Vancouver's Real Estate Market

[Badhobz]

banks are failing in the states, stocks dropped like a mofo and yet Vancouver RE keeps going up.

[Hondaracer]

Few people I know in finance figure these banks failing may signal a forced stop in interest rate hikes

If the banks can’t keep collecting on loans or even collect interest payments, there is no bank

[Alpine]

Originally Posted by Hondaracer

Few people I know in finance figure these banks failing may signal a forced stop in interest rate hikes

If the banks can’t keep collecting on loans or even collect interest payments, there is no bank

It's not just the banks, countries won't be able to pay the interest on their debts if rates continue to go up.

[hud 91gt]

Anyone know what would happen if the bank you financed under went bankrupt?

[Euro7r]

Originally Posted by Alpine

Congrats on the sale and I don't mean to pop your bubble but I think you already know the answer to this.....

The last time something 20-30 years old on a standardish lot in Vancouver proper was 1.7m was 2019-early 2020 and that was when rates were ~2%. Even something older (ie. 40-50-year-old unrenovated Vancouver special) never really went below 1.3m in 2019.

Having gone through the exact same process during covid and having to settle for plan C or D, I can tell you that you are looking for exactly what everyone else is looking for (an "entry" detached home) and inventory will only continue to decrease as builders buy up lots to consolidate or build duplexes. Once you include school catchment/curb appeal/etc it gets even more difficult.

Best of luck in your search, but I advise you not to get too discouraged and continue to go to open houses and put in offers (even low balls) to gauge the direction and temperature of the market. If you do come across something that meets enough of your criteria, go all in right away, especially if the market is warm/hot. ~$50k-75k is "meaningless" in the grand scheme of things when it comes to buying a house in Vancouver. I regret not going all-in right away when I found something that checked off enough boxes. I should've spent the extra $50k.

Yeah we've been checking out open houses every weekend to see what types of homes are really out there. With the limited supply, do you guys just offer a reasonable lower offer to start and see if you land lucky, or pay asking knowing the competitiveness? E.g. Say your budget is $1.6M and a house is $1.68M, what do offer? What is even considered acceptable in todays market with offers?

I've also seen stupid owners that apparently get offended when I talked to selling agent at open houses. "Oh, the owner got an offer $100K less than asking and felt offended and didn't want to even counter back". A week later, I see owner drop the asking by $50K LOL.

[Hondaracer]

The issue is your price point is where all the activity is. So it’s hard to know what to offer. A below ask offer probably is going to be ignored for a home with some things going for it

[supafamous]

https://www.zealty.ca/mls-R2754413/2...-Vancouver-BC/

Somewhat odd duplex that's 3100sf and going for $3.1m. Looks like the original house was retained due to heritage status so they could build a new attached house on it plus a coach house in the back. Doesn't even have a legal suite for that size.

[meme405]

Originally Posted by hud 91gt

Anyone know what would happen if the bank you financed under went bankrupt?

Are you referring to you have a loan from an institution that goes bankrupt? In that case: In simplistic terms, another institution or the government will assume control, and essentially "liquidate" the assets, this includes the debts and loans of the company. So in general, you will just end up owing that money to someone else.

If you are referring to you having shares or some sort of stake you are essentially a loser on your investment, no different from any other investment that goes sideways and you dont get shit.

In terms of deposits made to that bank, the government or in the US' case, they have the FDIB or whatever they call it that essentially insures deposits to certified institutions (of which there is 1000's in the US) above $25000. So basically they will pay you your money out. If you have less than that you would have been fucked, but I believe in this case they have already said they will cover all amounts.

[Great68]

Originally Posted by hud 91gt

Anyone know what would happen if the bank you financed under went bankrupt?

If it's being liquidated your mortgage will get sold to another lender and then you pay them.

[6thGear.]

