There is some ways around this and I cannot remember the exact details if it was a gift or selling it for a dollar but basically transfer ownership to the kids a reasonable amount of time before you die. My wife went through this with when her mom was terminally ill and the house, bank accounts everything was either made joint or totally transferred to all the kids. They totally avoided any type of taxes or probate once the mother passed and moving money and assets around was seamless. Even the car was put in the kids name.

All the kids owned their own places at the time as well so the mothers house was not the primary residence for any of them. In their case they knew death was coming so preparing for it did help a lot financially.

Edit: One of the details that is coming back to me is if the difference in the value of property is higher at sale then when it was transferred to the kids they would have to pay capital gains on the difference.

You know it's strange cause everybody in the real estate industry is saying prices are flat, and that we might be hitting a soft landing. history shows that soft landings rarely happen and that prices dont just go down slowly.

While in my opinion I dont see houses going down 30-40%, I also don't see it staying flat or going down 3-5% and then staying flat.

Mortages are something that people will always pay. People may cut down on there spending in other places like Restaurants and going out to movies; they may buy non-premium brands or no-name instead of the same quality they use to buy. But people will always pay there mortgages first.

If # of sales transactions stay like this. Sooner or later people will start dropping prices in order to have their listing become competitive relative to the other listings and thats when I think prices will start coming down.

Good. Maybe I'll actually be able to afford something in the next year.

^ +1


if things keep going down at this rate in a couple years... a place would be so much more affordable than compared to now!

^ all I got from that RE guy was... "Mortgage rules shouldn't have changed. I need my commissions!"

I like this. And I've noticed that for the past 6-8 months real estate (apartments) have been dropping/going flat.

Going to be buying in the next few years, and I'd love to see prices fall abit more. Considering who the fuck thinks $500k for 600sq. ft. is realistic?!

and the girl friend wants to buy a place in downtown........ a studio in dt core is well over 600k +........ :fuckthatshit:

realistic and vancouver real estate don't fall in to the same sentence :ilied:

keep waiting - will be a slow, long downward trend, like 3-5 years more

we should be looking at 25-35% more in price decreases

price is not based on true economic fundamentals (the mean is based on that) - it's based on emotion - emotion took us up this high, it will take us down beyond mean... it'll then start going back up, and we'll start up again in this stupid cycle

i read like 4-5 pages of this thread and just couldnt stop hitting my head on the table.

The condo market in Vancouver is ridiculous and watch the prices to drop even more because there's a large inventory of new condos units sitting on the market. Same thing happen in Toronto, large inventory of unsold units but not enough buyers and it wasn't until this past summer that prices started to rebound.

And I personally wouldn't buy a condo in DT for an investment, we own two condos, the unit we have at the fairmont pacific rim has inched up in price in the past couple of years but our other condo which is close to Rogers arena has been flat over the past few years. That been said, there's new cheaper units outside of downtown which wouldn't be bad investments.

whats your cash flows, ex. principle payments, like? in vancouver, with recent purchases, i cannot imagine it as being anything but negative (or a huge downpayment, in which case, lets look at the opportunity cost of the downpayment)

Please bestow us with your knowledge. (Srs)
Posted via RS Mobile

Sure, pre-sale condo prices may drop, but it most likely wont be any significant. 5-6% is likely if it keeps the trend. However mortgage rates is way too low right now. Lets not forget mortgage rates were double digits 10 years ago. I have a feeling mortgage rates will rise next year, and the year after, and so on. This means people won't be able to afford expensive homes anymore.

lol @ clubvibes... I wonder if we are eskimo brothers.. I'm pretty sure there is at least one chick that I hooked up with off there that you hooked up with..

Crossing swords happens these days, our modern sexual habits are ridiculous

I slept with 7 women in November, I am staying celibate until after my book is out.

February 14th, 2013!

Gentlemen, what does the possibility that you may have the same STD have to do with housing?

If we had the potential to own a home and have a family, we would probably be there by now, instead, many of us rent condos and bang the shit out of a parade of girls we don't want to date

The caucasian way!

all i meant was that reading diesels posts made my head explode.

i dont like to say too much about real estate because its just an argument between the haves and have nots. generally those who have bought into the market refuse to believe it will crash, and those who have not seem to believe an imminent crash is coming. people like to reinforce their decisions basically.

my opinion about the market is just that it will continue to slow down but i dont expect a crash any time soon. you cant really time such things. and for a disclaimer, i rent.

I've been fighting with the idea of possibly just renting for the rest of my life. With my job I can pretty much live anywhere and as long as I can get to Calgary airport in time for my flight to work.
Maybe do the downtown Vancouver thing for a year. Part of me wants to go live in Tempe Arizona for a year.
I'm 30 and dont own right now and honestly if I manage to live till 50 I consider my life a failure.

What? :badpokerface:

Means that there wasn't enough hookers and blow.

I don't think mortgage rate affect rich people who buys apartments and houses out right with cash LOL. It only affects Canadian mostly. I read on the news somewhere that families have been putting more and more of their wages into mortgage and if the rates goes up a good 20 to 25% of families won't be able to afford it.

Is getting late let me see if I can find the source tmr.

Well its pretty obvious... current rates at a conservative 4%, if it balloons to 25% it doesn't take a genius to figure out that there will be LOTS of people in trouble. It won't get to 25%, not before hitting 6%, 10%, 15%, and the question is which step will get most people into trouble. Even a jump to something like 8%, there will be lots of people in trouble given how so many jumped on the bandwagon when credit was cheap. The highest mortgage rate I recall was in the 80's when it hit ~18%, but people were able to get through that ok, however people were arguably more responsible with their money back then.