Downtown Vancouver parking stall on sale for $45K
A growing number of Vancouver residents are choosing to sell their building's parking stalls. One in Yaletown, an upscale downtown Vancouver neighbourhood is already sporting a $45,000 price tag.
The 13.5 square metre underground parking stall is part of a mixed-use strata building located at Pacific Boulevard and Davie Street. Most strata parking stalls in Vancouver can only be sold to building residents, but not this one.
"It's quite an anomaly actually. There are very few parking spots in Vancouver the public can purchase," said Richard Collins, general manager of Prompton Real Estate, the agency overseeing the sale.
"This particular parking lot is what they call a separate airspace parcel that allows anybody to buy the parking stall."
Increasingly, people living in Downtown Vancouver, who choose to leave their cars behind, are opting to sell their parking spaces separately according to Collins.
Take the poll: Would you buy a parking stall for $45,000 in Vancouver?
The price of parking
While the price tag has people talking, the reality is that the asking price is actually a pretty good deal, according to Collins.
He says parking stalls in Vancouver can go for anywhere from $20,000 to $50,000 and up to $120,000 if you are looking at a parking space with two stalls and a gate.
"I just think that it's taken people by surprise that there is actually a market for parking stalls," said Collins.
"If you look at New York City where there is an ample market for parking stalls, in 2013, the average price for a parking stall in Manhattan was $140,000 U.S.," said Tsur Somerville, a professor at UBC's Sauder School of Business and director of the UBC centre for urban economics and real estate.
Somerville believes these prices accurately reflect the cost of building parking spaces in new developments in a city like Vancouver.
Downtown parking not so hot
Parking spaces in Vancouver's downtown core are becoming less of a sought after commodity as developers shift their focus away from building more of them.
Somerville believes that residents who are buying condos often realize they don't need the parking stall that comes with it, and are deciding to sell it instead.
"The millennials who are buying in Vancouver don't want parking. They don't need a car," said Collins.
"If I look outside my office, I see four Car2Gos parked outside. Why would you pay $40,000 for a parking stall when you could just go across the street and pay for your vehicle when you use it?"
We can expect to see this trend in other dense urban centres like Toronto and Montreal where car share programs are growing. But Somerville doesn't expect residents in Calgary, which still remains a car dependent city, to be giving up their parking just yet.
In the meantime, Collins expects a commercial buyer to swoop up his Yaletown parking stall.
