Realtor Trent Rodney has a knack for selling West Coast modern homes that were built in the 1950s and ’60s.
Real eState
See the unique North Vancouver house a couple saved from demolition
He sent it out to 10,000 people on his database of West Coast modern aficionados. The goal: To save a small house on a big lot in North Van.
“Since it’s on a corner lot on Forest Hills Drive, one of the best streets, and is close to Edgemont Village, this is prime developer bait,” said Rodney.
In this case, the 9,660 square foot lot was occupied by a 1,363 sq. ft house. The zoning allowed for a new structure up to 5,500 sq. ft. The price: $2.3 million.
What made this house special is it was designed by the local West Coast modern architect Fred Hollingsworth as part of his “Flying Arrow” series in 1950. Rodney said only six Flying Arrows were built; this could be the only one left.
Hollingsworth had studied with architectural legend Wright in Arizona, who had an ambitious plan to build cheap but cool “Usonian” houses for the masses. Hollingsworth came back to B.C. and started designing his own homes for the middle or working class, called Neoteric or Flying Arrow houses. The Neoterics had flat roofs, the Flying Arrows had pitched roofs.
The houses were small but felt much bigger because they had an open-concept and floor-to-ceiling windows.
“The intention when it was built was to be indoor-outdoor living, living as much outdoors as you do inside,” said Rodney. “So they cared more about access to light, access to nature.”
The Flying Arrow homes had high angled ceilings (probably 15 feet in points) and a stylish “scissor truss” system of wooden beams that held up the roof.
Hollingsworth designs also featured brick walls, which gave them warmth, and large fireplaces that tended to be the architectural showpiece of the home.
In this case, the fireplace was five feet high and three feet wide. In a 1952 Western Living magazine story on the house, it said the original owner, Jim Atkins, burnt three-foot-wide logs in the fireplace.
“This was more of a forested lot, back in the day,” said Rodney. “The owner would go out and cut their own logs for the fireplace.”
The lot still has plenty of green space, including a handful of seven-storey-tall Douglas firs. The lot also feels very private, because the big windows are at the back, the front has smaller windows that are at eye level.
But the house was designed for the postwar era, when developers were building modest homes for people with a limited budget. The house has only two bedrooms, one bathroom and has a galley kitchen, which is out-of-step with the large contemporary homes in the neighbourhood.
Some owners of Hollingsworth homes expand them — there is a Hollingsworth next door where they added a second floor. But builders tend to knock small houses like this down and build as big as the zoning allows.
In this case, though, the house quickly sold for the asking price to a couple who loved the house. In fact, they had just sold a Hollingsworth Neoteric house they’d lived in for 18 years.
“There is a sense that you’re within a very tangible and thoughtfully designed piece of art, made specifically to ground its occupants to the land and trees that surround it.”
The Gilmours did an addition to their first Hollingworth house to make room for their family of four. Their two boys have grown up and moved out, and they were looking for something smaller.
Real eState
Mortgage rule changes will help spark demand, but supply is ‘core’ issue: economist
TORONTO – One expert predicts Ottawa‘s changes to mortgage rules will help spur demand among potential homebuyers but says policies aimed at driving new supply are needed to address the “core issues” facing the market.
The federal government’s changes, set to come into force mid-December, include a higher price cap for insured mortgages to allow more people to qualify for a mortgage with less than a 20 per cent down payment.
The government will also expand its 30-year mortgage amortization to include first-time homebuyers buying any type of home, as well as anybody buying a newly built home.
CIBC Capital Markets deputy chief economist Benjamin Tal calls it a “significant” move likely to accelerate the recovery of the housing market, a process already underway as interest rates have begun to fall.
However, he says in a note that policymakers should aim to “prevent that from becoming too much of a good thing” through policies geared toward the supply side.
Tal says the main issue is the lack of supply available to respond to Canada’s rapidly increasing population, particularly in major cities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17,2024.
The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
Real eState
National housing market in ‘holding pattern’ as buyers patient for lower rates: CREA
OTTAWA – The Canadian Real Estate Association says the number of homes sold in August fell compared with a year ago as the market remained largely stuck in a holding pattern despite borrowing costs beginning to come down.
The association says the number of homes sold in August fell 2.1 per cent compared with the same month last year.
On a seasonally adjusted month-over-month basis, national home sales edged up 1.3 per cent from July.
CREA senior economist Shaun Cathcart says that with forecasts of lower interest rates throughout the rest of this year and into 2025, “it makes sense that prospective buyers might continue to hold off for improved affordability, especially since prices are still well behaved in most of the country.”
The national average sale price for August amounted to $649,100, a 0.1 per cent increase compared with a year earlier.
The number of newly listed properties was up 1.1 per cent month-over-month.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
Real eState
Two Quebec real estate brokers suspended for using fake bids to drive up prices
MONTREAL – Two Quebec real estate brokers are facing fines and years-long suspensions for submitting bogus offers on homes to drive up prices during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Christine Girouard has been suspended for 14 years and her business partner, Jonathan Dauphinais-Fortin, has been suspended for nine years after Quebec’s authority of real estate brokerage found they used fake bids to get buyers to raise their offers.
Girouard is a well-known broker who previously starred on a Quebec reality show that follows top real estate agents in the province.
She is facing a fine of $50,000, while Dauphinais-Fortin has been fined $10,000.
The two brokers were suspended in May 2023 after La Presse published an article about their practices.
One buyer ended up paying $40,000 more than his initial offer in 2022 after Girouard and Dauphinais-Fortin concocted a second bid on the house he wanted to buy.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
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