Author Topic: Toronto couple says view from million dollar dream home spoiled by Toronto Hydro  (Read 9570 times)


slugline

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Even without the pole, that wasn't a million-dollar view. :)

TheAnonOne

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Even without the pole, that wasn't a million-dollar view. :)

"Dream Home"

For a million here in MN, you could have an actual mansion with designer - designed floor plans/ kitchen/ bathrooms(at least 4)
and a 6-8 car garage and probably have some left over to have a few cars in that garage too.

AND you'd be living on a lake, near the city, with a boat AND a motorcycle.

OR

You could buy what they did for 100k-200k and pay it off quickly.


Plus MN has some of the highest wages around. Taxes can be a b**** here on bigger houses though.... but I doubt that is much different than Toronto

Shinplaster

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Ha!   Only in Toronto (or Vancouver) is that a million dollar home.   And it never had a million dollar view.   I guess we should be calling our local hydro too - we have a pole to the side of our driveway, and we can see it from our MB window.  Oh, the horrors!

We live about 2 1/2 hours outside Toronto, and constantly shake our heads over housing prices there.   If I was going to spend that amount of money on a home, I'd be buying in Malibu or Hawaii.

TheAnonOne

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Ha!   Only in Toronto (or Vancouver) is that a million dollar home.   And it never had a million dollar view.   I guess we should be calling our local hydro too - we have a pole to the side of our driveway, and we can see it from our MB window.  Oh, the horrors!

We live about 2 1/2 hours outside Toronto, and constantly shake our heads over housing prices there.   If I was going to spend that amount of money on a home, I'd be buying in Malibu or Hawaii.

+1 for the paradise home

greenmimama

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It's not something I would be happy about, but it blocks their view in a 9inch space of another house across the street, not really anything to "view" certainly not a good view.

Notice the angle that they start the shot at, which makes it look like it''s in the middle of the yard, but really it's way on the side.

They live in the city, is the hydro supposed to put it on all of their neighbors properties instead :)

Kaspian

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The view out the door at 0:08 shows THREE poles.  Obviously the other two didn't matter because they weren't on their property?  Anyway, the new one certainly isn't "ruining a view".  ...Unless they had a huge emotional attachment to a small 1' x 1' square of grass on the curb. Toronto people are so delusional and spoiled.

GuitarStv

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Meh.  It would piss me off a bit if that happened.  Sticking it directly in front of the house is a dick move.

To give some background on this . . . Toronto Hydro has a long history of dicking around for no apparent reason and pissing people off.  I suspect that the hydro pole probably should have been placed a few feet over at the property line as they usually are in the city, but the contractor fucked up and Hydro doesn't want to pay to fix it now.

Taxes in Toronto are very low BTW.  We pay like .7%.

Catomi

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When I read "million dollar view," I think lakefront or something. Not "oh noes, I can't see the neighbor's house as clearly." I'm amazed people get that upset about their view of the street being minorly disrupted.

Side note: what the heck is a hydro pole?

GuitarStv

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In Ontario we substitute 'hydro' for 'electricity' for some reason . . . even though most of our power doesn't come from hydroelectric sources.  *shrug*

biggrey

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Toronto real estate is incredibly valuable based on a series of factors.  The area these people live in is through the roof price wise, as is most of the middle of the city.  This is a city where people live and work in an integrated way, so prices are high, getting higher and unlikely to tank.  The city has all of the characteristics - integrated economy not dependent on one industry, diversity, constant influx of immigrants, head offices, media and new industry, education, cultural magnets, top ranked country integrated with the US in ways that matter - to keep it top ranked as a city.  There is no question real estate will follow normal ups and downs and possibly some reversion to the mean, but in this case all things being equal it is likely to be "up", a lot, over time like the other top 10 global cities with similar attributes (NYC, London, Paris, SF, Tokyo, etc.). 

Heckler

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Ha!   Only in Toronto (or Vancouver) is that a million dollar home.   

um, no...

this is a million dollar home in Vancouver.



http://www.realtor.ca/Residential/Single-Family/15830529/3036-SOPHIA-ST-Vancouver-British-Columbia-V5T3L4

Heckler

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Heckler

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and as for the couple who got shafted by a pole.  suck it up, you use electricity.

deborah

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gooki

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Power poles are a fucking eyesore. Why in this day and age, is power not being delivered by underground cable?

kimmarg

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Power poles are a fucking eyesore. Why in this day and age, is power not being delivered by underground cable?
In the city? Who knows! In(some areas of) the country: bedrock. Prohibitively expensive to dig below the frost line and deal with all the rocks....at least that's what they tell us.

forummm

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I guess a million CAD doesn't go very far.

Quote
So much so, they paid $156,000 over the asking price.

OMG! That's way more than my entire house cost. So it's really not even worth a million CAD.

Tjat

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We can all make fun the house and the cost, but if that were me and my house, I'd be absolutely furious if that was put up right in front of my door after I bought the house.

Why can't the lines be underground?


forummm

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Why can't the lines be underground?

That's expensive to do. Why can't they just move the poll to the property line? That's the way I normally see it done around here.

Shinplaster

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Power poles are a fucking eyesore. Why in this day and age, is power not being delivered by underground cable?

Newer subdivisions have underground utilities.  (we do).  Although we have a pole at the edge of our property, it's actually just a street light.   In older cities, it's probably a nightmare trying to put all this stuff underground.  Plus we get so cold, our frost line is 4 feet down.

