Earlier this week we learned of a young couple who purchased a $500,000 condo in Vancouver. Only after they closed the deal did they realize the place was infested with bats. According to the Vancouver Sun, the couple made the decision to buy based on a 20-minute walk-through. Fearing they’d be outbid by other buyers, they made a subject-free offer.
The couple partly blamed the hype machine for their lack of due diligence, saying they took the risk because of the “state of the market.”
Regardless of who you blame — the seller for not disclosing the situation or the buyer for not demanding a professional inspection prior to closing — there’s no denying the influential power of hype. In today’s market, it’s as if we’ve all run up a tree, grasping for dear life, not realizing that we aren’t that far off the ground and there’s really no reason to panic.
That’s Vancouver real estate in a nutshell.
It’s also the key visual of the ad campaign for Thunderbird Creek in Squamish. The self-described “masterplanned community” is targeted at those buyers “feeling constrained in your home in the city.”
While I like the visual — see folks, I can say something nice — the dimwitted nature of today’s buyers makes me wonder if they might miss the cleverness and confuse this for some kind of high-end treehouse for executive-class hippie couples.
Hey, stranger things have happened. Didn’t a batcave just go for a half million?
Condohype 