Buyers Want Out of Olympic Village!!!

[SethM]

11 Olympic Village condo buyers want out

CBC News
Thursday, June 24, 2010

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columb ... z0rqSarexm

Several pre-sale buyers of condominiums at the city-financed Olympic Athletes' Village site on Vancouver's False Creek don't like their new homes and want to back out of their deals, CBC News has learned.

A lawyer representing 11 buyers said the City of Vancouver — which had to step in to finance the project when the original developer ran out of money — has not delivered on what was promised for the condominium units.

"They've lost faith in the developer," said Bryan Baynham. "They've lost faith in the city.

"Give us our money back and sell them to someone else who wants to live there. My people don't want to live there."

The buyers are unhappy that there's a parking lot where there was supposed to be a park, that washers and dryers have not been installed in their units and that their $5,000 fireplaces are defective, said Baynham.

He said the buyers wonder what else might be wrong.

The alleged deficiencies amount to a breach of contract, said Baynham, and his clients want their deposits back, with interest.

Pre-sale buyers Barbara and Harold Thuringer were asked how they would rate their unit on a scale of one to 10.

"I would say a six," said Barbara.

"Pretty low," said her husband.

The City of Vancouver stepped in to finance the Millennium Water condo project when the Millennium Development Corp. could no longer get financing.

City confident

City manager Penny Ballem said it is not unusual for some buyers in a 737-unit development to want out.

"This is a great development," said Ballem. "It has won lots of prizes and we have lots of confidence."

Baynham said the city owns the land and became the primary lender on the project, but was not included in the original sales contracts.

But the City of Vancouver is not mentioned in the sales agreements which means the contracts are not valid, Baynham said.

In March, the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee handed back to the city the hundreds of units it used to house Olympic athletes.

Of the 737 units, 264 had been purchased as pre-sales, before the development was built. As is typical with all pre-sales in B.C., scale models, artist renderings and pitches from sales agents were all buyers had to go on.

Condominium prices ranged from about $400,000 to $10 million.

The 473 remaining units went on the market in May and 36 have been sold so far, according to Bob Rennie, a Vancouver condominium marketer who the city has hired on a contract for two years to sell the project.

Rennie reflects Ballem's confidence.

"We have buyers going, 'Wow, I love the hardwood floors and the view and the sub-zero [freezer],'" said Rennie.

[robert james]

Alright,,what is going on here ??? People want in ,,people want out..Wall to wall rich chinese,, buyin here,, buying there.. I heard Rennie on the radio this morning and I really want to believe you ,bob ,,but the rats are really starting to smell..

[thirdlittlepig]

Define "Park". A green park or a car park? Maybe a park is a larger piece of asphalt with a few trees and bushes, maybe it's a smaller piece of asphalt with more trees and bushes.So, put in the dryers and washers, fix the fireplaces, go to the building's council with proposal to replace parking lot with park, or better plant some trees and stuff around the parking lot.

But I don't get the part about the sales not being legal because the owner/financer switched to the city. Surely other developments have been refinanced by different parties. Should make no difference, or if it does, were the lawyers asleep at the switch?

If 11 people are stupid enough to publicly badmouth the units they are probably going to want to put on the market in the near future, I'm sure there are a dozen or more who also suffer buyer's remorse, have trouble scraping up the money, or hope to yet flip their units and don't want any bad publicity to make it more difficult to sell or reduce the value of their units. The market has changed folks, you aren't going to flip those babies for a profit, grow up.
Wait till the remaining units are sold at firesale prices, and then you will have even more unhappy flippers.

[metalhead]

The buyers are unhappy that there's a parking lot where there was supposed to be a park, that washers and dryers have not been installed in their units and that their $5,000 fireplaces are defective, said Baynham

Apparently on CBC radio the first guy they talked to that wanted out said something along the lines like "It's not worth now what we thought it was going to be worth when we did the presale."
I don't think that is legal grounds for getting out of your presale contract.

Sounds like the lawyers got them back on track by complaining about the park, W & D, and fireplace.
Do you think they would want out of the deal if they thought they could flip them for a 100K profit?
Bwahahaaaa, they wouldn't give a shit about the park etc. if that were the case.

[MultipleOffer]

The resale market in Millenium Water will be TOUGH, competing against ~500 developer/city owned units. The good news for owners there is that the city HAS to keep prices high, or there will be hell to pay. Unfortunately, it will mean not many will sell. I'm guessing Rennie will need an extension on his contract.

The new park there is quite nice tho!

[registered]

The new park there is quite nice tho!

Yuck, I ride past there regularly. The statuary is almost comically ugly, up there with some of the 'nature art' tacked to the sides of transit stations. Must be a deeply WTF moment for European visitors. Or maybe they just write it off to a good mushroom crop.

[gse36]

Thats true, the art choices are really bizarre.

Like those tacky neon orange color bears at the side of one of the skytrain stations in vancouver (49th?)

The "Mao" (i think) metallic big head in Richmond on elmbridge way. There is some guy standing on his head with a pole -- makes "Mao" look like a propellerhead.

The grotesque brown things on #3 road (not sure what those are, but they are hollow and people/bums hang out in them)

The metal "tin foil" outside of City Center station.

The "jellyfish" art at the Olympic Oval. (looks like wire mesh hanging on a pole, painted a strong red color).

there are probably others, but they escape me..

[SethM]

Why the purchasers want their money back:

[SethM]

Haven't we seen this movie before?



Remember the famous quote at 1:48 in the video during the boom?

[Johnny Horton]

Remember the famous quote at 1:48 in the video during the boom?

....I buy s'ree, my husban gonna buy s'ree. Sounds Korean.
Oh well, the condo prices go up, the condo prices go down.

[SethM]

Remember the famous quote at 1:48 in the video during the boom?

....I buy s'ree, my husban gonna buy s'ree. Sounds Korean.
Oh well, the condo prices go up, the condo prices go down.

That quote was from 2004. She probably made over $1,000,000 profit on those 6 condos! She was smart!!!! I think 1 bedrooms were selling for $199,000 in Yaletown Park at that time. When the building was completed, they were selling for $350,000!!! Johnny, can you say P.R.O.F.I.T!!!!!!

[GooseMan]

People like that may have made a million from the deal; if they sold them, took the cash, and put it in the bank.

But like so many, they probably decided to put the money back into real estate, guaranteed to make even more.

And since they market always goes up, the most profit comes from using the least amount of your own money, and financing up the butt. So perhaps they've turning that 1 million of profit into several million more in financing debt. Their next round of sales should make them a fortune.

That is, as long as the market doesn't decrease, at all.

[eyesthebye]

"Johnny Horton"
....I buy s'ree, my husban gonna buy s'ree. Sounds Korean.

This is an incredibly significant sound clip. Haven't we been using this phrase for years to refer to the greedy
condo specuvestor.

I doubt she's Korean...it's mostly the Chinese asian in Vancouver that have this kind of
insatiable appetite for money.

[Thompson]

"Johnny Horton"
....I buy s'ree, my husban gonna buy s'ree. Sounds Korean.

This is an incredibly significant sound clip. Haven't we been using this phrase for years to refer to the greedy
condo specuvestor.

I doubt she's Korean...it's mostly the Chinese asian in Vancouver that have this kind of
insatiable appetite for money.

Whatever. What's your point?

[jesse1]

I doubt she's Korean...it's mostly the Chinese asian in Vancouver that have this kind of insatiable appetite for money.

eyesthebye, I think it's time you find somewhere else to post crap like this. You've already proven yourself, time and time again, to be one of the biggest idiots around (and on this forum that's saying something); don't add any other monikers to the list.