Purchasing First Home
 

Are there any guides or tools available online for Canadian purchasing their first home?

such as Maintenance costs, Misc. Fees, etc etc.

www.greaterfool.ca

Don't do it. Wait 6 months at least.

Yeah, that's what everyone has been telling me.

Thanks!

My dad is in the market to look for a place to invest, so I'm trying to absorb as much material now, so when the time comes, I'll be ready to hammer down the nail.

Any other valuable resources will be appreciated.

condo.

mtg/strata/util/taxes probably top another 15-20% top your mortgage thats your monthly bill you have to be able to afford.

small food for thought.

Buying a home is pretty easy:
- find home
- buy home
- pay taxes
- pay lawyer
- pay home inspector
- use home buyers plan (see restrictions)
- move in
- in-debt yourself for life
- remember all the things you used to beable to afford before foolishly buying an over-priced asset to satisfy your pride

Anyone looking to invest in real estate in Vancouver right now is just dumb. Go buy lottery tickets, its a better gamble.

How much does a lawyer and home inspector cost on average to close out a deal?

Is a Home Inspector necessary if the property is new?

notary is fine, home inspector is for you to check the "damages" to the house, things like you know, broken roof, busted floors, missing toilets things like that.


Lawyers - depends if you want to be baller, look cool or just acutally find someone that does the work for reasonable price. Ranges 300-1600. (notary to lawyers.)

Get a mortgage broker and have him find you a lender that will pay for your notary / lawyer. My real estate agent paid for my notary ($900)
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well i have quest for you. (this is live in property ,, and not investment prop)

take,
i pay about $1100 a month rent.
if i wait for 6-10 month to find a new place (planning to buy)
thats is putting 6600-11000 down the drain, in rent cause in the end i dont get anything out of it?

supposedly u are buying a place for 340k. and over the next year market does go down about 3-5 %. how much do you expect to save...

340-3-5% is 325-320?, do you see market going down more than 10%? and over this time you are building equity. yes, you are paying maint and tax, but u will be paying that regardless when u buy?

And the interest on your mortgage.

thinking that interest is at a record low and cad.res bank will inc. rates in 2nd quart of this year.... its still a good bet as u will be payin it regardless.but maybe on 20k less if u wait and buy/

This is the wrong way to look at it.

Consider that for the first 5 years of your mortgage you'll be paying 70% to interest. Thus if:

rent == (70% of mortgage) + property tax + condo fees

you're not throwing anything away renting.

1. The market went down 20% in 2008. So it can go down > 10%.
2. What will happen? No-one knows, all we can do is speculate.
3. I think we'll see a small drop (5-10%) followed by a decade of flat prices. I've posted why several times in this forum, please read some of the other threads and make your own decision.

First lets define the term equity: its money saved. Whether it be money paid down on a mortgage or money put into a bank account, equity == money.

Lets revisit this formula:

rent == (70% of mortgage) + property tax + condo fees

and add this formula:

rent savings > equity paid down on mortgage

which becomes:

mortgage + property tax + condo fees - rent > (30% of mortgage)

Thus if you're saving more on renting than you're paying down on the mortgage, you're better off renting and saving the difference. The reason most like owning is it forces them to save, they cannot trust themselves to save the difference while renting. I think that's a really stupid way to force yourself to save.

Note: These formulas don't account for cost of ownership (taxes, lawyers, fees, commissions), which is typically 8% plus any maintenance. This skews the formula in favour of renting.

Note: On a typical 25yr mortgage, you'll only pay down 13% of equity in the first 5 years. Subtract the 8% cost of ownership, and you're only left with 5%.