We’re doing a bit of a home reno right now. New fridge, kitchen, the works. So right now, we’re the very definition of poor. Not that we haven’t been, before. It’s aces of fun. (And no, this is not a plea for you to buy my book. That would be silly of me; I assume if you read this blog you must’ve, already. 😉 ).
I did mention we lived in a trailer, right?
I mean, in a very desirable community in the heart of Greater Vancouver, BC, (now one of the most expensive places on Earth to buy property in), situated on land we also own, but still a trailer, nonetheless. A single-wide mobile home. We lived in it for nearly five years.
I could rant about the insane state of real property here in but I made a blog post last year about not complaining and I’m going to stick by it…
…well okay. I’m going to complain a *little bit*.
Our trailer was built in the 1960s, 10’x57’x7′. For a couple who had been looking to own our own home since we first got married in 07′ (at the wise, old age of 20), it was a dream come true. We had been looking for a few years at that point and with the amount of money we made, it came down to an apartment along Hastings in East Vancouver, a townhouse in Maple Ridge or Surrey, a rotting, 2-bedroom house near the high-liquifaction soil along the banks of the Fraser River, or this: a trailer in a small village in the northern Tri-Cities region.
It wasn’t much of a contest. All our other choices were situated in less desirable neighbourhoods, while this one was in a *very* desirable neigbourhood, with good schools, etc. We would have our own yard, which was way bigger than any of the other choices–since we have dogs, this was why we wanted to buy property in the first place. We wouldn’t have to cross any toll-bridges. We did need a car, so we borrowed money from a good friend so it won’t show up during the credit check and affect our mortgage application.
That just left the last part: living in a decrepit, half-century trailer. It wasn’t too bad. We had to keep a de-humidifier running most of the time to keep the moisture at an acceptable level. We learned not to leave food out where the mice can get them. We learned all about compact furniture, how to make the most out of a small space, and how convenient foldable doors could be (as long as you tell people you’re going to the bathroom first, so they don’t accidentally walk in on you on the toilet). Some things we couldn’t really control, like how the house shook if the dryer was on, or the lack of ventilation, or how you couldn’t put wallpaper because the previous owner had put stucco on the wall. Also, the moisture and lack of proper ventilation to remove said moisture made everything stink. No matter what we did, there was still a distinct scent that, while not entirely unpleasant, made visitors complain.
But at least the mortgage was affordable.
That said, it’s been good for us. The crux of which was that we learned to appreciate the simple things in life. Because the fact of the matter is, people judged us when we chose to live here: they couldn’t see past the trailer. I think at some point I gave up trying to explain the highs of the damn place; if people can’t see that we’re all in the same boat, that property is becoming so expensive that THIS was an acceptable solution based on our lifestyle (dogs, hiking, a distinct hatred of living in crowded cities), there wasn’t much I could do. We’d make redneck jokes instead, laugh with the neighbours we had who DID fit that description. Sadly, most of them are moving away; just as I predicted five years ago, the trailer park is going. Our area is becoming a nice subdivision, with over-priced property just like the rest of the region. The trailer and land down the street is selling for nearly $135k more than we paid for ours. A house in this exact area sold for $799k; it was on the market for only a few weeks.
