Home buyers move to outlying areas
Escalating house prices are pushing residents out of the Metro Vancouver housing market
POWELL RIVER — David Repa recalls the shock he felt sitting down at a bank after selling his Vancouver business in 2013 and realizing for the first time how much of “a joke” his prospects were of owning a home in the city.
“Oh, my God. I’m not even close,” Repa remembers thinking at the time.
Three years later, the man who co-founded a non-profit electronics-recycling centre and a computer-repair business is living in a spacious home he owns in Powell River. The ocean is a block away and the sound of a creek running through his backyard can be heard from the front steps.
As soaring real estate prices expand up B.C.’s south coast, Powell River has become a refuge for residents of Metro Vancouver who want to make home ownership a reality.
Neil Frost, president of the region’s real estate board, said he’s seen a wave of young people driven out of the Lower Mainland and Howe Sound area. Non-residents have made up about 50 per cent of the buyers in Powell River over the past couple years, said Frost. Prices have grown about 20 per cent, he added, far lower than the surging values in and around Metro Vancouver.
Figures from the B.C. Real Estate Association show Powell River led the province in January for both the number and total value of residential sales, compared with the same period last year. Residential sales jumped 82 per cent to $6.3 million.
“The people in Squamish really felt the pinch,” Frost said. “So many times I heard the story, ‘Hey, Neil. This was the year I was going to buy in Squamish. House prices went from $450,000 to $750,000. I can’t do it. I can’t. So show me something in Powell River.’”
Jennifer Weaver, her partner Chris Lacoste and their newborn moved to Powell River last year.
Prices in Squamish “exploded” after Weaver and Lacoste bought a mobile home eight years ago for $130,000, she said. They sold their mobile home for nearly $190,000 and were able to buy a three-bedroom house in Powell River with an ocean view and mountain biking trails leaving from their backyard for $215,000.
“There’s a compromise in leaving your community,” Weaver said. My husband especially, he really misses meeting up at the pub with the guys.” But she said the move has been positive for her family.
Repa describes it as “fairly upsetting” to have poured so much into a community by starting Free Geek Vancouver and The Hackery and still not being able to afford to live in the city.
“Even with the sale of the business, home ownership was not something that was going to happen in Vancouver. Period,” Repa said.
The company wasn’t worth millions of dollars, but its sale likely would have been enough to set someone up anywhere else in Canada, he said.
Still, Vancouver will always have a special place in his heart.
“There are some super creative, super energetic, super caring people, and the only thing that’s holding them back is the fact that they can’t rent a little space to provide their services to the community,” he said. “And that’s the shame. Vancouver loses out because of that.”