Man, people are really waxing poetic about some kind of Canadian dream when they talk about what people want when they buy a house.
It’s literally a place to live, put stuff, and not pay rent anymore. I think the main aspiration in mind when going from a renter to a home-owner is, “I’m tired of paying rent to somebody else”. Everything else is secondary.
Then they talk about living there forever, but as soon as the prospect of higher density housing comes along, they cry, “but my house won’t be valuable anymore!”. Okay, so either your house value plummets and you’re gifted with lower property taxes, or it goes up and you been gifted with a higher resell value. There’s no downside.
In our old area in Kelowna where dumpy houses are being torn down and replaced with 4-plexes everywhere, I can attest that this hasn’t hurt the values of those dumpy homes that developers are snatching up. Heck, if you really want to make some bank, coordinate with your neighbours and create a land assembly.
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