maybe in Vancouver but not hickville Ab

presactly !

Some people we knew in Calgary bought a massive house, prob 4-5,000 sq ft, and I am not exaggerating when I say that you could have opened the window and just about touched the next door neighbours house. Not my idea of a good way to spend $1.5 million.

Huge 'luxury' houses, shoehorned in with barely walking space between them.

Most new developments I see are like that. Big houses that take up the entire lot with small alleys between them. They look great inside (from the mls pictures at least), but I'd rather live in a semi with some kind of garden.

I'm with you.

I totally agree with this too, can't imagine having a big house with no yard.

So did it the other way round

I did say 'can be'. I was just trying to point out it's not necessarily what people are expecting.
I'm sure they would help out if you were in the shit, but I expect a lot of Canadian neighbours would too.

Very important to me. If I can't see fields or forest from my bedroom window then something's wrong!

And here was I thinking this was going to be a thread about the cable tv channel......

The relative affordability of space*, is of course one of the primary attractions to the British expat moving to Canada. The desire for acres of land or 000's of square foot of house, often impossible to achieve in the UK, is tantalisingly within reach to most. Of course, the reality of mowing those acres and heating / cooling, those square feet, once it sets in can lead to a certain amount of disillusion after a while. Plus, of course, one mans rural idyll, is anothers scary-living-in-the-middle-of-nowhere-with-crappy-internet-and-power-outages,-not-to-mention-the-snow-clearing-etc-etc.

For us, space has been about having a bigger house -we swapped a 14ft wide, 800sq ft terraced house for an 800sq ft per floor detached house - and a bit (an acre) of land. As the poor white trash on our street, we are dwarfed by some of the recently constructed ghastly mock victorian mansions, but like the area. The acre of land and not being on top of your neighbours is something that we cherish and would be loath to give up now.

The whole building enormous homes on small lots, mere feet from your neighbours thing, happens here as well. It's easy to spend half a mill and be able to pass a beer to the next door neighbour on their deck without too much extertion. Land is getting expensive, so maximising return on investment is simple economics. The saving grace of the area we are in is no water or sewer, meaning wells and septics are the order of the day and acre lots are required.

If you do buy that acre lot, my tip is to invest in a ride on mower. I mow mine by walk behind. Apparently, so the wife tells me, it's good exercise.

* Relatively affordable in many parts of Canada. Not Vancouver 'fr instance.

I just don't see having an acre, or a couple of acres. It seems to me that a lot like that just means a great deal of mowing in order to keep it looking tidy. It think that, if you can't put a horse on your grass, you might as well live next to a park and let someone else keep the grass tidy.

Im guessing she doesnt much take up that option

I live on a 3/4 acre lot, we are not overlooked, the neighbours dont bother us, my sax playing doesnt bother them. Its nice to have a view. Much more and you spend too much time cutting the grass I think, as it is it takes 1.5hrs on the lawn tractor. Frankly it would take several wild horses to get me to move into a cookie cutter tract house that fills 90 % of its lot area.

The other bonus is you get to tinker with the mower engine and all that other manly stuff. Ill be swaping to a proper cast iron axle when the parts come in, fed up of the pressed steel one bending and only being able to turn one way....

As dbd says, next to a park would work too I suppose, although the neighbours might be a bit too close.

Actually, the exercise thing, plus the cost differential between a walk behind and a ride on, I'm cool with. Or, rather, was. Nowadays with a small kid and another on the way, time becomes more of a premium and finding a couple of hours to mow both front and back lawns is more of a problem.

dbd33, I agree, to an extent about an acre being a hassle to deal with, but it's the perfect buffer twixt you and the neighbours without being too isolated!

Of course, I could cut mine a lot faster if she didnt keep planting trees in random spots to make life difficult...

Much as I love the "mysteryberry" bushes (and associated pies), the thorns on the shins while trying to negotiate them without falling into the adjacent ditch gets a bit tiresome...

We live in a modern house on an quiet estate but probably have an extra 15 foot between neighbours, and no houses behind us - we back onto a park. The homes on this development do not back onto or look directly at their neighbours. Which is what attracted me. I can see lots of sky.

Same size house in UK and Canada.

I bought the biggest garden I could afford - and enjoy it. The kids play in the park. I struggled with the prescribed chain link fencing - but mostly don't notice it now, and enjoy that feeling of openess. My neighbours are never out in their gardens anyway and don't "garden" in the UK sense of the word.

I'd like a bigger deck now. I wouldn't mind a smaller garden now. I still don't want to look at my neighbours.

I think a half to three quarter acre plot in my similar area of town - which is impossible to find - would be perfect for us and the dogs, and I would self-build. The idea of an acreage is attractive for about 4 minutes, then reality kicks in.

I'll happily lend a hand to build a bigger deck. I built mine with the assistance of a neighbour a few years ago and it was good fun.

My daughters recently bought a horse and I am confident that it won't be long before they will have one each. The OH is looking at buying a Western saddle so we may be looking at 3. We even began looking at acreages this past weekend. My budget will only stretch to 10 acres or so east of Calgary so we will need to check out the municipalities' bylaws to ascertain how much land we will need. It will play havoc with my ski season