While real estate investors compete for multi-million-dollar properties in the red-hot Vancouver housing market, one man just outside the city is simply giving a house away for free – if someone agrees to pick it up.
Greg Cormier of North Vancouver is looking for someone to take a well-made, slightly-used, six-year-old coach house off his hands – or at least, his property – to make way for a new housing project in his laneway. He’s posted the coach house for free on Craigslist, in hopes of finding someone to preserve the building he built himself.
“I’ve put a lot of effort into the development, into the design and I built it myself,” Cormier told CTV Vancouver on Monday. “The last thing I would want to see is to have it demolished.”
Cormier says he received several calls within minutes of posting the ad and has heard from more than 70 people in the first three days it was up.
Of course, the coach house doesn’t come on wheels and would take some effort to relocate. Cormier estimates the cost of building a new foundation, hooking up utilities and securing the proper permits to be between $30,000-$40,000. But that’s a pittance next to the estimated $300,000 cost of building the structure from scratch, he says.
Coach houses are a growing trend in North Vancouver, a city just across the harbor from Vancouver.
Shakespeare Homes owner Mark Cooper, who also builds coach houses in the city, says he’d snap up Cormier’s offer in a heartbeat. “That would be good value,” he told CTV Vancouver. “They’re expensive to build.”
Cormier says he’d be happy to see someone else make the coach house into a good home, so he doesn’t have to tear it down himself. “That’s not the right thing to do with a good quality building,” he said.
With files from CTV Vancouver
