For sale

A little while ago I wrote about the houses for sale in my neighbourhood; there are some fantastic looking houses with great views of the Pacific ocean especially at this time of year when we get some surf and the whales are returning from the Arctic. For some perspective, however, and for those not on a dial up, click on the image above to see all the "For Sale" signs. I was standing just to the left of the house with the blue roof in the picture below, about 20-yards from the surf crashing against the cliffs.

I didn't count the signs but several houses are up for sale. I don't know if they were bought by people who now need to sell them or were built by contractors during the housing bubble and cannot sell them in the current financial climate. What I can tell you is that most of these houses did not exist five years ago.

There are some stunningly beautiful places to live here such as this house right on the cliffs, a few hundred yards down the road from the first picture:

This photo is from Remax, the house looks like a perfect vacation getaway or somewhere for a retired couple to enjoy a work-free life together. It's a secluded spot with a great view of the Pacific (and I can confirm it's secluded, it's impossible to get a decent photo without trespassing, so I haven't got one). All you need is $625,000 and, in my opinion, a disregard of the tsunami threat.

I'm going to try and follow this one. I wish I knew what it was originally being sold for.

Then you get a little closer to home. Two or three years ago a family, or at least a group of people, started to build a house not too far away from my own. I don't know when they bought the land, but three years ago the land itself would have cost about $100,000. Ten years ago it would have been $15,000.

I passed them every day on the way to work. We'd wave but I never actually spoke to them - they didn't seem particularly interested in any social contact. I'd often pass what I assume was the mother or grandmother driving to the plot in the morning in a very expensive car. I'd wave to her but she'd never wave back and that's so unusual here, everyone acknowledges each other in this neighbourhood - even if you've never seen them before. It's part of what makes this such a wonderful and friendly place.

Today, their place looks like this.


The old lady no longer arrives in her luxury car every day, in fact I haven't seen her for months. I don't see the family out for walks with the dog anymore. I do, however, know someone is still living in a trailer there because I can hear them most evenings and see the lights turn on when it gets dark.

I suspect there's a very sad story behind this.