Featuring the Homes, Condominiums and Land of Birch Bay, Semiahmoo and Blaine.
Birch Bay was featured in a New York Times article on October 5, 2007.
BIRCH BAY, Wash., was once another hidden gem of the Northwest. It sits 10 miles south of the Canadian border on a crescent-shaped inlet that is filled with some of the warmest water on the Pacific Coast. It was once known only by rural locals and savvy Canadians.
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Value-conscious Lower Mainlanders are snapping up recreational homes
Jim Jamieson
The Province - Money Section
Thursday, October 05, 2006
BIRCH BAY, Wash. -- When Mike Slipic and his wife, Katharine, started looking around for recreational property this year it didn't take long to realize anything near Vancouver was out of their budget.
Although the soaring cost of real estate in the Lower Mainland over the past few years has been well documented, the Slipics' quest for a place to kick back on weekends and vacations ended happily.
Last week, they closed the deal on a four-year-old, two-bedroom, 1,300-square-foot detached home on a 0.1-hectare lot in Birch Bay -- a small but growing Washington state beach community just a 10-minute drive from the White Rock/Blaine border crossing.
"We looked around, but the properties in Canada are just too expensive," said Slipic, 37, a manager with RBC Royal Bank, who lives in Surrey with his wife and eight-year-old daughter.
"We wanted something close, where we can spend weekends. We like the Cariboo, but it's a six- or seven-hour drive. With the [Nexus] border pass, this is 20 minutes away."
Property values in Birch Bay have risen dramatically in the last three years with no end in sight, but Slipic said the investment is more about family than financials. His new property is in the Birch Bay Village gated community at the western edge of the bay.
It contains a nine-hole golf course, swimming pool, tennis courts, a marina, four private beaches and 24/7 security.
"We look at it as an investment in our family," he said.
"It's very quiet here. And we're going to take advantage of the golf. My daughter wants to take it up."
A combination of the dramatic rise in the Canadian dollar and skyrocketing recreational property values for anything within a few hours of the Lower Mainland has fuelled a renewal of interest in the Blaine-Birch Bay area from Canadian buyers, said Windermere Real Estate agent Mike Kent.
"Once the Canadian dollar hit 90 cents [US], we started to get a lot of phone calls and visits from Canadians," he said. "We've seen a real spike in the last three months."
Slipic preferred not to say what he paid for his family's new getaway, but Kent said a similar property in Birch Bay would be priced in the $375,000 US range.
That's well below recreational-property values within a three-hour journey from Greater Vancouver, said Rudy Neilsen, president of Landcor Data Corp., a supplier of real-estate data.
Neilsen said a Gulf Islands property with an ocean view starts in the $400,000 to $450,000 range, while 0.4 hectares of waterfront on Nicola Lake near Merritt will fetch $450,000 to $500,000. Both are two- to three-hour journeys for most Lower Mainlanders.
"Prices go by the length of the journey," said Neilsen. "If it's three hours or less the price is high."
Birch Bay has been a second home to Canadians for decades, but that fell off when the loonie began its decline in the early 1990s and eventually hit 61 cents in 2002.
Kent said he estimates Birch Bay was close to 50-per-cent Canadian ownership 20 years ago.
He said that's fallen off to 10 to 15 per cent currently, but Canadian content is looking to make a comeback, based on recent trends.
A recent survey showed 1,209 properties in Birch Bay are registered to Canadians in the 6,000- to 7,500-member community.
The area has been a beehive of construction activity, with three new condominium projects under way along the Birch Bay beachfront and a major waterfront redevelopment that's planned for Blaine.
Birch Bay alone has 1,500 new building permits in place.
jjamieson@png.canwest.com
Lower prices for U.S. recreational property lures British Columbians
Vancouver Sun - Business Section
Friday, October 06, 2006
British Columbians are fleeing the high cost of recreational real estate by buying just across the U.S. border, a realtor in Birch Bay, Wash., says.
They are people like Burnaby's Duke and Carolyn Carpenter who bought a two-bedroom retirement home on a quarteracre lot overlooking a golf course for $235,000 US (about $260,000 Cdn) in June.
"Around Vancouver you just can't get that," Duke Carpenter, 53, said in an interview Thursday. "In Sunshine Valley, near Manning Park, you could get a really nice log home for approximately that price but it would be on a smaller lot and usually in the woods."
Powered by a Canadian dollar worth almost 90 cents US, Canadians are eager to find affordable weekend retreats relatively close to home that will double as strong investments, said Mike Kent of Birch Bay's Windermere Real Estate.
Border hoppers now account for nearly half the business being handled by real estate agents in Blaine, Semiahmoo and Birch Bay, he said, matching a pace last seen for roughly four years after Expo 86.
King expects the 2010 Olympics to refocus American attention on the region and push up prices which are relatively reasonable today. He notes that there are more homes listed today for under $300,000 in Whatcom County than in all of the Lower Mainland.
Carpenter, who works as a background performer in the movie industry, said affordability and Birch Bay's proximity to Vancouver were the big selling points for both him and his wife, who is nearing retirement as a schoolteacher.
With a Nexus card for nipping across the border, they can be back in their townhouse in Burnaby with their 21-year-old son in less than an hour. He said they were also attracted to Birch Bay's sunny climate, the people, the variety of recreational options and the comfort of knowing that their recreational property is protected by a security guard.
"Proximity was the big factor," Carpenter said. "There are other places I would probably rather live, but they're a lot farther away."
They are also a lot more expensive. In April, Re/Max Canada reported that foreigners and Alberta oil executives were paying $1 million-plus for winterized waterfront homes on Salt Spring Island, Shuswap Lake and Kelowna. Middle-income earners were settling for condos or backlot properties with waterfront access, or more affordable locations like Harrison Lake in the Fraser Valley or the Interlakes area of the Cariboo.
"Since then, we have seen further price increases, probably an average 10-12 per cent," Elton Ash, Kelowna-based vice-president of Re/Max of Western Canada, said Thursday.