Langley Real Estate

The folks at the Sonnet development call him "the inspector." When they broke ground at the new-home project in Langley last summer, Guenther Kradepohl was watching. And ever since, the 76-year-old with two decades of construction-firm ownership behind him has made a weekly visit to the building site.

He wasn't there in any professional capacity -- he's a buyer.

Recently widowed, Kradepohl wanted to downsize when he discovered Sonnet.

"We had a beautiful rancher in Langley but it became too much for me to live alone there and maintain it. So I decided to go into a townhouse or a condo," he says.

The Sonnet home that suited Kradepohl's taste is a second-storey, two-bedroom, two-bath apartment with a clear view of the North Shore mountains.

''Inspector'' or not, he likes what he sees both inside and out at the four-storey project.

"Everything they do is precise and good, and the quality they have here is much better than any other construction project," Kradepohl reports.

An assessment worth sharing because it comes from a man whose life experience infuses it with credibility, it is also worthy of a project that sales representative Dawne Edwards champions as "the first luxury condominium residence to break ground in the Langley area."

"The quality of construction that's going into this project from the ground breaking to the finishings in the suite is state of the art and of a calibre that really hasn't made itself present in the Langley marketplace," she says.

Cast-iron plumbing and copper will be used instead of plastic, for example. Homes will be soundproofed with acoustic mat.

"You could stand there and yell as loud as you wanted, and you couldn't hear anything underneath you," WestStone Properties president Dale Regehr says.

Inside, expansive windows allow natural light to spill into the living spaces while contemporary features like granite countertops and stone-tile backsplashes provide an impression of an upscale, urban apartment.

"What we're trying to basically do is bring a downtown lifestyle to a very diverse group of people - young professionals up to folks that are retired and downsizing," sales rep Edwards comments.

How diverse? Jessica Matlock, 24, and her boyfriend Wesley Phillips, 23, are among widower Kradepohl's new neighbours. The Langley-raised couple will move from their respective parents' homes to Sonnet in the fall.

"It's the biggest cheque I've ever written in my life!" laughs an excited Matlock, now a Sonnet sales assistant, although not when she and Phillips bought.

The couple shopped in Surrey, Langley, Aldergrove and Abbotsford before stumbling upon the display suite for Sonnet. Unfortunately, it was closed at the time, so Matlock peeked through the windows.

Although she could only see the kitchen, it was love at first sight.

"I just knew," she said.

Within days, she and Phillips had closed the deal.

Matlock particularly loves the open-concept plan, in which the living, kitchen and dining spaces are all defined yet merged.

"If you have people over entertaining, then you're not feeling left out if you have to be slaving away doing the cooking and dishes and whatnot," she says