Originally Posted by Euro7r

Yeah we've been checking out open houses every weekend to see what types of homes are really out there. With the limited supply, do you guys just offer a reasonable lower offer to start and see if you land lucky, or pay asking knowing the competitiveness? E.g. Say your budget is $1.6M and a house is $1.68M, what do offer? What is even considered acceptable in todays market with offers?

I've also seen stupid owners that apparently get offended when I talked to selling agent at open houses. "Oh, the owner got an offer $100K less than asking and felt offended and didn't want to even counter back". A week later, I see owner drop the asking by $50K LOL.

You offer what you feel is right. As for the seller accepting the offer, there's could be a number of factors determining how motivated they are to accept or even counter. Like I said before, majority of sellers are still in the greedy stage. Gotta shoot your shot to see if it'll hit the target.

[Tapioca]

Write a letter and argue why you're special and deserve the house and have your realtor attach it to your offer(s). It worked for my sister in law who ended up getting the house they wanted.

Or, just deal with reality in that your max price is not enough to get you a detached house in your preferred location.

[supafamous]

Originally Posted by Euro7r

Yeah we've been checking out open houses every weekend to see what types of homes are really out there. With the limited supply, do you guys just offer a reasonable lower offer to start and see if you land lucky, or pay asking knowing the competitiveness? E.g. Say your budget is $1.6M and a house is $1.68M, what do offer? What is even considered acceptable in todays market with offers?

My BIL has been looking for a house for over 2 years and hasn't gotten to a single accepted offer b/c he doesn't play to win and in this market if you're not willing to push your chips in when the house is good enough then the odds are against you. Now he's got two kids (6 and 2) and they're living in a 2 bedroom townhouse.

I'm not saying to overpay or to go above your budget but if you see something you like that works for you don't play the game of coming in low hoping you get picked. Play to win that deal even if it means you "overpay" (it won't be an overpay in 5 years). Don't be my BIL who has a 2 year old sleeping in his room despite being a high income household (I like to say that he likes looking at houses but he doesn't like buying houses - my wife tells me I'm being mean).

[donk.]

Originally Posted by Tapioca

Write a letter and argue why you're special and deserve the house and have your realtor attach it to your offer(s). It worked for my sister in law who ended up getting the house they wanted.

Or, just deal with reality in that your max price is not enough to get you a detached house in your preferred location.

This is how my ex ex neighbor bought her condo, she paid something like 30-50k less on a 300k condo with multiple offers in 2017. Sent in a "oommgggg your condo matches my viiibbeeee, I loooove what you did with it" letter, and it worked out vs all other offers.

[Alpine]

Originally Posted by Euro7r

Yeah we've been checking out open houses every weekend to see what types of homes are really out there. With the limited supply, do you guys just offer a reasonable lower offer to start and see if you land lucky, or pay asking knowing the competitiveness? E.g. Say your budget is $1.6M and a house is $1.68M, what do offer? What is even considered acceptable in todays market with offers?

I've also seen stupid owners that apparently get offended when I talked to selling agent at open houses. "Oh, the owner got an offer $100K less than asking and felt offended and didn't want to even counter back". A week later, I see owner drop the asking by $50K LOL.

What you offer will depend on the temperature of the market (hot/mild/cold). But you can’t gauge that until you start putting offers in and seeing what the feedback is like. Once you go through the process a few times and gain experience you’ll start to understand how much you may need to bid for each type of home. Just throwing numbers out there, but as an example, for a house asking 1.68m, you can try 1.55 and see what the feedback is (counter? Ignored?). Look at how busy the open house is and how many offers there are to gauge the market. Then find out what the house sold for. Then rinse and repeat. Also get your realtor to send you sold examples of homes that meet your criteria. The goal is to collect enough data points so you can look at a house and know what you probably need to bid in order to win, regardless of asking price (which is meaningless).

This was a different time, but when I was bidding for a van special against multiple offers, the data and my experience told me I needed to bid at least 1.35 to win right away. But I was too preoccupied with trying to find a deal so I kept bidding 1.3 and losing. And now I live in Coquitlam (not that it’s bad, but that was the cost of trying to find a deal)).

