Dear Editor,
Re: “City’s LUC debacle is unfair,” Letters, Nov. 25.
As much as I feel for Mr. Barkwell’s plight, I must remind him and all the other LUC homeowners that you are complaining about market conditions, not neighbourhoods or communities or anything else related to our quality of living.
From someone who has done property speculation for the past 10 years, I equate the fear of changing market conditions and the possibility of hastened decision-making to people who are concerned only with their own bottom line.
I am quite sure that noone is concerned with market changes that might have caused me to sit on or lose money on a property, nor should they. That‘s why it is called speculating.
If any of these LUC homes have been bought with the intention to raise a family or be a stable “full-time” abode, then the concern about their value and what they mean to market conditions, is a mute point in the short term.
But if any of these properties were bought for speculative reasons, such as what can I sell it for in the near future or how big can I build on it, then, I am sorry, you get no sympathy here; market conditions change all the time.
Market conditions exist in many forms (buyers, sellers, economics, population and, yes, even building bylaws) and affect people and property values in just as many ways, so why don’t we just chalk up any limitations that will be placed on LUC in the future as a win for neighbourhoods and communities, because as those continue to disappear, they become more and more valuable and that is an investment I am willing to make.
Jesse Arnold
Richmond
