1451 replies to this topic

[Rob Randall]

You'd be surprised how busy UVic is in the summer. Some are serious grad students here for three months on university transfer programs. Others are more like student tourists; spending a summer in beautiful Victoria and taking a couple of elective courses. In addition you have visiting academics and don't forget the parents who travel to Victoria to spend a week with their kid. All that is gone now.

[Mike K.]

But that’s when it’s business as usual so who knows.

UVic has a huge international student population, from what I understand. Several thousand, like around 5,000 or so. Cutting that in half, or seeing those numbers plunge further will make quite an impact on the rental market.

It’ll also be interesting to see how many undergrads switch alma maters to save money and stay at home, or at least in their hometowns. If mom and dad can’t chip in $10k for rent this coming year in addition to the other costs of living in Toronto or Montreal, etc, UVic might be the fallback for students from Victoria.

[Victoria Watcher]

I suspect universities will tell students to come anyway but then still curtail large clssses and interaction. if they tell students to stay away like I say new internationals just won’t register here. plus they will have to lay off all their food services and recreation and housing and library and physical plant staff, that’s huge.

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 29 April 2020 - 06:48 AM.

[Mike K.]

You'd be surprised how busy UVic is in the summer. Some are serious grad students here for three months on university transfer programs. Others are more like student tourists; spending a summer in beautiful Victoria and taking a couple of elective courses. In addition you have visiting academics and don't forget the parents who travel to Victoria to spend a week with their kid. All that is gone now.

There are summer courses, for sure, but is it “busy?” I recall it was at like 10% capacity when I had my summer semesters (which programs with co-ops do, and that’s primarily why schools with mandatory work experience have to offer summer curriculums).

[Mike K.]

I suspect universities will tell students to come anyway but then still curtail large clssses and interaction. if they tell students to stay away like I say new internationals just won’t register here. plus they will have to lay off all their food services and recreation and housing and library and physical plant staff, that’s huge.

Those international students will still want to go somewhere, and you never know, the Island might sound like a good choice considering how low the contraction rate was relative to other places.

There are far too many moving variables right now to know what’s going to happen at UVic, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the university literally goes on pause in many ways until fall 2021.

[Victoria Watcher]

I suspect some landlords are more likely to not “hold” over summer this year. with the uncertainty. in the past some landlords with say basement suites were happy to have them unoccupied each summer as then they could take their own vacation etc and not worry about leaving tenants alone. and they were happy with the tenants they had and were happy to welcome them back next year. but now with no guarantee those same tenants are returning they might rent to others.

[Mike K.]

Yeah, there’s that, too. Meanwhile you’re going to see quite a number of new rental units come online on the West Shore and in the core, both as purpose built and investment condos.

- Hudson Place
- Ironworks
- Fifteen88
- Yates on Yates, perhaps?
- The Row
- The Wade, and that’s not including quite a number of projects

[LJ]

There are summer courses, for sure, but is it “busy?” I recall it was at like 10% capacity when I had my summer semesters (which programs with co-ops do, and that’s primarily why schools with mandatory work experience have to offer summer curriculums).

Don't the uni's rent out accommodation to the public in the summer?

[Victoria Watcher]

Don't the uni's rent out accommodation to the public in the summer?

 

they normally do in regular times.

[VIResident]

1.  "Rental properties vacated by students who have returned to their home town or native country; property owners who, faced with a shortage of international tourists this summer, put short-term vacation rental suites on the long-term market. These are some of the factors that housing advocates and real estate watchers say could reduce rental prices in Greater Victoria."

 

2.  ".....Property owners fear more people will have trouble paying rent once emergency government assistance programs end and with the province facing an 11.5% unemployment rate, Hutniak said"

 

Residential rentals facing pandemic pressures amid absence of tourists and students

https://www.timescol...ents-1.24140008

[Mike K.]

I’m looking forward to the AirBnB equation here. Will the people with vacation suites who’ve vowed to never rent them as long term apartments going to change their minds, or are they holding out for “some” semblance of a tourist season?

[Victoria Watcher]

I’m looking forward to the AirBnB equation here. Will the people with vacation suites who’ve vowed to never rent them as long term apartments going to change their minds, or are they holding out for “some” semblance of a tourist season?

 

most will wait out at least one high season.  even the one quoted in the article says she is renting janion for half price - $75/night - right now.  that's hardly suffering.  but even if it was vacant, if it rents for $150 next season and beyond she is well ahead.

 

the hardest part about going to long-term rental is there is no end.  you can't just stop it later.  you are stuck with your tenant (good or bad) and rent controls.

[Mike K.]

Right. The rental scenario has become very daunting for small landlords.

My friend just “finished” repairing a house he had rented to tenants who refused to pay rent. For six months. Upon moving out, he discovered a huge number of hidden sabotage gems like cut wires in the drywall, plugged drains, loosened bolts, etc.

