Vancouver Sun

Don’t get it twisted, Vancouver House living will cost you

Resales in yet-to-be-built condo tower are going for well above market value

- SUSAN LAZARUK slazaruk@postmedia.com

Vancouver House, a twisted building at the north end of the Granville Street Bridge, is still at least a year from being built and be prepared to shell out a minimum of $620,000 if you want in.

And that’s for a 400-square-foot one-bedroom/flex suite, which works out to $1,550 a square foot. The average cost per square foot of Vancouver condos in August was just over $1,000 a square foot, but $1,250 a square foot in Yaletown, according to realtor Steve Saretzky’s website, the Vancity Condo Guide. The 49-storey building sold out within weeks of marketing years ago.

But some suites are being offered for reassignme­nt online. (Pre-sale condominiu­ms are exempt from a law passed last year to restrict the sale of assignment­s to prevent flipping realtors from double-dipping on commission fees.)

The 400-square-foot suite, which also has a 126-square-foot balcony, is on the third floor of the building at 1480 Howe St., in what’s called the “Beach District.”

Another condo — almost 2,100 square feet, three bedrooms and four bathrooms on the 36th floor and with a wraparound balcony — recently sold for $3.2 million or about $1,470 per square foot.

The 151-metre-tall Vancouver House, which includes 375 condo suites ranging from studios to four bedrooms, includes 105 rental suites, a retail area, a library, fitness centre, 25-metre heated pool on a living roof visible from the Granville Street Bridge and a fleet of BMWs for residents to share.

The tower will be the fifth-tallest building after Living Shangri-La (201 metres), the Trump Internatio­nal Hotel and Tower (188 metres), Telus Garden Residentia­l Tower (167 metres) and the Private Residences at Hotel Georgia (158 metres), according to skyscraper­center.com.

The building is unique in that it sits on a 6,500-square-foot triangular-shaped base and increases in square footage incrementa­lly starting at the 12th storey to end up being double that in size and rectangula­r shaped by the top floor, said Carl MacDonald, senior project manager at Bjarke Ingels Group, the Danish architectu­ral firm that designed it.

It is scheduled to be completed by spring of 2019.

The project is to eventually include two other buildings, one on either side of the bridge, housing commercial and office space.

 ??  ?? In the market for a one-bedroom condo unit? Better bank at least a half-million as the price for a 400-square-foot flex suite at Vancouver House in Yaletown will cost you $620,000, which ends up being $1,550 per square foot.
In the market for a one-bedroom condo unit? Better bank at least a half-million as the price for a 400-square-foot flex suite at Vancouver House in Yaletown will cost you $620,000, which ends up being $1,550 per square foot.

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