If anyones interested ' A place in the sun' this coming Thursday at 4pm on Channel 4 is featuring Vancouver Island

I knew they were going to do a show in the future, but the researcher said October. We saw an advert for people to appear on the show and saw that they wanted to do the Island, so asked when it ws to be screened.We had already bought our house by then. But was interested to see how they would view the island.

We fly out next Saturday to see our new house on the island for the first time, last thing I saw was a pile of dirt, and losts of trees. Quite nervous to see the finished thing.

It will be intersting to see how they see the island.
They last time C4 did a house swap with a couple who went to Campbell River.
It did not paint a good picture of the rest of the island as they couple hardly left the house in several weeks. They ONLY stayed in Cambell River...... for the whole time!!!!!!!!!

Maybe Willmore will be able to tell us about the Island as she lives there.
My wife has been to Duncan, got some crackin photos of the parliament buildings, with her in front of them.

Yes I am looking forward to seeing this programme, maybe it will make others think about a possible move to the island

Anyone know what house prices are like, say for a 3 bed semi or detatched house, what about prices for 4 bed houses.

Willmore I expect some good feedback here

Eddie

Boy, time has certainly gone by fast. If I don't talk to you before, have a great time Courtney and skiing. My family will be leaving for the cold province of Ontario on Dec 12 for xmas with our families.

Have a great xmas season.

Here is a link to the MLS site. This consists of all the houses that are listed with realtors on Vancouver Island. You will have to select an area that you are interested in etc. I don't imagine there are very many semi-detached houses for sale. Try a three bedroom bungalow - probably hundreds of those.

http://www.mls.ca/map.aspx?AreaID=245

I have heard that it doesn't work like this in England - you have to go around to the various estate agents in the area you are interested in. In Canada if your house is on multiple listing, which means any realtor can sell it and get a commission - then the house is on this site - from Halifax to Victoria.

We have just had built a 3 bed detatched on 1 acre by sea for £120,000. near Courtney.
A semi is a "duplex" over there, near us they were between £60,000 -£70,000 for a 3 bed.

Detached on an estate, or "suburb" is about £80- £100,000.

This is mid island. In the cities it is getting more expensive.

Have a look on www.mls.ca this is where all property is listed, but the picture is misleading often. Some look grander than they are. As much is wood built, they are need really good surveys etc as well.
Our brick houses are built to last. There's are often cheaper but need maintaining and repairing more than ours. especailly older ones. Some we saw looked good in pictures but awful in reality. Many do like their wood clad walls and ceilings. 70's wallpaper, and flowery quilts. I ran a mile......

Most on new developments come with new house build guarantees, and you can chose fixtures and fittings.

( Note for Willmore - i cannot believe how quick it has come around, we will be one of the first up the mountain when it opens! and one of the first in the Sears sale queue to get house furnishings! Have a great time on the other side, and a great Xmas.)

Re: www.mls.ca.
We are a frequent visitor to this site. The wife and I spend many an evening wistfully going through all the fantastic Canadian houses.
We even get so carried away that after 5 minutes we are already redecorating !
Oh, well. Got to keep on dreaming.

So this must be in the UK right? I just did a 2 week search for it and it wasn't listed at all.

Sorry Willmore
Yes its UK. The island is where we hope to settle so it will be interesting to see what parts of the island they show, so far most programmes featuring BC tend to be about Vancouver or Victoria, both of these are beautiful but a little pricey for us .

Could you tell me which areas in or around Victoria are good for families, but reasonably priced?

DDDOOOOHHHHHHHHH !!!!!!!!!!! As Homer would say !!!!!!!!!!!

Willmore of course it is in the UK,

Where else do you think it was to be shown,

A wee joke for WILLMORE

A businessman boards a flight and is lucky enough to be seated next to a gorgeous woman. They exchange brief hellos and he notices she is reading a manual about sexual statistics. He asks her about it and she replies,

"This is a very interesting book about sexual statistics. It identifies that American Indians have the longest average penis and Polish men have the biggest average diameter. By the way, what's your name?"

