Well. Here’s something to gawk at: Tiny Houses of the Historic Northwest. There you’ll see a hollowed-out log that’s been turned into a cozy living space, and another that’s a mobile office. Wow!

Update:

This photo, Cedar stump house, Edgecomb, Washington, 1901, is way cooler. Double wow! Also see the Edgecomb Stump House article and slide show at historylink.org. Want still more? On to Pete Beletsky, the Stumphouse Man.

I’ve seen old stumps on Gabriola that are as large as that one shown in the photos of the Edgecomb house. What I’m curious about now is this: suppose I had such a stump on my property, and suppose it were new. (Yeah, I know, I know. Previous generations already cut down the old growth forest here. But humour me.) If I were to hollow it out and put a roof on it, would local building inspectors approve it for habitation? Or would I be told that people can’t live in such a house because it lacks concrete foundations or violates some other part of the building code?

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

Of course, you can no longer order the entire house as a kit from Sears for $1513.00, but still. At least you can get the plans for this and similar houses, and one of them might be just your cup of tea.

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

This is the house I imagine they’d love to live in: A House Built for Skateboarding. So cool!

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

Have you had the fire on in the mornings? If you have, perhaps this idea of heating your home with a hair dryer will appeal.

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

Can you imagine something like this on the Gabriola shoreline?

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

How much space do we really need? In an era of ballooning house sizes and constricting rental markets, it can sometimes be difficult to envision opportunities for change or innovation. 102 is a design competition that seeks to broaden awareness and generate examples of building and design strategies that are small, green and affordable…

Take a moment to browse through the house designs that people have submitted to the contest. Which do you like best? Vote for your favourite under the list of entries; the most popular house will win the people’s choice award.

Some of you are canny investigators, so perhaps you’ll spot this right away: which of the house designs has a Gabriola connection?

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

Before real estate agents came along, all property sales were for sale by owner, as far as I can tell. Selling one’s house – or farm – was as simple as putting up a sign, then waiting. Sooner or later a buyer came along, a lawyer took care of the contract and land transfer stuff, and that was that.

When realtors captured the market, they did so by promoting their ability to market a property, epecially through the MLS (multiple listing service) system. The idea of reaching buyers easily was appealing to vendors, so using a realtor became the thing to do when selling one’s house. Now, of course, the MLS is on the web — the Canadian one is at MLS.ca.

But that’s not all that’s on the web. Vendors who are selling their homes look at the MLS listing pages and think I could do that, and for way less than the thousands the realtor wants to charge me. They find sites like the For Sale by Owner Primer to help them evaluate alternatives. And so these days, we’re seeing more and more house vendors on the web – with their for sale by owner listings.

Meanwhile, buyers search specifically for for sale by owner on Gabriola listings. Last January I noticed that a lot of people were winding up at Gabriolan.ca as a result of that search; that’s what brought this whole topic to my attention. I put up this blog post to help those web-searchers.

A few months later I noticed a bunch of Property Guys signs around Gabriola – have you seen them? (It turns out that Property Guys is a franchise, and they offer fixed price listing packages to people who want to list properties for sale.)

I’m used to seeing people use these sell your own house services on Gabriola, but here’s a new thing: get a load of this sign! It’s on Berry Point Road at the foot of Norwich Hill. The vendor is doing a for sale by owner thing, and using a house for sale weblog to get the word out about the property. Wow.

I’ve also noticed for sale by owner listings on local bulletin boards, on websites like Craigslist, in the Gabriola newspapers (The Sounder and Flying Shingle). It seems that this FSBO trend keeps growing.

Oh, and another thing: years ago, for sale by owner properties were dumps, sold by people who seemed pretty odd. But now? There are some top-rate Gabriola properties in the for sale by owner category, including some walk-on-waterfront properties with amazing houses.

I know there are a few realtors who read this blog; perhaps they — and you! — will have some comments to contribute. What does everybody think about this for sale by owner trend? Would you sell your own house? Will this trend eventually put realtors out of business?

Disclaimer: I am not a realtor. My house is not for sale. I don’t work for any of these for sale by owner listing companies, and I don’t have any friends who are selling their own houses. In other words, I’m not trying to sell you anything.

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

It’s going to cost the owner of a Cedar home approximately $50,000 to clean up the mess left by her cat-hoarding tenant.

Nanaimo businesswoman Irene Wenngatz owns the Lofthouse Road home where SPCA officials rescued 94 cats and kittens from deplorable conditions on Monday. (…)

Wenngatz doesn’t know where her former tenant is living now but has heard that she is trying to rent a home on Gabriola Island.

[The article quoted above is no longer available on the newspaper's website.]

(Emphasis mine.)

Oh gosh, that’s just all we need. You’ve probably already heard of the Gabriola tenants from hell, who left enormous problems and many unpaid bills behind when they were finally evicted. Let’s hope for no more of that nonsense.

UPDATE: SPCA rescues hoarded cats on Gabriola

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

For sale by owner companies with Gabriola listings

• Property Sold: Gabriola
• fsbo-bc.com: Gabriola
• BC Homes for Sale: Gabriola
• BC For Sale By Owner: Gabriola
• BC Island Homes: Gabriola
• PropertyGuys.com (search their site for Gabriola listings)
• HouseMAXX: Gabriola

Classified sites where there may be Gabriola listings

When people first started posting their house for sale advertisements on sites like the ones listed below, it was all for sale by owner stuff. Recently realtors have discovered that they can use these sites, too, so now you’ll find a lot of ads placed by them. In other words, if you want only for sale by owner listings, you’ll have to read carefully and wade through a lot of other stuff.

• Nanaimo Craigslist – Real Estate – hit and miss, but Gabriola listings do show up here. (In most browsers you can use ctrl F to search for a specific word – like Gabriola – on a web page.)
• Gabriola listings on kijiji – another online classified site.
• UsedNanaimo.com – yet another online classified site. Some Gabriola content, but you have to fish around for it.

Gabriola listings you won’t find on the internet

I can think of several properties on Gabriola that have home-made for sale signs posted, and it seems to me that the owners do nothing else in terms of marketing. They just wait for somebody to drive by, notice, and make an offer. Since you won’t find these places listed on the internet at all, you might want to explore the parts of the island you like best, and see if anybody’s posted this sort of sign. While you’re exploring, be sure to check the bulletin board outside Village Foods in Folklife Village – sometimes people post announcements there about houses for sale.

Consult paper copies of the Gabriola newspapers, too: The Sounder and the Flying Shingle. People sometimes advertise houses for sale in those papers.

Lawyer-assisted property sales

It’s an awfully good idea to have a lawyer involved in any real estate transaction. Here’s a page I came across that belongs to a Gabriola lawyer:

• Lawyer-Assisted Property Sales, through Bill Pope’s Law Office

Disclaimer: I have no experience with this fsbo (‘for sale by owner’ – pronounced "fizbo") approach, so please don’t think I’m recommending that you do sell your own home, or that you don’t. Also, note that I am not a realtor, and I don’t work for any of the ‘for sale by owner’ companies.

Related Gabriolan.ca blog post: Gabriola for sale by owner listings.

(From Gabriolan.ca.)