Would you pay $9.5M to raze this house?
Someone might be about to pay $9.55 million to tear down a waterfront West Vancouver home.
With its low-pitched gable roof, broad eaves, prominent chimneys, wide expanse of plate glass and outdoor decks that extend the living space toward a rocky beach, the home is a classic example of the type of architecture that was popular in B.C. in the 1960s.
The price? That’s a symbol of Vancouver’s red-hot real estate market.
The 3,000-square-foot house is among the most significant modern buildings in the district, according to a report published in the 1990s.
It also recently hit the real estate market for the first time.
The well-kept house has charm and historical value, but according to the ad on realtor.ca, the value is in the land and it’s more likely that the property will be sold to someone who will demolish the structure to build something bigger.
The multimillion-dollar teardown is a phenomenon that’s become more common over the past few years, according to West Vancouver realtor Tom Hassan, who has been in the business for 23 years.
“I think the land is just becoming so valuable that it puts demands on what people do with the properties,” Hassan said. “People who pay $2 million to $3 million, they don’t want to live in a house with two bedrooms and no ensuite.”
Hassan is the listing agent on the beachfront teardown, but he did not feel comfortable talking specifically about the property without the owners’ consent.
Hassan said developers are certainly part of the equation, but he doesn’t necessarily agree with the opinion that offshore buyers are driving the trend, at least in West Vancouver.
Other notable examples of pricey teardowns include a property in the Vancouver neighbourhood of Dunbar that sold last week in just 24 hours for $3 million. The four-bedroom 1934 home is sound, but it will be torn down because its new owners believe it is too small.
“Most people look at these homes and it has nothing to do with the livability, the cuteness or the character (of the home), it is the economics of the lot,” Wayne Hamill, a realtor with ReMax Select Properties, told Postmedia News after the sale.
Dorothy D. Barkley, executive director of the Architecture Foundation of B.C., said she doesn’t take issue with people who buy a property and build a new house that fits in with the neighbourhood.
But Barkley said she wishes that more people would look into renovating and restoring before demolition, and that municipalities would support such efforts.
What does get her back up is the destruction of old homes that still have life left in them, particularly ones that are architecturally significant.
“Our architectural heritage isn’t as deep as you might hope because (Vancouver is) too young. Whatever built environment memory there was, is being decimated by the rampant construction going on,” Barkley said. “I think it’s a tragedy and travesty.”