It’s not just residential real estate that’s going nuts. This is from Business in Vancouver:
Dirt worth more than anything built on it
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Commercial developers call it “dirt”: the plot of land that will support plans to add value by building office buildings, warehouses, shopping centres, hotels or rental apartment buildings.
But today in Metro Vancouver, the dirt is worth more than anything being built on it.
When Bal Atwal, a principal with commercial broker Avison Young sold the thriving Richport Town Centre in Richmond to investors from mainland China for $78.4 million last summer, he noted that the 5.4 acre retail site would have been worth as much if it was a vacant lot.
“It would have sold for a comparable price even without the existing improvements or the income it generates,” Atwal said. “Underlying land values have outpaced income values on property along or near virtually every major commercial corridor in Metro Vancouver.”
For all of 2014, Metro Vancouver land sales tallied $3 billion and accounted for half of all the money spent on all commercial and industrial properties combined – and the gap has widened into 2015. During the first quarter, dirt sales shot up 13.4 per cent from the same period last year and the dollar value rose 4.4 per cent to just over three-quarters of a billion dollars.
Yap, for most of Vancouver land value dominates. On 30% of properties the value of the building is less than 5% of the value of the land.
But there certainly are sites where the building is worth much more than the land. But not many.
https://mountainmath.ca/map/assessment?layer=4
Zoom into your area of interest to browse the value of the improvements relative to land value.