Nicholas Read and Fiona Anderson
Sun

According to Vancouver realtor Spice Lucks, who specializes in “helping people realize their dreams,” when people move from a million-dollar property, they move to change something.

Sometimes they move to change their lifestyles, and sometimes they move to change their wallets.

But people who live on Point Grey Road with an unimpeded view of Burrard Inlet never move.

The rest, however, can be slotted into a number of categories according to what it is they’re searching for.

THE OFFSHORE INVESTOR

Often, these people never live in the properties they buy in Vancouver, Lucks says. When they buy here, they see an opportunity to make money. When they sell here, they see an opportunity to make more money elsewhere.

THE CITY HOPPER

These are people whose children have left the nest and are fed up with cutting the grass, cleaning the gutters and calling the plumber when the pipes burst, Lucks says. So they sell that rambling four-bedroom home in Point Grey for the convenience of a condo in Coal Harbour, Yaletown or Kitsilano, and the comfort of having a few extra dollars in the bank.

THE GOLFER

These are people, usually retirees, who long for the good life in, say, the Okanagan, with its vineyards, lakes and golf courses. “These are people who have outlived the city, and what motivates them is peace and tranquility,” Lucks says. But it can’t be so tranquil that it isn’t within, at most, 45 minutes of an airport.

THE SEAFARER

If the Okanagan isn’t someone’s idea of living well, chances are life by the coast is, says Lucks. The Sunshine Coast, Qualicum Beach and the Comox Valley on Vancouver Island, and the areas around Victoria all figure in dreams of waves, sailing and long walks on the beach.

THE UP-SIZER

Yes, people will move from a small property on the west side of Vancouver to a larger one in the Fraser Valley so they can have space and money in the bank, too, Lucks says. But they rarely, if ever, are so eager to trade up that they’re willing to leave the province. Moving to Saskatchewan, for example, land of dirt-cheap dirt, is unthinkable.

NOSTALGIA RURAL

David Baxter, executive director of The Urban Futures Institute, says these people in their 40s or 50s equate success to rural property outside the city — a place on one of the islands or acreage in the Interior. Many have made money on their homes in the Vancouver area and can afford a recreational property or home outside the city.

© The Vancouver Sun 2005

REAL ESTATE I Buyers hunting for a more tranquil life are fuelling a land rush outside B.C.’s cities

Nicholas Read
Sun

Ah, the good life. Sailing, golf, a good wine as the sun hits the yardarm and money in the bank when ennui settles in and Paris beckons.

For most people, it’s a fantasy. Something to dream about after handing over a toonie on a 6/49 ticket.

But for an increasing number of lucky people — people like Ben and Jean Hartman of Kelowna — it’s life’s next chapter after years behind a desk. The proof is in the number of million-dollar-and-more retirement and vacation properties springing up outside the Lower Mainland, Victoria and Whistler.

Two years ago, the Hartmans, a retired couple, bought a vacant lot on Okanagan Lake for $600,000 — an exorbitant sum, Jean Hartman thought at the time.

Today they’re selling the same property and the one-level ranch house they built on it for $1,995,000.

“It’s just crazy,” says Jean. “What’s been happening over the past two years has been crazy.”

Proof is in the B.C. Assessment Authority’s 2005 list of properties worth $1 million or more. More than 800 of them are in places such as Parksville, Fernie, Kamloops, Salmon Arm and especially Kelowna, where the number of such properties rose from 57 in 2003 to 291 in 2005.

In the surrounding Central Okanagan Valley, there were five such properties two years ago. Now there are 124.

Also hot on the 2005 listings were Tofino, where the number rose from one to 33; the Gulf Islands, where it climbed from 10 to 61; Invermere and environs, where it jumped from seven to 38; and Sechelt, where it leaped from five to 70.

Money is on the march out of the province’s urban centres to what, only a decade ago, was still regarded as a kind of hinterland — places where, in the view of West Side hauteur, a coffee bar meant a truck stop and dinner was a ride to Wendy’s.

No more.

According to David Baxter of the Urban Futures Institute, people are looking for “Bonanza with a Starbucks image,” and they’re finding it in places like the east and west coasts of Vancouver Island, the Okanagan and, if you’re from Calgary, the Columbia Valley.

