Willoughby Heights Langley: The Most Sought After Family Neighbourhood

What you get

New housing at every price point. Willoughby is the largest concentration of newer townhomes in the Fraser Valley. Three-bedroom townhomes dominate, with condos in the Willoughby Town Centre and Yorkson areas and detached homes on smaller lots along the quieter streets. If you want a home built in the last ten years with a warranty still running, this is where most of the inventory is.

Schools built for the growth. R.E. Mountain Secondary, with its International Baccalaureate programme, and a cluster of newer elementary and middle schools including Yorkson Creek Middle, Peter Ewart Middle and Donna Gabriel Robins Elementary. Langley School District has been building here steadily, and still playing catch-up in places. Check capacity for your child's grade.

Amenities within the neighbourhood. Willoughby Town Centre on 208 Street for groceries and daily shopping, the Langley Events Centre for hockey, concerts and kids' programming, and Carvolth Exchange for express buses. The 196 Street SkyTrain station on the Surrey Langley line will land on the western edge.

What you give up

Honesty is more useful than a brochure here. Willoughby is a construction zone and will be for years. Expect cranes, excavators, closed lanes and dust near any active phase. Traffic on 200 Street and 208 Street at school pick-up is slow and getting slower as the neighbourhood fills in. Lots are small and the homes are close together; privacy in a backyard is not what it is in Walnut Grove or Brookswood. And because so much of the housing is new strata, you are buying into young strata corporations with small contingency funds and, sometimes, builder deficiencies still being worked through.

How I evaluate a Willoughby townhome

• Read the depreciation report and two years of minutes. Water ingress, parking disputes and special levies show up in the minutes long before they show up in the listing.
• Check what is zoned around you. The Township's neighbourhood plans say what can be built on the empty lot across the street. A view of a field today may be a four-storey building in two years.
• Compare resale, not just presale. There are now enough five to ten year old townhomes here to see how specific complexes have held value. Some have outperformed, some have not.
• Test the commute at the real time. From Willoughby to Highway 1 at 200 Street can be fifteen minutes at 8 a.m.

Willoughby versus South Surrey

Many of my clients are choosing between a new townhome in Willoughby and an older one in Grandview Heights or near 152 Street. Willoughby usually wins on the house: newer, more bedrooms, a warranty. South Surrey usually wins on location: the beach, Highway 99, the Semiahmoo and Earl Marriott catchments, and a settled neighbourhood that is finished growing. Which one is right depends on whether the house or the setting matters more to how you live. I will give you my honest read on both, and I sell in both.

The short version

• The largest supply of newer family townhomes in the Fraser Valley, with new schools and a town centre to match.
• A SkyTrain station coming at 196 Street and good express bus access from Carvolth.
• Trade-offs: years more construction, growing traffic, small lots, young strata corporations.
• Do the strata homework and check the neighbourhood plan for the lots around you.

If Willoughby is on your list, send me the complex names you are considering. I will tell you what their resales and their strata records say.