Vernon Tops the List
Two years ago Dr. Warren Bland, PhD. wrote his book - Retire in Style - 50 Affordable Places Across America. His new book this year is Retire in Style - 60 Outstanding Places Across the U.S.A. & Canada. The doctor went to university in Canada and the U.S. This is the first time he has included Canadian cities and two for the Okanagan made the list - Vernon and Kelowna. Vernon for three and a half pages and Kelowna for a half page. Here is what he had to say, first about Vernon. “The beautiful Okanagan Valley has long been popular as a retirement designation. Although Kelowna is the largest of several retirement places in the valley, for a variety of reasons Vernon is our top choice.”
He rated Vernon with 42 points out of a possible total of 60 were available. Five points being number one. Landscape, quality of life and cost of living were all fives.
Community services and recreational activities at four, climate, transportation, retail services, health care, cultural activities got three and work volunteer activities and crime rated a two.
His conclusions were that if you like a four-season playground, enjoy summer and winter out-doors recreation and appreciate small town virtues, you may find life in Vernon very appealing. Vernon offers an excellent quality of life unspoiled by traffic congestion, pollution or excessive development. Downtown Vernon is the most attractive urban core found in the Valley.
Fortunately Vernon is growing fairly slowly so it should remain desirable, unspoiled refuge and stresses for years to come.
He liked that town. With the half page left he tackled Kelowna in this way.
Kelowna, the largest city in the Valley is also worth considering for retirement. It is just south of Vernon. Kelowna’s a little warmer. Blessed with mountain scenery, pristine lake, sandy beaches, hill-sides covered with orchards and vineyards. You can both ski and golf. Rapid growth has brought some unpleasant side effects. Housing and living costs are rising rapidly and are approaching the U.S. average. A good deal of Harvey Drive (his words) is paralleled by ugly retail strip development and the city has sprawled upslope to the edge of the forest where the danger of fire is acute. Traffic is heavy, especially along Highway 97 and property and crime rates are above average. All in all though, Kelowna remains one of North America’s more desirable communities. He did not do a rating on Kelowna.
The good doctor’s books have become very popular, a bible for those looking for something new in the retirement mode…
Just a lot of Stuff…
I still keep getting info on the Robin Williams movie that was originally looking seriously at the Okanagan for its location work. The producers are now going to use Vancouver for the studio scenes and Calgary and I would suppose those ever present mountains for their location work. Just signed Jeff Daniels to work with Robin…
Bud Gracie in the San Juan Mercury News on Tiger Woods sensational chip shot at the Masters. “Tiger’s amazing shot on No. 16 actually is one I have made a number of time at my local course. Into the clowns mouth, out of his ear and into the cup…
Good reports on the WestJet Toronto flights out of Kelowna International. The new planes have the TVs in the panel of seat in front of you. The airline also announced more flights between Canadian cities this summer. Also adding a service to Charlottetown. We have a lot of people with summer homes on the island and they do have some fine golf courses. I believe Glen Rea and a group from here went there a couple of years ago and were raving about the courses, service and the magnificent scenery…
As Canadians you and I would like to have the same service the Americans have with their do-not-call list. We are tired of being annoyed by phone calls during supper hours from companies selling, doing surveys, asking you to use your bank card more.
The CRTC believe there will be two million of us clamouring for this service when it finally becomes available to us. They believe it is going to cost about $2 million in start up costs and they also say that will be handled by the industry. The CRTC realises it doesn’t have the staff or facilities to handle such a load so it would have to farm out the service and that could be an American firm. There is one catch that probably makes that impossible.
Under the U.S. Patriot Act, Ottawa would lose control over the database if it were managed by an American firm. The United States government could have access to any names on the list without permission from Canada. The third problem looming is a federal government because it could hold things up although all parties agreed to the support of the program. Yes we all want it, and we’ll wait…
Residential home sales are still hot in the Okanagan prices remain strong. This past March in the Okanagan Mainline sales reached $202,942,942 against last year’s March sales of $170,982,505 with home sales of 813. In the South Okanagan March was also huge with $55,775,978 in the till, against March 2004 of $35,794,284 and 261 sales. Sales in the province were over $3 billion.
Got a note from a real estate contact of mine in Kelowna with these numbers for the week of April 8-14. Weekly sale 133, 19 of them $150,000 or less, 41 $150,000 to $250,000. Four more properties listed at over $1 million.
In the South Okanagan up to April 23; 26 sales, 337 listed for sale with high sale for the week of $435,000. On the market for 16 days…
-John Thomson
Satisfied clients
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