The price of paradise: $30,000 a month

So you didn't inherit a sprawling lakefront compound or mountain retreat. This summer, if you have a cool $30,000 or $40,000 to spend, you can rent the Canadian cottage dream for a month.

The demand for high-end rentals in the playgrounds of the moneyed classes across the country has been increasing every year, according to real-estate agents who cater to the very wealthy.

Vacation spending has been fuelled in part by a sharp rise in the incomes of the wealthiest Canadians and steep growth in their personal assets, according to recent figures from Statistics Canada.

In British Columbia, high-end renters are lured more by the outdoors than the celebrity factor. The totem pole house being rented by Mr. van Mook's agency, with its gourmet kitchen, hot tubs and multiple bedrooms, draws mostly Canadians and U.S. visitors in the summer, many of them still spending money from their dot-com cash-outs. This crowd likes to rock-climb, mountain-bike and hike when they're not gazing at the view.

The unfettered summer experience is so in demand in some parts of the country that, if you don't get your chequebook out early, you'll be out of luck.  "If you don't rent by March or April, you don't get one," he says of properties that can go for $40,000 or more. "There's no use looking today. Some do it at the end of the season the year before."

Those looking to rent are executives "in any corporation, from vice-president on up. Money is not an object."

The Globe & Mail

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