This blog started when we moved to the Vancouver area. The first two months we lived in the West End and it was almost heaven. I loved the pedestrian life style. We walked to Granville Island and our favourite downtown pub. I went grocery shopping every other day, getting fresh produce, fish and bread from the specialty stores in the neighbourhood. However, there were some minor downsides. The apartment we could afford was very small with limited storage. It was noisy most of the time and we often got contact highs from our neighbours’ habits. And the homeless population there was front and centre, on every corner and in every alley.

So, we moved to downtown Port Coquitlam. When we first drove to the area I was smitten. Our building has a pedestrian walkway in front of it. I can walk to a small grocery store, a bakery, a farm market, a pharmacy, a pub and several small restaurants. But being outside of the bigger city, we also have access to river walks and biking trails, and great connections to major highways and transit lines. And a two car garage.

There are many things I love about this townhouse and its location. I love to people-watch and the pedestrian walkway lets me do that. I wrote about a proposal I watched under the big cherry tree. Children from a local daycare sometimes walk to the the little park between our building and the walkway to kick balls around and to play on the grass. The older people in the assisted living building across the street walk their little dogs and visit on the benches. Right now a woman is sitting on a bench under the tree reading a book. An urban adventurer once climbed the big maple tree and hung a hammock in its branches and wiled away the afternoon. When we sit on the patio and look up we see sky and trees. Sometimes in the quiet of the morning or evening we can only hear the wind in the leaves and the soft calls of birds. The building was brand new when we moved in. We put our belongings in never-used-so-they-were-never-dirty cupboards and walked on pristine carpets. We seemed to have the best of both worlds and loved the mix of urban and suburban living that we had found. And it was close to our older son and his family. Almost perfect.

Almost. Those benches along the walkway also attracted people who sat and drank all day. They would get loud and obnoxious and relieve themselves in the garden. Where the walkway crossed the side street was a popular location for drug deals. We found needles in the park. And although there were only five units in our strata, we did not all get along nor did we equally share the work of maintaining the building and running the strata. The townhouse has large bedrooms and a double garage but a small kitchen, living and dining rooms. Two people can’t move behind the kitchen island at the same time without getting up close and personal. The dining room table seats only six and our family is growing. Family dinners are crowded. And I am getting a knee replacement soon. This townhouse is three storeys, with all the bedrooms on the third floor. Not ideal for recovery after surgery and that causes me some anxiety.

Late last year we attended a retirement seminar put on by Dale’s employer. It was there we decided that we wouldn’t retire in the lower mainland. We would cash out our equity and move to a place that had a lower housing market and lower cost of living. Dale wants a big garage or a workshop so he can putter and work on his car. We started planning for that. And this spring we put our townhouse up for sale. Although the market had changed from a seller’s one to a buyer’s one, we got a great offer right away and we are moving, again. To a rental house in south Delta. Dale’s drive to work has dropped to ten minutes from almost two hours, each way, every day. We will have a large kitchen and dining room, and a backyard where our grandchildren can safely play. And there is a bedroom on the main level where I can park myself after knee surgery. South Delta has good shopping, bike trails and access to main highways. The transit links aren’t great and it is farther away from family, but still close enough. The drive to the theatre is about the same time. And now we have a new neighbourhood to explore and learn to love. It is distinctly more suburban than urban but that’s the trade-off for a bigger house with a yard. And we have traded a strata council for a landlord. Nothing’s perfect but this is the right move for us right now.

The equity from the sale will be in the bank, and in a couple of years we will decide where we will buy. Hopefully the market will be down even more then, so we can take advantage of buying in a buyer’s market, although that would run counter to our usual way of doing business. Nothing slows a market more than the Shimells trying to sell.