The first of two six-storey wood-frame buildings to be built in Metro Vancouver is ready for people to move in, and developers around the province will likely be watching closely.

Quattro3, part of Surrey's largest residential and commercial development, is the Lower Mainland's first six-storey wood-frame condominium to be completed.

Before 2009, wood-frame buildings were capped at a height of four storeys. In 2009, the province changed the building code to allow the construction of six-storey wood-frame buildings as part of the B.C. Wood First Act, aimed to stimulate the province's timber industry as well as the construction industry.

The entire development community will be weighing the pros and cons of six-storey wood-frame buildings.  The advantages are that the per-unit land costs and construction costs are reduced, so the consumer benefits from lower prices than for similar apartments in concrete or four-storey wood-frame buildings; a disadvantage is that they are a bit more complicated to build.

The suites in concrete buildings in Surrey sell for about $425 to $450 per square foot, while those in wood-frame buildings sell for $330 to $370 per square foot.

"Today's market is all about afford-ability, We need products that people want and they don't want anything expensive, but they want nice homes."

Peter Simpson, president and CEO of the Greater Vancouver Home Builders' Association, said other builders are considering building six-storey wood-frame buildings.

"There are builders and developers who will be watching the one in Surrey with great interest. They will be watching this and learning from it - we might see more of them now," Simpson said.

Anne McMullin, president and CEO of The Urban Development Institute, agreed. "Clearly it represents a future trend in B.C. construction," McMul-lin said, adding that the lower cost for consumers is the big advantage offered by this type of building.

"Some people would be willing to pay double for a concrete building, but some might like to pay less and buy in a wood building. It's providing more options for people," McMullin said.

A 425-square-foot studio apartment in Quattro3 sells for $159,000, while a 567-square-foot one-bedroom suite sells for $208,000.

The only other six-storey wood-frame building in the Lower Main-land is the Remy project in Richmond, which is in the process of being rebuilt after a 2011 construction fire destroyed it. The Quattro development also had a fire in 2008, though it was in a different four-storey building.

Len Garis, Surrey's fire chief and president of the Fire Chiefs' Association of B.C., said the fire safety of people living in six-storey wood-frame buildings should be equal to the safety in any other building.

"These buildings are fully sprinklered and our research suggests to us that in a sprinklered building, a fire is likely to never leave the room of origin, has historically never left the floor of origin in a building," Garis said. "Where the sprinkler system needed to operate to put the fire out, it put the fire out."

Garis did have concerns about construction fires in six-storey wood-frame buildings in 2009 when the rules were changed, because protection systems like sprinklers are not usually in place during construction.

After the devastating Quattro and Remy fires, Garis brought in a set of recommendations to improve construction safety, including measures such as having a live security guard, the earlier installation and activation of sprinklers and fire doors and having a detailed safety plan in place during the permit stage.

"These are guidelines, and it's up to the local authority what rigour they're going to put around ensuring they are done," Garis said.

These procedures were all followed at Quattro3, and Garis said his concerns have been addressed.

"But in life, there are no guarantees," Garis said.

"There will be outliers and failures, but those can happen in concrete buildings too. I'm not overly concerned about it."

The Quattro development has another lot that will be developed in the future, either with a four-or six-storey wood-frame building.  The height will depend on the parking requirements put in place by the city.

The Quattro3 is 75 per cent sold, and people started moving in on Thursday.

OTTAWA — TD Bank says tighter mortgage rules should do the job of cooling Canada’s hot housing market in the short term, but higher interest rates will be needed to return the market to saner levels.

The bank’s chief economist Craig Alexander estimates the new rules, which went into effect July 9, will shave five percentage points off sales activity and cut prices by three per cent on average during the second half of this year and early 2013.

In the next three years, he expects the combination of the tighter rules and anticipated modest increases in interest rates will result in a 10 per cent price correction on homes.

While it is early, there are already tentative signs that the new rules have tempered sales, if not prices, especially in the country’s hottest markets — Vancouver and Toronto.

The Toronto Real Estate Board reported Thursday that sales of existing homes in the greater municipal area fell 12.5 per cent from last year, although the average price of $479,095 was 6.5 per cent higher.

Meanwhile, the Vancouver board said sales dropped 30.7 per cent in August, while the average price was only 0.5 per cent lower at $609,500.

In July, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty reduced the amortization rate on new insured mortgages to 25 years from 30, bringing the maximum period for paying off a home back to the historic level. It was the fourth time Flaherty had tightened mortgage rules in as many years, incrementally dropping to amortization period from the high-water mark of 40 years.

