Rural BC Waterfront Real Estate Losing Value

An interesting if not unusual Vancouver Sun article caught my eye this morning. Unlike most reports about housing values either remaining steady or rising, BC waterfront property in rural areas is losing value.

It’s the rural areas that have been hardest hit by the recession. Wealthy Albertans are no longer throwing their oil patch fortunes at BC’s interior lake-fronts and  Gulf Islands, preferring significantly cheaper markets south of the border in Arizona and Nevada. The lake front properties of the Okanagan Valley and Kootenay regions have been particularly hard hit with the Gulf and Vancouver Island waterfront real estate prices being impacted negatively to a lesser extent.

An example cited in th article is a fully renovated waterfront property on Denman Island. The property was listed for sale in 2007 for $1.5 million and recently sold for $650,000. Another high-end waterfront property in Courtney was originally listed for $1.2 milion and recently sold for $789,000.

High end recreation property is always the first to take a hit during recessionary times. Many waterfront listings have been on the market since 2007 and some owners simply cannot afford to carry the properties any longer and are forced to sell. Needless to say, this drives prices down. The Shuswap Lake area, once a mecca for well-healed Albertans has been especially hard hit as that pool of buyers has all but dried up.

Rural real estate expert Rudy Nielsen of Landquest Realty commented that while prices have been driven down quite severely by those owners who have been forced to sell, there are certain areas that have seen price increases where owners are simply holding out for an improvement in market conditions. He mentioned that on central Vancouver Island, the average price of a waterfront home in $727,000 in 2007, $769,000 in 2008 and $614,000 in 2010.

For a look at the 20 most expensive rural island waterfront properties in BC, click here

Looks like I’ll be sticking to my MEC tent and Provincial campground accommodations for now.

About the Author

I am a Vancouver realtor and mortgage broker who has been in the real estate industry for 12 years.  My formal education includes a Bachelor’s of Commerce from the University of Natal and a diploma in Urban Land Economics from UBC

I enjoy many outdoor pursuits such as fishing, surfing, kayaking, windsurfing and camping.

Vancouver is a great place to live!