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Ah, the good life. Sailing, golf, a good wine as
the sun hits the yardarm and money in the bank
when ennui settles in and Paris beckons.
For
most people, it's a fantasy. Something to dream
about after handing over a toonie on a 6/49
ticket.
But for an increasing number of lucky people
-- people like Ben and Jean Hartman of Kelowna
-- it's life's next chapter after years behind a
desk. The proof is in the number of
million-dollar-and-more retirement and vacation
properties springing up outside the Lower
Mainland, Victoria and Whistler.
Two years ago, the Hartmans, a retired
couple, bought a vacant lot on Okanagan Lake for
$600,000 -- an exorbitant sum, Jean Hartman
thought at the time.
Today they're selling the same property and
the one-level ranch house they built on it for
$1,995,000.
"It's just crazy," says Jean. "What's been
happening over the past two years has been
crazy."
Proof is in the B.C. Assessment Authority's
2005 list of properties worth $1 million or
more. More than 800 of them are in places such
as Parksville, Fernie, Kamloops, Salmon Arm and
especially Kelowna, where the number of such
properties rose from 57 in 2003 to 291 in 2005.
In the surrounding Central Okanagan Valley,
there were five such properties two years ago.
Now there are 124.
Also hot on the 2005 listings were Tofino,
where the number rose from one to 33; the Gulf
Islands, where it climbed from 10 to 61;
Invermere and environs, where it jumped from
seven to 38; and Sechelt, where it leaped from
five to 70.
Money is on the march out of the province's
urban centres to what, only a decade ago, was
still regarded as a kind of hinterland -- places
where, in the view of West Side hauteur, a
coffee bar meant a truck stop and dinner was a
ride to Wendy's.
No more.
According to David Baxter of the Urban
Futures Institute, people are looking for
"Bonanza with a Starbucks image," and they're
finding it in places like the east and west
coasts of Vancouver Island, the Okanagan and, if
you're from Calgary, the Columbia Valley.
"They're looking for that rural, more
tranquil setting with less of the background
noise we have as urbanites," Baxter says. "But
at the same time they're not pioneering; they're
going into well-finished real estate."
"It's tame nature that they want. They want
to get the newspaper and the decaf latte and the
latest book, and they want to be within 45
minutes of the nearest airport because they're
still engaged in the larger world."
And financing these rural (but replete with
every urban mod con) idylls are, for the first
time, couples with two pensions and a house to
sell. That means not just cash in the bank, but
cash coming in on a regular basis, too.
"It's revolutionary," says Baxter. "Never
before in the history of mankind have we seen
this before."
It's also prompted a price boom where
properties that sold for thousands 10 years ago
are selling for millions now.
Daryl Caunt of Mibroc Construction in
Kamloops is building them to order. His dream
houses, which cost anywhere from $500,000 to $3
million, are designed for people "who are just
about ready for retirement," he says. People who
want peace, quiet, a good climate, spectacular
views and a drive to a major city within four
hours.
That doesn't surprise Rudy Nielsen of
the Landcor Data Corp., who believes in a
so-called golden circle when it comes to buying
property -- an area no more than four hours'
drive from the nearest major urban centre. From
Calgary, that's Invermere and the Columbia
Valley. From Vancouver, it's the Okanagan Valley
and Vancouver Island.
"The penturbite [a word coined by University
of Washington urban development professor Jack
Lessinger to mean residents of areas expected to
experience significant property rises in the
next 20 years] still wants to come back to
Vancouver to attend the opera and do some
shopping," Nielsen says.
At the same time, they want to get out of the
rat race to a place where property and house
prices aren't so prohibitive.
"Give me an acre, give me two acres," people
are starting to say, Nielsen says. "I've worked
hard all these years, so I want two acres."
But even in places like Invermere, Tofino and
the Gulf Islands, two acres -- especially two
acres on or near water -- are at an increasing
premium, and that premium is commanding
West-Van-sized prices.
On Saltspring Island, realtor Tom Navratil
says there are currently 34 properties for sale
at $1 million or more.
"I would question some at the bottom of that
list," Navratil says. "Out of the 34, one could
argue that three or four might slip below [the
million-dollar line], but otherwise they're all
worth over a million."
It's not surprising on an island where Barbra
Streisand is known to moor her yacht for an
afternoon's shopping and Robin Williams is
rumoured to own acreage. It's simply the cost of
living in such a desirable, beautiful and
convenient (with three regular ferry runs to
Vancouver Island and Vancouver each day) locale,
Navratil says.
But it's not just the eastern side of
Vancouver Island that's experiencing a property
boom. Tofino on the westernmost coast of the
island is also seeing prices rise like surf.
Tofino district treasurer Martin Gee
attributes that to the publicity the community
earned in the early 1990s when protesters were
trying to stop logging on Meares Island and in
Clayoquot Sound.
People appreciated the protests, Gee said,
but admired the scenery more. Suddenly,
international tourism was a going concern in
what was until then a backwater fishing village.
And with the rise in tourism has come a
concomitant rise in property prices.
"It's getting to the point where some of our
residents are concerned they can't afford the
rising taxes to live here," says Gee. "Property
that was reasonably priced 10 years ago now has
a very high price and it's getting expensive to
support that. I've heard a number of people
complain that they're going to be driven out."
Invermere Mayor Mark Shmigelsky tells similar
tales. With the influx of blue-eyed oil sheiks
from Calgary "who can sign cheques for $3
million without blinking an eye," has come a
rise in property prices -- particularly of
recreational property -- that is making life
increasingly expensive for long-time Invermere
residents.
"It's certainly presented us with a number of
challenges," Shmigelsky says. The city even had
to go so far as to buy its own plot of land on
nearby Lake Windermere to make sure the public
could continue enjoying what has traditionally
been the town's beachfront. The rest has been
sold to private individuals or developers.
According to Tim Pringle, executive director
of the Real Estate Foundation of B.C., a typical
property on Windermere Lake cost about $70,000
in 1972. By 1992 it was up to $135,000. Twelve
years later it hit $830,000, with about 30 per
cent of that increasing occurring in the last
two years.
But nowhere has the rural property boom been
quite as loud as it has in the Okanagan Valley
where, because of low interest rates and an
influx of about-to-retire wealthy baby boomers,
tear-downs are now going for $1 million and
more, says realtor Ann Petrone.
"Smaller old-style homes on the water are
going for over a million," Petrone said. "A
50-foot lot with a two-bedroom house on it would
be a million or more."
Westbank regional director Aaron Dinwoodie
says that's been great for economic development
in Kelowna, but when pressed, he admits it has
created problems too, primarily around
affordable housing, an issue on which he says
Kelowna officials "have a long way to go."
It's not unusual, Dinwoodie says, for people
working in the service industry to have to
"partner up" just to afford a roof over their
heads.
"They have to be creative. They have to
partner up and have a couple of different
incomes for it to be affordable. It's a very
difficult challenge."
But for couples like the Hartmans, it's meant
an unexpected windfall.
"We're very surprised," Jean says of their
enviable straits. "We often say to each other
that we have been so fortunate. Because if
anyone had ever told us we would live here and
do the kind of travelling we do, we'd say that
was a nice dream." |
