The Village of Delia put out an offer many people couldn’t refuse. Over 650 people to be exact.
That is how many phone calls Dennis Thordarson received on Saturday alone after the village announced they had seven lots for sale for just $10 on Friday. He said that didn’t include text messages and emails that were also sent.
“It was a nightmare (but) it was a good one though.”
Thordarson, one of the organizers of the project, said he had phone calls from all over the world.
“We got phone calls from China, Taiwan, Israel, Pakistan, England, Germany, I’d say 50 per cent of the states in the US, every province in Canada, the Yukon.”
“It is amazing how many people are looking to get out of the cities. The two most common things that almost everyone mentioned were (that it would be) safe and secure and a good school,” he said.
There were a few conditions that went along with the $10 price though.
“What we asked of them was that they start construction within 90 days; they put a $1000 deposit down and upon completion of their home being built we would give $990 back and keep the $10 for the lot. The only thing we wouldn’t allow was mobile trailers to come in, it had to be a structure on a foundation,” Thordarson told the Mail.
Another conditions was that no developers were allowed to come in and just buy the lots.
“We thought if a developer came in and bought all the lots we had available they could sit on them for another five or six years before they did any developing. The lots would just be empty and totally out of our control then, where if we sold them to an actual family, someone looking to build a home, then we would get a response a lot faster.”
“We didn’t want someone coming in here and buying cheap, and then expecting to sit back for a few years and then make a big dollar on it, we wanted families,” he said.
“We wanted to increase our population. Small rural villages aren’t growing that much anymore so we decided to put a plan together and see if we could move some people here to help secure our school and the businesses we do have here,” he said. “We didn’t want to become a plaque on the side of the road that said ‘Delia was once here.’”
Thordarson said the village is “looking forward to about eight new families coming to town.”
A friend of Thoradson’s, who lives in Manitoba, helped to put this plan together. They worked together for about a year and a half.
“Once we got a hold of CTV to come out and it was on the news, things just went like wildfire,” he said.
He said this type of response was “not at all” what he expected. “I never dreamt it would get the response that it did.”