The crazy prices in Toronto and Vancouver are why we stay where we are, even though our son wants us to move to Toronto.  We've seen similar houses to the above Vancouver one for sale in Leslieville in Toronto for a million dollars too.  If I'm going to live in a shack, I'm sure not going to pay that kind of money for it!

Rollin

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Yet the big stump next to the sidewalk isn't an issue.  I wonder if their coffee is too hot too?

ShoulderThingThatGoesUp

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In an existing neighborhood, putting power lines underground would involve digging up the street and altering every house's wiring. Enormous hassle to make something harder to maintain.

Rollin

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In an existing neighborhood, putting power lines underground would involve digging up the street and altering every house's wiring. Enormous hassle to make something harder to maintain.

Ironic that here in Florida the figure for undergrounding is $1 million/mile!  Maybe they'd pitch in???

Scandium

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and as for the couple who got shafted by a pole.  suck it up, you use electricity.

Eww! That was totally unnecessary.


foobar

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Ha!   Only in Toronto (or Vancouver) is that a million dollar home.   And it never had a million dollar view.   I guess we should be calling our local hydro too - we have a pole to the side of our driveway, and we can see it from our MB window.  Oh, the horrors!

We live about 2 1/2 hours outside Toronto, and constantly shake our heads over housing prices there.   If I was going to spend that amount of money on a home, I'd be buying in Malibu or Hawaii.

In SF that is a 2 million dollar house:)

Seriously I understand what they are talking about. If your 200k house was now worth 150k because of something the utlitity company did, you would be pissed. That being said I think they are overreacting as far as the drop in value. It is pole. There are 2 just like it across the street.

And a lot of people here have reading comphrension issues. It is a view from a million dollar home, not a million dollar view from a house:).That view looks to be worth about .50 to me unless I am missing something.

CommonCents

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+1 to foobar

It's not as big of a deal as they make it out to be, but the utility company was pretty assholey in choosing to locate it where they did (rather than between the houses).  The company also doesn't have a clear reason why they won't move it - it isn't really explained well.  I'm assuming it's because they think "it costs money to fix the mistake" won't go over as well.

I'm not quite sure why it warrants such bashing here.  It likely does reduce the house value, albeit by a much smaller amount than claimed by the owners.
 
I wonder if the utility company screwed up and didn't pay attention - or if they somehow had pissed off the utility company and it was on purpose.

forummm

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Ha!   Only in Toronto (or Vancouver) is that a million dollar home.   And it never had a million dollar view.   I guess we should be calling our local hydro too - we have a pole to the side of our driveway, and we can see it from our MB window.  Oh, the horrors!

We live about 2 1/2 hours outside Toronto, and constantly shake our heads over housing prices there.   If I was going to spend that amount of money on a home, I'd be buying in Malibu or Hawaii.

In SF that is a 2 million dollar house:)

Yeah, but then you get to live in SF.

sleepyguy

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Nothing new,  although they are overeacting.  Toronto Hydro, Bell Canada, Rogers... All asshats.

Crazy isn't it what you get for $1 Mil.  Our 1500sqft bungalow in oakville (about 30mins outside of toronto) is about 600k... Crazy.

foobar

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+1 to foobar

It's not as big of a deal as they make it out to be, but the utility company was pretty assholey in choosing to locate it where they did (rather than between the houses).  The company also doesn't have a clear reason why they won't move it - it isn't really explained well.  I'm assuming it's because they think "it costs money to fix the mistake" won't go over as well.

I'm not quite sure why it warrants such bashing here.  It likely does reduce the house value, albeit by a much smaller amount than claimed by the owners.
 
I wonder if the utility company screwed up and didn't pay attention - or if they somehow had pissed off the utility company and it was on purpose.

The odds of this being to piss off the customers is about 0%. There were probably like 3 spots considered (I am sure there are regulations on placing them) and some said what the heck lets go with this one. If they picked one of the other 2, those people would be complaining (or maybe not. Some people just roll with the punches). Seriously look at how tiny that lot is and you can see their isn't a ton of room to move it closer to the property line without running into the sidewalk.

K-ice

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I can empathize with this couple.

Our townhouse had a pole about 10 feet in from the back and side of the property line. Almost right in the middle of our yard.  We bought the place that way and didn't even realize the property went all the way back until we looked at the survey in detail. No fence on the rear line &  renos on the property behind. This caused some nasty discussions with Neighbours who used the pole placement as "proof" of where our property ended.

Added paving stones on our turf & I planted scarlet runner beans up the pole and they went about 12 ft.

Why Hydro/cable guys etc.  couldn't at least put it on the property line I don't know.

lostamonkey

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Ha!   Only in Toronto (or Vancouver) is that a million dollar home.   And it never had a million dollar view.   I guess we should be calling our local hydro too - we have a pole to the side of our driveway, and we can see it from our MB window.  Oh, the horrors!

We live about 2 1/2 hours outside Toronto, and constantly shake our heads over housing prices there.   If I was going to spend that amount of money on a home, I'd be buying in Malibu or Hawaii.

In SF that is a 2 million dollar house:)

Yeah, but then you get to live in SF.

Interest rates decreased again today WTF. My stocks went up because the CAD$ went down but this is going to increase the unaffordabiliy of housing.

 

Wow, a phone plan for fifteen bucks!