It seems whenever you get involved in a real estate deal there is always some type of complication. This deal proved no different, though the issue was not money as is usually the case.
It all began quite innocently back several years ago now when I was living in an apartment off Main Street in Smithers. My friend Dave decided to build an addition on his house and inadvertently built himself a new larger home. Now he wanted to get rid of this 20 x 30-foot doll house the family had lived in for several years.
“Do you want it?” he asked one day. “I’ll sell it to you for 6K, you will just have to move it.”
“Sure sounds good to me, I’ll come out for a look,” I said.
“This looks doable and maybe an opportunity to get back to Telkwa, lets make a deal.”
And so by the end of the day, I had a cute little 600 sq. ft. house with a real bathroom and kitchen. Ok, what to do now? I got on the phone and started to look for a building mover, headed for Telkwa to look for a lot and stopped by the credit union to see if they could help.
It was good timing, not like today. I checked several movers and found a competitive outfit out of P.G. in the $4,000 range. I then located a lot on the other side of the bridge and checked with the real estate office. No, it has not sold and had been on the market for a while. Back to the credit union and all was rolling along smoothly.
The last piece of the puzzle was the Telkwa town council. I arranged a presentation and gave council an opportunity to comment on my plans.
They did not have any major issues other than the home needed to be inspected and they wanted it to be a minimum of 800 sq. ft. All right, I can do that as I did want to put the house on a basement and no reason we could not add an addition and change the profile from rectangular to L-shape.
I contacted the building inspector and he came out for a look the next week. Wow, everything is falling into place. The following week I went to the real estate office and prepared to make the deal. Something did not seem quite right.
“What you say, I said, the property has sold? You have got to be kidding, who made the purchase.”
Seems the inspector’s wife got the jump on me. They said the property was across the street from her place and she did not like my plans.”
Is that not collusion, I’m going to sue someone.”
The following week I returned to council and was livid. How can this happen? “I want this inspector’s job.”
Council was calm and said they would look into the situation. What am I going to do now? I have a house and no lot. As good fortune was looking a bit sketchy.
I left the town office and just happened to run into Sam and Leigh, Telkwa citizens from the highway side of the bridge. “ We have a lot for sale, why don’t you take a look at it.”
Point the way and the new deal was inked.
Not only did I not have to move the house down to Houston to get over the Morice bridge, I had a beautiful view lot with a 1950s style house that would fit into the neighbourhood.
Turns out sometimes a little luck and determination can pay off. Do a drive-by sometime up Hankin St. past the Telkwa school to 1672 1st St.
Turned out pretty good if I do say so myself.
With Al Burrows as carpenter/contractor it was hard to go wrong.
Give me a call 250-877-1806 or email me at trranch@trranch@hotmail.com and we can write up a story on your real estate adventures.
Thanks for reading, Tom.