James Risdon, Business in Vancouver, 1995
Urban cowboys are snatching up ranchland within a five-hour drive of Vancouver.
Waiting to sell it to them is Rudy Nielsen, the land developer who heads New Westminster-based NIHO Land & Cattle Company Ltd. and LandQuest Realty Corp.
In some cases, the urbanites who head for the hills take their role playing very seriously.
“I know a group of guys who have this land and a trailer on it and every Friday night they leave and put on red shirts,
Rudy Nielsen, Equity Magazine, 1994
Ten years ago our company decided that instead of investing our future into commercial and residential real estate investments, which we had done for some 20 years we would change our focus and make a business out of investing in recreational properties.
Our priority was to be diversified. So we acquired only ocean, lake, and river-front properties, islands, exotic hideaways, small ranches and timber stands.
Jurock Real Estate Investor, August / September 1993
To some people, “recreation” is a $400,000 home or a “basic” $230,000 condo in Whistler. To others, it’s a vacant piece of wilderness land near Alaska. One man’s nightingale is another’s owl.
Whatever the vision, many people have given up looking for their own escape places. Properties seem too expensive or they don’t want to buy into a co-op purchase of a large acreage where they may never see a return on (or even use of) the land.
Olivia Scott, The Vancouver Province, August 21, 1992
It’s a realtor’s dream.
An entire B.C. town complete with shopping centre and housing for 2,000 people is for sale at $23.5 million.
And Kitsault, north of Prince Rupert, is vacant so there’s nothing to do but move in.
“There is a caretaker and his wife there who keep the lawns mowed, the trees pruned, the roads cleared,”