Latest news with #BrendanPowell
The Province
29-05-2025
- Business
- The Province
Some homes in Toronto are being listed for $1. Here's why
'Another time when you are likely to see this strategy is when the objective value is very hard to determine,' says broker of record Brendan Powell Homes stand in this aerial photograph taken above Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on Monday, Oct. 2, 2017. Photo by James MacDonald / Bloomberg Some properties in the Greater Toronto Area are being listed for $1 — a meagre price tag compared to the latest data on the average selling price, which was $1.1 million in April, according to the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Exclusive articles by top sports columnists Patrick Johnston, Ben Kuzma, J.J. Abrams and others. Plus, Canucks Report, Sports and Headline News newsletters and events. Unlimited online access to The Province and 15 news sites with one account. The Province ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on. Daily puzzles and comics, including the New York Times Crossword. Support local journalism. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Exclusive articles by top sports columnists Patrick Johnston, Ben Kuzma, J.J. Abrams and others. Plus, Canucks Report, Sports and Headline News newsletters and events. Unlimited online access to The Province and 15 news sites with one account. The Province ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on. Daily puzzles and comics, including the New York Times Crossword. Support local journalism. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Most recently, two adjacent homes in the East Danforth area were listed for a loonie, as was a lot in the Englemount-Lawrence neighbourhood that gives buyers the opportunity to build a detached house, with approved permits, drawings and development charges, according to the listing. A vacant lot in Cabbagetown also comes with a $1 price tag. It has approved zoning for four storeys and is 'a rare and exciting opportunity for investors and developers,' the listing says. Properties being listed for $1 isn't a new strategy, explains Brendan Powell, broker of record at the BREL team at BSpoke Realty Inc. It tends to come up when sellers and agents have run out of more conventional ways to attract attention to their listing Brendan Powell 'It tends to come up when sellers and agents have run out of more conventional ways to attract attention to their listing,' he told National Post over email on Tuesday. Essential reading for hockey fans who eat, sleep, Canucks, repeat. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. Please try again This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. 'Another time when you are likely to see this strategy is when the objective value is very hard to determine,' he said, pointing out that the listings in the East Danforth, Englemount-Lawrence and Cabbagetown areas fall into that category. 'One is a vacant lot downtown, so the value is entirely in the eyes (and wallet) of the beholder — generally depending on what they plan to do with the space,' he said, referring to Cabbagetown. Per the listing, the lot is located in the heart of Toronto's bustling downtown and is 'just steps away from leading universities, colleges, and hospitals.' It is 'ideally situated to meet the growing demand for student housing, micro-suites, or high-demand downtown living rentals.' This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. As for the East Danforth area listing, Powell said the combined address of two connected sides of a semi being together is 'quite unusual.' 'The value for that could be quite different from the simple combination of each property value on its own,' he said. The listing reads: 'Imagine the possibilities: live in one and generate income by renting the other, or create a multi-generational family residence.' The Englemount-Lawrence lot comes with plans for a house, so 'you are buying the lot, as well as all the plans, permits… the value of which is very personal.' In these cases, each of the properties is hard to price, he said. 'The $1 price tag is kind of like saying 'or best offer' without having to commit to an arbitrary bracket. I still feel that more often than not, $1 listings are about attracting attention to unusual properties — heritage homes, unique properties,' said Powell. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Founder and broker of record at Bosley – Toronto Realty Group Inc. David Fleming, who has written about $1 homes on Toronto Realty Blog, told National Post over email that he thinks it's a tactic 'that never works.' 'It's borne of desperation, and that desperation typically comes as a result of sellers who won't accept fair market value, and/or listing agents who don't have the stomach to show their sellers the reality of the market,' he said. After some houses hit the market for $1 in March, Fleming wrote in a blog post: 'This isn't outside-the-box thinking at all. It's pure lunacy, is what is.' He compiled data from 2015 to 2024 and included listings in Toronto, Durham, Halton, Peel, and York. He narrowed down the listings to actual homes, excluding vacant lots or power of sales. He found that the success rate of selling a $1 home was close to 1 per cent. Although it's possible, he said it was rare. