Episode 37 Transcript – Infiniti project

Hello there! You’re live with Jessi Johnson. What I want to discuss today is the Infiniti project based out of Surrey. To date this is Surrey’s largest residential/commercial construction project where they have five high rise towers. Essentially what happened is they recently, just last week, filed for bankruptcy protection. Essentially they have protection from the government, they aren’t able to make their payments. Believe it or not, they are short $100 million dollars to complete the entire project. Now the reason for this is because they had $100 million dollars coming from Leeman Brothers, which is the American based company that went belly up. They were providing secondary construction loan financing. Construction financing is extremely difficult right now to get. Especially in a booming city like Vancouver believe it or not. A lot of major lenders and a few others have just cut back and said we’re not lending on construction, period. I assume this will continue this trend for another two or three years until the overall economy strengthens. My major point of today is that a lot of people are asking me about their deposits that they’ve already prepaid. Just so you know, when you pay a deposit on a residential purchase, the developer or the seller does not keep that. That is held in trust with the real estate company. In the event of the project not completing or the sale not going through for various circumstances that could change the outcome. In this circumstance with the developer, they can’t complete, you are going to get your money back. Believe it or not, with interest. It’s not going to be very high but there will be interest. You can reach me at www.firsthomeinfo.ca. I’m Jessi Johnson. You have a good day, bye!