Bob Ransford
Sun
When you look for value in a place to live you probably look at price first. Value can also be measured in terms of the intangible commodities like community character and neighbourhood appeal.
The first-ring suburbs on Vancouver‘s eastside provide good value in all these areas.
Lower price stands out as the most glaring measure of comparable value in eastside neighbourhoods as there has always been a disparity in Vancouver between westside and eastside residential prices.
I recently checked a few real-estate listings to compare prices in two of my favourite eastside neighbourhoods and prices for comparable homes in westside neighbourhoods.
The eastside properties were between 10 per cent and 35 per cent less in price.
I compared three eastside homes with three westside properties.
Two of the eastside homes were in the Burrardview neighbourhood; one in the Grandview-Woodlands neighbourhood. Two of the westside homes were in West Point Grey; one, in the Dunbar neighbourhood.
These neighbourhoods are all what are known as the first-ring suburbs. If you don’t want to live downtown, but still want to be in the city, these first-ring suburbs are your next choice.
The success that Vancouver has experienced in attracting people back to the heart of the city as a place to live has pushed downtown housing prices to levels that few ever expected.
The spillover effect is also felt in what are these first-ring suburbs — on both the eastside and the westside. But the geographic price disparity continues to exist.
The first-ring suburbs predate the automobile and still have the kind of character that is devoid in further-out suburbs built after the Second World War. Many first-ring suburbs grew up parallel to and radiating from the first form of mass transit — the streetcar lines.
Shops and higher-density housing were originally built along the main streetcar routes, serving as high streets or social centres for these first-ring suburban neighbourhoods. That historic development pattern with a main shopping street, neighbourhood schools and parks, continues to characterize many of these neighbourhoods today.
There are some neighbourhoods among the first ring suburbs, both on the westside and the eastside where you can find real value measured in community character and neighbourhood appeal.
The character seems more ingrained and genuine, though, in my two favourite eastside neighbourhoods — Burrardview and Grandview-Woodlands.
Perhaps it is the diversity of housing in both neighbourhoods that makes them so attractive. Not only is there diversity in the age of the housing stock, but there is real diversity in the type of housing.
In Grandview-Woodlands — the area on either side of Commercial Drive, between Venables and Grandview Highway–there is a mix of historic single family housing, old and new apartments and newer in-fill, higher-density townhouses.
The same holds true for the Burrardview neighbourhood–an enclave tightly contained by the high traffic arterial routes of Hastings Street on the south and Renfrew and McGill Streets on the east. The neighbourhood overlooks Burrard Inlet on the north.
It includes a mix of high-end view properties along the north escarpment, a range of older and newer apartments around Wall Street and some in-fill townhouses, as well as a whole range of single-family homes of almost every era scattered throughout.
Burrardview residents enjoy the eclectic Hastings Street shopping district concentrated for a few blocks either side of Nanaimo.
Both neighbourhoods are within five to seven minutes’ drive of the downtown core, which frames the main westerly view from the higher points in both communities.
So, adding it all up, there is real value in a home located in what I consider these eastside “gem” neighbourhoods.
That value comes from their proximity to the downtown, the strong community character defined by an historic neighbourhood shopping street, defined neighbourhood boundaries, a diversity of housing types, as well as by prices that are comparably less expensive than similar westside neighbourhoods.
© The Vancouver Sun 2005