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. One example of a property elsewhere in Canada being listed for $1 is the former home of Canadian businessman Jim Pattison in West Vancouver. In 2022, the District of West Vancouver purchased the house for under $5.2 million and stipulated that whoever buys the home next will have to transport it to another location to make way for a public walkway and park along the waterfront, Vancouver Sun reported. It was sold for $1.75 in July 2023, per North Shore News. 'This is an extremely wonderful outcome because the applicant plans to move the home by barge, and temporarily store it until a new location in Vancouver is prepared. There'll be no cost of this move to the district,' said West Vancouver Mayor Mark Sager at the time. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Europe is also no stranger to listing properties for pocket change. Twenty-five municipalities in Italy are offering up vacant homes for the symbolic price tag of one euro. The younger generations who are no longer interested in living in smaller villages have left behind an aging population with no heirs to their property, The Independent reported. Local authorities have taken over and devised a plan — listing the homes for a mere euro — to attract new homeowners to help the communities thrive. But, there are strings attached. The buyers must guarantee that they'll plan a restructuring and revaluation project (usually within a year of purchase), support notarial fees for registration, start work within the time decided by the municipality, and take out a surety policy between 1,000 to 5,000 euros that expires when the work is completed, according to Read More Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here. News News Vancouver Canucks Vancouver Canucks Vancouver Canucks
San Francisco Chronicle
28-04-2025
- Business
- San Francisco Chronicle
Meet the S.F. group begging the city to build more housing in its ‘rich' neighborhood
At a time when San Francisco neighborhood groups from the Marina to the Sunset to Fisherman's Wharf are fighting the city's plan to allow taller and denser housing, a group of residents in one city enclave have a different message to city planners: Please, upzone us. The organization D9 Neighbors for Housing has been lobbying to have Bernal Heights included in the rezoning that is aimed at producing housing areas in the city that have seen little development in the past 40 years and are considered 'high-resourced' in terms of household income, transit, schools, parks and retail. The group believes that the neighborhood's 40-foot building height limits and tight density controls have contributed to soaring housing prices and created an exclusive environment where the artists and activists and working-class families who defined Bernal for generations are shut out. D9 Neighbors argues that Bernal Heights, a lively hillside village with narrow streets, neighborhood schools, a library, spectacular hilltop parks, a strong retail corridor and a median home price of $1.7 million is nothing if not well-resourced. The neighborhood was left out of the 2010 Eastern Neighborhoods plan that resulted in thousands of new homes in the adjacent Mission, as well as Dogpatch and Potrero Hill. 'This is a resource-rich hill,' said Brendan Powell, a longtime Bernal homeowner who raised his family in the neighborhood. 'We are a rich enclave and we need to do our part. There is a clash between a lot of our neighbors' image of themselves and the reality of the wealth they have.' For the most part, the city's state-mandated 'expanding housing choice' plan doesn't include eastern parts of the city that have seen the preponderance of building in the past 25 years. Neighborhoods left off the rezoning map include the Mission, SoMa, Civic Center, Ingleside, Dogpatch, Hayes Valley, Western Addition, Bayview-Hunters Point and Potrero Hill. These are all areas that have either been part of past rezonings or do not qualify as 'high-resourced' under the Planning Department's criteria. Planning Director Rich Hillis said that 'Bernal is somewhat unique' in that it has not been included in any of the neighborhood plans that have allowed for more densities. While property values have soared, the neighborhood is still part of a census tract that doesn't qualify as high-resourced. 'You could probably make an argument that it's similar to well-resourced neighborhoods, but the way the data come together by census tract it ended up not being in a well-resourced area,' Hillis said Hillis acknowledged that the D9 group is unusual. 