We continue to investigate the various models that universities, especially those located in prohibitively expensive real estate markets, adopt in using their own land to support family housing for their faculty and staff. Again, I am not describing the various financial assistance programs, normally managed by the Provost’s office, and which are often independent of whether the property is on university land or not.
The University of British Columbia
UBC has elected to use a co-development model to support family housing for its faculty and staff. This essentially allows all people working on the UBC-Vancouver campus to be part of a co-development property.
Restrictions: Initial participants/co-developers have to
- be UBC faculty or staff, other UBC (or UBC associated research groups) employees, or any other people working on the UBC campus.
- occupy the unit as their primary residence,
- participate only once in the program (with an ability to upgrade or downsize)
- if need to rent is justified, then they have to rent to UBC workforce
- remit a portion of the increase in value (claw-back) of their unit if they sell their leasehold prior to the 5th anniversary of the date of registration/purchase.
Advantage to Faculty/Staff: Co-development saves roughly 25% of purchase price
Advantage to UBC: Full proceeds for the lease on the land
Draw back to UBC: No guarantee that units remain in the hands of the UBC workforce.
Here is a table summarizing (rough estimates) the case of a typical 1100sf apartment in a UBC co-development property.
| Occupancy | Year 1 | Year 3 | Year 5 | |
| Purchase price | 537,000 | |||
| Market price (6% inflation) | 672,000 | 713,000 | 802,000 | 903,000 |
| Market Price –purchase price | 134,000 | 175, 000 | 264, 000 | 365,000 |
| Claw back to UBC if sold | 134,000 | 139,000 | 105, 000 | -1000 |
| Co-developer’s proceeds | 0 | 36,000 | 159,000 | 366,000 |
| Initial proceeds to UBC ($250 psf for land) |
Simon Fraser University
The SFU Verdant model allows SFU faculty and staff to purchase units at 20 % below market. Much of this reduction is the result of discounting the land value of the project site. Here are the conditions of the program:
- purchasers have to live in the units and cannot rent them out
- on resale, the unit must be sold at the same percentage discount below then-current market prices
- the unit will first be offered to SFU faculty and staff with children.
Here is a table summarizing the case of a typical 1100sf apartment in the SFU Verdant development.
| Occupancy | Year 1 | Year 3 | Year 5 | |
| Purchase price (20% below market) | 537,000 | |||
| Market price (6% inflation) | 672,000 | 713,000 | 802,000 | 903,000 |
| Mandatory sale price (20% below market) | 538,000 | 571,000 | 642, 000 | 723,000 |
| Co-developer’s proceeds | 0 | 34,000 | 105,000 | 186,000 |
| Initial proceeds to SFU ($250 psf for land) | 26, 675 |
