The Blog

In Metro Vancouver, the real estate prices are moving up for a third straight month and it is picking up steam. The media is keying on multiple offers and units selling above listing price. Though the inventory remains low, the sales volume is picking up.It is only 15.6% below the 10-year April average. Note the year started with sales 42.9% below the 10-year January average. If prices continue to increase, there will be more people willing to put their property up for sale. Sales-to-active listings ratio is a measure of supply and demand. As it is increasing, pricing pressure is increasing and when it is above 20% for a sustained period, it is expected that the price will move up. As you can see from

The First Home Savings Account (FHSA) is a new account the Federal Government created to help people save money to buy a home. It is better than the RRSP and the TFSA, because that money is NEVER taxed. And the growth is never taxed. With the RRSP, every dollar withdrawn is taxed as income. And the money inside your TFSA has already been taxed. Because money not used for the purpose of buying a home can be rolled over to the RRSP tax-free, people who don’t plan on buying a home can use this as an extension to the RRSP. Even though the FHSA is better than the RRSP, if you have the money you can contribute to both. And you can withdraw money from

In Metro Vancouver, the real estate prices are moving up for a second straight month while sales volume remains low. The sales number for March is 42.5% below last March but only 28.4% below the 10-year average.Remember the sales were down 42.9% and 33% below the 10-year average for January and February respectively. So it is doing better on a 10-year average basis, but sales volume is still really low. The prices have gone up as you can see by the table below. The sales-to-active listings ratio used to gauge price trends have also moved up. All of them are above 20% which indicates pricing pressure upwards. It is actually surprising how much prices jumped month over month. What seems to be playing out is

Canadian seniors now owe 6.7 billion in reverse mortgage debt. And it is rising quickly. A reverse mortgage is a loan you take out against your home where you don’t need to make monthly payments. The accrued interest is added to your principal amount. This along with the fact that the interest rate is higher than your typical mortgage or home equity line of credit (HELOC) makes this type of loan more of a last resort as it will eat away at the equity in your home faster. Though you do have the option of paying the interest and preventing the loan from increasing in size. These loans are geared towards the elderly as it does not require proof of income and generally you need

Title fraud and mortgage fraud has been in the news the past month. There were several articles that highlighted the increasing number of title fraud and mortgage fraud in Canada. Title fraud is when the fraudster sells your house and the title of the house is transferred to a third party. Mortgage fraud is when the fraudster uses your house as collateral for a mortgage loan. The easiest targets are homes that are paid off and the owners are out of the country.  The two cases that were successful in BC involved owners who were out of the country. The fraudsters were able to manipulate property management company to help them fool the realtors and lawyers.   In BC, the record at the land titles

The Metro Vancouver real estate sales in February were 33% below the 10-year February average. Remember January’s sales were 42.9% below the 10-year average. So while the sales remain low, the activity is picking up relatively speaking. This is reflected in the stronger sales-to-active listings ratios and the corresponding month-over-month price increases in all three categories. Sales-to-active listings ratios are 16.8% for detached homes, 30.1% for townhomes and 25.8% for apartments. From the chart below you can see that it is a significant reversal from the recent trend. Townhomes had the biggest reversal in the sales-to-active listings ratio and translated into the biggest month-over-month price increase: 1.8%. This is followed by apartments at 1.6% and 0.7% for detached. New listings are 36.6% below last February’s, but the total

There were quite a few articles written about the foreign buyers’ ban on residential property. It is a 2 year program designed to protect real estate price increases due to foreign buyers’ participation. To me, it is a little too late. The addition of the foreign buyer’s tax has already slowed the purchases and the high interest rate has killed the market. Also there are a bunch of exemptions that make it more ineffectual. International students, temporary residents, people with temporary work permits, refugee claimants and someone with a Canadian spouse are all exemptions. By the time the market turns around, the program would be over. It will be interesting to see if it will be extended. We have enough Canadians and new immigrants to

The real estate market in Vancouver started slow in January. In fact, 42.9% below the 10-year January sales average. New listings are slowly trickling in. 20.9% less than January of last year, but because of the slow sales, the total inventory is 32.1% higher than last January. The sales-to-active listings ratio continues to head down pointing to weaker pricing power for all categories. However, townhomes and apartments have made price gains relative to last month as shown on the table below. It is a bit of an anomaly. Maybe it is due to some of those multiple offer situations I heard about anecdotally. However, the general theme is down. From the Canadian Real Estate Association to the BC Real Estate Association to the Great Vancouver

Currently housing affordability in Vancouver is the worst since in 1981 when the mortgage rate peaked at 20%.  You know how the government promises affordable housing and whenever a project is finished, it doesn’t seem that affordable. Have you wondered how much a property would cost if we took out the exorbitant builder’s profit and all the fees the government charges? I am going to try to figure this out from some readily available data and see how affordable housing can be. From a study out this year by CoConstruct, a construction management software company, the average profit margin for a builder in Canada is 13.2%. Did you expect it to be higher? I was a bit surprised, especially when you compare it to government