Alexander says the latest moves, which hike mortgage costs by $140 a month on the average priced home, may be even more effective than the previous efforts in slowing the market.

But if the experience of the previous three moves are any guide, the slowdown will be temporary, lasting a few quarters, after which Canadians will dive back into the market.

For a longer lasting solution to the overheated market, Alexander said Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney will need to hike interest rates to make borrowing more difficult and expensive.

“Interest rates simply cannot stay at current levels indefinitely,” he says in the paper.

On Wednesday, Carney kept the trendsetting policy rate at one per cent, marking two years that it has remained at the super-low level, and few economists expect him to act before mid-2013.

Canadians have taken advantage of the cheap borrowing costs to buy homes, cottages, cars and other consumer items, but the result is that household debt has hit record levels at 152 per cent of disposable income.

Alexander says debt would even be higher if Ottawa hadn’t begun tightening mortgage rules in 2008.

“Our models suggest that had the government not tightened mortgage rules between 2008 and 2011, the Canadian household debt-to-income ratio would have reached 160 per cent this year,” he said.

That’s about the level the U.S. and the United Kingdom reached before the collapse, although not all factors are similar.

Alexander says he believes the latest rule changes would trim about one percentage point off credit growth.

Ghost town, dead, dull - these are all words that are no longer used to describe the once struggling condominium community of the Village on False Creek.

More than two years after the 2010 Winter Games flame was extinguished in Vancouver, and the residential development became dogged with controversy and miserable condo sales, the Olympic Village has come alive.

A community largely made up of young families, empty nesters and city professionals has emerged, evident on Saturday as hundreds of residents filled the village square for an event to mark the grand opening of London Drugs, the latest in a string of new retail amenities aimed at revitalizing the Village.

Earlier this summer, the upscale supermarket Urban Fare and the Tap and Barrel, a 12,000 square-foot restaurant, moved into the complex, following on the success of trendy cafes and shops like Terra Breads and Legacy Liquor.

Five days ago, Brenda Racanelli bought a ground-level 950-square-foot two-bedroom condo facing the waterfront on Athletes Way for $670,000, which she noted was much lower than the initial asking price in the $800,000 range.

In February 2011, the Village was relaunched by Rennie Marketing with new show homes, a name change and prices that averaged 30 per cent lower than those in place in 2010.

Racanelli's parents also bought a condo in the Village a year ago and she says it's nice for her three-year-old son to be closer to his grandparents.

She said she loved the fact her son will meet other children in an area she believes is very safe.

"I've been noticing more kids in the area There's a real neighbourhood feel," she said.

"You start seeing the same people all the time and you're saying 'hello' more than you would in some other neighbourhoods."

Rejoice Kryza, who rents a unit in the Village and was cuddling her nine-month-old baby girl, said it was the number of families and the beauty of the waterfront that attracted her to the complex.

"There's the community centre, and to see so many businesses now come out, well that's what we need," she said. In the last year she has lived there, the mother of three said she's seen the community change a lot.

"There wasn't much going on when we first moved here, but now every weekend there's activities and so many people come here, rain or shine - and, you know, with these big birds it's so beautiful - like a postcard."

Condo marketer Bob Rennie said more homeowners - rather than investors - have been buying the units in the last few months, which he said adds to the sense of community.

""We have a lot of first-time buyers and empty nesters," he said. "It's people who don't want to live downtown and like that it's not a car-dependent community ... It takes 18 minutes to walk to Granville Island."

Of the 737 units in the Village, only 186 are left, said Rennie, with 26 units ranging from $395,000 to $3 million sold since July. He speculated the rest of the units will be sold by the end of next year.

On Saturday, kids with Spider-Man balloons and face-paint raced around the square, sugar high on candy-floss and Popsicles, while other people swayed to booming dance music in the Village square, an area becoming synonymous with two massive art sculptures called The Birds, created by artist Myfanwy MacLeod.

Once a shipyard and industrial wasteland, the Village is now a hub for outdoor enthusiasts of the cycling, strolling, and rolling variety, as well as those who would prefer to sit on a sunny patio with an ice-cold beer.

Raucous laughter could be heard from an oversized patio at the new and popular Tap and Barrel, which was packed with sunseekers and friends cheering with sudsy beers and colourful summery cocktails.

Steve Szilvassy, who has lived in the area for 11 years with his wife Marta, said they never took walks along the seawall like they do now.