'This is the only time I have seen a group organizing to become part of the upzoning,' he said. He emphasized that the plan is still in flux with changes to the map likely to occur between now and January, when state law requires that the rezoning be complete. It's possible that the Planning Commission could decide to add a portion of Bernal in the rezoning. The state is requiring that the city rezone for 36,000 units of new housing, over half of which must be affordable to low- and middle-income families. In a city where nearly all new housing has been built in a handful of neighborhoods, Bernal Heights has been particularly immune from development. Between 2016 and 2021 it added 60 housing units, which equates to just 0.02% of housing built in the city. This is compared to 12,005 units in SoMa and 3,073 in Mission. From 2008 to 2023, Bernal averaged six net new units per year and among the city's districts it ranked last or near last in building housing almost every year, according to the city's annual Housing Inventory Reports. But the neighborhood hasn't always been so immune to development, particularly affordable housing. In the 1940s and '50s three public housing developments were built on the neighborhood's edge: 118 units at Holly Court, 160 at Bernal Dwellings and 151 at Alameda Apartments. All three of those projects have been renovated in recent years. And in recent years Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center has been aggressively looking to add to its affordable housing portfolio. The group is building 35 units at 3300 Mission St., which will replace the 3300 Club bar and residential hotel that was destroyed in a 2016 fire. In a statement, the group said the project would be completed in fall of 2026. The group recently won approvals for 70 units of disability-forward senior housing at 3333 Mission St., in the parking lot of a shuttered Big Lots store. 'We are actively pursuing a financing pathway for this project,' the group said. Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center has not taken a position on the rezoning. Both the 3300 and 3000 Mission projects were opposed by neighbors — something which members of D9 Neighbors said is all too common. The 3300 Mission project went through several owners and years of political negotiations before the final project was approved. It was opposed by condo owners in the adjacent market-rate building, which was on the site of a hardware store that was also destroyed in the fire. Powell, who managed a vintage car restoration shop, said the 3300 project, which will open in late 2026, should have been denser and taller and completed long ago. 'That fire was tragic, but how do we make the most of that situation, how do we turn that into something that helps San Francisco, that helps Bernal, helps Mission Street?' he said. 'I'd say taking 10 years to start building is not helping San Francisco — it certainly didn't help the people who were burned out in the fire.' But it's unclear if upzoning that stretch of Mission Street would have led to more units at either 3000 or 3333 Mission, according to Planning Department Chief of Staff Dan Sider. While both properties are zoned for 40 feet, state density bonuses allowed for another three floors of units and also for 'density decontrol,' meaning that the developer wasn't limited in how many units it could squeeze into the buildings. If the zoning had been 65 or 85 feet, the two projects could be taller, but that would have forced a steel-frame or concrete building type that is expensive and difficult to finance. The neighborhood's unique geography — steep hills, wild open spaces and some streets so narrow that two cars can't pass each other — offers limited opportunities. Bernal's vibrant main commercial corridor, Cortland Street, is narrow with few vacancies. There is the single-story Good Life grocery store that some have mentioned as a possible development project, with housing above the retailer. But that would force the temporary closure or relocation of the wildly popular grocer, which is not something likely to be embraced by the community or the business. Most of the large opportunity sites in Bernal are on the flats along Mission Street and eastern end of Cortland, near Bayshore Boulevard, where small-scale retail and housing gives way to larger commercial parcels like the Bare Bottle brewery and tasting room at 1525 Cortland. Powell said he could see a redevelopment project there that includes a new brewery with housing above. He said neighbors need to think inventively if they want to create a place where their kids can raise their families and older empty-nesters can downsize into smaller units. His generation of Bernal transplants — he has been in Bernal or nearby since the late 1990s — 'have a notion of Bernal when they arrived.' 