Vancouver Condo Info

If you recently bought a condo in Vancouver this probably isn’t what you want to hear, but let’s just think about this situation realistically. Let’s pretend we get the ‘perfect’ scenario of constantly rising house prices. A young couple buys a condo to get on the property ladder and plans on starting a family and moving up to a larger home in a few years. When it’s time to sell, it’s a jackpot! Their condo has increased by $100 grand and they magically find a buyer at that price right away..

but wait. That home they wanted to buy is up $200 grand. Better hope their income has been increasing a lot faster than everyone else.

And that’s in the magic ‘balanced’ scenario where homes and condos increase at roughly the same percentage year over year. For a while here in Vancouver, house prices have lept up while condos have been mostly flat. The hypothetical move-up buyer is even more screwed.

Maybe it’s time to get some smaller furniture and turn the ‘den’ into a babies room, since we don’t seem to build many large family size apartments in Vancouver. It’s either houses or ‘junior’ one bedrooms with little in between.

Constantly increasing house prices means you only win if you sell and get out of town or sell and rent. The move-up buyer is screwed.

This post was submitted by John.

At least one person thinks that Global Recession MkII is about to cause Mr. Carney to slash interest rates in Canada. The prediction is a 75% drop from the rock bottom 1% to a rocker bottomer .25%

This could be really good news for the few people who’ve built up good credit and cash. I can think of at least two cases where debt levels rose so high that property prices were crashing while interest rates were dropping.

There are many places in that big country just to the south of us where you can buy a house for half what it cost a few years ago and you can lock in for ridiculously low mortgage rates. Japan also saw home prices dropping while interest rates fell. Heck it even happened here in Vancouver at the start of the eighties.

Only a moron would think that a housing market crash means no one is buying and everyone loses their job. Someones always buying, they just don’t always pay the same price.

Another warm sunny day in Ottawa. Here’s what I get for having given up on the “best place on earth”:

- more cultural activities
- people who are polite and say hi to you on the street
- neighbourhoods that feel like neighbourhoods
- ethnic diversity but not segregation
- no homeless people outside of downtown
- breakins are regarded as newsworthy
- much better job opportunities

I can break the RE market into three sectors:

- Gatineau, Quebec
Prices that are actually reasonable. $200K gets you this in the English-speaking community of Aylmer:

http://passerelle.centris.ca

- Generic Ottawa
Overpriced but if you really want to buy, you won’t become a debt slave. $300K gets you this in Silicon Valley North:

http://www.realtor.ca

- Trendy Ottawa
Definite bubble territory, but still more for your money than Vancouver. This $1.2 mil house in the Glebe likely would not rent for more than $3500/month:

http://www.realtor.ca

Compare with this rental:

http://ottawa.en.craigslist.ca

Or you can rent, there’s lot of quality stock, the landlords aren’t psychos and people don’t treat you like a leper.

Enjoy the rain.

This post was submitted by patriotz.

Zoocasa.com is now giving public access to home appraisal values for free.

Carefully guarded data on home appraisal values – once the private preserve of real-estate industry insiders – has been posted by a listings website backed by Rogers Communications Inc., which has tapped private databases to give people an instant estimate of a property’s value.

That’s from an article over at the Globe and Mail where they go on to talk about how moves like this weakens the position of Real Estate agents who’ve used privileged access to market information to justify their commissions.

The argument against such a move has always been that it impinges on personal rights to privacy, which isn’t such a long shot when the president of Zoocasa pitches it as a fun way to find out the value of friends and neighbors houses.

By entering any address in the country and providing a few additional details, such as the number of bedrooms and bathrooms in a house, a user can get an instant price estimate. It can give them a better idea of what their own house is worth – or something to gossip about around the dinner table as they discuss the net worth of friends, family members and neighbours.

“That’s one of the fun things about this service,” says Butch Langlois, president of Zoocasa. “It’s not necessarily your own home that you are interested in pricing.”

This post was submitted by Adam.

Remember when they dropped prices at the Olympic Village by up to 50% and presales buyers got upset? At least they didn’t trash the sales office.

..the properties owners have not even taken the delivery of the properties (as they were pre-sold), but the latest “group-buying” offered a 30% discount to latest buyers. The properties owners were angry because they haven’t even got the properties … As a result, they went to the sales office last Saturday to demand a refund for the amount they lost, and they damaged the sales office in the process.

Reminds me of that Gem out of the states when a developer slashed prices on a partly pre-sold development. “They promised us they’d never sell for less than market value!”

This post was submitted by laughlin.

Interesting bit over at the Globe and Mail: Nearly a third of our population is boomers who will be nearing retirement soon. Should they be cashing in on the housing boom and sell early to fund retirement?

This could be one of the most important questions that baby boomers deal with as they enter retirement, and the financial impact will be widely felt. Expect a slowing in today’s hyperactive housing market, but not right away.

“There’s this idea that when the kids leave home, boomers will downsize,” said demographer David Foot, author of the influential book Boom, Bust & Echo and professor emeritus of economics at the University of Toronto. “Well, that doesn’t happen. You hold on to the family house, probably into your 70s because you want grandkids to come and visit.”

So figure on having about 10 years before a downsizing bulge alters the balance of sellers and buyers in our housing market. Should retiring baby boomers wait that long? Mr. Foot’s analysis certainly doesn’t suggest a bright future for house prices.

Read the full article here.

Another news clip from Greenhorn AKA SethM.

May favourite clip at 4:50: a bartender living in a downtown condo bought by her parents. She pays them rent. Horror, you say? Apparently not: “It’s not that simple. They’re pretty strict. They’re just like a bank.” LOL We’ll see!

Greenhorn has recorded this Global piece aired last night on families moving away from BC due to the high price of housing:

Summary: families moving away due to the high cost of housing.

The TSX index fell by about 450 points

The USD-CAD fell to 0.97

The GoC 5 year bond fell to 1.286

So given all we know about real estate investing and price-rent ratios to determine fundamental value, perhaps a few can chime in on what they think is going on in Canadian and world markets and how current valuations align with future earnings.

Here’s a couple of million dollar houses.

This first one is in West Palm Beach. It’s a modest 6,898 sq. foot 5 bedroom home on 2.5 acres with a guest house and five car garage:

But for just $50k more you can get this beauty in South East Vancouver, conveniently close to Burnaby. It’s a 1958 sq. foot old timer with a basement and all windows are double glazed:

This post was submitted by Eddie.