All Forum Posts by: Jason Farr

@Jash Sayani I would say the jobs are not supporting the housing prices.  They (the news) has talked about the lack of high paying jobs and companies in the Vancouver area and that working people can't afford to move there.  Companies don't want to move there, because they can't find employees that can afford to live in the area.  There are a lot of foreign investors that live there, but also there are vacant houses owned by foreign investors as well.  

My wife and I are currently living and renting in Edmonton AB, and looking to move to the greater Vancouver BC area to be closer to her family.  I have visited a couple of times in the last month.  The market is currently going to the moon.  

The realtor I am working with has explained since about last November things have really started to take off.  For example pretty much everything listed during the week has an open house over the weekend and they take offers the following Monday and set a time like 5pm that the offers need to be submitted by.  For single family homes it is not uncommon to have over 100 buyers show up to an open house and have 20 offers submitted for the property.  Townhouses and condos/apartments were slower to see such demand but apparently over the last several months they have picked up as well.  

When I went at the beginning of May we were looking at townhouses.  When I went back at the end of May the same type of places were were selling for 10% to 20% more in price. If a place is listed for say $450K it would not be unusual for it to sell at $550K (everything is selling for over listing).  Agents are telling me they are getting sight unseen multiple offers for properties the day they hitting the market.  It is also my understanding that inspections/conditions are pointless because the seller will just move on to another offer.  

There is a lot of new construction going on as well but sales offices are all pretty much closed because they are sold out.  If a developer releases more townhouses they are sold out in a couple of days or less.  

There are a few things that are running up prices.  People are leaving Alberta and moving to BC because of job losses from the oil price decline.  Also, there is a lot of interest from Chinese buyers.  I heard that there is a waiting list of 40,000 Chinese people trying to move to Vancouver and each applicant has a minimum net worth of $3 million dollars.  Of course that does not count the Chinese that just want to buy a property and not move there.  Low interest rates help as well.  Something else interesting about Canada is they do not have fixed term mortgages like a 30 year fixed mortgage.  It gets confusing when you ask because they tell you "yeah we have fix term loans we can lock it in for 2 or even 5 years on at 25 year mortgage".  

What I hear they do not have is a big increase of jobs and the job around there are not super high paying. It is more of just a lot of wealthy people moving on investing in the area.  

Depending on the area and type of property prices are up 20-50% from last year and the number of listings is down 40% from a year ago.  This is not unique to Vancouver I think it is also happening in Toronto as well. I saw in the news a few weeks ago that the Toronto luxury home market is up 47% from last year and they called it the hottest market in the world right now.  

It is also interesting that in the Edmonton market where we are now and seeing job losses the market has been pretty much flat.  I would have though we would have seen prices drop.  

I am interested to see what others opinions are of the Vancouver market.  Does this sounds like a bubble or could this be that the area is has been extremely undervalued and just moving up to where it should be?

@Sean GrapevineThanks for the clarification. When I talked to a BOA mortgage rep yesterday he told me you could use them for condos, not for multi families or coops. I had asked him about rates he mentioned "he thought" they were they about the same as conventional. If they are bumping up the rates to cover the insurance it probably isn't any better than FHA.

I saw an interesting article today that stated that Bank of America is offering a 3% down mortgage for a primary residence.  The best part is there is no insurance on the mortgage. However, it does not cover multi unit properties. It is good news because if people are not having to pay mortgage insurance they can potentially borrow more money to spend on houses and waste money on the insurance.  

@Ross Bernard So did you pay him or offer to pay for his time to trouble shoot the problem? If not, I wonder if calling him dishonest makes it easier to justify using his expertise and time and then cutting him out of the job at his expense?

Hi Jared, 

As someone who used to be in the sign making business I would caution you on making the magnets too large.  The bigger they are the more chance they will go flying off the side of the van when is driving around.  For this reason I had made a policy not to make ones larger than 18"x24".  Things to consider are: the replacement cost and what if it causes an accident.  

Jason

Do I need a sales agent to represent me if I am buying a REO using an online auction (auction.com)?

There was a title search done.  The big question is how does the 2nd priority on the foreclosure relate to the sale and could I be responsible to pay any of the condo association fees owed. The documents show 18k owed as of about a year ago but no lein on the property. so will this come back and bite me?

I am looking at a condo for sale at auction.com.  They provided a partial title search report document.  It stated there was LEIN which I found details on from the County Register of Deeds for unpaid income tax of about $1500.  There were 2 other liens from a previous owner (not the one that was foreclosed) for about 3k owed to the condo association.  I would assume these were paid of because the last deed issued when the current owner bought the condo there was a warranty deed issued?

There was also a foreclosed document noted in the the provided title report that says "see attached" but they did not include that information.  I called auction.com as well as the title company that ran the report and they were not willing to give me a copy of the foreclosure document.  I did find a a foreclosure document on the County Register of Deeds website which shows that there are 2 priorities for the payoff the 1st being the bank that holds the mortgage with interest fees etc.. the amount owed probably willbe greater than the fair market value of the condo by about 20-30k.  The 2nd priority is for the condo association for roughly 18k.  There is also bank listed as a named party but did not respond to the notice (looks like a 30k mortgage).  

My questions are:

When the bank sells the foreclosed property and there most likely will not be any paid to the 2nd priority ($18k condo association), can they come back and put a LEIN on the property?  Also, are there other places to check for LEINS other than the County Register of Deeds?  

Also, I did call the property management company but they were not willing to answer any questions until I won the auction.

You could have someone cosign the on the loan that has a good income.