The most common reaction to "we're moving to Vancouver", was "isn't it an expensive city to live in?". It is fair to say we were prepared to be shocked by the cost of renting a house. However, living in Auckland seems to have prepared us well for Vancouver. Prices in Vancouver feel very similar to Auckland. Eeek!
The Canadian equivalent of listing your house on Trade Me, is to create a classified ad on Craigslist. So that is where we began our house hunt. It became quickly obvious that the majority of leases started/finished on the 1st of each month. With our Airbnb room only booked until the 16th of February, we had given ourselves two weeks to find a place, in the middle of the month. In retrospect, we could have timed this a bit better.
Room vs. Apartment vs. Sublet vs. Short-Term-Furnished
Before arriving in Vancouver, Sean and I had talked about trying to find a room to rent in an already established flat or apartment. We thought this would be affordable, a good way to get around furnishing an entire house, and an opportunity to meet some locals. Although once we started looking more seriously at some of these, lots of them were deep in the suburbs, wouldn't rent to a couple or were home to lots of students and other international travellers. Also, they were REALLY cheap! We ruled these out fairly early on and began looking for a place by ourselves.
The next route we explored was finding an apartment or 1 bedroom basement suite. They are super common and still within our budget (which was going surprisingly far!). Unfortunately, most leases require a minimum of a 1 year lease (along with references, and a good credit rating - which we don't have yet and while we are still nutting out our plan for our time in Canada we weren't really keen to commit to an apartment for an entire year. That is where subletting came in! Lots of people on Craigslist who are going out of town for a couple of months will rent their apartment for the time they are away. This sounded perfect for us! We get a place for a shorter length of time, and we get to use all their stuff. Win!
By this stage, I had accepted a job in North Vancouver (YAY!), and being on a quick bus route to school became a priority. There are two bridges which connect Vancouver to North Vancouver (which are officially two different cities); Lion's Gate Bridge, which connects to downtown Vancouver, and the Second Narrows bridge in East Vancouver. Being close to one of these bridges was going to be key in getting to North Vancouver with the fewest number of bus transfers. With location, a short-term lease and furnished property in mind, we started our search again.
I emailed about 15 people about their apartment/room/sublet, over ten days. Only four replied! By this stage, it was starting to feel a lot like house hunting in Auckland - a complete lottery! Annie, the owner of a laneway house in an East Vancouver suburb called Hastings-Sunrise, responded to my email about ten minutes after I sent it. She was friendly, easy to communicate with and eager to show us around her laneway house. We walked through the house while it was still being painted, and immediately knew that we could (and wanted to) live here. We viewed the house on Tuesday, signed the lease on Thursday and moved in on Friday. Easy, eh?!
East Vancouver, Hastings-Sunrise
The house is located in Hastings-Sunrise. I kind of knew the area (mainly just a coffee shop and a Taco restaurant from my semester at SFU) and was fairly confident it would work for us, transit-wise. The suburb is one of the oldest in Vancouver, and home to lots of schools and families with a local community feel.
A Laneway. A what?
Generally speaking, all roads run either north to south or east to west, forming blocks. Along the main roads, the houses are very tidy and surprisingly uniform in appearance. There are strict building regulations to maintain the heritage look and feel of different areas. They are able to do this, as each block has a laneway running through the middle of it, freeing the main road from essential household services. The main house sits towards the front of the section with the back (on the laneway) used for storing and collecting rubbish bins, power lines, car parks, veggie gardens and garages etc. Perhaps in response to the growing demand for houses in Vancouver (um, hello Auckland?!), people have started to use this space to build small, one bedroom houses.
Annie and Max's laneway house is brand-spanking-new and it is beautiful! It is architecturally designed to look good, feel good and be good to the environment. It fulfils the requirements of Passive House Standards, being energy efficient and working to reduce its ecological footprint. The place in about 550 square feet, slightly smaller than our unit in St Heliers. It looks like we have stepped into an Ikea catalogue! They have thought of everything to make the place both stylish and functional; internal shelving, hooks, blinds, lighting, USB plugs etc. There are mobile phone apps to control the settings for the baseboard heaters and underfloor heating in the bathroom (which Sean loves). You can set the temperature in the house for different times of the day and different days of the week. You can even see the weather forecast while you are in the bathroom!
The house has been lovingly furnished and thoughtfully executed. You can tell that this laneway house has been an exciting project for Annie and Max; it has been their baby for a few years, and they are both eager to have someone finally live in it. Lucky us!