Vancouver Westside - 'The Greek Church House' - "The figures, while crazy, don’t tell the whole story of the madness that has gripped the market. "

“The figures, while crazy, don’t tell the whole story of the madness that has gripped the market. The real estate board doesn’t keep figures for specific neighbourhoods, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t benchmarks from which to gather intelligence. There are the stories, passed on through friends, retold at Caffè Artigianos. A realtor friend told me about one particular house in Quilchena, and within two weeks I must have heard the same story a half-dozen times. 
 ‘The Greek Church House’, as it came to be known, sits on a moderately quiet street, Maple, behind Saint George’s Greek Orthodox Cathedral. After hearing the tale, I decided to drive by and check it out. It was a nice enough house: a one-level rancher, the type of place you’d be proud to show your parents if you didn’t have to tell them how much you’d paid for it. It had last changed hands in 2006 for $1.5 million; in 2010 it had been assessed at $2.3 million; and then, amid a flurry of missives on the late-March [2011] “offer day,” it was sold to an overseas buyer for $4.3 million. Its listing sheet cooed about its Sub-Zero appliances and walk-in closets, but its 12,482-foot lot was the real kicker: it meant that the next house to be built there could conceivably be almost 8,000 square feet.
” [4491 Maple Str, Vancouver Westside; 4,600sqft SFH; 12,482sqft lot]
- from Frank O’Hara’s ‘China’s Real Estate Spree in Vancouver’ [1 Jul 2011 edition of BC Business]. Frank’s own personal anecdote from that article was archived here 18 Jul 2011.