Market Housing

Housing Prices and Rents
In parallel with comparable municipalities, the price of all forms of housing increased sharply from 2001 to 2007. In New Westminster, detached homes increased by 113%, attached homes by 92%, and apartments by 122%.  Benchmark real estate prices in New Westminster reached their peak in March 2008. In early 2009, there was a decline of 7.5% in the benchmark prices of detached homes and 1.2% in apartments. Benchmark data for attached housing was not available.

Overall, housing in New Westminster is more “affordable” when compared to Vancouver, yet less so than Surrey and FraserValley municipalities.

Rental Housing
Rental housing serves an important role in the community, providing access to a form of affordable housing to households with varied income levels.  It also allows for flexibility in the housing market for workers who need to live closer to their employment.  Retention of rental housing is a City priority. 

In New Westminster, approximately 46% of all households are renters.  Rental housing comes in many forms: purpose-built rental apartments, condominium rentals, single-family house rentals, secondary suites, rooming houses, etc. Since 2000, vacancy rates have ranged between 0.9% and 2.8%. Vacancy in 2007 continued to be low at 1.3%. 

Purpose-Built Rental Housing
The purpose-built rental structures tend to comprise the older rental housing stock as there has been very limited development of new rental housing in recent years. Due in part to the moratorium on strata conversion of older purpose-built rental buildings, the City has experienced a loss of no more than 2.9%, or 244 units, in the past five years due to redevelopment.  However, the City’s purpose-built rental apartment stock is aging and 10% of rental apartment units are in need of major repair.

 

Table 1: Average rent, purpose-built rental stock, 2007

Unit Size	Rent	Number of Units
Bachelor	$590	784
1-Bedroom	$709	5,172
2-Bedroom	$893	2,043
3-Bedroom +	$1,131	152
Total	$751	8,151

Source: Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, Market Rental Report, October 2007

The average rent (among the purpose-built stock) increased by 28% between 2002 when the average rent was $666 and 2007 when rents were $751. That is an average increase of 2.4% per year during that period. According to BC’s Residential Tenancy Regulation for 2008, the maximum allowable annual rent increase is 3.7%.

Secondary Suites
Secondary suites have come to be recognized as a legitimate and desirable form of affordable rental housing. They are often an affordable option for students, single people, young working couples and small families.  New Westminster’s Secondary Suites Program began in 1998.  Since then, 269 legal suites have been implemented throughout the City with up to an additional 2,200 suites that are not registered. This would suggest that secondary suites could potentially make up 10% of the housing stock in New Westminster.  Based on an analysis of the City’s legal suites, we note that most of the secondary suites that are legal are found in newer homes.

• Secondary suite webpage