In the fall of 2010, Kris and I had a chat about whether we were going to set up shop more permanently in Vancouver. With an agreement of "you never know what could happen, but for now, sure, let's do it", I sold my condo in Toronto. While the sale went through in November, the closing date wasn't until early January, and due to some odd complications, I didn't actually receive the money until late January. With some cash in hand, we began to ponder our next step.
Looking at the housing market - which was growing by a few percent per month - we originally said forget it and continued to ignore, but as spring arrived, we began to have a serious chat about it. Given that average detached house prices were in excess of $1.3 MILLION for the west side of Vancouver, and well over $700K for the east side of Vancouver, I've long felt that the market was out of whack with local economic fundamentals (people just don't earn that much in Vancity!). Furthermore, there is more and more evidence that mainland Chinese buyers are driving much of the market here (which makes sense), and I think we've ended the era of "local real estate" - rather we're in a globalized economy where real estate is a global commodity. If prices continued to increase, we would soon be priced out of the idea of ever owning something in Vancouver (something that's happened in a lot of cities around the world).
We ultimately decided to start looking in late April, and hooked up with a friend of my sister, Gina Rossi. We were ideally targeting something around the Fraser-Cambie-8th-33rd box (Mt.Pleasant, Cambie, Main, Fraser on this map - which has great neighbourhood profiles), but were were also open to some other areas such as around Knight/Kingsway, Trout Lake, or Commercial Drive. As time went on, we even started to consider places up around 29th and Nanaimo as you can get a heck of a lot more for your money up around those parts than you can around the areas we wanted. We were looking for an RS-1 (residential, single family) zoned lot, with a standard Vancouver 33*122 lot size and a back lane - which would have allowed us to have built a laneway house at a later point. The problem was, we couldn't find anything in the areas we were interested in for under $800K that met all of those criteria (which, as you can appreciate, was out of our price range). So....on to plan B....using high Walkscores (over 85-90) and a price of less than $700K (side note: ended up using Sutton's mapping (over MLS) because you can use the walkscore function in the advance search)
HOUSE #1 - THE CUTE OLD, ROTTEN HOUSE: 632 East 20th Ave.
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| The front of the house on 632 East 20th |
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| Awesome detailing! |
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| The retro-cool "out of a 1950s catalog" kitchen |
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| A great dining-living space to boot |
In late June we came across an old hundred year old place on East 20th, which was just west of Fraser. It was super cute from the outside, and as you can see below, really neat on the inside as well. It had a main level bathroom, living-dining room, and kitchen-pantry-laundry area, along with a front and back porch. Upstairs was two bedrooms and an attic crawl space. Downstairs had a workshop and a semi-finished space. And a big south-facing backyard to boot. It was an 8 minute walk to Main Street and close to some other up-and-coming areas on Fraser. Pretty great, right? We thought so. With the market starting to falter, the price had been reduced from $669 to $650. We offered $645K, and they accepted (conditional on house inspection and finance). We knew it wasn't perfect, and that it would need some work, but...
What we weren't expecting was a house that was sinking. We went through the house with Gary Douville (who was very helpful). The front of the house had dropped nearly a foot from the front to the back of the house, and the floors had been propped up over and over. Ultimately, the fact that the house was located on a bog meant that building a new place would cost an extra $50K+ (deep pilings necessary), and that would also affect resale value. "The bog" an area that runs in an irregular shape from roughly Prince Edward St., along 16th and then up Kingsway, to 21st, soon became our nemesis (see House #2). With all of the concerns, we decided to walk away from the offer in the end even though we loved a number of details about the place. But as they say, the foundation is key, and "location, location, location!" matters, so we turned our sights elsewhere. The place ultimately sold in August (we're going to find out for how much, but my guess would be well below $650K)
HOUSE #2 - THE NEW-OLD-UNKNOWN PLACE: 627 East 21st Ave.