'I don't think they recognize that the people who do the same work that they do, or the work they did in their 20s or 30s or 40s or whenever they were able to get on the ladder, couldn't get on that ladder today,' he said 'Part of being a sanctuary is giving people a place to be. If we don't have housing we can't be a sanctuary. We can't live up to the values we espouse.' But, some longtime Bernal renters see the potential upzoning as a threat. Stephen Torres, who works at two San Francisco legacy businesses — Flower Craft garden center on Bayshore Boulevard and Twin Peaks Tavern in the Castro — characterized the pro-upzoning group as the 'homeowners up on the hill' who are happy to advocate for more density in the flats along Mission Street which will not impact them very much. 'A lot of us resent the top down attitude,' he said. 'It's people who had enough money to buy a home on the hill saying, 'Oh, Bernal is such a well-resourced neighborhood,' and then the parts of the neighborhood they are identifying for density are down at the bottom of the hill.' Torres said the vital community of restaurant and entertainment establishments along Mission Street south of Cesar Chavez — like Royal Cuckoo, Pizzahacker and Club Malibu — could be lost to redevelopment if the strip is upzoned. 'It's going to trigger a speculative real estate rush,' he said. Still, the push to add housing in Bernal has struck a chord. A year after being revived the D9 Neighbors, which was originally started by the late Michael Nolan, has 369 members, according to the group. Its members turned out in droves to support both plans for 3000 and 3300 Mission, as well as the rezoning. D9 Neighbors organizer Ruth Ferguson is typical of the members who have been testifying at public meetings. She said she was lucky to be able to buy a home in Bernal but fears that her friends and her sister — who lives on her block and 'makes a great salary as a nurse at the VA' — will eventually be priced out. The hope that her parents, small business owners in Washington state, might be able to retire to San Francisco to be closer to their daughters is far-fetched. 'My parents who have had a small business and worked their asses off my whole life, there is no chance they could buy a place here and live near me and my sister,' she said Ferguson said the arguments against upzoning are 'rooted in progressive values and justice,' convictions she said she shares. But she said the refusal to open Bernal up to new development 'sequesters' high density in other less wealthy neighborhoods and creates 'affordable housing segregation.' 'People like to say that Bernal Heights has a rich history of working-class people and artists and it does, and that's amazing,' she said. 'But at a certain point the rhetoric is hypocritical. We should be thinking of building for the people who are here and won't be able to stay, the people who have been forced out and the people who will be here in the future.'
BBC News
27-04-2025
- Sport
- BBC News
Somerset in Pictures: Swans, horse racing and Team Bath
Racing returned to Somerset this week, while the end of the Easter weekend brought some one of the oldest family-owned department stores in the country celebrated its 250th is our selection of pictures from across the county this week. Over hurdles: Brendan Powell rode American Land to victory during the Ron Hatton Memorial Handicap Hurdle at Taunton Racecourse on Wednesday. Beach day: People flocked to the beach at Weston-super-Mare over the Easter bank holiday weekend. Historic shop: Former staff at one of the oldest family-owned department stores in the country gathered for a special event to mark its 250th anniversary. Hatchers can trace its history back to a drapery shop that was first set up in 1775 and it still employs more than 40 people in Taunton. Former employee Alison Winchester was among the guests. Cows and clouds: This highland cow was captured by weather watcher Nutkin on a cloudy day this week. Easter win: Team Bath Netball began the second half of the inaugural NXT Gen League season on a winning note as they recorded a 59-44 victory over Severn rivals Cardiff Dragons on Easter Saturday. Sunny spells: We've had some mixed weather this week but the sun came out intermittently, making for beautiful photos such as this one of Glastonbury Tor. Oldest player: A former Bath Rugby player has been presented with a legacy cap 74 years after first joining the club. Stan Francis, now 100 years old and thought to be Bath Rugby's oldest living player, made his debut for the club in 1951. Spring chicks: There was great excitement at The Bishop's Palace and Gardens in Wells as this year's cygnets hatched in the nest of the Palace's much-loved swans, Grace and Gabriel. The moment of hatching was confirmed by Moira Anderson, known locally as the Palace's "Swan Whisperer." Competing nationally: Maisie Elliott of Bath University competed in the Women's 100m Butterfly heat during day five of the British Swimming Championships. Medical advancement: Stroke care and research colleagues at Somerset NHS Foundation Trust have teamed up to test a new nerve stimulation therapy, in bid to improve hand and arm weakness in stroke survivors. The new stroke treatment delivers electrical pulses to a patient's brain via a portable, pacemaker-like device.
