South Victoria

3 neighbourhoods along the Juan de Fuca shore and the hill above it, and the most expensive ground in the city. Fairfield runs from downtown's edge to the Dallas Road cliffs with Beacon Hill Park in the middle of it; Gonzales holds the large lots above Ross Bay; Rockland is the estate district, built on Dunsmuir coal money and now full of subdivided mansions and consulates.

Two things to check before falling for an address here. The first is that a great deal of the stock is pre-1960 — 63% of Rockland's dwellings and 42% of Fairfield's were built before then — which means knob-and-tube, oil tanks, perimeter drains and heritage designations are live questions, not hypotheticals. The second is that the walk to the water is often further than the map suggests, because the streets do not run straight down the hill.