Vancouver’s real-estate market has imploded, so now you can get a $400,000 condo with a side of avocado toast.A Metro Vancouver developer is enticing Millennials to buy one of its 116 condos at a Coquitlam project by reducing the down payment to just 10 per cent from the customary 15 or 20 per cent and offering a year’s supply of free avocado toast.“Saving for a down payment does require some saving and sacrificing,” said Jamie Howard, president of Woodbridge Homes. “At the Kira project, we say you can have your avocado toast and eat it too.”Vancouver’s real estate market is known globally for its sky-high prices, a phenomenon that peaked in June of 2016 and made some homeowners millionaires, but left many residents locked out of the housing markets and facing rising rents and increasing evictions.The real-estate slowdown was one of the reasons cited by the Bank of Canada in its Wednesday decision to keep the benchmark interest rate at 1.75 per cent. In its decision, the Bank of Canada also slashed its 2019 growth forecast for the Canadian economy to 1.2 per cent, down from its January forecast of 1.7 per cent. The bank cited “weaker-than-anticipated housing” as one of the causes for its lower forecast, and also hinted at the prospect of interest rate cuts.In Vancouver, other condo developers have offered to pay for interior decorating, several months of strata fees or even cover some mortgage payments. One realtor who is trying to resell a presale contract at the original purchase price is even offering a $100,000 “credit from developer upon completion,” according to an email she sent to other realtors that was obtained by the Star.The avocado toast is a tongue-in-cheek reference to an infamous 2017 comment from an Australian real-estate developer who counselled young people to stop buying the expensive hipster breakfast item if they wanted to be able to afford a house.It became a potent internet ...
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