new condo.

“If you’re a buyer, I can’t think of a better time,” said Pat Kelly, president of Whistler Real Estate and an almost 30-year resident of the area. “There may be some people who are more interested in looking at an offer than they were a year ago. If you’re patient and you have cash, you are in a very strong position. It might be the best buying opportunity prior to the Olympics.”

Right about now the resort could use a perfect storm - one that combines just-right temperatures with snowfall to cover bare rocks and trees in the upper reaches of the alpine. The past week has seen a dramatic improvement in the snow cover. After snow bypassed the resort during the holidays, a whopping 87 centimetres has dropped on it in recent days.

Even so, Brownlie says the unstable snow pack still has to be dealt with through extensive avalanche control that is now going on at the resort to prevent layers of snow from breaking free.

There have been bright spots, such as the opening of the $50-million-plus Peak 2 Peak gondola connecting Whistler and Blackcomb Mountains. It has garnered attention and enthusiasm both on and off the mountain. A BASE jump video has drawn almost 30,000 viewers on YouTube, and the first week of operations alone saw an aerial wedding conducted on the gondola as it hovered over the mountain. Several couples took the heady step of getting engaged on the Peak 2 Peak.

Jeff Hunter and his girlfriend Amy Galiszuski travelled to Whistler all the way from Philadelphia for the grand opening of the lift, and Hunter marked the occasion by asking Galuszuski if she would marry him.

“I got the guys (running the lift) to block off the doors so there was just the two of us in one gondola,” he said. “I waited until we were in the middle. I told her how much I cared about her and I popped the question. She said yes,” he said of his proposal, made 436 metres over Fitzsimmons Creek.

Hunter isn’t worried by the stories about the Excalibur Gondola or the avalanches. The B.C.-raised skier tells all his friends to go to Whistler, which is heading into the final-year countdown to the 2010 Olympics with a lineup of World Cup competitions scheduled this winter as a prelude to the big event.

“I’ve emailed everyone I know who skis, and I’ve told them they’ve got to go and ride the Peak 2 Peak,” he said. “I’m telling them Whistler is a great place to ski.”

Brownlie also remains relentlessly upbeat, pointing to the top ratings the resort consistently gets from ski magazines, and a reputation that draws outdoors enthusiats from around the world.

“There is lots of new snow in the forecast,” he said. “Every year there is something different, and certainly this is no exception.

For the 2009 Property Assessment Roll only, BC Assessment will be providing property owners with the market value of properties as of both July 1, 2007 and July 1, 2008.  The lower of these two values will become the 2009 assessed value for most properties.

On November 27, 2008, the provincial government passed the Economic Incentive and Stabilization Statutes Amendment Act (Bill 45), which provides special valuation rules for the purpose of the 2009 tax year only.

This initiative is part of the B.C. Government’s economic strategy to provide stability and predictability to British Columbians in response to the downturn in the real estate market which began mid-2008.BC Assessment will post information updates on this web page to keep the public informed.

BC Assessment will continue its normal practice of reflecting property changes which have occurred since the previous assessment. These include changes such as new construction and development, property classification or use, tax exemption status, additions or demolitions. Assessments for properties with regulated values will continue to be based on rates set for the 2008 assessment roll.

Please refer to www.bcassessment.bc.ca/2009_assessment_roll_info/index.asp for more information about how BC Assessment has produced the 2009 Assessment Roll.

Excerpt taken from the BC Assessment website and included with the 2009 Assessment Statement mailed out to homeowners at the beginning of each year.

By Andrew Mitchell. As published in Pique Newsmagazine January 7, 2009

Province’s decision to freeze property assessments reflects sales volumes, values

While it still remains to be seen what municipal property tax rates will be this year, residents will at least be guaranteed that their share of the tax burden will stay the same or go down compared to last year.

On Monday, homeowners across the province received notice from B.C. Assessment, which determines the approximate value of homes based on sales figures. Because the assessments were made in July, before the economy declined, the province passed special legislation in November that homes be assessed at the lower of July 1, 2008 or July 1, 2007 values.

According to Jason Grant, Area Assessor for Vancouver Sea to Sky Region, assessments stayed the same or dropped for roughly 93 per cent of homes in Whistler, 92 per cent of homes in Pemberton, and 97 per cent of homes in Squamish. Assessments on homes that gained value stayed flat, while homes that lost value were assessed for less.

The remaining percentage, seven per cent in Whistler, saw their assessments go up because the homes were newly built, or underwent major renovations to increase their value.

“The first and most important thing is that the assessment notices contain two values, one for July 2007 and one for July 2008, and depending which one is lower the lower one will be your 2009 assessed value,” said Grant. “We did publish what 2009 values would have been if the special legislation was not enacted, but you will always be assessed by the lower value.”

While municipal governments make the final decision on how much to tax based on budged projections, the assessments can determine your share relative to other residents. For example, if homes in one neighbourhood increase in value while other neighbourhoods see a decline then that will be reflected in taxes.

The July 1, 2007 assessment rolls, which were used to determine property taxes for 2008, were up anywhere from five to 15 per cent in Whistler, the first increase in value in four relatively flat years. The same figures are not available for July 2008 because of the province’s decision to change the assessment process this year.

