Salmo, a small mountain village in the interior of British Columbia, has seen its median property value increase by 60 percent from $199,000 before the pandemic began to $319,000 in July 2021, at the end of years of a relatively stable market Salmaan Farooqui/The Globe and Mail
For years, Salmo, British Columbia, was a place that travelers passed by without noticing. It’s not even on the main highway that tourists use in the countryside.
Nestled at the bottom of the Kootenay Pass, one of Canada’s highest mountain pass highways open year-round, the southern British Columbia village of roughly 1,000 people was mostly a place to fill up on gas after a drive. With a remote location that’s about an eight-hour mountain drive from Calgary or Vancouver, real estate has always been cheap.
But like a gentrifying neighborhood in downtown Toronto, the sense that things are changing is palpable. Young families with prams can still be seen walking around the center of the village. A craft brewery opening in 2020 that wouldn’t look out of place in Vancouver. New residents and people in the region say the community’s image of the “provincial countryside” is changing.
Salmo is also about half an hour from Nelson and Trail, mountain towns where housing prices exploded during the pandemic, causing a cascading effect in the surrounding West Kootenay region. Salmo is just one community that has seen its reputation as a sleepy, aging village turned upside down as people in the area seek refuge from skyrocketing housing costs. The Village may have been viewed as too remote or too rural by many Canadians years ago, but increases in housing costs have made it an affordable option.
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Median property values have increased 60 per cent from $199,000 before the pandemic began to $319,000 in July 2021, capping years of a relatively stable market, according to data from BC Assessments.
Those price increases still pale in comparison to Nelson, where realtors say out-of-towners have snapped up homes for millions of dollars sight unseen. And Trail, a city where five years ago you could buy a home for $79,000, had its first million-dollar home sale two years ago. Property values also nearly doubled from a median price of $155,000 in 2017 to $303,000 this year.
Kate Bonner sits with her dog in the backyard of a $250,000 fixer-upper she bought in Salmo, British Columbia. For the same price, she could barely afford an apartment in nearby Nelson. She much prefers the space she has to herself here. Salmaan Farooqui/The Globe and Mail
Kate Bonner grew up in the region and recently lived in Nelson while working a comfortable job at Teck TECK-AT, the multinational mining company based in Trail. After ending a relationship, she moved to Salmo in search of an affordable place to call her own.
She eventually found a fixer-upper with a spacious yard for $250,000. As a carpenter, she plans to do much of the work herself and has already remodeled her kitchen and bathroom.
The cheap housing also allowed her to develop her own business in urban food fermentation.
She has to drive to Nelson or Trail to get groceries or clothes at good prices, but the way the community comes together makes up for the inconvenience.
“There is a good community. People travel together, people buy and sell things to each other and there are people who buy things together en masse,” Ms Bonner said.
Villages like Salmo not only attract people from the local region.
Cassandra Smith and Jonas Rigo, both 30, moved from Nanaimo, an eight-hour drive and two-hour ferry ride, in October. They wanted to move out of the city to Vancouver Island to buy their first property because the prices had become too high for their quality of life.
Their search included communities around Victoria, British Columbia’s Lower Mainland, Calgary and Salmo. In the end, they settled on Salmo because it was the only place they could get something within their roughly $300,000 budget.
“You can buy a starter home for about $300,000, and when we were on the island, a starter home was $600,000 or $700,000 and it was in a bad part of town,” said Ms. Smith, who telecommutes as an accountant. Her partner travels the world to work as a geologist.
The couple decided it was better to buy a spacious home in a small community like Salmo rather than compromise in a larger community. They are currently renting and the change of lifestyle in Salmo suits them well. Their dogs are much happier with the space and the couple loves the easy access to the outdoors.
Paul Butler, branch manager of regionally-based Kootenay Savings Credit Union, said he might have approved a few mortgages a year in Salmo before the pandemic, but the past two years have seen a big uptick.
“Maybe sometimes I got a car loan application, there wasn’t a lot of activity there,” said Mr Butler, who is also a Trail town councillor.
“But now we have two lenders in place and there are mortgage applications coming from Salmo just as much as anywhere else.”
Loans for building or repairing a home are also becoming more expensive. His branch alone has received eight construction mortgage applications in the past year after many years of none.
Salmo Mayor Diana Lockwood said she tries to meet every newcomer to the village and has noticed that most of them are between the ages of 30 and 55. She said many of them moved to Salmo so they could buy their first home or take advantage of equity they were able to build from owning homes in larger cities.
However, she believes her town’s population isn’t necessarily growing, as many young people who grew up in the community are leaving in search of post-secondary education and better job markets elsewhere.
Ryan Chamberlain stands outside the home he bought two years ago. He moved to Salmo because of the cheap housing prices in the area. Salmaan Farooqui/The Globe and Mail
Still, people in the city are seeing a noticeable change in culture. Ryan Chamberlain, 47, moved to Salmo two years ago from Sooke, which is 30 minutes outside of Victoria, and says even in that time he’s noticed a stronger presence of young artists in town. Mr. Chamberlain himself is a DJ.
“It builds a cool community,” said Mr. Chamberlain, who saw the same story play out in his old town.
“Sooke was an old logging community, and now it’s kind of a hipster place with all these fancy coffee shops and breweries popping up and you know it’s on its way.”
He bought his home on Vancouver Island in 2015 for about $300,000 and after building it, sold it for $825,000. He was looking to settle into a new community and found Salmo. The market in Salmo was even more competitive during the height of the pandemic, he said, noting that he outbid on one home where he offered $50,000 over asking.
He eventually bought a home on a large parcel of unzoned land for about $300,000 and worked on starting a business on the property.
While Salmo is a happy story for the out-of-towners, Ms. Lockwood worries about what will happen to the people who grew up in the city, or to some of the young people who have left the city and want to return one day. Not many homes are being built and property prices are expected to rise steadily.
“We’ve always been very accessible, but in the last two years that’s changed,” Ms Lockwood said.
“It’s become affordable for people in the city, but it’s become unaffordable for people who are just trying to get into the housing market.”
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