“They’re looking for that rural, more tranquil setting with less of the background noise we have as urbanites,” Baxter says. “But at the same time they’re not pioneering; they’re going into well-finished real estate.”

“It’s tame nature that they want. They want to get the newspaper and the decaf latte and the latest book, and they want to be within 45 minutes of the nearest airport because they’re still engaged in the larger world.”

And financing these rural (but replete with every urban mod con) idylls are, for the first time, couples with two pensions and a house to sell. That means not just cash in the bank, but cash coming in on a regular basis, too.

“It’s revolutionary,” says Baxter. “Never before in the history of mankind have we seen this before.”

It’s also prompted a price boom where properties that sold for thousands 10 years ago are selling for millions now.

Daryl Caunt of Mibroc Construction in Kamloops is building them to order. His dream houses, which cost anywhere from $500,000 to $3 million, are designed for people “who are just about ready for retirement,” he says. People who want peace, quiet, a good climate, spectacular views and a drive to a major city within four hours.

That doesn’t surprise Rudy Nielsen of the Landcor Data Corp., who believes in a so-called golden circle when it comes to buying property — an area no more than four hours’ drive from the nearest major urban centre. From Calgary, that’s Invermere and the Columbia Valley. From Vancouver, it’s the Okanagan Valley and Vancouver Island.

“The penturbite [a word coined by University of Washington urban development professor Jack Lessinger to mean residents of areas expected to experience significant property rises in the next 20 years] still wants to come back to Vancouver to attend the opera and do some shopping,” Neilsen says.

At the same time, they want to get out of the rat race to a place where property and house prices aren’t so prohibitive.

“Give me an acre, give me two acres,” people are starting to say, Neilsen says. “I’ve worked hard all these years, so I want two acres.”

But even in places like Invermere, Tofino and the Gulf Islands, two acres — especially two acres on or near water — are at an increasing premium, and that premium is commanding West-Van-sized prices.

On Saltspring Island, realtor Tom Navratil says there are currently 34 properties for sale at $1 million or more.

“I would question some at the bottom of that list,” Navratil says. “Out of the 34, one could argue that three or four might slip below [the million-dollar line], but otherwise they’re all worth over a million.”

It’s not surprising on an island where Barbra Streisand is known to moor her yacht for an afternoon’s shopping and Robin Williams is rumoured to own acreage. It’s simply the cost of living in such a desirable, beautiful and convenient (with three regular ferry runs to Vancouver Island and Vancouver each day) locale, Navratil says.

But it’s not just the eastern side of Vancouver Island that’s experiencing a property boom. Tofino on the westernmost coast of the island is also seeing prices rise like surf.

Tofino district treasurer Martin Gee attributes that to the publicity the community earned in the early 1990s when protesters were trying to stop logging on Meares Island and in Clayoquot Sound.

People appreciated the protests, Gee said, but admired the scenery more. Suddenly, international tourism was a going concern in what was until then a backwater fishing village.

And with the rise in tourism has come a concomitant rise in property prices.

“It’s getting to the point where some of our residents are concerned they can’t afford the rising taxes to live here,” says Gee. “Property that was reasonably priced 10 years ago now has a very high price and it’s getting expensive to support that. I’ve heard a number of people complain that they’re going to be driven out.”

Invermere Mayor Mark Shmigelsky tells similar tales. With the influx of blue-eyed oil sheiks from Calgary “who can sign cheques for $3 million without blinking an eye,” has come a rise in property prices — particularly of recreational property — that is making life increasingly expensive for long-time Invermere residents.

“It’s certainly presented us with a number of challenges,” Shmigelsky says. The city even had to go so far as to buy its own plot of land on nearby Lake Windermere to make sure the public could continue enjoying what has traditionally been the town’s beachfront. The rest has been sold to private individuals or developers.

According to Tim Pringle, executive director of the Real Estate Foundation of B.C., a typical property on Windermere Lake cost about $70,000 in 1972. By 1992 it was up to $135,000. Twelve years later it hit $830,000, with about 30 per cent of that increasing occurring in the last two years.

But nowhere has the rural property boom been quite as loud as it has in the Okanagan Valley where, because of low interest rates and an influx of about-to-retire wealthy baby boomers, tear-downs are now going for $1 million and more, says realtor Ann Petrone.

