^to hoard all the junk lmao.

Seriously though, to provide your children with more wealth when you pass it down. Or even if you don't have children, you will retain more $$$ when you are in your elderly ages, and you can downgrade to a condo and use the extra $ for what you need.

My parents realized that the condo that they bought back in mid 2000s (was around 230k at the time) is only worth 370k-400k recently, meanwhile a house that they could had bought in East Van at the time (420k) was just sold for 1.7m at the end of 2020. Thankfully they bought a couple years ago, the mortgage has been stressful and they don't have a lot of extra $ to spend on themselves, but that goes for a lot of immigrant families.

And to all the car enthusiast on here, who doesn't wish you can park multiple cars in your own garage and on your own driveaway, and best of all, wash and detail your cars on your driveaway as well

Why do you need kids to have a SFH?

I like having a yard, my own space, neighbours further then a wall away.

I totally think we all understand the benefits. Just question what peoples cost thresholds are for the luxury.
I have to say, I’m happy that the vast majority of my neighbours in my building are great people to deal with, and our condo board is as well. No unnecessary bullshit, no passive aggressive Karen’s and no stupid rules. And most importantly a very well equipped car wash bay.

Keep in mind that banks will most likely require a full appraisal on anything over $1m which means the appraiser will need to go inside. Technically you can be refused this by the seller if you put no subjects. And I have seen deals get rejected as the property does not meet the banks requirements so you're fucked if you put no subjects even though you have a pre approval. So I'm thinking possibly the people putting no subject offers might be taking funds out from helocs. But it's gonna be a giant ass heloc to pay for $2m :okay:

In your contract you should have a stipulation saying you can have access to x amount of times prior to closing...that’s what we did in case the appraiser needs access...however I know when we did it they didn’t require full access inside...I guess it might be needed if you need the suite income though?

At worse the bank won’t deny your mortgage amount (unless the place is like a grow op or leaky condo or something) but they’ll just say they would only mortgage a lesser amount and it’s up to you on finding the difference

The wife want to downsize. I wish we could do this on a trial so she can realize what a great neighbourhood we live in. Very quiet, great neighbours, lots of room for the dogs to run about.

Rent a place and rent yours out?

Have you thought about renting an air B&B in the neighbourbood/area your wife wants to downsize to?

This would fit your idea of a trial and you wouldn't have to sell your place.

Some good ideas, would give her an idea of the smaller space issues and potential extra noise with Condo/city living. Hard to replace your neighbours tho.

^so true. I have great neighbours and we’re in a very quiet neighborhood. I’d hate to move somewhere and be disappointed in the people around me.

what's the end of life cycle for old condos? At what age is demolition on the horizon and what happens to the current owners/tenants?

looking at older condos rn and one thing turning me off is the lack of appreciation potential for something 40+ yrs old

I was able to get my house appraised for a HELOC increase by just sending the guy some pictures. That might not fly for a purchase and I have no way of knowing if he decreased the value because of it but it doesn't hurt to ask about.

^ I did one recently too. Photos only due to Covid.

In Jan 2021 - the appraiser HSBC hired did not need to go in or on the property... not even sure they made the trip to be honest. Detached, <$1.5M.

The building value on my property is pretty low so that probably helps - at least 90% land value I'd guess - as the land doesn't really need to be appraised in person. If more of the value is in the building then I could see them wanting to visit.

We have another 20k or so of rainy fund lying around. Otherwise everything went into the mortgage. Honestly unless you have 6 figures just lying around doing nothing, it's not going to make much of a dent on a 7 figure home.

Is 10k a year of surplus too tight for you? 10k surplus is something like 18k pre-tax income.
We took lots of trips before too, covid and a young child kind of makes that impossible. We don't foresee really being able to travel again until early 2022.

People do move jobs, but moving jobs for both of us would only be up unless tech takes a massive shit(doubt it). Wife took a sizable paycut for her current job because of a career move and also for flexibility. Our 200k right now can probably be 250k in 5 years or so.

