Want to Buy My Childhood Home?
August 27th, 2007, 8 Comments »
I grew up in West Vancouver. To most Vancouverites, that either implies that I was raised by my grandparents or in a Asian-owed, monolithic palace in the British Properties. In truth, I spent my youth in a wooded but very middle-class neighbourhood near the Cleveland Dam.
Yesterday my brother emailed me, because he noticed that our childhood home is up for sale. It’s an ordinary split-level, 2000 square-foot home and is now 51 years old. It’s got four bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms and is on a fairly large lot which backs onto the forest. It’s about ten or fifteen minutes north of Park Royal:
I’ll have to double-check, but I think my parents paid $75,000 (apparently they paid $96,000) for that house back in 1979. I’m not sure how much they sold it for in about 1992. Today, how much is the sale price?
$969,000. Really? Is that what a million dollar home looks like in Vancouver?
It’s about two blocks away from Collingwood School, which is a ritzy private school that’s probably driven up local property values. Still, though, that seems like an absurd amount of money for such an ordinary house.