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| THE HOUSE IN 2015 |
First a little history. My grandfather bought this house in
1945 for the amazing price of $1500. My Mother who was a grown adult at
that time, moved in with them to take care of her parents. After she
married my Dad in 1950, he moved in as well.
Dad then built a suite in the basement
where they lived until I came along in 1955. In 1958 my Grandfather died
and then in 1960 my Grandmother had a stroke. In the interim, my sister
arrived on the scene in 1960. At this point the house passed into the
ownership of my Mom and her brothers. Since they each had their own homes
in other parts of the world, Saskatoon, Long Beach, Jamaica they signed over
ownership to my mother, no questions asked.
We went along as a happy family of four
until I got married and moved out in 1982 followed a couple of years later by
my sister. In 1992, Mom died of cancer, leaving my Dad on his own.
He was in his mid-seventies at this point. The house had been
willed to my sister and I with Dad having lifetime tenancy privileges.
Unfortunately there was a screw up at the Land Titles Offices and the
house was put into my Dad's name.
In 1996 when I separated from my wife, Dad
invited me to come and live with him, in the very same basement suite that he
had built so many years ago. It gave me a place to live and it gave him
the added security of having a policeman living in the basement. Believe
me, it wasn't without its trials and tribulations for quite a few years.
I had no stove and no shower facilities. Dad and I tended to clash
like oil and water on occasion. But we always worked it out.
Initially, I could not afford to pay rent
as I was living on a mere $100 per month for the first year plus. Dad
would not hear of it in any case, even when I got back on my feet. I made
up for it by running errands, taking him to Doctors appointments, doing yard
work and maintenance projects around the house. People used to bug me
about how I was living rent free, but I did work for my keep, in addition to
working shifts.
We had a few scares along the way with Dad
having various health scares including several heart attacks. One of the
biggest scares came in 2011 when I got a 2:30 AM phone call from the RCMP
saying Dad had been driving erratically and could I come pick him up. By
the time I got to where they had him pulled over, the intersection was full of
police cars, fire trucks and ambulances and then I saw Dad on a gurney with a
fireman sitting on his chest doing CPR.
I thought that was it that night, as he
had gone into full cardiac arrest and then had his heart stop three more times
on the way to hospital. By the time we had gotten to the hospital, Dad
was in Emergency and arrested three more times. The Doctor told us at
that time that if he arrested again, they were going to "let him go".
As luck would have it, he stabilized right then. He arrested once
more while in ICU, but was quickly brought back.
Dad amazed us all by waking up just in
time to see the Canucks lose to Boston in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals.
At this point there was no reason to believe he would ever get out of
hospital and come home. He fooled us all though. After three months
in hospital and care homes, he was discharged and came home, where I became his
care giver full time. Dad survived another 3 plus years.
In 2013 the error in the house ownership
was discovered and moves were made with a lawyer to put it right. Dad
wanted me to be able to stay in the house and so an agreement was reached and
the house was signed over to me, with a mortgage held by my sister, due and
payable 30 days after Dad's death. The real estate market in Vancouver
had not by that point gone completely insane. while in the lawyers
office, the statement was made "if the bottom falls out of the housing
market and you decide to sell, then you still owe us this money. If the
market goes up and you decide to sell, then you have made a tidy little
profit". Prophetic words as it turned out.
On January 4, 2015 Dad finally lost his
battle and passed away a few days after his 96th birthday. Now the
scramble was on. My sister and her family arrived the next day and
started clearing out Dad's stuff and things in the attic. There was stuff
up there dating all the way back to 1945.
As per the agreement, I obtained a mortgage 20 days after Dad died
and paid my sister. The house was now
officially mine, but of course that came with crushing debt. It’s ok, I was going to make it work. I had the mortgage amortized over 25 years to
minimize the payments as much as I could.
I had already been retired 10 years by this point and was living on a
fixed income. A very nice income mind
you, but still fixed. The $1900 per
month payments though did not leave a lot left over to live on.
Add into this the fact that I had suffered a significant back
injury, then a broken wrist and followed that up with a knee injury, which left
it near impossible to do the required yard work, or maintenance on a 70 year
old house.
I kicked around suggestions and ideas of how to make it work. Could I get a job? Not likely at age 60 and inquiries proved
that assumption. How about staying in
the basement and renting the upstairs?
Possibly, but I still had the problem of no stove and no shower
facilities. I had so little disposable
income that solving that problem was almost impossible. My sister offered to put in a shower at
reasonable cost, but in February 2016, I’m still waiting for that to happen.
I spent the summer thinking about it and agonizing over it and trying
to figure out what to do. Renting out
the upstairs was not practical for the reasons I listed plus the fact I was not
at all keen on being a landlord, nor living with strangers. Renting the basement and living upstairs, was
not doable for the same reason. Finally,
after a summer full of stress and money problems, I came to the inevitable
conclusion that it was time to move.
I contacted my old boss and good friend from work who was now a
real estate agent. We got together and
he took a walk through the house. We
decided that the house would go up for sale at a listing price of
$899,000. Quite an increase from the
$1500 that my Grandfather had paid. Neil
was fairly confident that we would probably end up with something closer to a
million bucks.
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| NEIL PUTS OUT THE SIGNS |
The house went on the market and on the first day of the open
house, 35 people went through. On the
second day 72. Meanwhile the real estate
market in Vancouver had gone into frenzy mode.
By the time we made it to offer night, we had put on a restriction that
anyone wishing to make an offer had to present a cheque for $50,000 in trust,
to prove they were serious. It was
insane. There was one fellow who came in
and presented a cheque for $150,000. I
think he was serious. The advantage here
was if we reached a deal with any of them and they backed out, the money was
mine and we would do the sale all over again.
We took 18 offers that night.
Some were lowball and one guy even tried to make an offer for less than
asking. The agents who appeared ran the
gamut from total sleazeballs, to very professional and everything in
between. One guy who came in looked like
a character from central casting for the TV show The Sopranos. The fellow who presented the $150,000 cheque
was the one who got it. His offer was
totally clean with no subjects and a total of $1,270,000. An offer that was so far above my
expectations as to be mind boggling.
Even my real estate agent could not believe it.
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| SOLD |
Even more amazing was one lady made an even higher offer of
$1,2888,888.88. We dubbed her “Crazy
Eights” but the offer was full of subjects and some “shady” stuff. Plus she wanted me to pay $2000 per month
rent to be able to stay until I got a place to move to. We took the lower, clean offer and she went
ballistic. She could not understand how
we could take less money.
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| FIRST VIEW |
That out of the way, I had to find a place to live. I decided I wanted a brand new townhouse, so
that I would not have to worry about interior or exterior maintenance. We looked at places in Surrey, White Rock,
Langley, Coquitlam, Burnaby, New Westminster and Maple Ridge. I set a criteria of what I needed. I had two lists, one was “absolute must haves”
and the other was “nice to haves”. Some
of the priorities were brand new, garage big enough for my boat, gas stove,
etc. We found an incredible place in
Maple Ridge that had every single thing on both lists except one and that was a
“nice to have”.
It's amazing how fast that much money can disappear. After buying my new place, which as of this
writing is still under construction, paying off my mortgage and penalties,
paying off agents commission, paying off other debt that I incurred while
trying to keep my head above water, taxes and filling the new place with
furniture it didn’t leave a lot left over.
But, the big thing is I am now the proud owner of a brand new townhouse
and I’m debt free.
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| EXTERIOR ALMOST DONE |
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