UDI Cancels Its 2026 Awards — “There Is Little to Celebrate”
Jailed Developer Helen Chan Sun Declared Bankrupt
Vancouver's “Villages” Public Hearing July 14 — 13,000 Lots About to Be Pre-Zoned
Investor's Scoreboard
Hot Foreclosure
Selected Blog Post
Feature Spotlight
Listing We Love
What Real Estate Creators are Talking About This Week
The Big Three
UDI Cancels its 2026 Awards — “There is Little to Celebrate”
The Urban Development Institute, BC's main development industry body, has cancelled its 2026 Awards of Excellence outright. CEO Michael Drummond's statement landed hard: “There is little to celebrate when the conditions to build are this broken.” These are the awards that recognize the year's best BC development projects, and the industry just declared there isn't a year worth recognizing. A full-throated statement that the BC building environment has collapsed.
Jailed Developer Helen Chan Sun Declared Bankrupt
The Vancouver developer ZONED covered in Issue #7 (when she was sentenced to 40 days for contempt) was declared bankrupt on June 11 by BC Supreme Court, even as she remained behind bars. Justice Gordon Weatherill granted the order with one of the more memorable lines in recent BC legal history: “The debtor has a history of financial shenanigans that have been exposed in various proceedings before this court.” Sun's personal net worth peaked at $94 million on Cambie Corridor speculation. Today she sits jailed with judgments against her and her companies totaling more than $115 million.
Vancouver's “Villages” Public Hearing July 14 — 13,000 Lots About to Be Pre-Zoned
City Council is heading to a Public Hearing on July 14 to approve the Villages Plan, which would pre-zone approximately 13,000 property parcels across 17 areas of Vancouver for four- to six-storey mixed-use buildings — about 600 city blocks in total. If approved, affected lots become land-banking territory overnight: detached lots in those 17 areas will be worth what a developer would pay for assembled multiplex or apartment land. Critics argue that pre-zoning to maximum density automatically prices land at the highest-density value, restricting other redevelopment options for owners.
The 17 Villages, in five geographic clusters. If your home is near any of these intersections, the July 14 hearing matters to you.
Investor's Scoreboard
$250K. Renovated. Cash Flow Positive.A 594 sqft 1-bed at Wyndham Estates in Cloverdale is asking $250,000 — already renovated, in a rental-friendly building five minutes from Kwantlen Polytechnic University. All-in monthly carry (mortgage + strata + taxes) around $1,307. Comparable 1-bed rent in the area: $1,750–$1,900. That's ~$500/month in your pocket and a Year-1 cash-on-cash return near 12%. No age limits. No pet limits. No rental limits. Hot water included. If you've been waiting for the cheapest tenant-ready entry into Metro Van real estate, you just found it.
Land assembly that never assembledOn June 6, 2022, someone bought two adjacent houses on Delestre Avenue in Coquitlam West. Combined purchase: $6.35M. Almost certainly a developer planning to consolidate the lots and build something taller.Four years later, both are court-ordered. Combined asking: $4.58M. Combined paper loss: $1.77 million.A land assembly that never assembled.
Find a Cool House. Literally.Heat dome season is here. On Zealty, open the filters, scroll to the keyword field, and type “feat: air conditioning”. The list rebuilds to show only homes with AC mentioned in the listing. Stop touring places in 32-degree heat just to find out there's a single window unit in the bedroom.
The Cabin Your Grandkids Will Fight OverA 1,382 sqft lakefront in Peachland, on Lake Okanagan, $1,899,000. Three bedrooms, two baths, dock straight out front, vineyards in the hills. The kind of place that gets passed down for fifty years because the family knows they'll never find another one. Buy it once, never sell it, and tell your kids to figure it out among themselves.
Hamidreza Etebarian leads the editorial process behind Zealty’s content. He works directly with the team to shape everything from market reports to general real estate guides into clear, reliable, and decision-focused pieces.
The Holywell Properties brokerage, powered by advanced Zealty software, is your partner in making well-informed real estate decisions. Terms of Use and Privacy Policy apply. This message is not intended to solicit clients currently under contract with another licensed real estate brokerage. As always, if you’d rather not get emails like this, you can unsubscribe.
:format(webp)/www.zealty.ca/api/cms/media/file/HE-1.jpeg)