“Smaller old-style homes on the water are going for over a million,” Petrone said. “A 50-foot lot with a two-bedroom house on it would be a million or more.”

Westbank regional director Aaron Dinwoodie says that’s been great for economic development in Kelowna, but when pressed, he admits it has created problems too, primarily around affordable housing, an issue on which he says Kelowna officials “have a long way to go.”

It’s not unusual, Dinwoodie says, for people working in the service industry to have to “partner up” just to afford a roof over their heads.

“They have to be creative. They have to partner up and have a couple of different incomes for it to be affordable. It’s a very difficult challenge.”

But for couples like the Hartmans, it’s meant an unexpected windfall.

“We’re very surprised,” Jean says of their enviable straits. “We often say to each other that we have been so fortunate. Because if anyone had ever told us we would live here and do the kind of travelling we do, we’d say that was a nice dream.”

© The Vancouver Sun 2005

Sun

If money were no object, nothing could be finer than to fork out $19.8 million to live in the style and comfort to which many wish to become accustomed.

Assessed at $15.2 million, 3330 Radcliffe Ave. in West Vancouver is the top of the heap in B.C., as the most valuable property in the eyes of the B.C. Assessment Authority. Last summer the five-bedroom waterfront home sold for $17 million after only three days on the market. Now it’s back on the market at the higher ticket price but not so quick to sell.

Could there be something wrong with the place? Sitting on 0.9 acres of waterfront, with 11,000 sq. ft. of living space, endless views and cascading water pools, it’s unlikely.

The house generates a tax bill of $80,000 a year, according to realtylink.org.

© The Vancouver Sun 2005

Six success stories: Buyers who have watched the value of their homes go through the roof

Nicholas Read and Fiona Anderson
Sun

As a real estate agent, Patricia Hetherington has a sixth sense for a good buy. But it wasn’t her pocketbook that motivated her to move financial heaven and earth five years ago to buy her waterfront Langdale property. She just loved it.

“I think when you buy a property you can’t buy it because you can expect the market to do anything,” Hetherington says of her 100-year-old house. “Whatever it is, you must feel strong and attracted to the property.”

The fact that she paid $500,000 then and it’s worth $1.2 million now is just icing on her cake. Granted, it’s a dollop of quite delicious, wonderfully gooey icing, but not gooey enough to make her sell the place and pocket the difference.

“It pleases me immensely,” she says of the rise in the house’s value. And it’s consistent with what she knows about the realty situation on the Sunshine Coast.

“It’s because the demographic,” Hetherington says. “We know the boomer demographic stands to inherit more money than any other generation in history. They’re starting to make choices towards values, including a less hectic pace, a more natural setting, a small community.

“This is a sophisticated artistic community and we’re still close to Vancouver. It takes you away from the other side.”

INVERMERE

When Locke Robertson bought his house by Lake Windermere near Invermere in 1967, it “wasn’t worth a whole lot,” he says with a purposeful sense of understatement.

To be precise: $7,000.

Today he’s selling it for $1.29 million. That represents a 18,328.6-per-cent increase.

Or as the forever modest Robertson puts it: “It just worked out pretty good.”

He and his wife are planning to use the difference to move to a lot they bought near Nanaimo and build a house there.

The house they’re leaving isn’t particularly large — just three bedrooms and three bathrooms on a .22-hectare lot — but that’s what waterfront property is going for these days, Robertson says.

People from Calgary who are interested in recreational or retirement properties are prepared to pay practically anything for them. And he’s the beneficiary of that.

“This isn’t something new,” he says of his windfall. “Properties have been selling for over a million dollars for several years now.”

And knowing the value of waterfront property, Robertson plans to hold onto another lakefront house on Kootenay Lake which, he predicts, “will be worth a few bucks one of these days.”

“When you buy something they’re not making any more of, the price is definitely going to go up.”

TOFINO

In 1977 Joan Dubanko was a social worker who fell in love with Tofino — so in love that she bought a seafront property there that cost the then whopping sum of $25,000, the price of a nice waterfront home in Victoria.

“I’d travelled a lot in my life so I realized what a jewel this was,” she says.