"It was so dead here. You had to drive somewhere else to get groceries," he said. Wearing twisted party balloons on their heads, the elderly couple was whooping it up Saturday in the square with their three-year-old granddaughter Graye.

Like many of the local residents, Laura MacCormack, a mortgage broker who has lived in the area at 2nd and Yukon for six years, described the Olympic Village as a "ghost town" post-Games.

"I felt like at any moment a tumble-weed would roll by," she said.

"The energy in the village was strange then. And now, two years later, it has started to come to life with the seawall being complete, the new community centre, Urban Fare, Legacy Liquor store, Terra Breads ... there is a new sense of community."

London Drugs and Urban Fare, which originally signed up as anchor tenants at the Village, renegotiated the terms of their leases after the original site developer Millennium went into receivership last November. The companies announced last summer they had reached agreement on leases after the residential occupancy rate reached 65 per cent at the site.

"If people have never been down here, I think their perceptions are going to be blown out of the water about what they thought or understood in the media," said Clint Mahlman, senior vice-president of London Drugs.

The Village on False Creek condominium complex opened in 2009, and during the Olympics housed athletes from around the world. But controversy and financial problems soon dogged the $1-billion development. Vancouver tax-payers ended up on the hook for $178 million for the city-owned land purchased by the developer, Millennium, which later went into receivers

The mortgage financing is settled. You've been scanning the Multiple Listing Service like a stalker. You've already had the clear-out garage sale. There's just one last, teensy, tiny detail to take care of: You have to completely make over your house so it looks like a show home.

Intimidating? Maybe, particularly if you assume your buyer - like you - will look under the kitchen sink, try to pick you out in family photos and investigate every closet, like they're looking for bodies.

But according to Jodi Gilmour, realtor, décor expert and host of HGTV's For Rent, prepping your house for sale can be done quickly and cheaply.

"Today's buyer wants to be able to find a place that is move-in ready and if they have to paint a room or two, they don't mind having to do that, but they don't want to have to do it. So if you take away the strongly personal taste and neutralize the main areas of the home, you'll get a broader range of buyers and a shorter time on the market."

The first step, she says, is possibly the most brutal. Like the fashion rule of looking at yourself quickly in the mirror, then removing the one accessory that draws too much attention, homeowners have to purge, purge, purge. Clean up bookshelves so they're 40 per cent books, 20 per cent décor and 20 per cent negative space.

"Take away 40 per cent of your stuff in general. Start packing. Buyers want to assume they can grow into the house," she says.

"You want your rooms to feel like they have extra space, so take out furniture, pack your fall and winter clothing away. Even edit the cutlery drawers. You can live with eight place settings instead of 18."

And while you're packing up the kitchen, make sure you remove all the half bottles of cleaning products, dubious-looking cloths and the 400 recyclable grocery store bags you store under the kitchen sink. "If someone is serious," she warns, "they'll look under the sink."

Staging the main rooms is also critical to moving your property quickly.

You may love your treadmill in the dining room, but that's not really where it should be.

"You stage your house differently for sale than for life," she observes. "Edit anything that gets in the way. The first rule is to use each room as it is purposed for." That may also mean packing away most of your beloved ceramic owl collection, keeping the children's' toys stowed for a few weeks and storing some of your furniture.

"The more floor space," she says, "the bigger the room looks."

And while removing personal art such as family photos may create more wall space, it also diminishes the distractions. According to Gilmour, the minute people look at portraits and family pictures, they are no longer engaged in seeing the house as theirs.

"If you have a gallery wall, human beings are naturally going to look at photos, like Facebook." This might also be the moment to ignore your husband's protests and take down the black velvet Elvis oil painting. Ditto nudes and representational art. "You're better off going with abstract pieces. Where there are distractions, people either make a judgment about the house and the life going on in it or they're too distracted."

Finally, painting and cleaning carpets cannot only refresh your house, but make it accessible to the imaginations of potential buyers.

While brightly coloured children's bedrooms are generally fine to leave as they are, living areas, bathrooms and the kitchen should be toned down.

A coat of paint with a good primer can also neutralize years of cooking and smoke smells.

But whatever else you do, Gilmour suggests starting at the front door and entry to your home. Tidy up the garage and front step, paint the door and ensure the front hall is warm and inviting.

"You can tell a lot about the condition of the home from the layout and condition of the front hall. It's hard enough to get buyers to accept pictures online," she says. "So the front of the house needs to be beautiful. Buyers make the decision about whether or not they want to see the rest of the house from that first 30 seconds in the front door."