You’d think that in a region that’s running out of land for new housing, policymakers and investors would look to the water. Vancouverites have, after all, lived on the waterways since before the city was incorporated. According to one float-home real-estate agent, the demand is there but the developers are not.

“We have a proposal, a small little marina with just a few float homes,” Greg Klemke said of a partnership he’s formed with a developer. “The municipality [New Westminster] sent us 19 things that needed to be done [including submitting reports by a biologist, interfacing with various environmental agencies, and building public-access infrastructure].”¦You throw that at the average developer, and he says, ”˜Nah. I’ll just stick to building houses.’ ”

B.C. has about 500 floating homes. These are not quirky live-aboards, but comfortable, well-built houses that happen to float on water. Most of them are in the Lower Mainland, at eight marinas in places from North Vancouver to Langley.

Klemke would love to see this niche market grow. It’s a romantic lifestyle, he said, and can be relatively affordable. He’s recently sold float homes for as little as $20,000 for a one-bedroom and den. That price doesn’t include a water-lot rental, which starts at around $700 per month. (Klemke figures a buyer could get into the market with a good float home for about $1,200 a month, including financing, lot rental, taxes, and insurance.)

He also noted a growing “sexiness factor” associated with float homes; where in the past a float home might stay on the market for months, the more affordable ones now get snapped up over a weekend. So why aren’t there more of them available? Besides developer shyness, Klemke noted that municipalities can be wary of rezoning for more—for historical reasons.

At a few marinas, he recalled, “a bunch of float homes just showed up one day, and the municipality said, ”˜Okay, okay, just stop. Okay, you’re grandfathered, but no more,’ ” he said. “They’re not even legally zoned for it. And a lot of marinas are”¦just dumping their crap into the river.”

If this unregulated, environmentally iffy situation is float-home hell, heaven would have to be the Canoe Pass, in Ladner. That’s where Chris Scurr, president of the Floating Home Association Canada-Pacific (www.floathome
pacific.com/), lives. It took 10 years, he recalled, to get the municipality to finally approve the 43-home Canoe Pass Village in 1984, but he
believes it’s the world’s premier marine community, both environmentally and structurally.

“The view from that house [his] is absolutely stunning,” he told the Straight. “You look out over the mountains. You got nature on your doorstep with seals and otters and beavers, swans and ducks, eagles who have a nest across from that house.”

All Canoe Pass homes are connected to a private sewage-treatment plant, so there’s no dumping into the river. With reconstituted dry wall, no old-growth timber used, a river-based heating and cooling system, and extra insulation, Scurr’s 2,500-square-foot ultramodern house is as planet-friendly as he could imagine. Living in the community also comes with a price tag: on the market now are a four-bedroom home for $639,000, and a two-bedroom for $659,000.

Scurr is clear about what FHAC-P does. It’s an advocacy group for owners, he said, and they don’t actively lobby for more marine-developer-friendly municipal regulations. He also admits that, even in Canoe Pass, “nothing’s perfect.”

“We’ve got siltation issues,” he said. “The houses at very low tide often go aground. And that’s okay if you go down flat. But sometimes there’s a hump in the mud so you go down at an angle, which is uncomfortable, and it puts strain on your homes.”

Could float homes solve the Lower Mainland’s housing-affordability crisis? Klemke believes folks should buy float homes for the lifestyle, rather than the price. Still, he said, with the hot land-based market, the water is starting to attract price-conscious buyers for the first time.

“People used to phone me and say, ”˜How much is moorage?’ ” Klemke recalled. “I’d say $700. I’d get hung up on. Now I hear, ”˜Hmmm, well, that’s pretty reasonable.’ And that’s because the market’s gone crazy. There’s the romantics, the people who buy float homes for the lifestyle. And now I guess we are getting some people who get in them for affordability.”