Can you provide further explanation on this? My wife and I are currently considering whether we sell our condo and purchase another place, or refinance and rent it out after purchasing our next place - probably a townhouse.

The parking situation depends on the street. I've walked around the Norquay neighborhood on an after-dinner stroll, and there are definitely areas where the whole block is packed tight full of cars because there are 3-4 townhouse complexes built on a street.

My parent's street is always packed full of cars and that's when there are 3-4 duplex lots still under construction. I imagine it'll be even worse once they complete and people move in.

If you treat your current house as a rental and you have payments on the property, you are allowed to write off all expenses associated with the home, including your payments, property taxes, utilities, etc.

I would speak to an accountant, they can walk you through the process.

You can expense the costs associated with the rental property.

E.g. Rental Income of $24,000

You can deduct expenses you incurred to earn that rental income.
e.g. utilities, property tax, strata fees, mortgage interest, etc.

If you refinance and increase your mortgage balance, you pay a higher amount of interest (which in turn, decreases your taxable rental income)

I don't know if that's "legally" possible

Anyone on here with 2+ properties, that has cash out refinanced to buy the next property, been able to write it off for the original property?

Ex:
You own a 1mil house that you live in, with 20% mortgage balance remaining.
You cash out refinance, now your mortgage balance is 60%.
You use that 400k to use as 40% down on house #2 worth 1mil. You move into house #2.

That 400k, was applied to house #2, you cant deduct this on the house #1, it would apply to house #2.
This would only work if you stayed in house #1, and rented out house #2.

The balance is attached to house #1, but where it was used, is what matters, no?


before anyone rampages here that you can't buy a house for 1mil, the numbers above are an example

the use of the funds borrowed is what determines whether interest can be claimed.

Agreed. If your borrowed money goes towards a rental property, then you can apply the interest/expenses against the income. If you borrow money to buy a principal residence, then you can’t claim the interest.

For example, I used my HELOC to buy a 1-br apartment a few years ago. I only pay the interest, and claim the interest, strata fees, property taxes, etc. against the rental income.

True, some parts are worse than others. I lived on the south side closer to 41st and most of those streets had tonnes of parking available while the north side (north of Kingsway) is much more crowded - streets like Duke tend to be packed. The south end is less dense right now - a lot more large lots - so parking tends to be less of an issue.

I'm pro-mixed density - duplexes and townhouses should be blended into the neighbourhood evenly rather than the current approach of turning entire blocks into townhouses. That way stuff like parking is less of an issue - one townhouse development with 10 units that replaces 3 houses (each with a suite) isn't that much of an increase in cars unless you're doing it for an entire block.

Make every corner lot (and the house next to it) townhouse eligible and parking in the middle of the street isn't so bad and the density is spread out nicely.

A house in Citadel Heights in Port Coquitlam came up for sale last week at $2,778,000 and I thought it was overpriced by $300,000 to $500,000. I was obviously wrong because it sold in one week for $2,750,000. The 2021 assessment value is $1,846,000.

This market is crazy and just makes no sense. $2,750,000 for Port Coquitlam! Nice looking house with a 3 car garage but still it seemed like it was just over 5 years ago that $2,750,000 was a nice big house in the west side of Vancouver.

https://www.zolo.ca/port-coquitlam-r...isade-crescent

That's gotta be some sort of record for Port Coquitlam. The house is 30 years old too (although it looks like parts of it have been updated over the years).

I went to the open house at 1528 Celeste Crescent as a friend was shopping in this area and the sale price blew me away. Mary Hill & Citadel PQ seem to be amongst the nicest neighborhoods in poco but damn, 1.805m for a 55-year old house that could use a remodel.

List was 1,499,999. I looked at the pics the inside looked alright for its age unless one is looking for ultra modern

1991 probably a poly b special. Nice G wagon though. Hopefully it comes with the house at 2.75!

Just read an article how the hot real estate market is forcing buyers to have no condition on the offer, including no pre-inspection (by a properly trained home inspector) or else they would lose the bid. People rolling big time dice there. Insane indeed. Some of us wouldn't buy a used car without a mechanical inspection!

There's also lots of sales where there's subjects for financing and inspection that the media won't report. We've had listings still with those conditions from buyers. My brothers coquitlam TH last September had 2 offers both under list with those subjects. Have to take those reports with a grain of salt

Honestly unless you walk into the worst case scenario a pre-inspection isn’t as big of a deal as these “inspectors” would make it out to be

Yeah, the buyers of my mother in law's place had all the standard subjects in place. There was also no "bid war" for her place, she got one offer and that was it.

I'll chime in also, sold my 1 bed back in Oct. Multiple viewing parties, fully booked, but only got 2 serious offers.

Don't let the media brainwash and make you believe everything you hear.

My coworker was trying to sell her dad's place in East Van cuz he passed away.... 1.975 asking price... weekend open house only got 5 people came through (1 Sat / 4 Sun) and 1 offer at 1.9 she took it. Her situation is complicated dealing with a mentally ill brother trying to control everything lots of family drama... but they really struggled to sell this place for a long time now, definitely wasn't as easy as the media portrays. Doesn't help it was a long thin lot right on a busy street either... plus the house is a teardown.

I spent more time reading the CoV's Making Home Policy that passed last night - and I'm more behind it now, depending on how it is implemented. I think the City has to ensure in someway that a diversity of housing types are created through this initiative, including rowhomes, townhomes, triplexes, quads, etc. If they allow developers to come in and start building 500SF x 6 home on each lot, this won't solve the missing middle housing issue, which by far is the biggest issue the City is dealing with.

Someone pointed out the other day on Twitter (or somewhere) that pretty much all the gentle density zoning changes that have been implemented in the past 30 years like laneways and duplexes etc have ended up working out better than expected and, if anything, the feedback has been that the city should have been even more aggressive about it (like allow full 2 story laneways in the first place or larger duplexes).

I suspect that we'll look back at this Making Home thing the same way - we'll say it should have been 4 stories tall and allowed smaller setbacks blah blah blah.

Inspections for apartment units offer very little value, IMHO. Your most important concern with respect to an individual unit is water damage. If the unit has water ingress issues from poor windows or a neighbour above, you're going to see it right away in terms of poorly repaired drywall, unmatched popcorn ceilings, or bubbling.

Doing your own inspection during your viewing time is something every prospective apartment-buyer should be able to do.

If the building has issues, you should be able to see that in a depreciation report or in the meeting minutes. Or when you walk through the common areas and parking garage, you should be able to get a general feel of how well the building is managed. You're better off spending that $500 on an inspection by buying yourself a good set of tools to tackle simple repairs like drywall patching or fixture replacements.

^^^ I shake my head and laugh when inspectors don't find any unit issues and list a couple common property issues and the buying realtor expects us to get our client to fix it LOL

There's a lot of stories of both.
Ex neighbor sold his TH a few months after me and got $100K more for his corner unit.
He had many offers, I had 4 serious offers with 2 subject free.

That neighbor was able to buy an older home for $1.6M near Burnaby Hospital, no bidding war. But when they came to the closing date, his realtor had people calling asking to offer them $1.8M for the house.

Some of it is the realtor, and some of it might be timing on why some units are not getting a bidding war.

A house recently sold in Pitt for $1.9M. Owner is in the Pitt chat group and said he had 22 offers. Owner sold the house and is moving to Mexico.

Here’s a couple listings for you guys lol

https://www.realtor.ca/real-estate/2...reet-vancouver

https://www.realtor.ca/real-estate/2...reet-vancouver

FORMER METH DEN! SUCCESSFUL BUISNESS FROM HOME OPPORTUNITY!