BC Business
Each week, BCBusiness takes you inside one of the most outrageously upmarket real estate offerings in the province
Address: 4278 West 12th Avenue, Vancouver
Price: $4,380,000
MLS: R2115295
The skinny: Four-bedroom, three-bathroom, 2,583-square-foot house in Point Grey.
The bling: Starter home alert! This is entry-level material, kids—just a squeak over $4M, and just right for a young family ready to take their first step onto the property ladder. It’s perfect, really: basic, dated, a bit shabby, and with the cheapest fixtures and fittings the hardware store had on the shelves 30 years ago. But that’s exactly what your first home should be: a blank canvas, just waiting for you to paint several colour swatches on the walls, hide Granny’s handed-down dilapidated sofas with throwovers and turn a blind eye to the hideous bathroom tiles. We’ve all been there, kids. Seriously. So all you need to do now is persuade mom and dad (or granny, or the in-laws) to downsize to a nice studio in New Westminster and give you the deposit. It’s not a gift exactly—and it’s most certainly not a loan—it’s more just reassigning the family’s financing to give you all the privileges afforded to them when they were young. It’ll also save them thousands in the private school fees you would otherwise be obliged to insist they fund if they force you to live east of Cambie. And, if New West seems a little far—after all, what are grandparents for, if not to offer childcare relief to their high-powered, busy offspring?—point out the opportunity looking you all in the face: teardown and rebuild (and, please God, upgrade) something big enough to house you all. Win win.
The hidden extras: What you see is what you get: a basic property in the right postal code for the best schools, nice parks and close enough to the beach.