Bob Mackin
Step right up, step right up! Christy and Richie’s Second Mortgage Emporium is now open for business! The not-so-sublime subprimes! Affordability the worst? Come see BC First!
The widely panned B.C. Home Owner Mortgage and Equity Partnership began taking applications on Jan. 16 from those seeking help to buy their first house.
The BC Liberal government is refusing to release the business case for now and is audaciously threatening to charge freedom of information requesters money to see whether a cost-benefit analysis was actually conducted for the $700 million-plus vote-buying program.
Coleman marked the occasion with a photo op at a mortgage store in the Vancouver-Fairview NDP riding, but Clark wasn’t there. Afraid to answer the inevitable questions about the unflattering New York Times report on banana republic-style political fundraising in B.C., perhaps?
Clark instead marked the occasion by Tweeting and Facebooking a photograph of the first house she owned with Mark Marissen (it wasn’t all hers), back when they were a political power couple. The San Remo Drive house in Port Moody hosted many of the couple’s notorious toga parties back in the day and was home of Marissen’s Burrard Communications lobbying company before it moved downtown. It was also one of the places where the RCMP showed up after the 2003 Legislature raid, because Mounties were probing the events surrounding the corrupt privatization of BC Rail.
Clark moved to Vancouver before her failed 2005 bid to win the NPA nomination for mayor and settled in a house south of Vancouver city hall. It was recently assessed at $2.24 million (up from $1.73 million a year earlier), but Clark no longer calls it home.
Her current abode in Dunbar has the name Nevin Sangha on the title. Sangha is a close business associate of Clark friend/Vancouver Whitecaps’ owner Greg Kerfoot. The Major 
League Soccer club plays at public-owned B.C. Place Stadium and trains at a University of B.C. facility that scored a $12 million taxpayer subsidy from the B.C. Liberal cabinet.
Real estate agent Tanya Oliver (a Clark leadership campaign volunteer in 2011) caused more than 30-seconds of commotion on Facebook after she brokered the April 2016 sale for $3.688 million — $200,000 over asking. The assessment of the Blueshore-mortgaged house skyrocketed almost 37% from $2.505 million to $3.426 million, year-over-year.
Clark’s spokespeople claim she pays between $5,500 and $6,500 a month in rent.
Last year, Clark and brother Bruce bought their Galiano Island vacation property out of a trust. It is now worth $720,000.
Back to that humble Port Moody house that inspired Clark’s Blue Monday moment of nostalgia.
According to PropertyInsight.ca, Clark and Marissen sold it May 19, 2004 for $380,000, up from the $250,000 paid Dec. 22, 1996. In 1991, the year the BC Liberals became the opposition to the governing NDP, it was worth $202,000.
What is it worth now?
BC Assessment shows the San Remo two-storey sold in January 2015 for $688,000 and the valuation jumped, year-over-year, from $718,000 to $975,000. A whopping $257,000 (or 35.8%) increase.
If the house hit the market today, it would be far out of reach for any first-time buyer approved under Clark and Coleman’s BC HOME Partnership gimmick.
That’s because the ceiling for applicants is $750,000.
