Development costs determined lots' prices
A Yukon government land lottery held Tuesday saw the most expensive and largest rural lot north of Whitehorse selling for $217,634.
A Yukon government land lottery held Tuesday saw the most expensive and largest rural lot north of Whitehorse selling for $217,634.
Although there were 30 rural residential lots up for grabs in the Grizzly Valley subdivision, only 21 are now spoken for.
Twenty-six Yukoners put their name in the lottery, and five are currently on the eligibility list because they didn't get their top choice.
The subdivision is located on the west side of the Klondike Highway at kilometre 220, between the sod farm and the Deep Creek Road.
The land is divided into lots that range in size from three to almost eight hectares.
Land owners are responsible for providing their own water source, hooking up to the nearest electrical pole and providing a sewage system.
The largest lot is 7.96 hectares and sold for the $217,634.
The least expensive parcel sold for $124, 697 and is 3.17 hectares in size.
Matt King, a spokesperson for the Department of Community Services, explained that it cost the government just under $5 million to build the roads, wildlife corridors and install the electrical lines.
He said the cost of each lot is determined by the development cost of the subdivision.
The roads will be finished in the spring of 2012.
Successful applicants include Jonathon and Shannon Bragg, David Brierley, Rose Cobbett, Marie Ducharme, Barbara Hanson, Craig Hansen, Dustin Kent, Terry Kent, Daniel Macdonald, Natasha Macdonald, Stephen Morash, Raymond Nielsen, Nicole Peterson, Graham Putland, Anke Rhein, Jennifer Smith, Daran Stewart, Tanaka Reiko, Gunner Tirschmann, Saul Turner and Jennifer Whipple.
The Glacier Acres subdivision lottery also took place Tuesday. There were two applicants for the five country residential lots in Destruction Bay. The two applicants received lots for just over $50,000.
The nine remaining lots in the Grizzly subdivision and the three from Glacier Acres are now for sale over the counter at their lottery price at the territorial land management branch.
Comments (8)
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Groucho d'North on Dec 14, 2011 at 11:59 am
Max Mack, I understand how the process works. If as you say, all work was performed by the private sector, all of these individual contracts should be listed on the government's contract registry and they should add up to the $5 million sum.
This should provide an itemized summary of what each component cost the taxpayers to develop this new subdivision, which I do support as not everybody wants to live in town, and some wish to keep horses or chickens - outlawed in the City proper, so they can now hobby farm in a proper rural setting; so the subdivision fills another identified housing and property need in our expanded community.
I'll bet you all the contracts posted do not add up to $5M, check it out – I await your report.
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QLD dude on Dec 14, 2011 at 3:27 am
This is madness and pure money grab, but hey you voted the government so live with it.
In the mean time I would prefer a 50 hectare lot with 2 houses only a 100k from Brisbane....go figure...
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River Rat on Dec 12, 2011 at 1:59 pm
Most of the people in Whitehorse that are making the decisions on lot/housing development in Whitehorse, got their land for a song or close to it. They built their own places and now those places are worth a lot of money, in fact a lot of them own other units that they rent out.
It is not in their interests to see affordable land/housing come onto the market, because it will drive down the value of their properties.
It does not matter how much land is made available, only the rich will benefit, one way or the other.
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Max Mack on Dec 9, 2011 at 9:53 am
Groucho -- private developers are doing the work. Government merely provides project oversight. The only way to do it cheaper is to cut corners . . .
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bobby bitman on Dec 9, 2011 at 9:11 am
I meant $166,666 per lot.
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Groucho d'North on Dec 9, 2011 at 12:01 am
$5 million for government to develop 30 rural lots? I'd like another bid to consider. This high cost demonstrates the need for government to get out of the land development business in favor of private developers who could competitively bid to do the work; and a little over six years to get this far demonstrates the true costs of working at government speed.
We deserve better than this.
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bobby bitman on Dec 8, 2011 at 6:00 am
I would love to see the books on this one. $166,666 to build a road that touches each of 30 lots, and to run an electrical line alongside this road. That seems high to me, and that is apparently all the purchasers got.
Who got paid to do the work? How was the contract tendered?
It seems that people wanting housing are being overcharged and taken advantage of. I own a few places and am one of the people benefiting from the madness, but I still do not like it.
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Geoffrey Capp on Dec 7, 2011 at 12:49 pm
With a rural subdivision like this, I would hope the government is also factoring in the inclusion of telephone line installation in the cost of development. Northwestel's SIP program that ended in 2007 wouldn't have included then-not-existent subdivisions like this, leaving these lucky new residents with extremely high cost of getting lines put in. No doubt some of the residents will want high-speed internet, the rest will want a regular touch-tone telephone.