TalksAboutVille
Longtime reader, and fellow musician, Danneau recently mentioned that he watched the moon landing on the TeeVee in his family home at 2nd and MacDonald in Kitsilano.
Which is the kind of thing that, no matter how hard they try, gets Lotuslanders wondering...
'Gosh. I wonder what that property is worth today?'
Our own similar, although more recent Lotusland land story goes like this:
1) We move back to Vancouver in 1995 with a toddler in tow.
2) C. does all the leg work and finds us a slightly dilapidated, but still nice for us, house with a great big yard in MacKenzie Heights (i.e. inner Dunbar) on a nice, quiet street just off West 33rd Ave.
3) We live there for a couple of years before the offshore landlord tells us they are planning to sell.
4) They offer to sell it to us for $255,000.
5) I shout, 'Are they crazy!' and we move away and spend the next eight years trying to get a co-op built.
6) Today, of course, the dirt itself is probably worth about three million dollars.
Banana stands, indeed.
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Things all turned out fine, in the end, for us....But we were extremely lucky...Others really need the help that, I hope, the Dipper-engineered soft landing has started...
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4 comments:
In the mid 1970s I made $25K a year and the new condos, in Kits were going for $35K. By 1978, you could still purchase a house in MacKenzie Heights, with view for $125,K. All within reach. the problem not only have the prices of the land gone up, but the salaries have not kept up.
Will the NDP do something? Not much they can do. Land is expensive. However, co-op housing would be a good plan. It used to work. The federal government got out of the co op business which was really too bad. It was a great alternative to home ownership and because there were blended incomes, they didn't turn into ghettos.
The government needs to start building some sort of affordable housing for the disabled, seniors and working families and by that I mean, families making less than a $120K a year. If you don't blend the incomes, it won't work.
Places in Richmond which sold for $25K in the early 70s are worth several million now, just for the dirt as you say.
in the Netherlands the government owns 40% of the housing stock. that isn't the case in B.C. or Canada.
eaf--
You are correct that annual wage multiples really matter.
Especially if interest rates were tick upward a few points.
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Actually, it was Watergate I watched at the MacDonald house. Moon landing was my brother's house in the woods in Felton, just outside of Santa Cruz. Nonetheless, a story (somewhat) related to the Mac house: friends from the Gulf Islands returned from a stint working In Stockton and bought a house at 15th and Trutch in '73. I can remember clearly the whinging from V. about the cost (36 500). They sold it in '79 for 99k and bought a place on 32nd and Selkirk, sort of fringy Shaughnessy for the astronomical sum of 125 k. Sold that in '97 or thereabouts for $1.25 M, paid off the Mayne Island place and bought, free and clear, a place on Alma and 40th.
I was standing on the back deck of the Mac house one day when our neighbour to the sough, a somewhat elderly gentleman, informed me that the vestigial creek that ran behind the property was what he used to float logs from the MacDonald-Dunbar slope down to English Bay in his youth. The wonder of it all (cue David Bowie Ch-ch-ch-Changes).
Thanks Danneau...
Scary when you start to get Apollo 11 and the Watergate TeeVee shows mixed up in your head!
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