A pair of empty homes advertised as “never lived in” have gone on the market at two different condo projects belonging to controversial Vancouver developer Westbank.

Unit 1809 at the 2016-completed Telus Garden located at 777 Richard Street building is listed for $1,488,000. Records show that seller originally paid $773,900 for the property in June 2016 and it’s financed with a mortgage from Gulf and Fraser Fishermen’s Credit Union.

Unit 311 at the Kensington Gardens project located at 2220 Kingsway, completed last year, is listed for $868,000. The seller is listed as A&B Marketing Ltd.

Westbank also pre-sold nearly a quarter of all units of its Kensington Garden project — aggressively marketed in Hong Kong — to flippers¹.

Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver threatened our parent publication ThinkPol with legal action after it broke the story about Kensington Garden presales².

The controversial development company is open about only building for what it calls the “Chinese Market”.

“But right now I have a rule when we talk about projects if the Chinese market doesn’t want it, I have no interest in it.” Westbank’s Director of Marketing Michael Braun said on the Westbank website³.

Westbank, headed by Federal Liberal and Vision Vancouver bagman Ian Gillespie, has gained notoriety for pitching Vancouver’s estate market to buyers in China with the “Vancouver’s becoming a safety deposit box for the global rich!” as the selling point⁴.

At the last municipal election Ian Gillespie bankrolled the so called “YIMBY” – Yes In My Backyard – group Abundant Housing Vancouver (AHV) director Adrian Crook’s campaign for Vancouver city council.

AHV claims that cracking down empty homes, which numbered over 25,000 in City of Vancouver alone in 2016, is expensive and ineffective.

The YIMBY group also disputes the figure of 25,000 empty homes, insisting that more supply is the only solution to the region’s housing crisis.

1. https://thinkpol.ca/2017/10/23/westbank-pre-sold-nearly-1-in-4-kensington-garden-condos-heavily-marketed-overseas-to-flippers/
2. https://thinkpol.ca/2017/11/15/vancouver-real-estate-board-threatens-thinkpol-with-lawsuit-to-protect-foreign-buyer-privacy/
3. Original: http://westbankcorp.com/michael-braun archive: http://archive.is/cwqJ8
4. Original: http://www.westbankcorp.cn/media/141.html Archive:http://archive.is/jdxTy