Many detached homes in Vancouver could be torn down: UBC

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VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – You’ve been hearing about it non-stop for the past several months and there is more concerning news about the local real estate market.

Researchers at UBC say about one-quarter of detached homes in Vancouver could be torn down sometime between now and 2030. Experts have used a forecasting tool, known as a teardown index, which suggests the lower the value of a home is relative to the overall value of a property and the likelihood it would be ripped down and replaced. UBC says the two compared land value, building value and lot size with variables such as whether the property had been torn down a couple of years before or after the sale.

“An RBV of between 60 per cent and 70 per cent is generally considered healthy for a new building. But when a building is worth less than 10 per cent of the total value of the property, the probability of teardown and replacement increases dramatically,” explains Joseph Dahmen, a professor of architecture at the UBC.

As a case study, researchers traced the relative building value of a home built in 1940. And they found that as the overall price of the property rose over 75 years, its relative building value dropped, eventually hitting just four percent. Dahmen says with those kinds of numbers, it’s likely the tear down would be replaced with a new home.

With local real estate prices quickly growing out of control, half of single-family homes in Vancouver already have relative building values below 7.5 per cent, says research collaborator and mathematician Jens von Bergmann of MountainMath Software.

“If RBVs continue to slide, one-quarter of all single-family homes will be torn down between now and 2030, replaced by new single-family houses that seek to maximize size,” said von Bergmann. “It’s not clear how that will help affordability. We should ask ourselves how to replace these teardowns with more units of ground-oriented, family-friendly homes on each lot.”

In their research, experts are also highlighting the environmental concerns of tearing down so many homes.

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