View of Kirschner Mountain development lands.
Image Credit: From Kirschner Mountain web page
January 22, 2021 - 6:30 PM
The sale of the Kirschner Mountain housing development to a Manitoba buyer for $22 million may be the largest property transaction ever in the Okanagan.
Plus, it allows a pioneering Okanagan family to finally retire.
“It’s the biggest sale ever through the MLS system,” Max Carbone, owner of Century 21 Assurance, which sold the property, told iNFOnews.ca today, Jan. 20. “There may have been private transactions that weren’t listed on the MLS system, but it was definitely the largest one that has ever gone through the Multiple Listing System.”
That system includes commercial as well as residential properties.
The Kirschner Mountain sale, which was finalized Friday, surpassed the $20.5 million price a waterfront property sold for a couple of years ago, Carbone said.
The sale includes 190 acres of what was originally a 640-acre Kirschner family farm and ranch in the Black Mountain area of Kelowna.
In the early 2000s, the three Kirschner brothers (Don, Allan and Gord) got approval from the City of Kelowna to develop 329 acres of their land, about one-third of which was for parkland. They have since sold 241 lots with 19 more coming on stream, Allan Kirschner told iNFOnews.ca.
Another 290 single-family lots have been approved along with 350-400 multi-family units, he said.
“We’ve been looking to sell it since we took it over from our folks in 1971,” Kirschner said. “We all had different ideas of what we wanted to do with it.”
What they did do was work as a family to develop the land but, as they’ve gotten older, they looked at making a change.
“I’m turning 73 this year and my older brother (Don) is 79,” Allan said. “How long do you want to go on for? I want to smell some roses before I’m pushing them up.”
Working as a farmer and land developer is more than a full-time job, he said, noting that most of the sales he’s completed had to be done after normal working hours.
And there have been tough times.
“We had lot of stuff to pay for,” Kirschner said. ”We had to pay for reservoirs and a lot of offsite stuff over the years. It keeps you broke for a long time. You don’t want to get in too far. You don’t want to squander your money because, when’s the next recession coming? The recession of ’08 hit us hard because we had come on with a bunch of lots and registration and the market drops 30 per cent.”
The market dropped again with COVID-19 last year before picking up later in the year.
Now he’s looking forward to rediscovering some of the fishing lakes in the area that he’s not been able to get to for many years and doing some long-neglected chores.
He’ll stay on for a time breaking in the new owner and will keep on doing some farming and raising pigs.
Carbone, on the other hand, won’t be retiring on the commission he made off the sale, a commission that will be shared with Mark Boppre, who co-listed the property with him.
“There’s a fair compensation but, a lot of times, on larger transactions, they take a long time,” Carbone said. “They’re a lot more work. They’re more complicated. There’s a lot more marketing, contacting and business activities required.”
This deal took a year and a half to complete since the property was first listed in September 2019. There was another solid offer last spring that fell through because the prospective buyer’s business was hard hit by COVID-19, he said.
What's the best part about closing a $22 million real estate deal?
"I was very happy for the family, more than anything else,” Carbone said. “There are three brothers and their wives – good people – who have really owned and managed this property since 1958. It’s a life-long partnership for them. They’re super nice people and I think it was a big relief for them.”
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News from © iNFOnews, 2021