Calling owners in BC, Canada

Group,

After much delivberation, and despite my original and adjusted plans, I'm considering moving back to Canada and looking at BC. I'm intersted in touching base with owners in BC about general cost of living/housing/good communities to consider type questions. I realize this is a bit off topic for this board, but I know I'll get some interesting feedback from the BC crowd.

As a nice aside, I get a crack at buying an Intermeccanica if I make the move. :)

-Jeff

Jeff - more power to ya, my brutha! Good luck with your endeavor!

Peace - Out!

Jeff,
There's a really nice guy on the spyderclub site named Mark Greenburg who lives in BC. He also owns/manages body shops in vancouver.

angela

Bring oodles of money. The average house price has hit $700K UP and 1 in 3 homes is now 1M$ UP. My sister lives there and rents and for the life of me I cannot understand unless you are wealthy how anyone can buy a house there. Of course I don't know you and you may be rich. But it's damn expensive in Vancouver and Kelowna and Victoria. Of course it's drop dead gorgeous but you may want to wait until after the 010 games to buy. Some realtors are looking at a small adjustment after the games.

Now on the other end of the spectrum you have Timmins Ontario where a average house sells for $55.000.00 and the average household income is about $57K, like Vancouver. Imagine that. Of course Timmins is... well, no BC, imagine the difference.

houses here are pretty dammmmm expensive. but - that said, it's a pretty nice place, so you can get into the market at around $400K (fixer-upper).

Check out gas prices here: gasbuddy.com

Where are you looking to move to? Vancouver? Gulf islands? Vancouver island?

I went online last night doing some house research.

It is eye popping.

I don't need to be in the Greater Van area, I could be outside the city in a smaller community.

I am definitely not rich, but my current housing market is pretty bad too. Right now a 2 bed/2 bath condo, about 1400 sqft is $500K, so we're just renting.

Are there some good smaller communities in BC where things are more reasonable or is it just outrageous everywhere?

-Jeff

KITIMAT BC... now that's affordable...

The key is the further inland from Vancouver the cheaper except the Okanagen Valley where it goes sky high again.

Check out www.mls.ca

VCR is off the hook and for a lot of money you get usually a cheaply built leaky home. BIG problem right now with leaky high-rises in Vancouver. 60-80,000 condos need their windows replaced and the cost goes to the condo owner. One particular building the owners are faced with a $180,000.00 per condo fee to change the windows in the high-rise. 60,000+ more to go....

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=ec2ab1f3-bfb0-4401-9a6e-12e474b634a6

check to see if they have "rain-screen" technology.

There are lots of other places than downtown vancouver though. It's a beautiful province and you can still find a nice place at a good price if you look.

like Mike said - http://www.MLS.ca is the easiest way to spend an evening poking the market.

If you don't need to move to a particular location (ie: for a job) - why are you moving to BC? ... retiring?

Abbotsford and Pitt Meadows, from what I can tell, seem to offer reasonable travel times to downtown, if you want to go downtown for something, as well as reasonable housing prices. Something in the $500-$650K range is what I'm thinking. No idea what problems they might have.

We're a young family so we need some space after being in this sardine can.

We've been abroad for five years, thinking about Canada but not used to the cold any more so BC seems like a reasonable option. :)

Intermeccanica is just icing on the cake if we go to BC.

Not retiring, just changing jobs. Looking to strike out on my own (again) I think...

-Jeff

Vancouver Island is nice, but also expensive. We live in the Fraser Valley (east of Vancouver) and may move to Vancouver Island (Courtney area) when we retire. I'm getting tired of breathing in Vancouver's smog.