SUBURBAN life or city lights? It's a common dilemma when buying a home.
Now we can get a window on this conundrum through HGTV's new real estate show Urban Suburban.
The premise of the show revolves around the affable brother and sister real estate team of Sarah Daniels and Philip DuMoulin. Together, they face off in each episode as they guide families through urban and suburban houses -- competing to find each family their perfect location, price and home.
DuMoulin is on team urban, and shows the couple three homes in the city, while highlighting the benefits that go with downtown living. Daniels, who is pro-suburban, brings them to homes beyond the city limits, where they will likely get more bang for their buck. In between, they throw in a couple of challenges, whether it be a commute, day care or groceries, that help the family gauge what is most important to them.
On a sunny fall afternoon this month, the show's crew was in Ottawa to film an episode, setting up in front of Charlesford's Hudson Park condo tower on downtown Kent Street, one of the urban properties they saw. The suburban homes to be visited were in Orleans.
The couple in this episode, Nathalie Kauffeldt and Danny Savard, are on opposite sides of the urban-suburban fence. Kauffeldt wants to explore all that Orleans can offer while Savard is keen to maintain his urban lifestyle.
"I just like being downtown, being close to the restaurants and bars," says Savard. "I like walking down one street and hitting your little corner store, like Boushey's, bookstore, video stores, without being a big-box (store) in a parking lot."
Kauffeldt thinks their dollar will stretch further in Orleans. And she says the drive from Ottawa suburbs is not as far as some other bigger cities, like Toronto and Vancouver.
"The logic of suburbia is hard to ignore," says Kauffeldt. "It's hard to look at a backyard and a deck and not see the value in having all of that, as opposed to a balcony that's got a less-than-inspiring view."
DuMoulin and Daniels, who grew up in West Vancouver, developed the concept of the show with Force Four Entertainment Inc. and then pitched it to HGTV. By the end of January, they got the green light to start shooting. Since then, they have been travelling across Canada from Vancouver to Halifax filming episodes. What amazed Daniels was how the spectrum of affordability changed from location to location.
She says they can relate to the urban-suburban debate.
Having grown up on the west side of Vancouver, now a very expensive part of the city, she says these days neither she nor most of their friends can afford to buy a home in their old neighbourhood. So, like many of their friends, she moved to the suburbs -- in her case White Rock, 45 minutes south of the city.
"What you would get for $1 million in White Rock and what you'd get for $1 million in the west side of Vancouver, which is not a lot, like not even a teardown, is an apples and lawn mowers kind of comparison," says Daniels, who was blown away by the value to be had on the other side of the country.
"Seeing across the country has been incredible." She cites the example of a suburban property near Halifax on 2.5 acres with a Cape Cod-style home on a lake with a private dock and beautiful English-style garden, for $479,000. "And I'm standing there and I'm going, 'OK, I'm moving.' "
Unlike some other home shows, Urban Suburban does not follow the process of buying and moving into the home, it's more focused on the pros and cons of the lifestyle elements of each home. At the end of each episode, Daniels and DuMoulin chat about whether urban or suburban "won" the episode.
The episode with the Ottawa couple is to air Nov. 16 at 10 p.m.
DuMoulin says what he loves about the show is that they identify a specific area of a city, rather than referring to it in a general way.
"I think what people are really loving about it is seeing prices all over the country," says DuMoulin.
"It's the first kind of show that actually pinpoints neighbourhoods and gives you an accurate price of that neighbourhood, which is a lot of fun."
-- Postmedia News
