These days, I usually read the Real Estate guide when I’m looking to practise my spit-takes, but I think I’ll be moving on to using it for maniacal cackling.
Lately, prices for real estate have been climbing faster than Charlie Sheen’s hairline. At the same time, condo development has become “de rigueur”. After all, hip, urban dwellings shoehorned into our Northern lifestyle right at the peak of a housing crisis, makes perfect sense.
It seems the message is that growth in the territory can only be accomplished by the extremely wealthy. Who else would say “Yes, please!” to forking out 400 grand for a two bedroom condo in a building they’ll never own?
But hey! Look at all that chrome! And 800 square feet of “open concept”, oh my!
Those are some lovely river views to eat out of a can of tuna by, lemme tell ya.
Who knows, maybe Whitehorse is building a cottage industry for the extremely wealthy. After all, if one has a private jet, anywhere in the North can be your “country residential” paradise.
Sure, I’m being my usual snarky self, but let’s face it: if you’re someone who wants to buy a home in the territory, I hope you have a graduate degree in alchemy.
And if you’re someone who has the audacity to want to start a family here, I just hope your kids pop right out of the womb with government jobs. Federal government jobs.
My wife and I moved back to the Yukon because we both truly believe this is a wonderful place to raise kids. We’re both extensively involved in the Arts (yeah – we’re those kinda people), and we both have decent gainful employment.
What we didn’t look forward to, and perhaps you’ll agree, is living paycheque to paycheque while doling out inordinate amounts for rent.
This is the truly fascinating part about our housing crisis. While we all bemoan the skyrocketing housing prices, we also seem to have no problem gouging each other.
One padlock on your basement door = one snazzy rental “suite”!
Not too enamored with the idea of indenturing our firstborn to the upstairs landlord, we took to the trailer parks for a more permanent landing pad.
After all, you may have noticed that most of the trailer parks in town also hold claim to some of the best views in Whitehorse.
(On a side note, the views from the dump are particularly nice, too.)
So now my wife and I have a cozy, skylight filled giant rectangle we call home. Sure the walls are thinner than the paper this article is printed on, but at least we start our months with disposable income.
That’s right my friends, we buy the higher-end Ichiban noodles.
I’m happy to let the growing culture of nouveau-riche property owners dream their hip urban life dreams.
If the path to a Northern Toronto lifestyle means shelling out half a mil, well, that’s a small price to pay to immediately rise above the hoi polloi.
The inevitable housing bust is going to be interesting to watch for us Northerners.
I’m not too worried, though.
After all, if I miss out on flipping the trailer at about four times its actual value, I can always drive it right up to the landfill.
And soak in the view.
