BC Business
Address: 2295 KLO Road, East Kelowna, B.C.Price: By auction: no reserve price; no minimum bidAuction House: The Garage Sale
The skinny: Five-bedroom, five-bathroom, 5,940-square-foot house on 35 acres of Okanagan farmland. The bling: Look at the price. No, seriously, look again: no minimum bid, no reserve price—on a house that, until recently, was listed for almost $7 million. Who says there are no bargains to be had in B.C.? Of course there are. You just have to lower your high aesthetic sensibility and look beyond the cosmetic. Take the house. Imagine a beautiful art deco building from the 1930s, all curves and ribbon windows, and then cube it out, as if you were building it with Lego, with a stepped roof and similarly stepped perimeter. It may be a boxy behemoth, but what do you expect at this price? Inside, there’s black marble and Tamara de Lempicka’s precisely apportioned Portrait of Ira P. surrounding you in the bathroom, and a mahogany kitchen so shiny you could fix your face while you’re fixing breakfast. Not quite your cup of tea? Never fear, just look out the (many) windows and you’ll see the potential: acres of mature fruit trees just waiting to fill your Vitamix to the brim with goodness. You’ll be practically self-sufficient. Just make sure you keep enough money in the kitty to pay the legion of planters, pruners and pretty sunhat-wearing fruit pickers you’ll need to keep you fuelled up. The hidden extras: 3,500-square-foot groundskeeper’s cottage, four-car garage, cute little 660-square-foot picker’s residence (they’re outside all day, after all), wine cellar, swimming pool, thousands of cherry, apple, pear and peach trees.