Your last line really hammered it home. We both work from home and we are feeling the space crunch. Things are a little better now that the little one is at daycare, but the little guy easily takes up more space that both of us combined.
The other financial things are really about even in terms of property tax and insurance and strata fees.
The big benefits we are looking for is a) having a yard, b) having a garage, c) more privacy.

Like some one else posted here, our parents sucked it up and only travelled once every 3 years or so, drove a base Dodge Caravan, and we ate cheap so they can afford a house. Obviously times are different, but we have two BMWs, we live well. Sucking it up and tightening it a little doesn't seem like such a bad tradeoff.

The garage want is real. The bit about parking wealth is also real. We are risk averse in terms of investments. This is a slow but safe place to park our money. I don't see the same kind of insane gain we saw in the last 20 years, but hey who knows, no one saw those gains coming either.

We went through the whole "we have space and we'll fill up that space with shit" ordeal already. I think we are done with accumulating junk. If anything we are getting rid of junk.

Too many variables

A building that has proper upkeep will last 100+ years

A building with cheap owners, an upcoming 150k elevator replacement, 150k roof, 400k membrane, and 1.2mil envelope special assessments, is gonna look real good to sell to an investor offering 1.3 of market value to the current owners to tear down and rebuild

Buy what works for you
Personally, im not going to be buying any more 40+ year old buildings, unless the owners like spending money, and the building shows like its 10-20 years old

The duplex I live in has an unusable garage - the ramp to get in is too steep for a regular car and the insides are too narrow (less than 9' wall to wall) for anything but a subcompact so a top 3-4 reason (a yard, more space, and better quality are other top reasons) why we're looking to get/build a new place is to get an actual garage that we can use.

I'm not looking to park a minivan in there, I just wanna fit my future sports car in there but city regs don't require that when a garage is built that it actually be usable. A lot of the new houses being built, especially those with laneways, are built with really narrow insides. Just give me 10' on the inside walls.

never heard of that, even if you back in the ramp is too steep to clear like 3-4"?

deep > wide if you hoard cars...unless maybe if you have the og hummer

my first time buyer's mistake was not measuring the garage properly

i was reading the news article about 6plexes and council said who gives af about offstreet parking, most car owners just use it for storage anyways :alone:

Yep. My garage is part of a coach house (we're actually a triplex) so it's 3 single garages next to each other and the alley isn't flat and the low point of the alley is where my stall is. The builder was an idiot and used the 1st stall as the starting point for the height of the coach house so the alley is quite a bit below the entrance to my garage.

Neither my TSX or Mazda 3 could get in without serious scraping (my TSX was lowered by an inch though). The builder got someone to show up and add some more asphalt to reduce the angle but it still doesn't work for a regular car - he was an asshole so he didn't really want to address the issue.

Here's a shot of it from Streetview, you can sorta see that the entrance to my garage is about 2' higher than the low point of the alley.

https://i.imgur.com/QDbfbJ3.jpg

That’s brutal who did the surveying for that build

my friend's garage is similar, but even more gnarly on 1 end.

Same here! I thought I would have plenty of space in my double garage but lengthwise my 3G TL-S would barely fit, I didn't even bother trying to squeeze our 2G MDX in.

And newer cars are just getting bigger and bigger...

One word: garage.

I deal with having a yard in exchange for getting to have a garage lol.

-Mark

Interesting Twitter thread started by YVRHousing Analyst about who's buying SFH in Vancouver:

https://twitter.com/YVRHousing/statu...849548295?s=20

I had an accepted offer on a house 5 years ago and then backed out when my wife started measuring the building and couldn't see how the place added up to 1500sf.

Nowadays I bring a laser measure for me and am especially interested in the width of the garage and the size of the bedrooms. I get particularly excited when a single garage measures 12' wide between the drywall.

https://www.realestatemagazine.ca/ho...s-place-again/

Here's a court case over a house that was misrepresented by over 42% in size that the buyer won.