Victoria's high end real estate

Running through Victoria’s most posh neighbourhoods, I feel proprietarial, condescending, envious, and afraid. I am an intruder, casing the joint in the early morning, yet I am also in equal measure a neighbour sympathetic to the plight of millionaires trying to avoid losing money, realtor alert to the multitude of ‘for sale’ signs that have sprouted everywhere, and a canny investor (albeit with no money) looking for a good deal.

And you do see good deals (in relative terms) – the house for sale that was a once in a lifetime opportunity at 2.199 million is now going for a song at $1.999 million, in grim competition with a stone-gated mansion that has its very own website or an ocean-front penthouse. I am becoming aware of the slight but acute class distinctions between houses that are a mere 500 meters apart – the parvenu concrete block at the base of Foul Bay road doesn’t fall into the same category as the house up the hill that is being sold by Sotheby’s International. A water view is not the same thing as an ocean front, and King George Terrace is not to be confused with Hollywood Crescent. One of the dozen or so manorial residences at the corner of Beach Drive (before it turns into more plebeian Oak Bay with its rental apartments for seniors) sports oriental turrets on the small gatehouse for the gardener or visitor, not to be confused with the mansion itself at the end of the driveway.

I was glad to see an article in today’s New York Times confirming my impression that lots of high-end property is for sale right now. The article quotes local realtor Marsha Crawford saying that Victoria “has more property now on the market in a single month than we have seen in 18 years.” Most oceanfront homes on the market are being priced at between 2-4 million dollars. While, there has been a slowdown in transactions, I’m not feeling too sorry for the would-be sellers – “prices are up double digits over the same period last year.”

Apparently, four percent of Victoria’s houses are owned by Americans, with other foreigners owning another one percent. One realtor thinks Americans are selling their Canadian vacation properties “because of the Canadian dollar’s newfound strength and reinvesting in American vacation properties.” Perhaps he is too polite to consider that maybe they are just over-extended and desperately trying to get rid of whatever they can to get some cash.