"My friends were trying to recover most of the costs linked to their one year of West Coast home ownership (almost 100K)."

From Vankouver at greaterfool.ca 26 Mar 2010 1:04 pm -

“Two weeks ago I stood in the West Coast rain creating curb appeal with a garden full of pansies (tough flowers despite their name) on a cute but way overvalued piece of BC RE (I don’t garden). My other 5 friends (all professionals) scrubbed algae off a large deck, cleaned, and painted for 12 hours all in the name of helping friends get their house “into shape” and staged to sell. They were trying to recover most of the costs linked to their one year of West Coast home ownership (almost 100K). The experience was full frontal XXX BC RE. I’ve done the math and estimated that at the group’s average hourly professional rate the cost of fixing up the house to get it ‘market ready’ was somewhere in the ‘hood of about 12-14K…. the pizza and beer was great! They couldn’t afford to hire people to help them because it was too expensive even being in the highest income bracket – all the signs of the silly costs of owning a home. The good news is that foolish buyers were frothing at the mouth. The designer house was sold in less than a week at asking price, with multiple offers. Hate to say it but, the RE agent was quite useless.”