The southern Sunshine Coast and Bowen Island, MacKenzie notes, are the only submarkets in the Metro region that now have lower average house prices than five years ago.
"I have personally handled many listings where the seller just could not take the commuting [costs] any longer." MacKenzie said.
The average detached house price on the southern Sunshine Coast is now $365,200, down 1.1 per cent from what it was in 2007. Bowen Island has seen similar declines. In comparison, the benchmark house price in the rest of the Lower Mainland has risen 24.9 per cent in the same period, to $862,800. In West Vancouver, the community closest to the Sunshine Coast and Bowen, the typical detached house price has soared 37 per cent in the past five years, to $1.9 million, according to the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver
MacKenzie, who has been leading a campaign to have a low-cost, passenger-only ferry started between Gibsons and the Mainland, said many people complain that friends and families can't afford to visit the coast because of soaring ferry fares.
On April 1, BC Ferries increased fares for the fifth time in three years, and another increase is expected prior to summer, MacKenzie noted. For a couple in a car, it now costs $75 to take the 9 km. ferry from Horseshoe Bay to Langdale.
