Real Estate in Vancouver

Despite the fact that we have a pittance for a down payment - we keep looking at places that strike our fancy.

We checked out a couple of open houses yesterday.

The first one was depressing as it was in the same complex and floor plan of a place we SHOULD have bought years ago when the asking price was $329K and not $525K as it was today. The place has a great floor plan and nice big yard. However, for over half a million bucks, you could have done a better paint job on your place? Not to mention that there had been no upgrades done anywhere - kitchen, bathrooms - and the place was over 30 years old.
This is something we have noticed a lot.

The second place was a townhouse that we could actually afford. It was in a great location, with parks and forest trails nearby. It was an end unit with a wrap around yard and in a nice quiet family oriented complex. But again. Not one upgrade. The kitchen was ancient. The carpets old and cheap. The doors and closet doors were made of the same crappy fake wood that is in our rental town home….really old fashioned and ugly. They had ‘finished’ the basement in their own style - faux brick wall for their “wine cellar” - and NO UNDERLAY under the really thin and again cheap carpet.

We would have to spend a fortune to gut the interior of the place to make it livable. We can’t afford that. Not unless they knocked off about $30k of the asking price…and being that they already had two offers coming in, oh well.

The panic buying that is still going on in Vancouver boggles me. People are spending millions on shabby old homes without batting an eyelid. People are rushing to buy not yet built condos.

It has been said by one of the biggest realtors in Vancouver that our fair city is now considered a ‘resort’ town. A place where people buy properties to rent or only stay in for part of the year. So the soul is being sucked right out of this place….it will get worse and worse till after the Olympics and then watch out for all the For Sale signs when the rental condo market drops.

I mean how many people can afford a rent of thousands of dollars?

How many people can pay mortgages of over $3000 a month either? Wages are not rising to match the housing prices?

Just how are people managing?