Now you might be asking why I put “finished” in quotes. Well, low and behold, when my friend stepped out onto the elevated deck to take pictures for the listing, he noticed something wasn’t right. Walking under the deck he realized another calling card of his evicted tenants was cut support beams, just to the point where if several people had walked out onto the deck it would collapse, quite possibly during the first showing.

He has now embarked on rebuilding the deck.

No income for six months, and $20,000 in repairs was what he got for being a landlord. And due to the purposeful damage his tenants left that could have lead to a fire, serious flooding and now death or injury from a collapsed deck, he’s going to be pursuing legal action for nothing else than to seek jail time for someone who clearly had no qualms over putting people’s lives at risk.

[Nparker]

I am sure the former tenants were just practising survival crimes. We're all in this together don't you know?

[Mike K.]

They were average folk, he said. The man was a carpenter and the woman a stay at home mom. No red flags when the papers were signed, then six months of agony until they were finally ordered removed.

You don’t realize how destructive some people are, just for the sake of it, until you’re a landlord that has to stand idly by as someone destroys your home under the protection of the RTA. This is why AirBnB has become so popular. Even the mayor’s landlord, who was also her biggest financial backer in at least two elections, rented out two suites as vacation rentals in her single family home rather than make them available to full time renters.

[spanky123]

1.  "Rental properties vacated by students who have returned to their home town or native country; property owners who, faced with a shortage of international tourists this summer, put short-term vacation rental suites on the long-term market. These are some of the factors that housing advocates and real estate watchers say could reduce rental prices in Greater Victoria."

 

2.  ".....Property owners fear more people will have trouble paying rent once emergency government assistance programs end and with the province facing an 11.5% unemployment rate, Hutniak said"

 

Residential rentals facing pandemic pressures amid absence of tourists and students

https://www.timescol...ents-1.24140008

 

The TC keeps quoting rentals.ca yet if you look at their site they have a grand total of about 40 rentals of all shapes and sizes in Victoria. You can't gain anything meaningful with such a small sample size

[Casual Kev]

most will wait out at least one high season.  even the one quoted in the article says she is renting janion for half price - $75/night - right now.  that's hardly suffering.  but even if it was vacant, if it rents for $150 next season and beyond she is well ahead.

 

the hardest part about going to long-term rental is there is no end.  you can't just stop it later.  you are stuck with your tenant (good or bad) and rent controls.

 

If she's renting a bachelor, even at 2/3 occupancy she'd be making about as much as renting it out long-term but with none of the commitment. Goes to show how much of a boon AirBnB is relative to long-term rentals. 

 

Landlords really need to have an easier time evicting deadbeat and/or destructive tenants to reduce the risks associated with committing the unit to tenants. Unfortunately very few people think of AirBnB as a positive competing force that should encourage rethinking about housing supply or tenancy law. Rather they're seen as a plague that must be fought - ironically, to the benefit of incumbent AirBnB hosts and to the detriment of tenants facing rock-bottom vacancy rates.

[Victoria Watcher]

many landlords would just be happy with a faster process for when a tenant does not pay. surely a process could be put in place that sees a tenant gone by the end of the month which they do not pay for. ie. if you do not pay your rent in June 1 the absolute longest if you stalled and appealed would by june 30.

if there is some type of wild extenuating circumstance and discrepancies at the very least the tenancy branch could issue an order in June that says future rental payments will go into escrow with the government. then when it’s sorted that money can go to the right party.

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 23 May 2020 - 02:53 PM.

[grantpalin]

Right. The rental scenario has become very daunting for small landlords.

My friend just “finished” repairing a house he had rented to tenants who refused to pay rent. For six months. Upon moving out, he discovered a huge number of hidden sabotage gems like cut wires in the drywall, plugged drains, loosened bolts, etc.

Now you might be asking why I put “finished” in quotes. Well, low and behold, when my friend stepped out onto the elevated deck to take pictures for the listing, he noticed something wasn’t right. Walking under the deck he realized another calling card of his evicted tenants was cut support beams, just to the point where if several people had walked out onto the deck it would collapse, quite possibly during the first showing.

He has now embarked on rebuilding the deck.

No income for six months, and $20,000 in repairs was what he got for being a landlord. And due to the purposeful damage his tenants left that could have lead to a fire, serious flooding and now death or injury from a collapsed deck, he’s going to be pursuing legal action for nothing else than to seek jail time for someone who clearly had no qualms over putting people’s lives at risk.

Ugh. Some renters giving the rest of us a bad name. I keep seeing these horror stories as justification for not renting units out long-term, so owners will instead AirBnB the property. Yet is that not taking the same risk?

[Redd42]

Seeing lots of For Rent signs on buildings that used to say Waiting List....