Pat Kelly, owner of the Whistler Real Estate Company, said the province did the right thing by freezing assessments.

“I can only speak from my personal experience, and that is my property in Pemberton was assessed the same as the year before, as the provincial government outlined,” he said. “The market situation didn’t change in that period of time between assessments, 2007 to 2008, and we’re getting the benefit of a lower assessment than we maybe would have seen in July 2008, when the market was still strong. What will be interesting is to see values when they’re taken again on July 1, 2009, given the economic challenges we’re facing.”

Kelly pointed out that assessments are based on home sales, among other things, and that “price always follows volume.” He says the volume of sales in Whistler is much lower now than the last two years and that he expects to see prices drop slightly in the next year.

“Certainly we can expect to parallel the Vancouver experience right now, and right now the Vancouver Real Estate Board is saying sales are down about 35 per cent over last year,” said Kelly. “However we’re only expecting to see some flattening in prices overall, while Vancouver is predicting a drop (in sale prices) of 15 per cent. Whistler won’t be down nearly as much.

“Did residential prices go down? There’s no indication in the statistics that value changed dramatically — maybe one or two per cent, and in some cases the value has gone up.

“In this case I’d say the provincial government has done a good job insulating property owners from the buoyant market in ’07 or ’08, which was definitely more in Vancouver than here. We didn’t see the same rapid appreciation of values that Vancouver saw, our prices stayed pretty flat, and it was a pretty sustainable market.”

But while sales volume has slowed recently, Kelly says there is some positive news, including the sale of resident-restricted housing at Cheakamus Crossing, Fitzsimmons Walk and Rainbow. And while sales volume may be down, that could change — with mortgage rates and prices coming down, Kelly said, it’s a buyer’s market.

The Resort Municipality of Whistler is currently finalizing its budget, but residents have been warned to expect another property tax increase. Property taxes increased 5.5 per cent in 2008, but that increase was mitigated by a reduction of provincial taxes to less than two per cent. Increased operating costs and the loss of revenues due to the Class 1/6 condo classification are blamed for the increase.

If people have questions about how their homes were assessed or the provincial legislation that essentially froze assessments at July 2007 values, Grant recommends that people visit www.bcassessment.ca.

As well, there are changes to the B.C. Home Owner Grant system, which can now reduce property taxes by up to $570 on homes up to $1,164,000 in value.

The province created a new Property Tax Deferment Program for homeowners facing hardship as a result of the financial crisis, and that have at least 15 per cent equity in their homes. The province will pay property taxes for qualified applicants in the 2009 and 2010 tax years, but the homeowners owe that money and interest back to the province. The taxes do not have to be paid back until the home is sold or ownership is transferred to someone other than a spouse.

 Sea to Sky sales, median prices fluctuate in 2007-08

B.C. Assessment figures show that the median price of homes sold in Whistler has fluctuated in the past year, but Grant cautioned that figures have to be taken in context from quarter to quarter. Lower averages in one quarter might reflect the sale of smaller condos or resident restricted housing in one quarter rather than a loss in the value of larger homes, while the sale of a mansion might skew numbers upward. Home values are assessed annually from July to July, and are based on neighbourhood values, sale value, size, lot size, age, location and other factors.

In the past two years the median price of homes in Whistler has ranged from $1,045,000 in the fourth quarter of 2007 to $1,395,000 in the first quarter of 2008.

What is interesting to note is the number of homes sold in Whistler in 2008 is down significantly. In 2007 there were 186 homes sold in Whistler, compared to 100 homes from January to October in 2008, the last month data was available last year. There were 58 homes sold from July to September 2007, compared to 26 in the same period of 2008.

In Squamish, the median price for homes increased from $433,500 in January to March 2007 to a high of $522,500 in April to June 2008. That median dropped to $499,000, as did the number of homes sold. From July to September 2007 there were 80 homes sold, compared to just 35 during the same period in 2008.

The situation was similar in Pemberton, although Grant says its hard to attach significance to the numbers because of the relatively few homes sold. From January to March 2007, the median price of homes was $430,000, increasing to a median of $575,000 from April to June 2008. The median dropped to $535,000 from July to September, while the volume of sales ranged from six homes to 18 homes per quarter.

 Assessment Sidebar:

B.C. property values near $1 trillion

·         1,854,009 properties were valued for the 2009 assessment roll, 33,965 more than the previous year.

·         The taxable value of the 2009 roll is $953 billion, an increase of $13 billion or 1.41 per cent over the previous year.

·         Roughly 94 per cent of residents in B.C. will be assessed the same or less than the previous year.

·         The median sale price for Vancouver and Sea to Sky region ranged from $735,000 in January to March 2007 to a high of $870,000 from April to June 2008. In July to September 2008, which includes the economic crisis, the median price was $783,000.

·         Roughly 87.6 per cent of properties are classified as Class 1 residential.

·         Less than two per cent of British Columbians request reviews of their assessment to one of 75 Property Assessment Review Panels appointed by the Ministry of Small Business and Revenue.

The deadline for reviews this year is Feb. 2.