Housing markets are funny. I know, it's all in supply and demand, but I've found it somewhat amusing, ever since several of our friends in a missionary organization ended up living in upscale houses when the organization moved from California to Florida, because for tax reasons they had to reinvest in housing the large profits they made from selling their missionary shacks in California. That works both ways: having moved to Florida from the Northeast, we found ourselves caught in a real estate market that was flat for almost 20 years while places like Massachusetts and Connecticut skyrocketed, effectively precluding a return to our roots.
Yesterday I came across this property for sale in Vancouver, British Columbia, and it got me thinking. You can have this "attractively priced" home for a mere $709,000. Assuming that's Canadian dollars, it might be a bargain at about $663,000 in U.S. currency. (Size measurements are given in feet, however, so I'm not sure which units are being used.)What intrigued me about this home was its surface similarity to our first home, in Rochester New York. Our house was 1338sqft on a 40ft x 104ft lot; this is 1888sqft on 33ft x 122ft. Actually, I think they are even closer in size than it appears, since the basement was not counted in our square footage, and it seems theirs has been converted into 750 square feet of living space. The houses were even built in approximately the same era. Note that our old home is now supposed to have a market value of $110,000.
Location and market demand probably account for most of the price difference. However, the second intriguing thing is what the owners have done with such a small space. Whereas our home had three bedrooms and one bath, this one has five bedrooms and three full baths! Look at the pictures: they have made full use of every square inch of space. It's a lovely home—even if I do find it exceedingly difficult to imagine paying seven hundred thousand dollars for a small house on a a minuscule lot, unless it also happened to be sitting on top of a diamond mine. One thing I know: Lovely home or not, I'm glad I'm not planning to move to Vancouver.It might not be worth it even if it was on a diamond mine. At least in our area, the rights to whatever is under your property were given away decades ago.
