Friday, January 29, 2016

My Vancouver dream home: only 2.4 million!


This Vancouver dream home could be yours for only $2.4 million


January 29, 2016. 8:58 am • Section: Real Estate




Posted by:
Peter Darbyshire

Vancouverites greeted the new year with the news that most homes in the city now cost $1 million or more — plus, your firstborn child. Just kidding — no one can afford to raise children in Vancouver anymore. In fact, $1 million may be on the low end — one-third of Vancouver homes are valued at more than $2 million.

How do you like being a world-class city now, Vancouver?

Hey, at least the transit runs on time — ah, never mind.

But there are still bargains to be found in the region’s crazy housing market. Take, for example, the charming fixer-upper that just went on sale in Vancouver’s prestigious Point Grey neighbourhood for a measly $2.4 million.




The three-bedroom, two-bathroom house at 4453 West 14th Avenue was built in 1930 and currently has a self-contained basement suite. It has a mountain view and is within walking distance to Lord Byng Secondary, Jules Quesnel, Queen Elizabeth Elementary, West Point Grey Academy and much more. Although, if you can afford $2.4 million for a home, you’re probably taking a helicopter wherever you need to go anyway.

Photos of the home show it’s in need of some work. Paint appears to be peeling in places throughout the house, and the yard appears to be transforming into some sort of Avatar-like jungle. It does have an eco-friendly green roof, though! We’re sure the new owners will lovingly and carefully restore this house to its former glory.




There will be an open house Tuesday, Feb. 2, 10 a.m.-noon if you want to check it out in person. In the meantime, you’ll have to settle for touring the photo gallery to imagine yourself living here.

















This post from today's Province newspaper gave me pause. It gave me pause because we could probably now sell our back yard tool shed for at least a cool million. Who says our ship will never come in?

Every day I am grateful for our modest, if unprepossessing home in Port Coquitlam - and even out here, condos are springing up out of the ground and spreading like a malignancy. They're ugly, identical, squashed-together, have no character, and are also tall and skinny, each room on its own floor, to save land. And there are no yards of any kind. Yards are becoming a luxury and will soon disappear. Some newer neighborhoods have houses that are smack-dab up against the road, without even a curb to divide them. I see no green space, no parks, no place at all to take your kids to run around and look at a tree: they simply have to do without that luxury, so they sit and play games on their ipods.

This is no way to live. We're settled here, our family is here (and thank God our kids also have comfortable homes, with my daughter even living in out-of-the-question North Vancouver - having settled there fifteen years ago when things were different). But the other horrendous problem is unemployment. It's the one-two punch: you cannot afford to be laid off if you're trying to pay off one of these babies. And it's happening all the time.




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