Six success stories: Buyers who have watched the value of their homes go through the roof
Nicholas Read and Fiona Anderson
Sun
CREDIT: Mark van Manen, Vancouver Sun Eighteen years after building it, Chris Harvey and wife Dee recently sold their home in Whistler for $1 million.
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