So determined was Dubanko to make a go of it that she started fishing to supplement her income and her dream, and eventually opened a bed-and-breakfast.

When she sold the property — and the business — three years ago, it went for $1.4 million.

“I got tired of being an innkeeper,” she says of her decision to sell.

Instead she bought the house across the road for less than half that price and started gardening.

She’s still only 200 steps from the shoreline. “I walk the beach much more now than when I ran the B&B” — except now she has money in her pocket too.

Dubanko is glad she made the move, but admits there’s nothing quite like a sea view.

“I don’t miss the work, and I don’t miss the upkeep. But it definitely feels different, because I no longer look out my window and see Japan.”

SALTSPRING ISLAND

Wildlife artist Robert Bateman owns six Gulf Island properties, most of them on Saltspring Island.

Now he’s selling an environmentally friendly seafront house he had built in the Reginald Hill area and the two lots it sits on for $3.5 million. When he bought the land and the then small summer cottage that occupied it in 1984, it cost $377,000.

Even Bateman is surprised by the increase.

“Yes, I am surprised at the evaluation which came from several sources. If we sell it for the list price, we will still only about break-even since building a ‘green’ house has turned out to be surprisingly expensive.”

He’s selling the house because he’s had another house and studio — with much better painting light — built on one of his other properties, and at 75 years of age he wonders how many houses a person needs, especially on an island like Salt Spring where space is at such a premium.

“Demand, especially on the Gulf Islands, is going up rapidly, and the supply of available spaces is dwindling,” Bateman says. “In our system, prices usually respond to supply and demand. Obviously, governments could step up to the plate and provide affordable housing if they have the political will.

“It is a crazy system which some Solomon-like body might be able to tinker with, but so far, our civilization has not found a better one, bad as it is.”

OKANAGAN VALLEY

Jean Hartman didn’t particularly want to move to the Okanagan 12 years ago when her husband, Ben, retired from his job at what was then BC Gas.

But he did, so she agreed, but only on the condition that they live by the lake.

So the Hartmans bought a lakefront house for $660,000, roughly what their house on the Coast was worth. “It was almost an even exchange,” Jean says.

Two years ago, however, they sold that house for $1.25 million, and bought another lot by the lake for $600,000 — an incredible sum for an empty lot, the Hartmans thought at the time.

Today, however, they’re selling that same lot and the ranch-style house they built on it for $1.995 million.

All Jean can say is “Wow!”

They don’t know where they’re going to move to, but they both love to travel, and with five children and 12 grandchildren, they know the money will come in handy.

“Next winter we’re going to Vietnam and Cambodia,” Jean says. “We love to travel and do other things, and we could help our children too.”

But no matter where they go, they doubt it will ever be as pleasantly salubrious as where they are now.

Says Jean wistfully: “On Sunday we had guests to dinner and sat out on the patio and drank wine and had dinner, and as we sat there we thought ‘Is there anywhere in the world that could be nicer?’ “

WHISTLER

Chris Harvey moved to Whistler because there was lots of work for a truck driver in the construction industry. And the work’s been good, he said. But what’s been even better is the real estate market.

Harvey had been having trouble finding steady work when he heard there was work in Whistler 20 years ago. And being hard-working, he packed up the family and headed for the mountains. But renting was expensive even back then, so after a couple of years he bought a lot and built the family a home.

“We built because the rent was getting so expensive even 18 years ago that you could carry a mortgage on your rent for the same price,” Harvey said. “So that’s what we did.”

The lot cost $53,500. When he built the house on it, it was assessed for about $200,000. Now he and his wife are selling the house for $1,090,000.

The Harveys‘ dream has always been to move back to Vancouver Island. Now they’re able to, Harvey says as they pack their bags to head to Cobble Hill, an area that’s promising to have a real estate boom of its own. In Cobble Hill, in the Cowichan Valley, the Harveys have bought a 0.8-hectare parcel with a double-wide trailer on it, a two-minute walk to the beach, with an ocean view. Total cost $300,000.

He may even be able to cut back on work a bit.

“It’s been very good for us here [in Whistler],” Harvey said.

