A $2M industrial sale in Lower Lonsdale is a case study of where the industrial market is, and shows the hoops interested buyers need to jump through to acquire prime industrial property in the Greater Vancouver Area, says Avison Young VP Matt Thomas. (It's way easier to get on a reality TV show at this point, maybe we should all make a career change.)

Matt worked with the buyer of the property (North Construction) in the deal—378 East Esplanade in North Vancouver. North Construction will gut the property and use it primarily as its new head office operation. “The buyer was desperate to find something new, and with the market as tight as it is, unless you wanted a strata property, you couldn’t find a property like this,” he tells us. Matt started working with North Construction two years ago, looking for a property to buy, but couldn’t find property available for sale. “It’s hard to find anyone interested in selling. So we knocked on doors, to try and pry something loose,” he says. (You've heard of door-to-door salesmen, he's a door-to-door buyer.) That’s what it has come to. Fortunately, after a lot of knocking, they found an owner who agreed on a price. But the experience was a reminder, he says, of the challenges in the market overall these days.