Live the Lumen lifestyle in Vancouver ›› p.8
Regent International’s Paloma 2 tower offers new homes in the vibrant community of Richmond. “(Paloma 2 creates) a green environment in the heart of the urban scene,” says architect Duane Siegrist. Find out more about why you might want a Paloma 2 home inside > P.5
March 18, 2010
Home sales strong in February Housing market activity steady, even during Olympic Games The world was focused on us throughout the 2010 Olympic Winter Games, but in Metro Vancouver, many were focused on other activities – like buying or selling a home. In Metro Vancouver, the housing market continued to experience strong demand from homebuyers and an increase in total property listings, reports the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver. Residential property sales rose by 67.1 per cent to 2,473 last month, compared to the 1,480 sales recorded in February 2009. It was also a 28.6 per Scott Russell cent increase compared to an extremely busy January, when 1,923 homes were sold. February’s Greater Vancouver sales still marked a 7.6 per cent decline compared to February 2008 and were 13.5 per cent behind February 2007. Yet the price of homes continues to rise, and the average residential price increased by 19.7 per cent over the past 12 months to $581,911 from $486,054 in February 2009. This price is 2.4 per cent above the previous high point in the market in May 2008, when the residential benchmark price sat at $568,411. “We don’t know at this point what longterm impact the Olympics will have on our housing market, but we do know that activity in our market remained steady through all of the excitement and distraction of the past few weeks,” says REBGV president Scott Russell. CONTINUED ON P.2
Avalon Gardens general manager Patricia Chase in the entry foyer of the brand-new retirement community. “We welcome seniors wishing to live independently, knowing that they have support at hand, should they need it at any time,” she says. Rob Newell photo
Golden years: are you ready? TRICIA LESLIE “Youth is a circumstance you can’t do anything about. The trick is to grow up without getting old.” – Frank Lloyd Wright, American architect Age can be relative to how many years a person has lived. A man in his 30s may be just a child to someone in his 70s – yet to a teenager, anyone anywhere near 30 is definitely, like, old.
But no matter how you view age, one certainty remains: Everyone gets older. Everyone ages. Everyone is moving inexorably toward those golden years that sound so good when David Bowie sings about them. The questions facing many people as they move into their retirement and the years beyond are often: to move or not to move? Stay in the family home or downsize? Renovate for aging-in-place? Renovate to sell? Throughout Metro Vancouver, retirement communities are becoming more and more
common, offering those who are entering their senior years an attractive selection of choices in where they might want to live. In Langley’s peaceful Murrayville neighbourhood, for example, a brand-new retirement community, Avalon Gardens, offers new homes to seniors in the region. The community offers flexible and optional support services with condominium ownership, and there’s a rental option as well, CONTINUED ON P.2