© The Vancouver Sun 2005

Skyrocketing property taxes put squeeze on longtime residents of Point Grey Road

Fiona Anderson
Sun

Higher assessed values may create new millionaires on paper but they can also cause hardship as taxes based on the new values become unaffordable. One Vancouver neighbourhood feels especially affected.

Point Grey Road is known as the “golden mile” of Vancouver. It is a scenic 12 blocks that run along the beaches of the west side of Vancouver. Many of these homes house long-term residents who moved in because they loved the neighbourhood. But with skyrocketing assessments some can no longer afford the taxes.

“People are being priced out of their houses,” said Dr. Nathan Batt, president of the local ratepayers’ association.

Assessed values jumped 70 per cent a few years ago, Batt said, and since then have increased 25 to 30 per cent a year. That’s fine for people buying into the neighbourhood now but many local residents have no intention of selling and all the increased values means is that they have to pay higher taxes.

“It is the people who have bought 10 years ago, 15 years ago and just enjoy living in that location who have had their family grow up in that area and who don’t want to move that are being affected,” Batt said, “which I think is unfair.”

The average tax payable is probably $2,500 to $3,000 per month, Batt said. And this amount is as high as $70,000 a year for Army & Navy owner Jacqui Cohen, who lives at 2815 Point Grey Rd., Batt said.

“The fact of the matter is that there are some people who are retired engineers who have fixed incomes and they can’t live there any more,” Batt said. “I think that’s really sad that somebody who has lived there for such a long time has got to move because the assessment went up so high and the taxes went up accordingly high.”

Batt thinks there should be a limit to the amount of taxes that can be charged. For example, in California he says that taxes are based on the purchase price of the house and not on assessed value. That way people know what they are getting into when they buy and that’s much more reasonable.

If you buy a house for $1 million, Batt said, you should be expected to pay taxes on that level or a reasonable amount of increase per year beyond that and not necessarily based on what a house sold for three or four blocks away because what that house sold for may not be indicative of what the houses are really worth. People with deep pockets and bidding wars are causing some houses to be sold at amounts that don’t necessarily reflect actual value, Batt said.

“I think that the tax structure needs to be revised in the whole city,” Batt said. “I don’t want to say that we’re the only ones that are being overtaxed.”

© The Vancouver Sun 2005

Sun

Higher land values and strong demand are blamed for the biggest increase in Canada

Derrick Penner
Sun

Vancouver‘s new housing prices spiked 1.7 per cent in April — the biggest increase in the country, Statistics Canada reported Thursday — driven by higher land values and strong demand.

Statistics Canada released its new housing price index Thursday, which showed the price of new homes in Canada went up 0.6 per cent in April compared with March, the biggest monthly gain since June of 2004.

In year-over-year terms, the Statistics Canada index showed that prices of new homes in Vancouver had increased 4.4 per cent compared with the same month a year ago, which is slightly less than the national average of a 4.9-per-cent increase.

The report attributed stronger market conditions combined with increased materials and labour costs for the rise. It added that rising land values were a factor in six of 21 metropolitan areas surveyed, including Vancouver.

“We concur, [Statistics Canada economists] have it right,” Peter Simpson, president of the Greater Vancouver Home Builders’ Association said.

“We’re struggling with increased costs almost on a daily basis. Land is going up considerably. Steel has gone up, though it has levelled off, lumber has gone down a bit [but] labour is going up.”

Simpson said the continuation of historically low interest rates continues to drive strong demand for new housing, particularly at the entry level.

He added that the new housing market could be bit stronger than it is, but homebuilders are at the capacity of what they are able to build.

Simpson said the labour shortages are “across the board.”

“We could use [trades people] in every one of the disciplines. Right now, I’m hearing that most of the need is for skilled framing carpenters.”

Increasing labour costs were also a factor for the 1.5-per-cent increase in new housing prices in London, Ont., the city with the next highest monthly increase in prices.

A total of 11 of the 21 cities that Statistics Canada surveyed saw housing prices increase from the previous month, but not Victoria, which saw prices drop by 0.1 per cent from March.

[email protected]

HOUSING INFLATION:

Month Year

over month over year

Vancouver +1.7% +4.4%

Victoria -0.1% +5.9%

Calgary +0.7% +4.1%

Toronto/Oshawa +0.5% +4.8%

© The Vancouver Sun 2005