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Are you mis-spelling Genius for rhetorical effect? I'm relatively new here....
LFP,
Do you know what led up to this apparent giveaway?
Apparently this came about as a result of a road closure issue. Either way $12 thousand for 3/4 of an acre under ANY circumstance blows this Editor away.
Oh Jenius with a "J" is reserved exclusively for the "good ole boys club"! A revered LFP tradition I guess! Welcome to LFP RC, enjoy! November has seen tons of new readers. A record breaker in fact! Thank you all.
Hallelujah! Finally a minumum wage Mcdonalds burger flipper making $8 an hour can now afford property in Langley! Yup this council is doing its thing for the minumum wagers out there! unfortunately the neighbours around the property have obviously lost tons in their property values due to this bargain basement Council Land sale. Does anybody know any where in North America where you can buy land, 3/4 of an acre for $12,500 ! Not even in the antartic I bet!
Are we living in Mayberry? Is Barney Fife running the show on Township council? $56 million of taxpayer money for an arena, golf courses, restaurants and now $12500 an acre of our land SOLD!
I did a little calling around, and this land was not in any way part of a flood plain, or enything like that! It is in the upper reaches of the Salmon River area. This definetely needs looking into, and our local newspapers should be very interested in this. I've seen property assessments for homes in that area where an acre is worth easily 10 times that much.
Methinks - I watched the Council Meeting last Monday night. I suggest you do some research (checking minutes and talking to councillors) on this issue as I have done. Firstly this is 'road allowance' not raw land. These are two totally different things and the rules on the sale of road allowance are significantly different. The LFP Editor likes to make this out a pristeen Salmon River land....it is not! You can't build on it, it is on a steep slope in fact it has very limited value as was mentioned in the discussion, thats why the 'outside' 'independent' appraiser gave the value they did! In following up on this the one land-owner WAS given opporunity to be involved in this transaction but for whatever reason chose not to - again mentioned in the meeting. The papers have likely done their homework, realize this is a 'non-issue' and certainly don't want to get in to an issue which was seen to be done by the book in the first place.
Edited By Siteowner
I looked at the property in question, whis is no wider than the butt end of an avenue. Its width consisted of the deeded frontage plus the lane right of way. Since the whole width including the lane was no more than the usual 66 feet, that could mean that the lot is now legal for a modern home positioned at the front of the lot. The lot declines quite steeply though. Someone with real estate knowledge could settle this discussion and we'll retire our key boards from the subject.
Wink & Methinks: From this editor's point of view, the road allowance or land or whatever it is (which was confirmed to be 3/4 of an acre that was sold for $12,500) is a great deal.
If the purchaser has 1 or 2 or even 5 acres of existing land, adding the 3/4 acre must realistically add commensurately to the existing overall land value - one would certainly assume and expect this.
As a simple example, if you or I owned 1 or 2 acres and then if we bought a narrow ribbon of unencumbered land around its perimeter that added 3/4 of an acre to it, you better believe that it definitely boosted my property value by the additional 3/4 of an acre value at current market rates. In the Salmon River Uplands area, I believe an acre goes for $500k to $700k an acre! Not less than $20,000!
Also apparently the other neighbour said he would double the purchase price and buy it himself. Also this neighbour (contrary to what Wink says) told Council he was not given the opportunity to buy the land. This alone makes one think that Richter, Kositskty and Long (the veteran trio on council) were correct in asking for a second look at what clearly appears as a bargain basement sale - especially when you have a doubling of the price offer by another abutting neighbour!
At minumum, you would expect that both neighbours should both be given fair opportunity for satisfaction! This is also a failure by the Township Council as well because it clearly has now caused even more considerable animosity between the neighbours!
So you decide. It appears that there was a bidding war on this 3/4 acre by two neigbours. Was $12,500 (or even $25,000) a good sell price for this Taxpayer-owned land?
Whether Methinks is right or wrong, in this editor's opinion I think this was a bargain basement terrible deal for township taxpayers because I am sure that either purchaser adding this land will get a lot more equity than the $12.5K when and if they sell their land! I'm betting there would be a 10 to 30 fold investment payoff! Hellava deal whatever way you cut it.
LFP, there are 2 civic addresses at the entrance to that property. Owner and a rental perhaps???
I spoke with someone at township hall and they informed me that indeed a real estate person estimated the worth of that laneway. If he was any good, he might have got it right, so only a second qualified opinion will settle this perhaps. That I am not.
This council is F**ed up
Councillor Jordan Bateman not only voted to sell this taxpayer land for pennies on the dollar ($12,000 for 3/4 of an acre), but he also won't let me publish this comment on his blog, I call it the "BATEMAN BAN". Come on everybody all the kids are doing it now its the "BATEMAN BAN".
Edited By Siteowner
Commenting by HaloScan
