Craig B. Rushton

By Chad Skelton, Vancouver Sun

Realtor Bob Rennie, known by many as Vancouver's "condo king," may have to get used to another nickname: the prince of parking tickets.

Using parking-violation data for the past five years, The Vancouver Sun compiled a list of the 10 most-ticketed licence plates in the city.

Nine of those plates belong to commercial vehicles such as armoured cars and parcel-delivery trucks, which often find themselves dinged for stopping where they shouldn't.

Only one of the 10 is a personal vehicle: Bob Rennie's luxury car.

Since Jan. 1, 2004, Rennie has racked up 204 parking tickets.

Almost all of the tickets are for sitting at an expired meter and more than a third were received in the block where Rennie's office is located.

In fact, 37 of the tickets were written at the exact same meter: the one right in front of Rennie's office.

"It's embarrassing," Rennie conceded. "But I think it's just a cost of being busy."

Rennie said he doesn't even drive the ticketed car to work that often.

He said he couldn't recall how much he paid for it (the retail price is upwards of $150,000).

Rennie said that on the rare days he drives the car to work, he finds it convenient to park right by his office and usually pays by phone for the first couple of hours.

But then he gets busy with meetings or phone calls and forgets to plug the meter.

City records show Rennie has paid all his tickets and he says he never gives the parking officers who ticket him a hard time.

"The guys are doing their jobs," he said. "I don't get upset when I get a ticket."

Rennie refused to say exactly how much he has spent on parking tickets -- other than it's "too much" -- but, assuming he paid each ticket within 34 days, the total bill is somewhere in the neighbourhood of $6,000.

Rennie's not convinced he has spent that much more on tickets than he would have if he'd parked in a downtown lot.

"If you just broke it down in business terms, if I kept a parking spot in a Triple A location, in Wall Centre or at Bentall Centre, it would far exceed -- or be equal to -- the sporadic tickets," he said. "And [you have] the convenience of parking exactly where you want."

Nonetheless, Rennie said he'll be more careful about his parking in the future.

"I think that I should just start dialing up that number and paying for the parking," he said, then added jokingly: "[Or] maybe I should negotiate with the city and see if I can buy that meter."