VANCOUVER — It sounded like an astonishing purchase when reported in June — $25 million for a deluxe penthouse in the Fairmont Pacific Rim building at Coal Harbour — but it turns out that was just part of the story.
The price for the penthouse was a record for a Vancouver condo, but the buyer, identified only as a Middle Eastern royal by the realtor who made the deal, also picked up a unit on the floor below for $15 million, bringing the total to $40 million worth of real estate.
Realtor Malcolm Hasman, quoted in a story by Bloomberg News, characterized the combined purchase as the most expensive condominium purchase in Canada, and indicative of the foreign interest in Vancouver real estate.
“Vancouver has been fuelled tremendously in the last couple of years by high-end wealthy Chinese and Hong Kong buyers,” Hasman said.
This year will probably be Hasman’s third-highest in sales, after 2012 and 2007, with more than $200 million in luxury real estate sold, he said.
“There’s more money around today than there’s ever been in the high-end market. And where’s it coming in from? The Middle East, China, Asia.”
Hasman declined to disclose his buyer’s identity, and transaction records at the B.C. Land Title Office only identify the purchaser as Leemar Investments FZE, a company registered in Dubai’s Jebel Ali Free Zone Authority.
Land title documents show that Leemar bought the PH01 unit on June 7 for $25 million. The property last sold for $17.6 million in April 2010.
Just 10 days later, land title documents show that Leemar bought apartment 4601 for $15 million. That property last sold for $5.5 million in February, 2010.
Realtors at the luxury end of the market noted a marginal recovery in sales of expensive properties during the first half of 2013 compared with the last half of 2012.
Sotheby’s International Realty Canada, in its mid-year Top-Tier report for 2013, counted seven condominium sales over $4 million in the first half of 2013, which was relatively steady with the last half of 2012.
Condo sales at lower tiers, however, were more robust. At the price point between $2 million and $4 million, Sotheby’s counted 40 sales, a 90-per-cent increase from the last half of 2012, and between $1 million and $2 million, 131 apartments sold, which was up 26 per cent from the last half of 2012.
The Pacific Rim sale was part of six consecutive months of monthly home sales gains, the most since January 2011, and defying the predictions of the Toronto Real Estate Board and the Bank of Montreal that the market is cooling. Analysts and investors including Bank of Nova Scotia and Sun Life Financial Inc. now say it represents the excesses of a market that may be peaking.
