Water views dominate desirability, but about City views?

Human beings consistently prefer a view over water, be it the ocean, a lake, or river. Water has a calming effect. The second most "desirable" view tends to be natural landscapes. Views of a prominent mountain or a gorgeous landscape like the Columbia River Gorge. Cityscape views come in third and have the most variability and risk.

Landscape views tend to lose in the night time and sometimes a water view does as well especially in coastal and rural areas. The one view type that tends to shine at night, literally and figuratively, is an urban landscape.

The long standing issue with urban landscapes is the near constant threat of some future urban project rising up to block that city view. Some really high end buildings hyper rich markets have literally bought airspace rights over other structures to create permanent view corridors in dense cities like Hong Kong and NYC. 

Urban landscape views are often at the best at night as bright city lights dance in the windows of urban condos. They are mostly protected from the weather as well. Cloudy days and nights do not ruin the views. About the only natural event that messes with a city view is dense fog.

Vancouver has an interesting trifecta opportunity with many of its urban views. The Downtown area lies on the shores of the mighty Columbia River offering many homeowners a lovely water view that also lights up at night with reflections of the cityscape all through the night. Towering Cascade volcanoes are also visible from many locations as well. Some of Vancouver's waterfront neighborhoods both in the urban core and in the suburbs along the Columbia share this rare trifecta of views.

At the end of the proverbial day, most people will still gravitate towards a water view. This certainly helps explain why waterfront properties tend to sell for substantially more money than other view types or no views at all. City dwellers in Vancouver can enjoy all three view types from the same picture window. You just have to have really deep pockets.
  

Downtown Vancouver Condos

Downtown Vancouver remains a stronger market relative to many other neighborhoods. Downtown has enjoyed a surge in popularity compared to the other urban neighborhoods in Portland. If you want a true city living experience you are limited to neighborhoods like Downtown Portland, The Pearl District, Lloyd District, South Waterfront, and Slabtown in Portland or right here in Downtown Vancouver. Portland still suffers from empty storefronts and a depressed office market in the city center. Vancouver on the other hand is adding merchants and restaurants and has a fairly tight office market that is actually expanding rather than contracting.

The City of Portland has made some major changes in the structure of the local government and it seems like things are starting to improve. They are however going to need allot of time to recover their sagging reputation. Thats the thing about a reputation, it only takes a minute to ruin it, it can take years to gain it back. 

Vancouver has to be very careful here and mindful of its own history. In the 1980s and early 1990s Vancouver's downtown was in terrible shape. The beautiful Esther Short Park was over run with vagrants, drug dealers, and strung out prostitutes. Main Street had more sleazy card rooms and pawn shops than they did restaurants. Even after the beautiful park renovations and the fabulous redevelopment of the old Lucky Lager brewery site Vancouver still clung to the reputation as being a dumpy city. The Mayor continued to push for redevelopment and the city continued to improve. After the recession ended and the Waterfront started to emerge the city started appearing on the news for positive reasons rather than negative stories. Now that the Waterfront is 70% built-out, the city enjoys the reputation for being a destination and the hip place to hang out. It took nearly three decades to crawl out from under the crappy reputation and our local leaders need to be vigilant not to let the homeless overrun it, nor let crime get out of hand. That shiny reputation we have earned over the last 15 years can be gone in an instant. The city needs to reap the rewards of higher tax revenues downtown and if they screw up and let things decline they will never recover the investment they have into the redevelopment. Politicians are rarely smart enough to see that. 

I did a YouTube video that goes over the six condominium developments in the Downtown specifically as a bit of a guide to condos. You can watch that here:

          

Are Lower rates Helping the Local Market?

Mortgage rates have seen a slight drop and low to mid sixes are available to highly qualified borrowers. With a little help from the seller, rates in the 5s are easily attainable. One might expect some favorable movement as a result. So has it helped?

That's tough to quantify at this point. I am seeing an uptick in buyer activity, but we are also seeing an uptick in new listings. If both of those metric continue to rise it will keep the relative market stable. It will be good for agents of course as transactions will go up :) But for buyers and sellers the balance of inventory to buyers needs to change for there to be any movement in values. 

At this point our market remains a little soft on price and enough inventory to keep the buyers busy. technically our inventory levels still slightly favor sellers but certain sub-markets and neighborhoods may be hotter than others. 

A savvy buyer should open up the neighborhood range to capitalize on deals that may appear due to more seller activity. Neighborhood turnover can be a sign of trouble, but sometimes it's just a sign of normal turnover. Neighborhoods that were built 10-15 years ago in desirable school districts may now have a lot of empty nesters moving out, not because of any trouble but just the normal retirement move. That can work in the favor of buyers.

Buyers should always do their own due diligence and check things out, check with an agent about the area before making an offer. Things are looking up overall after a couple almost stagnant years.