50 Years of Whistler Real Estate

This year marks the 50^th year of Whistler as a ski resort. Unsurprisingly this Golden anniversary will see a series of event and media pieces celebrating our history and reviewing the evolution of Whistler to its current status as North America’s Number 1 mountain resort.

Following recent interviews regarding Whistler’s 50^th anniversary, and how business and the real estate business has changed over time, I began to wonder what is the single biggest change that has occurred? And furthermore how did this change come about and where has it left the Whistler real estate market today?

Clearly this is a topic that will not be fully covered in a 400-word blog and in particular, changes relating to the envisioning and development of the Village have already been extensively covered by others (the Whistler museum is a great place to start if you want to find out more). As such, I will try to cover a few other areas that I feel are important and interesting in a series of posts over the next few weeks and months.

A town in transition

To start let me say that I have been fortunate to have been a part of the community since 1970, firstly as a weekender with my family, and then as a full time member of the community. I have been working in the real estate business in Whistler as salesperson, manager, owner, and as an active participant in the business community since 1980.

During that time there has been a lot of change both structurally and philosophically. The community has evolved from a tiny seasonal community of self-reliant, individualistic, skiing enthusiasts with a single mountain; to the world class, two-mountain resort community with a full time population of 10,000 we know today.

The children of some of our earliest residents are now raising families of their own in Whistler, and the ‘business’ of Whistler is now a serious full time endeavour, as compared to being a vehicle to enjoy another day on the ski hill.

Moving forwards

The evolution of the real estate business in Whistler has really got two stages, pre-village and post village. There is no doubt that the decision to turn the local garbage dump into a mountain resort village changed both what we built and sold, but also who would become buyers and sellers in our marketplace, and how we as realtors handled the process.

In the next couple of posts I will try to comment on the evolution of form and function on our built structures, along with the process, the customer, the technology, and finally the vision of the community.

I would be most interested in hearing your thoughts on the topic however. What do you think is the biggest changes in the real estate business and/or business in general in Whistler? Let me know at patrick@wrec.com and I look forward to hearing from you.