Lynn and Dave become citiots

Friends of ours live in Collingwood year round. I met Mariane when she worked in Toronto. Mariane was from Creemore, home of the beer (I'm amazed at how many Torontonians don't know there really is a Creemore) and moved back to the area for love. She reconnected with Charlie, her high school sweetheart, and they married a few years ago. This past winter, my husband and I visited them several times. We like it up there. On New Year's Eve, my husband Dave and I heard a new term for Torontonians who buy vacation property "north of 7". They're called "citiots".

Dave and I loved the term, but never dreamed we'd become part of that pack. We had discussed perhaps eventually buying property in Wakefield, QC, near my best friend, Leslie and her husband Brian. But when my mother decided to give my brother Jim and I our share of the proceeds from the sale of her home, owning a vacation property shifted from a concept to a possibility. Money was cheap to borrow. We started trolling MLS listing on the Internet.

We soon realized that Wakefield wasn't a practical option. Wakefield is about five hours from Toronto, and we wouldn't be able to get there very often. And there was the nagging issue of maintenance. Who would take care of the place when we weren't around? We couldn't ask Brian to do that for us could we? And, the kicker: real estate in Wakefield wasn't the bargain we thought it would be!

Dave and I spent yet another weekend with our friends Mariane and Charlie up in Collingwood. On the way back to Toronto, we drove past a converted schoolhouse that Dave had been interested in before he met me. It sported a fresh "SOLD" sign.

If only we had known that it was for sale! Dave was now in a position to afford the place. I had a more than decent down payment at my fingertips. We shifted our attention away from Wakefield, onto Collingwood and Creemore.

Our initial thought was to purchase a Victorian property in Collingwood's downtown core. I pictured us stumbling back to our charming, character filled, beautifully decorated home after an evening of great food, great wine and even greater conversation at Mariane and Charlie's.

Brent, our Toronto real estate agent, put us on to Peter, an old friend of his who relocated to Collingwood. And so began our search for the perfect second home.

We gave Peter our wish list. The initial phone conversation centered around that elusive converted schoolhouse, but we also mentioned our desire to own something older, with character. Peter showed us a variety of properties that ranged from converted schoolhouses (two of them) to converted barns (on ninety acres!), to a seven-bedroom converted general store (too close to the highway), to a five-thousand square foot Grand Home (the nicest house in town - the town was "an armpit" as accurately described by Mariane), to a log home (right on Highway 26 - the noise!) to ... a condo in Lighthouse Point, where Peter himself lived.

A condo? No way! Dave hated it on principle. The unit was very nice, well decorated, well laid out, but a ground floor unit. I liked it, but had to agree about the ground floor aspect. We couldn't live with the perceived lack of privacy a first floor unit would offer.

I e-mailed my friend Leslie the details of our house-hunting excursion, complete with pictures and impressions. When I mentioned the condo, I was almost apologetic. I stressed the low maintenance aspect of owning a condo -- the turnkey, "lock the door and walk away", worry-free aspect of having such a property. She promptly responded with "why would you want to spend your weekends shovelling a driveway or mowing a lawn?" By golly, she was right!

Time for a second trip up north, this time with a dedicated condo focus. Peter is very good at his job. He showed us a variety of units on the property, ranging from wall-papered shrines to the year 1989, to hideously overpriced brand-new waterfront units, to a slightly older but upgraded two-storey waterfront unit, to its unrenovated (and very, very pink) sibling. Peter cleverly positioned the unit he knew was going to become our home in sixth place, out of nine possibilities.

My first impression was disappointment. I thought I would fall in love with the unit the minute I walked into the place. I didn't, but I have to admit, the one aspect I did fall in love with was the view. That view! I saw it through the windows on either side of the doorway. The marble floor was nice, but colder in appearance than I would have liked. And the granite countertop was darker than I would chose, but okay. And, horror of horrors, it had an electric stove!

Yes, I know I don't cook much, but I do like a gas stove. For me, it's more about the cachet of having a gas cooker than cooking with gas. After all, my preferred kitchen appliance is the microwave. Hmm, would this prove an effective negotiating tool?

We left the unit, with its three bedrooms, three bathrooms, two decks, two levels (second and third floors, yay, no ground floor worries!) and moved on to the other viewings. Yet, we did come back to this one at the end of the day.

We requested a second viewing a few days later. Within the month, we would join the twenty-five percent of the population that leaves Toronto every weekend. We would become citiots.