BC Business
Business in the 1980s | BCBusiness
Business in the 1980s was a time for growth and new ventures, but rising interest rates lurked like a spectre in the real estate sector, seeing the housing market crash and bounce back by the decade's end. With its hair metal bands and Pac-Man games, the 1980s cast a long shadow into the present day, but in Vancouver that shadow is longest in the world of real estate.
With its hair metal bands and Pac-Man games, the 1980s cast a long shadow into the present day, but in Vancouver that shadow is longest in the world of real estate.
It was a decade of speculation that began with a boom. As the city prepared for Expo 86, the average Vancouver house price more than doubled from $86,000 in January 1980 to $177,000 in January 1981. But interest rates were also marching north, and after the Bank of Canada rate hit 21 per cent in August 1981, the average house price plummeted to the $110,000 range by the summer of 1982. But the panic would prove short-lived: by January 1989 the average house price was $220,000.
Meanwhile, while activists protested the destruction of downtown rooming houses in advance of Expo, foreign buyers rolled into single-family-home neighbourhoods, replacing 1,000-square-foot heritage bungalows with “monsters” taking four times the space, earning the city the moniker “Hongcouver” from locals concerned about the future of their city.
Fast forward to today: another world exposition, another housing boom. According to the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver, a typical detached house in greater Vancouver today goes for $1.1 million, up 36 per cent over the past three years. While that hardly matches the 100-per-cent gain of 1980, it’s hard to see what all the fuss was back then, when an average Vancouver house went for $110,000.
1980: Blackcomb Mountain opens with a capacity of 4,000 skiers a day. Four triple chairs and a beginners’ double chair serve 4,068 vertical feet. TODAY: Blackcomb would be bought by Intrawest in 1987, which would add Whistler to its holdings in 1998. Whistler Blackcomb would be taken private by a New York hedge fund in 2006, then go public in a 2010 IPO.
1981: Quadra Logic Technologies, now QLT Inc., is formed to commercialize research spearheaded by UBC researcher Julia Levy. Following a 1986 IPO, share price would hit a high of $215 in June 2000. At its peak in 2001 QLT had 347 employees and recorded revenue of $129.5 million. TODAY: In 2011 revenue was $28.38 million.
1981: Average five-year fixed mortgage rates hit 20.54 per cent, marking the beginning of the end of a Vancouver housing boom that saw the average price of a single-family house double from $88,539 in the spring of 1980 to $176,481 in the spring of 1981.
1981: The Vancouver Stock Exchange moves into its new headquarters at 609 Granville Street. Trades are recorded by hand around the walls and the VSE reports it has narrowed the search for an electronic system from four options to two.
1983: Vancouver Art Gallery moves into the old courthouse.
1986: Premier Bill Bennett welcomes Charles, Prince of Wales, and Diana, Princess of Wales, to the opening ceremony of Expo 86. Number of visitors by the October 13 closing date: 22,111,578.
1987: Starbucks opens its first outlet outside the U.S. at Vancouver’s SeaBus SkyTrain station. TODAY: Starbucks has 379 stores in B.C. and more than 17,000 worldwide in 55 countries.
1987: Vancouver Trade and Convention Centre opens on the site that had served as Canada Pavillion for Expo 86. TODAY: the Convention Centre would triple in size to 1.1 million square feet with the opening of the Vancouver Convention Centre West expansion in April 2009.
1988: Cactus Club opens its first restaurant, on Pemberton Ave in North Vancouver.