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Someone is selling a house in Vancouver for $5,000, but you have to find it a home

It's a house without a home.

One house in Vancouver is selling well below what one might expect for a home in Vancouver, but there's a catch.

You have to move it.

The one-bedroom cottage has sat at the corner of Alma Street and Cameron for nearly 100 years; it was built in 1926, according to BC Assessment. Oddly, it actually sits across the road from the city's oldest building, the Hastings Mill Store, which itself was barged to Kitsilano from the waterfront in Gastown.

A Facebook ad for the structure notes that the land isn't for sale, just the building.

"(It's) close to water with no power lines above. Able to barge to your own location," explains the ad.

The house, it adds, has cute character and fir floors. Photos inside show a simple home just under 600 sq. feet.

BC Assessment's assessment of the property suggests that the site is worth $3.83 million, though only $10,700 of that is for the house. The property last sold in 2021 for $4 million.

The selling and moving of older homes and buildings is becoming more common. It can be cheaper than building a new home, and is less wasteful than destroying the structuring and tossing the materials.

Recently a yellow schoolhouse built in Kitsilano in 1912 was moved to a site with the Squamish First Nation. The former home of local businessman and billionaire Jim Pattison was sold for just $1.75.

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