It's getting f'n ridiculous. These aren't chinese buyers. They buy the condo's. You can't leave a house empty here but you can leave a condo.
__________________________________________
Bulldozer bait’: $6-million mansion just another Vancouver tear down
1996 Shaughnessy mansion slated for demolition raises bar in debate over Vancouver real estate
by all appearances, the house at 6088 Adera St. is a well-appointed, relatively new, $6 million luxury home with an indoor pool, media room and new hardwood floors. It would seem to be a desirable residence as is, but instead it is slated for demolition.
The prospect of a luxury mansion becoming just another Vancouver tear down is sparking a new level of debate over the rapid re-construction of Vancouver’s residential neighbourhoods as word of the development circulates among neighbourhood and housing advocates.
“It’s mind boggling,” said Caroline Adderson, a Vancouver author and heritage advocate. “They’re not putting up condo complexes, it’s going to be another single-family house.”
She said the home’s demolition and the presumably even-more-luxurious replacement “runs contrary to every single goal the city stands for,” because redeveloping the property won’t help increase affordability or density” and “there is nothing green about demolishing a perfectly livable house.”
The city has confirmed that the home’s owner has made an application for a demolition permit, which is pending until approval of the combination development and building permit for its replacement.
The building permit application is for a new, single-family dwelling, said city spokesman Jag Sandhu in an email, which complies with the neighbourhood’s RS-3 zoning.
Property records show that the 7,300-square-foot house was last sold in 2013 for just over $6 million — the assessment today is $7.44 million. According to the 2013 listing for the property, it boasted $350,000 in recent renovations including new hardwood floors, a water purification system and windows. The listing sheet shows the two-storey house on a corner lot has 19 rooms including seven bedrooms, a media room, office and 12-foot by Seven-foot walk-in closet off the master suite.
Adderson has become a heritage advocate for Vancouver’s character homes, administering a Facebook page dedicated to chronicling the rapid demolition of pre-1940 houses and co-authoring the book Vancouver Vanishes, which explores the issue.
However, she said increasingly people are calling her attention to houses built in the 1990s or later being replaced by new homes.
“Everything is bulldozer bait,” she said. “Now it’s all about the building lot.”
In early 2015, The Sun reported that almost 8,700 buildings were demolished in Vancouver since 2005 and that houses were still being torn down almost daily.
“It’s very disheartening,” said Vancouver Coun. Adriane Carr of the rapid demolition of homes.
She said she plans to raise the Adera Street demolition at council to find out more about the circumstances and whether there are ways to “prevent the destruction of perfectly good homes.”
“It’s such an incredible waste of resources at a time in our planet’s history when conservation of resources is on everyone’s mind.”
At present, Carr said it doesn’t appear that there is a way to do so, but she mused whether council can use zoning changes to prevent such demolitions.
Carr is one of two council liaison members to the city’s heritage plan committee which is looking for ways to encourage the retention of more pre-1940 heritage homes and zoning is one of the options being considered, which she hopes could be applied to “the problem of any home that’s decent being torn down on a whim.”
‘Bulldozer bait’: $6-million mansion just another Vancouver tear down
