How I almost bought an $875,000 Vancouver condo as a single, starving artist.

Keyword there: almost. Spoiler alert: it didn’t come together #stillrenting.

[5 minute read]

content warning: brief mention of physical assault and IPV.

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The skies outside my apartment have been my closest audience this last year. And to be honest, they’re witnessing a pretty serious ego-death these days.

Does that happen to everyone approaching 40?

Thankfully, the views have kept me dreaming. Keep me scheming. Keep me reaching. Grinding. Hustling. And kept me humble. Held by nature.

And inspired despite the pressure of an otherwise soul-peeling, bark shedding season.

Growth is not always comfortable. I’m feeling the tight restriction that comes just before the expansion.

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Something else that might not always be comfortable…

My not-uncommon use of long and often too verbose sentences.

Like the one I’m going to try and impress you with next.

——

I’m sitting in my how’d-I-get-so-lucky-to-live-here second bedroom, that I’ve recently converted into an office while I take a much-needed-and-long-overdue break from living with roommates in order to stretch out, decompress, and enjoy the view (along with some solitude) while I gather my thoughts and schedule meetings with the Attorney General’s office.

Three years ago this unit was appraised just $125,000 shy of a million dollars. Even though it was well beyond my scrappy little single-artists budget, I was plotting an ambitious scheme to buy it.

Broke as I am, I’ve always been rich in smarts and creativity. So I jumped ship from Bank of Montreal to Vancity Credit Union and I worked with Small Business BC to develop a bed and breakfast business plan.

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The vision was sue the pants off of the man who inflicted acts of torture against me in a foreign country and if that didn’t work out (bad news, it didn’t), secure a women-in-business growth loan, as well as a first—and second—mortgage with private-lenders in order to buy the property and convert it into an Airbnb.

Luckily, a unit like this, in a building with dozens of successful Airbnbs was strong enough collateral. Suddenly the far-fetched dream was beginning to take shape. It was a creative financial risk but one that lenders seemed willing to take.

The exercise gave me an appreciation for my own resourcefulness that, up until that point, I hadn’t really given myself enough credit for.

The mortgage was going to be steep, but the Airbnb revenue lucrative, so I kept going.

Working on the business plan with Small Business BC, I registered The Nest, at Strathcona Village and decided I’d no longer declare the rental income I’d been earning for the last five years, as personal but as business instead.

That would mean higher corporate on what could otherwise be a personally owned asset—but—it would finally make me a home owner.

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Before finding this condo, I’d moved nine times within four and a half years between 2015-2019.

There was an era, circa 2015-2017 when the Vancouver real estate market was really hot. As such, more than my share of landlords reclaimed their unit from underneath me to either: sell, or renovict me. It happened to me three times in as many years.

The other four moves were a bit of short-term rental accommodations I did after I was strangled in a foreign country by my ex-boyfriend.

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Ya, I’m just going to dangle that carrot for now. You can learn a fuller version of the story here.

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Back to the double mortgage / Airbnb: I honestly didn’t care that I’d be paying more in taxes and corporate taxes. At least I’d be building equity unlike the hundreds of thousands I’d paid in rent over the past two decades.

As it started to come together, I grew excited.

Unsure what might happen with inflation, or how much interest rates were going to climb, it was determined I would likely need to Airbnb the unit full time for the first year to cover the near $5,000 mortgage and costs. Yikes.

But, luckily I was booked back-to-back with petsitting gigs for the majority of the next year and a half.

For contingency, I decided to purchase a 1978 17’ boler travel trailer that I could camp/travel in as my home-away-from-home when I wasn’t otherwise petsitting. I was 37 years old, single, and had been cooped up all through covid… why not.

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The hiccup was, the last interest rate hike of 2022.

It put private lenders on notice. Financial institutions that had long-gotten-rich off real estate speculation in Vancouver were suddenly a lot more cautious.

In order to prevent the housing bubble from bursting, the condo market in Vancouver was about to experience a real cool down.

Even still, two friends offered to loan me $40k to help me cross the finish line. The first, a male friend who’d lived with me for a few months who’d become a friend. At the time, he and his girlfriend had just split up. Unfortunately for me, they got back together a few weeks later and the offer was reneged. They now own a home in Kelowna and have a beautiful baby boy and were recently married in Italy though, so I’m happy he followed his heart.

The second, a friend who offered unfortunately only after the private lender had pulled the plug (which she didn’t know yet, so indeed a tremendously kind gesture).

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My parents, unfortunately, had just undergone a pretty stressful period.

My Dad had undergone Kidney Stone surgery during Covid. Typically a pretty routine surgery. Unfortunately, the laser snagged a blood vessel, and he experienced significant blood loss, requiring a blood transfusion.

A year later he was scheduled for a triple by-pass surgery, which became a quadruple in surgery with its own post-op complications resulting in many days in ICU monitoring lung failure, kidney failure, and heart failure before hospital staff were able to bring him back to stable health.

Turns out a tube that medical staff had inserted to help remove excess gas from the body (that they pump you up with during surgery) had accidentally remained clipped. Essentially, this turned my dad into a balloon animal of sorts, rather than deflating him. Whoops. He’s okay now. But that stretch was brutal, and it changed all of us.

So no, needless to say, my parents weren’t in the frame of mind to talk business or estate planning.

My brother, to his credit, offered to buy into my parents property, which would allow my parents the ability to re-deploy capital with me. However, the conversation proved to put too much pressure on my parents who were already in the midst of confronting their own mortality.

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The timing wasn’t great.

The unit was not sold, I continued to rent. It’s now two years later and FIFA ’26 is just around the corner.

I didn’t get the condo.
But I did get the blueprint.
And the next time I try, I won’t be building it on borrowed faith.

I didn’t become a homeowner.
But I did become a woman who knows exactly what she’s capable of under pressure.
Which is… honestly more terrifying.

Till next time.

— TwT