[Traum]

When I was selling my apartment a few years ago, I received a letter like that. It was a young family with 2 kids for our small-ish (700+ sq ft) apartment. The letter was nicely written with a touching story. Unfortunately (for them), the high bid was some $70 or $80k higher than what they had offered.

I fully admit that I was a heartless dick, but I was heartless dick that had $70 or $80k more to put towards my current home. The elderly lady that bought my place was doing precisely what supafamous was talking about -- she played to win, and she did.

Originally Posted by Tapioca

Write a letter and argue why you're special and deserve the house and have your realtor attach it to your offer(s). It worked for my sister in law who ended up getting the house they wanted.

Or, just deal with reality in that your max price is not enough to get you a detached house in your preferred location.

Originally Posted by donk.

This is how my ex ex neighbor bought her condo, she paid something like 30-50k less on a 300k condo with multiple offers in 2017. Sent in a "oommgggg your condo matches my viiibbeeee, I loooove what you did with it" letter, and it worked out vs all other offers.

[Alpine]

https://twitter.com/dlauer/status/16...523396099?s=20

We may see rate cuts soon...

[EvoFire]

I'll believe it when I see it. A 0.75 drop would be a nice reprieve though.

[sonick]

Switching topics, given the SVB news and banking uncertainty, and with smaller banks like EQ trying to gain marketshare with high interest savings account, I just learned about this myself recently (maybe its common knowledge and I'm dumb), but banks in Canada only insure up to $100k in deposits per account. Anything above that is uninsured.

So just a PSA that if you have a lot of cash sitting in a single account, you are only insured for the first $100k.

I didn't know this and at one point after my condo sale, I had accounts that were above the insured amount. Fortunately it was in a credit union, where Credit Unions in BC cover the full amount.

[Spoon]

If 2008 taught anyone anything, it's that the government will not allow the big banks to fail. Letting that happen may as well be financial Armageddon.

[6thGear.]

Originally Posted by sonick

Switching topics, given the SVB news and banking uncertainty, and with smaller banks like EQ trying to gain marketshare with high interest savings account, I just learned about this myself recently (maybe its common knowledge and I'm dumb), but banks in Canada only insure up to $100k in deposits per account. Anything above that is uninsured.

So just a PSA that if you have a lot of cash sitting in a single account, you are only insured for the first $100k.

I didn't know this and at one point after my condo sale, I had accounts that were above the insured amount. Fortunately it was in a credit union, where Credit Unions in BC cover the full amount.

https://financialpost.com/fp-finance...o-you-get-back

[JDMDreams]

I bet most people on here have money that's not cdic covered anyways, stonks, mutual funds.

[TOS'd]

I remember coming across this old article the other day:

Milwaukee Bucks champion Giannis Antetokounmpo, 27, is extremely careful about preserving his hard-earned coins and has accounts at 50 different banks containing $250,000, revealed his team’s co-owner Marc Lasry to Bloomberg News.

The two-time NBA MVP is utilizing the total standard deposit insurance coverage limit of $250,000 at each Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, or the FDIC-insured bank, according to the New York Post.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/giann...143319084.html

[Traum]

Originally Posted by Alpine

https://twitter.com/dlauer/status/16...523396099?s=20

We may see rate cuts soon...

As EvoFire was saying, I'll believe it when I see it. And even then, it would be the Fed cutting rates. Whether BoC will follow suit is a different story.

Regardless of whether rates get cut or not, we are all walking a really tight rope right now. Keep hiking rates, and a lot of home owners stand to lose their homes. Hold or drop rates, and inflation may go through the roof. Personally, I have no idea what the best course of action would be, and all the available options that I can see look bad.

[Harvey Specter]

Likely scenario is they keep the rates unchanged. Job market is hot and inflation is evaluated for any rate cuts.

[sonick]

Originally Posted by 6thGear.

https://financialpost.com/fp-finance...o-you-get-back

Yep thats what I meant, thanks for the info!