He coolly replies, "Tonto Kawalski, nice to meet you."

ENJOY

Eddie

Smart-ass. Ok, so maybe it wasn't the smartest question I've ever asked (but then again you should have seen me in physics class at university), he could have meant in Canada, afterall this is the Canada forum.


hehehehe....very good. I love your jokes - keep them coming.

I think that if you go to the website mentioned above it will give you a good idea. Prices in Victoria and area have really skyrocketed in the past few years, as many many people from the States and Europe are buying houses and either moving here permanently or for 6 months of the year. Oak Bay, James Bay and Fairfield (where we live) are probably the most expensive. We were fortunate to buy a home overlooking the ocean when the market was still very reasonable and the bank stupid enough to give a mortgage to two kids really just starting out in life after university. The demands for homes in the Victoria area out-numbers the number available for sale. I say that tongue-in-cheek as I understand from the UK perspective our prices are quite reasonable.

However saying that, I would still certainly still look around all the areas. Gordon Head and the Saanich area are nice, and certainly anywhere on the Saanich Peninsula would be beautiful. If we were looking now we would certainly try to move out that way - still alot of farming and very rural. The western communities area is growing very very fast and is also very nice. Anywhere close to water and near or around Victoria is going to be expensive now

I think that Gooding (since she has just gone through this) can probably give you a more up to date and realistic view of the situation. She has built a beautiful home near Courtney - so she will be a wealth of knowledge.

Please remember that these are just my comments. We have not been looking at homes at all, so our info is just from realtor friends, news and people moving in the area.

Good luck to you and your family. You will love living in Paradise. I would never want to move away from here.

Hello,

I'm also from Victoria and agree pretty much with what Willmore wrote. I'll just add a few different things...

Where I do disagree with Willmore is about the Western Communities (sorry Willmore! ). I spent much of my teens living there and hated it. The school was absolute crap, I didn't like many of the other kids and there was not much stimulation for a young inquisitive mind. Langford, one of the Western Communities, is the home to 'Langford girls' - Victoria's cousins of Essex girls. Of course this is all just a stereotype but the whole place has a vibe that is very unapplealing to me. The Western Communities is where all the 'mega-super-duper-cheapo stores' are dumped along with used car sales lots and bland, soulless stripmalls.

If you really want to be near Victoria, you might want to check out some areas of Esquimalt (this might sound strange to Willmore!). It's very close to downtown Victoria (it is its own municipality but it is still regarded as Victoria - you can walk from Esquimalt to downtown along a beautiful walking path that hugs the water in about half an hour - or drive in 5 minutes), has great parks, it's very friendly and it's cheap (for Victoria). I don't know too much about the school situation (I don't have children) but there were a lot of kids in the neighbourhood, there's a lot of sports teams (lacross, ice hockey, roller hockey, swimming, baseball, etc...) always playing in the rec park, I always had a gazillion trick or treaters on Halloween, etc... so my guess is it is a family-friendly area.

And - it's cheap (for Victoria). Though prices have really boomed over the last few years in the whole Victoria area, Esquimalt could still be the most reasonably priced area. I don't think that will last too long. I bought a house in 'Old Esquimalt' 10 years ago when nobody wanted to live there and its value has skyrocketted over the last few years because of Esquimalt's proximity and easy access to downtown Victoria, improvements made by the municipality and because people are realizing its actually a very nice area.

It's an option to consider... good luck!

Just my opinion, but I found Esquimalt to be somewhat old and dumpy looking - being the site of the naval base didn't help its appearance. Of course on the whole, Victoria is a very beautiful city.

Some areas of Esquimalt are old and dumpy, some areas are not - which is why I wrote "check out some areas of Esquimalt". The navy base is a specific area of Esquimalt. I lived in Esquimalt for 5 years and never even saw the thing without actually intentionally going there once.