A B.C. Supreme Court judge has rejected a bid by a group of owners in an aging North Vancouver housing complex to force the sale of their property against the wishes of other owners who want to remain in the complex.The president of a condo homeowners' association said that while the property is co-owned, not a strata-titled condominium complex, the case raises questions about what will happen to thousands of older condominium buildings in B.C. that are becoming costly to maintain and are on land ripe for redevelopment.About half of the 135 owners of the condo-like units in the 50-year-old Cypress Gardens wanted to sell the 3.8-hectare site.Polygon Pacific Homes Ltd. approached the owners in 2011 to buy their units ...

Buying or selling real estate is probably the largest financial transaction most people will make. It's important that you do your due diligence so that there are no surprises down the road that could cost you money. With strata properties one of the areas you want to pay close attention to is the strata bylaw, rules and regulations. This is an area that can come back to bite you unless you turn over every stone. Now, when you have me as your Realtor I'm going to do most of that due diligence for you - it's just second nature for me. However not a month goes by where I don't see units that are being sold that are in violation to the strata by-laws. Make sure your agent asks questions. Lot's of questions unless they has intimate knowle ...

The amount you pay for your monthly strata management fees can vary greatly from one building to another. It takes a knowledgeable Realtor to do some due diligence to find out exactly where that money is going. In Vancouver the average monthly strata fee is around 35 cents per sq foot. So if you have a 600 sq ft condo you're paying around $210 a month for strata fees. However this is simply an average there are so many variables when it comes to strata fees and what is considered high or low. Remember just because a complex has a high maintenance fee say 60 cents a sq foot does not mean it's a poorly managed building. In fact it can be the opposite. It's another reason why you need an experienced Realtor who knows how to read the s ...

Statistics can be manipulated in a lot of ways to tell any type of story you want them to.  3 statistics that I don't think are worth the paper they are  printed on are:1. Average sale price; 2. Average days on market; 3. Price to list ratio or %.  These numbers are important to have but to get the true stats you need to have access to the Realtor version of MLS and the history of each individual property. Something the general public dose not have access to. Of course when I'm representing a buyer I'm armed with all these stats and not using some vague averages that don't really mean anything.There are 3 kinds of lies: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics"  - Mark TwainHere are the 3 most commonly misunderstood real estate statistics i ...

Richmond BC Realtor, Owen Bigland, blogs about an experience he had with 2 very successful business people last month "Be greedy when others are fearful and be fearful when others are greedy". Those are the words that Warren Buffet has always lived by. Owen had 2 experienced buyers last month pull the trigger on million dollar plus properties. They both had a lot in common. They saw value in the current price that these homes had been reduced to. They were not concerned about trying to buy at the bottom of the market. And they understood that markets go up and down (IT'S NORMAL). Most importantly, a well purchased property if held for good periods of time say 10, 15 years or more will always appreciate. In other words don't try and ...

You might have read this headline in the Vancouver Province and Sun last week. It sure caught the attention of some of my clients and blog viewers and that's exactly why the Vancouver Sun prints these headlines... it sells papers.  Many people think a 30% drop in sales means prices have gone down 30% and that is not the case. This stat means sales VOLUME is down 30% (actually most agents will tell you it feels more like 50% down). The average sale price which is what most people are concerned with is only down 1%. Yes, you heard it right...a whopping 1%. Now, average price I have to admit is also a misleading stat. This is where they lump all homes in all areas into one basket.  It's a terrible metric used to measure home prices. T ...

The amount you pay for your monthly strata management fees can vary greatly from one building to another. It takes a knowledgeable Realtor to do some due diligence to find out exactly where that money is going. In Vancouver the average monthly strata fee is around 35 cents per sq foot. So if you have a 600 sq ft condo you're paying around $210 a month for strata fees. However this is simply an average.  There are so many variables when it comes to strata fees and what is considered high or low.  If a complex has a higher than average Strata fee say 55 cents a sq foot it doesn't automatically mean it's a poorly managed building. In fact it can be the opposite. That higher fee could mean they are putting extra money into their contin ...

It's a question that we hear in the real estate industry all the time. The answer is simple: It's the right time to buy when (1) you want to, (2) you have a long-term view, and (3) you can afford to.Buying patterns are dictated by a multitude of factors, but they mostly have to do with changes in life circumstances: moving out of your parents' house, getting married, having a baby, getting transferred for work, and becoming an empty nester are all strong incentives for changing your living situation. Sprinkled into this decision are thoughts on what is going to happen to the real estate market.But what is going to happen to the real estate market?Take this headline from the Globe and Mail: 'Housing Market has Cracks'. The article, ...

Vancouver's new housing affordability initiative is only going to increase the value of single detached homes even more, in my opinion. The price appreciation gap between detached single-family homes and condos has been increasing for the past 20 years. Back in 1977 there was very little difference in the average price of a condo compared to a single family home. Now that gap is huge!  The average detached home is worth almost 3 times that of the average condo. This new initiative will help developers cut red tape and allow them to build denser housing projects faster and will result in more applications to rezone existing single family homes into multi family strata condos and townhomes. The math is quite simple if you redevelop m ...

If you talk with a condo owner who has had the unfortunate experience where their building has required major remedial work, like in the case of a leaky condo where the entire exterior of a building needs to be replaced or repaired, they will tell you how expensive this can be and the steep special levies and assessments they have been hit with to get the building fixed. Even more unfortunate is the fact that when the owners decide to sell their unit they rarely ever get the money spent fixing the problem back from their selling price. I have seen 20 year old units where the owners have just spent $50,000 fixing a leaker  - sell the unit for the same price as the 20 year old unit in the building next door. Now, with all the depreci ...