Buyer profile: The Sapperton in New Westminster

Fiona Li’s homeownership plans started earlier than most. In fact, by the time she was a 15-year-old attending high school at Prince of Wales in Vancouver, she had set herself a clearly defined goal: buy her own home as soon as she graduated from university. She immediately got a job at Swiss Chalet and within a couple of years, she’d saved $14,000 toward her goal.

Like most first-time buyers, Fiona always knew that the most difficult part of buying a home would be coming up with the down payment. So despite the temptation to use her nest egg toward tuition and rent, she kept her money squirrelled away while completing her degree at Simon Fraser University. When she graduated at age 23, she immediately began looking for a home to purchase.

“I just didn’t want to keep renting and paying someone else’s mortgage any more – I wanted to own some sort of property so that the money I’d saved was working for me,” she says.

As a long time fan of The Sapperton neighbourhood in New Westminster, Fiona soon zeroed in on Brewery District and to her delight, discovered that the $14,000 she’d earned as a teenager was exactly the amount she now needed to make a five per cent down payment on a one-bedroom apartment with den. Today Fiona works two jobs and is well on her way to saving the balance of the down payment she’ll need in two years when The Sapperton completes.

“You don’t need a million dollars to buy a home,” she says emphatically. “Maybe people just aren’t looking into what’s out there enough or they don’t want to settle for an apartment even though they’re already renting one. If you’re looking for a house you probably do need a million, but I don’t think people realize there are a lot of affordable options available. I’m paying $261,900 for my home and my mortgage will be about the same as the rent I’m paying now.”