Category: Kamloops Real Estate News

Kamloops Homeowners are you ready for water meters? This article appeared on the front page of the Kamloops This Week on the Friday May 1st, 2009 edition, written by Jeremy Deutsch. What do you think about these proposed water meters in Kamloops?  Read below for the full story.

The city is once again moving in the direction of universal mandatory water meters and will apply to the federal government to help bear the cost to make them a reality. Council has directed staff to apply for stimulus or “shovel-ready” funding after learning water-meter programs are eligible for money under the revised Building Canada Fund.

The cost to install meters in every home in Kamloops is pegged at $12 million, but the expectation is a grant would cover $8 million. The city has flirted with the idea of universal water meters before, but it was rejected by residents in a 2001 referendum. Instead, a voluntary water-metering program has been in place for the last two years, with 128 house-hold signing up in 2008.

The city hopes meters will cut water consumption and ease demand for the natural resource. According to numbers provided by the city, Kamloops is one of the thirstiest communities in Canada, consuming water on a daily basis above the average in the province. Kelowna, which is on a universal water-meter system, uses and average of 587 letres a day per person, compared to Kamloops which uses 700 letres. The provincial average is 426 litres a day per person.

Kelowna experienced a decrease in annual consumption of water by 20 per cent under water meters. “Based on results from communities across North America, there is no question that water meters are an equitable way to charge for water and save significant amounts of capital dollars,” said David Duckworth, the city’s director of public works and utilities.  It is estimated two of the city’s three primary water-delivery zones need significant upgrading within 10 years, while nearly half of the booster stations will require work within the same time period.

While the majority of councillors have expressed support for water meters, Denis Walsh, Pat Wallace and Marg Spina remain opposed. Tina Lange suggested residents prefer a user-pay system for many of the services in the city, noting meters fall in line with that desire. She said the city isn’t going to profit off a metered system, adding for those on a low or fixed income, meters would be financially beneficial. But Walsh questioned whether there were other ways to get people to conserve water without going to meters. He also wants to see some type of public consultation before meters are approved.

Wallace is skeptical of talk and savings under water meters and as a councillor at the time of the 2001 water-meter referendum, feels obliged to uphold its results. “Because we asked teh taxpayers for their opinion, I feel duty-bound to respect that,” she said.

Even if the grant application is approved, council would still need to give its final nod before going ahead with a universal metering program. Under the application, the meters would need to be installed by April 2011. With clear direction from council, it’s now up to city staff to put the application together before today’s deadline – not an easy task as a typical application can take up to four months to complete.

This was published by the Kamloops This Week in their 2009 Progress Report that was distributed March 29, 2009. Peter Milobar, the Kamloops City Mayor wrote this piece in the publication calling for residents to take a “realistic and positive” view on the economy in Kamloops. He does put some of the facts about the recent downturn in building permit values and real estate house values into perspective. Read below for the full story.

Peter Milobar Kamloops Mayor

Over the next year, keeping things in perspective will be critical as it seems we are being inundated daily with stories of economic ruin. While times are undoubtedly changing quickly and the overall economy is slowing, keeping the numbers we see in perspective is important.

Headlines highlight drops in building permit values or house values seem bad at first, but let’s put some perspective to those numbers. This year, our development services department is anticipating building permit values of around $140 million. Now one could say, based on the 2008 number of $208 million, this year will see a 30 per cent drop in values. Technically, that is correct, but does it mean the construction industry is on life support? To put some perspective to the numbers, you would see 2008 was the third consecutive record year for permit values. Yet a closer look to the projected 2009 numbers will show both 2003 and 2004 actually had lower permit values and in fact, $140 million is the 10 year average for Kamloops. So any drop from a record year would seem big. When you consider many of the projects in the 208 permit value numbers will actually be constructed this year and the fact builders were having trouble finding workers under the record setting years, the construction employment numbers should stay strong.

Two other bright lights right now are the B.C. Lottery Corporation and Thompson Rivers University. Locally, the BCLC is currently undergoing not only significant renovations, but are also in the process of hiring 60 new employees. TRU and the newly announced Faculty of Law are continuing to help make Kamloops an even more diversified economy. Domtar and their announcement of new capital improvements for their boilers is also a good indicator of the long-term viability of the Kamloops and regional economy. Capital re-investment provides not only much needed dollars into the economy, but – perhaps more importantly – provides reassurance to the many employees and suppliers of Domtar.

We have been hearing for some time now about the impending labour shortage heading our way into the next three to five years. Slowing economy or not, people will still be getting older and as RRSP accounts start to recover, retirements will pick up, resulting in new job opportunities.

None of the above is meant to make light of the situation the world economy is in and are only examples of how, when most forms of business are coming off record years of growth, some contraction is inevitable. Moving forward, there are two ways to have a realistic view on the economy – a realistic and positive view or a realistic and negative view. My choice is the realistic and positive view. What view will you chose over the next year?

“Getting Down To Business. Mayor and business groups continue meeting to find ways to keep the city moving.”  Written by Jeremy Deutsch of The Kamloops Daily News.  Here is a portion of the story about home renovations and the changes Kamloops City Permits Office has made to the approval process.

A second meeting of the business minds in Kamloops has led to changes in the city’s permit process. The city is working to shorten the time it takes to hand out a permit for small interior renovations to one day. In a typical renovation situation, the applicant submits the appropriate forms, but it can take up to a week to get approval by the time the building department looks at the site.

Under the new system. The applicant will go to the city with a detailed plan for the renovations An inspector will go through the plan then give it an initial OK. The renovations can begin immediately, with a building inspector giving the final OK after inspecting the site once the work is done.

The Canadian Home Builders’ Association (CHBA) Central Interior saw the delay as a major issue for it’s members, saying that a lot of people get discouraged from taking on renovations when they have to wait for approval.  They suggested the longer the wait, the greater the prospect of the builder losing a job.

This article is from the Kamloops Daily News and written by Staff reporter Jeremy Deutsch. This story is from the Wednesday, February 11th, 2009 paper. He states that housing starts are down, as I already expected. There is a lot of news in the media these days about the slumping real estate market not only in Kamloops but in North America. It will be interesting to see what the statistics are for housing starts and residential housing sales in the next couple months. I suspect that we will continue on this trend downwards, but it is pretty difficult to predict the future! Read below for the full article.

Following a trend of declining figures in housing sales and city building permits, the number of housing starts in Kamloops has also taken a dip. Statistics produced by the Canadian Housing and Mortgage Corporation (CMHC) show the 62 housing starts in January were down five per cent from 2008. But the small decline is deceiving, as the number of starts were boosted by one apartment project that began construction during the month.

A closer look reveals six single-detached housing starts, a decrease of 70 per cent from 20 which began in January 2008. Paul Fabri, a market analyst with CMHC, noted the numbers coming out of Kamloops are similar to those across the region. “We’ve seen economies in Kamloops, B.C. and North America begin to experience slower growth and that will mean less demand for housing.” he said.

Kelowna saw a 94 per cent decrease in housing starts last month, while Vernon dropped by 85 per cent. Fabri explained Kelowna’s market, compared to Kamloops is driven by demand for discretionary, resort or secondary housing, which has cooled off considerably, given the economic downturn. He surmised the slower pace of employment growth as the issue in Kamloops.

The CMHC isn’t expecting a quick turnaround either, predicting housing starts will stay low for most of the year.  Fabri also pointed out the last couple of years have been so hot, the number of housing starts now are similar to those during the 1990’s.

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