The Vancouver condo market remains quite strong with an active sales to listings ratio over 25 (sellers market). Prices are slowly rising again and inventory remains low. Especially in the quality 1 & 2 bedroom units I like to get my clients into. Buyers need to remember.. They are two worlds of Vancouver condos. The good stuff in quality well run strata’s that are priced right, in good locations that will maximize your long term appreciation.... and then everything else. In my opinion the good quality units make up less than 10% of the total inventory.

A comment that I see quite often is that long time Vancouver home owners got lucky! They bought that detached home in the 90’s or early 2000’s and are now sitting on $100’s of thousands or even millions in capital gains. I’m here to tell you that luck had very little to do with it. The secret is to buy the right home, move in, enjoy it and keep it for 25-50 years. This will guarantee to make you lucky!

One of the main drivers of our current strong Vancouver Real Estate market is record low interest rates. Looks like we're going to be in a low interest rate environment for the foreseeable future. Take a look at what these record low rates are doing to your principal vs interest payment on a 25 yr mortgage. A great site to use is calculator.com and their mortgage calculator.

I continue to see people focus on the short term predictions of what the Vancouver Real Estate market and the stock markets may or may not do. They look at amateur scenarios of buying a home today and what might happen if the price drops 5% to 10% in a few years… What are you going to do??? My answer is nothing, just hold and enjoy the home. Short term price volatility should be expected, its par for the course. Never let the possibility of a short term loss on paper (not a realized loss unless you’re forced to sell) keep you frozen on the sidelines paying rent. Buying your principal residence is a long term need, you should have little concern over what the price does in the short term.

In this video I discuss frequent questions I get. Where should I buy? And what area or city has the best long term potential as an investor?

As you’ve probably heard the Federal Government has recently spent $250,000 funding a report by radical left academic Paul Keshaw to look at new ways of taxing Canadian homeowners. With the liberals running a recent $300+ Billion dollar deficit they need to find new revenue sources and what better way than to tax the trillions in capital gains that Canadians currently have in home equity. Here is the article and where you can sign the petition: https://www.stepupnow.ca/taxing_you_out_of_your_home

In this blog I talk about some of my core equity holdings in my retirement portfolio. I also brush on where you should hold these equities and how index investing by way of low cost ETF’s should be the first step.

There’s really not much more to buying your principal residence than this. Stop paying too much attention on statistics and market predictions that are guessing on where the market is heading in the short term. Instead focus on finding the right home within your budget, live in it for 10, 15..25 years and enjoy it.

It's Saturday so time for one of my motivational blogs on taking the mirror test in life and recognizing that success in life is all on your shoulders. Being Canadian, we are given a huge leg up in life but it’s up to you on how far you want to take it.

What a difference 3 months makes. Back in April Bloomberg wrote an article forecasting the day of reckoning was upon us in Vancouver Real Estate. Now they print a new article extolling the virtues of Vancouver Real Estate and why owning your principal residence is still the best move for most people.