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| The living room at 627 East 21st |
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| Great little backyard! |
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| Dining/kitchen area at 627 East 21st |
The next place we moved onto was practically in the backyard of the first place. Why so close, given the bog problems? Well - it's on a hill, and therefore "in theory" should be above the bog soils. The place was listed at $699K and had a pretty nicely finished upstairs (2 bedroom, 1 bathroom), a great backyard, mountain views, and a half-finished basement that looked like it had the potential to become a mortgage helper (i.e., rental suite). We put in an offer, and ultimately had one accepted at $677,500 conditional, once again, on an inspection from Gary and financing (which I'd been approved for previously...and we'll get around to in a later post). So what went wrong this time?
Well - first off, the house had undergone a number of renovations recently, including a lot of work in the basement - new draintiles (why?), foundation reinforcements (why?), and a few other things. Vermiculite in the ceiling, and evidence of work that had not been done as well as it could have been, also added to our uneasiness. The final nail in the coffin came when we ordered soil testing (agreed to by the seller), and they could not drill because the seller refused them permission when the drilling company arrived on site. Furthermore, I had to negotiate all of this with Kris (who was taking care of the pup, taking two full-time accelerated courses at UBC, and working at MEC in between) from Sri Lanka - certainly not the easiest scenario.With soils in doubt once again, and us being at our breaking point, we opted to pass on the second property and walked away, now $2000 poorer due to house inspections, drilling, etc. from the past two properties.
With two near hits/misses, we decided to take a step back and re-evaluate. With the financial markets melting down (late July/early August 2011), we were feeling a bit nervous about what the housing market might do here in Vancouver. While we had agreed not to return to searching until fall, we couldn't avoid the siren call of real estate listings (Gina had this robot-MLS thing that posted us on new properties and sales), and noticed the this place...
HOUSE #3 - THE AWESOME LOCATION / NOT-SO-AWESOME HOUSE: 1815 East 6th Ave.
I'd first noticed this place because of it's location and price. 6th and Commercial (on "the Drive" in Grandview) was a really awesome location - close to transit, shops, restaurants, etc., backing onto a park, on a great tree-lined street - it was really above and beyond. Furthermore, at $599K, the price was "affordable" (makes you laugh, doesn't it?). However, it was a really small house (600 sq. ft.), a pretty small lot (25*100 ft), didn't show any pictures of the inside (always frightening), and was zoned RT-5 (meaning there wasn't much leniency on "the look" and building a modern styled house was out of the question). Nevertheless, the market in early August was slower, and I opted to swing by the open house on a Saturday. In going through the place my impressions were as follows:
- The street and location were as good as I had thought.
- The house was dark, old and smelly on the inside.
- The basement was unlivable (but had decent height ceilings)
- The backyard had a weird concrete foundation in it - my best guess was a chicken coop. (but had potential)
- There was carpet in the bathroom (gag)
- There was wood paneling EVERYWHERE.
Bottom line: it was going to require massive amounts of work, but had a lot of potential. I took some pics and told Kris about it, and touched base with our friends Brett (a general contractor) and Ian (an architect with Bruce Carscadden) and the group of us toured it again on Sunday. In general, the thoughts were similar to mine - it was going to take a lot of work, but it seemed like it had decent bones to it and the potential for renovation was there. So, on Monday we put in a bid of $610,000 (in retrospect, probably should have gone for $605K), and it was accepted that evening.
The house inspection (Gary and I were becoming well acquainted at this point!) revealed a fair bit of asbestos/vermiculite, and an incredibly disgusting toilet/bathroom that was simply draining directly into the FLOOR (gag again), but did indicate that the foundation, outside and roofing were in decent condition. Systems needed complete removal (plumbing, electrical, etc.) and all of the appliances (aside from the fridge) were ancient, but the shell seemed solid. So, after a lot of humming and hawing, Kris and I opted to go for it. Which brings us to now. More later, but this posting has been way too long to begin with, so I'll call it quits here.
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