SITTING PRETTY
The vibe is warm and inviting at Mosaic’s Victoria at Burke Mountain
Finding just the right home can be a very competitive pastime in Metro Vancouver’s multi-family housing market with some people even camping out nights before sales begin at some projects.
Amanda Hung and Gordon Misner and their three-year-old daughter Madeleine were ready to brave the cold in a tent for four days last month to be first in line when Mosaic launched sales for its new Burke Mountain development in Coquitlam.
Luckily, they were spared that hassle at the last minute.
“When we set up the Tuesday night before the units went for sale, a Mosaic sales staff (member) came outside that night and said the lineup system had changed, that we did not have to line up outside for as long as we had anticipated,” Hung said.
Faced with limited space and the fact that the potential camping site was considered a construction zone, Mosaic instituted a wait-number system instead.
The family was able to go home with their No. 1 ticket in hand.
They returned a few days later to buy the four-bedroom-and-den row home they had been eyeing at Victoria, Mosaic’s collection of 131 Tudor-styled units.
“We were happy with this procedure because, realistically, buyers who can afford property like this have full-time jobs and a family,” Hung said.
“We do not have the time to camp outside for 72 hours, but we would have done anything to be first.”
Misner said they wanted a large enough home to share with his mother, who recently retired and now wants to help raise Madeleine.
“We know that raising a daughter is easier with more hands.”
At the same time, living in the ground-level fourth bedroom will allow his mother to take a break from her role as grandma, he said.
Hung and Misner, both in their early 30s, said they have been following Mosaic’s new projects since they bought a row home in 2014 in Fremont, another Burke Mountain project by Mosaic.
Such repeat buyers are nothing new for Mosaic, which has built almost 300 homes on Burke Mountain in the last 12 years, said Geoff Duyker, Mosaic’s senior vicepresident of marketing.
“We have sold 30 homes in Victoria and over a third of them have been to families that have owned Mosaic Homes previously,” he said.
Victoria is basically being built for families that need more space, he said.
The units are generously sized by comparative standards with the largest rivalling that of a singlefamily home.
So far, about 80 per cent of the buyers have come from either a condo or a smaller townhome and are looking for more (or bigger) bedrooms for their children and a bigger garage for bikes and other toys, Duyker said. The remaining 20 per cent include more mature couples who no longer want the work of managing a single-family home, but still want some of the features of that kind of home.
With its newest development, Mosaic has refined its Tudor-style architecture with more exterior detailing, such as brickwork, timbers, scroll designs and window boxes, and novel elements, such as corner nooks for dens or workspaces. But the biggest change from Mosaic’s previous projects was in raising the ceiling heights to 10 feet on the main levels of all homes, a modification supported by surveys Mosaic conducted, Duyker said.
“That’s a big shift for us and you can really feel it when you get into the homes in Victoria for the first time,” he said. “It gives you more volume, space and light because your windows are bigger and more storage because your cabinets are higher.”
Duyker said Burke Mountain has proven popular because the community is newly developed and provides some great views of Tri-Cities and Mount Baker. “It has new schools, new parks, new shopping retail and new trails and then we get to do the new homes as part of it,” he said. At the same time, there are continued enhancements to transportation systems, including improvements to connections between the Mary Hill Bypass and Highway 1, as well as the extension of the Evergreen Line and improved bus routes.
Inside the homes, the kitchens are fitted with flat-panel upper cabinets, available in a white or taupe matte finish, which sit above Shaker-style bottoms. A black faucet serves as the centre of attention with a backsplash of bright square white tiles outlined in black grout.
In the bathrooms, frameless glass showers sit next to marble-finished tiles. Lights are set on motion detectors to turn on and off as one passes by.
The three model homes also feature several design ideas that buyers can source out through their own contractors.
One model, for instance, includes a 10-foot-high, floor-toceiling library case in the living room, complete with a wheeled ladder on a horizontal rod, while another showcases built-in shelves and desks for work spaces.
The development also includes a clubhouse that buyers can use for birthday parties or family gatherings.
That’s a big shift for us and you can really feel it when you get into the homes in Victoria for the first time.