Raise the Hammer

Hello Gregory,

What devalues property values are things like gradually growing old in large well manicured lots and suddenly finding that our kids have left home, never to come back... and not having the strength in our old bones to mow and rake the lawns - just to keep the neighbors happy...

What devalues property values are things like gradually realizing the futility of up keeping facades and pretenses about a notion we call "home", and not having the retirement income keep up with the voracious appetite of the utility companies, and the high-maintenance modern construction marvels we call homes...

What devalues property values are things like small-lot minded people realizing that moving into large-lot properties may have been an economical option for their parents, but they simply do not have the job security and retirement/pension/security to take such chances...

What devalues property values are things like the swing of a pendulum - a force of aging that hits us hard on our rear - while we are busy ogling property values arising from the quality and quantity of our front yards...

Market forces may very ironically be responsible for finally bringing diversity into the monoculture we call suburbia. Smaller lots will bring younger and even stranger people to the neighborhood with possibly limited income... who may possibly look at opportunities for generating supplemental income. And thus the "large-lot" people, living lives of quite desperation - may finally have someone to look after them and their assets in their old age - right in their neighborhoods!

This whole small-lot thing could have been so very easily packaged as an "Innovation" project!!

This flap could have been avoided and this idea successfully sold to the community -- if only the developers had a savvy marketer - who positioned the small-lots as cutting-edge "socially innovative" planning :-)

Imagine the cost-savings on senior's managed-care that our community can accrue, by promoting in-your-own-house --"large-lot retirement living"-- serviced by the new "small-lot people" who are no longer tucked deep inside the bowels of the subdivision in shame.

Imagine the enormous value appreciation for the whole town called Ancaster -- where people are finally looking after people and large properties - right thru old age, co-existing near each other in varying sized lots.

Imagine the enormous value appreciation for the City of Hamilton - where councilors are finally facilitating creativity and allowing density-innovation to occur in the most un-innovative of circumstances called suburbia!

Portent of the Hamilton NEXT... eh?