ISLAND DESTINATION A NATURAL
When it comes to retirement destinations, South Vancouver Island is a natural. The area is blessed with some of the best scenery in B.C., balmy weather in winter, and just enough isolation to put the rest of the world in a fresh perspective. Islanders take things a little more laid back than most, says Rob Fraser, president of the Victoria Real Estate Board. A native-born Victorian, Fraser says once people experience life on the Island, they never want to leave.
“It’s an easy place to live,” he says. “We have a different kind of lifestyle here, a slower pace than on the mainland.”
While the retirement buyer is the key to the Island’s real estate market, so far little effort has been spent enticing retirees, says Fraser. “Most people in Canada already know about us. Typically, they’ll come out here for a holiday first, usually in the winter to see if the weather is really as good as everyone says, and then they come back when they retire.”
But residential land developers are tuning in to the potential of the growing retirement market and are now designing housing to meet the affluent senior’s every need. The projects now under construction range from a wooded enclave of adult-only condominiums to an ambitious retirement village, the first of its kind in Canada.
