[URBAN NOTE] "Is Saint John, New Brunswick, the place to be for inexpensive real estate?"

[rfmcdonald]

CBC News' Julia Wright reports from the New Brunswick city of Saint John, where real estate can be astoundingly inexpensive.

Not every house hunter would see the potential in a partially renovated, century old, long uninhabited house in Saint John, N.B.'s old north end.

But Daniel Gable, 36, isn't a typical buyer.

Gable, a musician and former tree planter, became frustrated with real estate prices in his former home of Squamish, B.C., where he said the price of a single-family home starts around $500,000.

He started "searching around the country looking for — not the cheapest home I could find, although that's what it ended up being — but for an affordable house, basically."

The search led him to Saint John's old north end.

Looking online, Gable saw an old red house on Victoria Street listed at a mere $10,000 — a price, he said, that was too good to pass up.