Condo Buyer Beware

In the dark reaches of real estate hell I wandered
into the office of my friend and real estate agent, looking
to invest in some property. It was time for my wife and
I to settle down and create some equity for our old age.
I approached the idea of being a home owner with gusto
and envy, that is to say I really wanted to be the same
as everyone else I knew. They owned property and were
worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Of course my
wife and I left it a little late before we decided to get
into the housing market, we missed our chance of
buying a home when the prices were reasonable. Well,
Chapter One
Buying the Dream
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reasonable at the time we got married. It was impossible,
way beyond reason in the seventies to predict what the
housing market was going to do over the next ten years.
By the time we realized we had to buy a home it was
too late.
Any way my agent called one day and said he had
this really neat condo for me to look at. Actually it was
after I’d been bugging him for a few weeks to find me
something to buy that he finally called. The market was
hot so we couldn’t afford a house and a condo seemed
like a possible solution. We would be able to build up
some equity and maybe sell the property for a profit.
Then we could use the profit to buy a house. Good plan
or at least I thought so.
I arranged to meet him at the complex where my
wife and I could take a look at the property. When I got
off the bus and saw where the condo was located I
should have turned tailed and run for the hills but I
didn’t. Much to my regret I made my first mistake.
The condo was nice, both my wife and I liked it. The
only problem with it, really, was the location. Of course
we were reassured the area was being cleaned up. I’m
talking about Whalley, a very notorious part of Surrey
a suburb of Vancouver.
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Whalley was and is famous for its shirtless, shaved
headed rednecks; toothless and tattooed they wandered
the streets in search of the next bar or crack house. It
was also famous for its hookers, homeless, addicts, half
way houses and methadone clinics. Yet those
unfortunate enough to be raised in Whalley defended
it’s lifestyle with gusto, bats and small arms fire.
The condo was on the edge of the mayhem but we
felt it was possible to live in this remote corner of
Whalley, it seemed quiet and there was a Macs store
across the street so milk was no problem, neither was
pop, potato chips and all the great junk food. Over the
years I managed to put on forty pounds, oh it was
heaven.
The condo was new, having just been built the year
before. It was too bad the two of us were novices at the
house buying business because we really didn’t know
what to look for. We trusted the developer and the
builder, people are basically honest we thought. Boy
did we think wrong. They must have put out the word
for sucker-like-purchasers to come look at their product.
Just like fishing I guess, throw out a line and see who
bites. We took the bait hook line and sinker and it proved
to rip out our lips in more ways than one.