Vancouver's Real Estate Market

[Hondaracer]

Originally Posted by sonick

Lol at the nitpicking on some of the issues in recent listings reminds me of the old 2/10 would not bang sharp knees memes, except grown up:

If you think that’s knitpicking id say that’s what’s wrong with the current market lol

Hey friends/family got a pretty sweet deal for 4 mill! Drywall dust everywhere and tiling a student with zero experience would be ashamed of! Everything is white though so I’ve got that going for me

[Eff-1]

Originally Posted by Gerbs

The balcony is like this, there's no balconies below me. Can I just go ham and pressure wash. It's like 12 x 6 tiles. Each tile also started having some leaves clog in between the cracks if I didn't sweep them in time. I also wonder how I clean the other side of the balcony / glass.

It's only 20% covered. Fortunately that means at least half my patio furniture can chill in a corner and be somewhat fine.

First thing I'd do is read your bylaws and find out what exactly your strata council allows and doesn't allow with respect to cleaning your patio.

It would also depend on what is directly below your patio flooring. Is it another unit? Or is it your own unit and that patio is your rooftop? Or is it on the ground level?

Is there a drain on your patio?

The last consideration is sometimes pressure washing patio pavers can cause damages, depending on how the pavers were installed and what they are sitting on.

The good news is it doesn't look like you need to worry about dripping dirty water on to someone else's balcony. But you should still figure out where the water would drain to if you did use a hose.

Once you identify the drainage route and read through your bylaws, I think you could probably connect a standard garden hose to your sink and then use some elbow grease (a brush with some borax) to remove the mold and mildew.

As for cleaning the other side of the glass, I can't tell if you are on the ground level or not, but looks like you can probably just jump the railing and clean it with windex.

[6thGear.]

When it comes to listing a property there's a lot of other associated costs even if it seems minor like $200 for a floor plan.

MLS list fee
Photos
Matterport tours
Videos
Title search fee
Strata docs ( if applicable)
Form B
Form F
Fixing up eyesores/damaged issues
Staging ( lots of clients ask for this)
Sellers fee ( that's obviously the big one)
gas spent to drive back and forth for weeknight showings
Brokerage percentage cut
Housewarming gift

Then there's the final nail, clients asking for kickbacks/covering lawyer fees/disperserment fees/moving costs. That $20k pre split commission looks grand but all said and done can be as low as $2k-$3k

The statement a property sells itself is such a misconception especially these days. Every seller thinks they're sitting on a goldmine and expecting competing multiple offers for their worn down home. The media glamorizing the market doesn't help either. Any realtor who doesn't offer even half of the above list should be giving up portion of their commission.

[quasi]

Originally Posted by 6thGear.

When it comes to listing a property there's a lot of other associated costs even if it seems minor like $200 for a floor plan.

MLS list fee
Photos
Matterport tours
Videos
Title search fee
Strata docs ( if applicable)
Form B
Form F
Fixing up eyesores/damaged issues
Staging ( lots of clients ask for this)
Sellers fee ( that's obviously the big one)
gas spent to drive back and forth for weeknight showings
Brokerage percentage cut
Housewarming gift

Then there's the final nail, clients asking for kickbacks/covering lawyer fees/disperserment fees/moving costs. That $20k pre split commission looks grand but all said and done can be as low as $2k-$3k

The statement a property sells itself is such a misconception especially these days. Every seller thinks they're sitting on a goldmine and expecting competing multiple offers for their worn down home. The media glamorizing the market doesn't help either. Any realtor who doesn't offer even half of the above list should be giving up portion of their commission.

I wish I had an experience like that, my sell and buy experience right prior to pandemic when market was much more flat.

Pros:
-They did hire a professional photographer and photos were good.
-They were available whenever to speak
-Two open houses?

Cons during Sale:
-Open houses, wasn't informed of day and time found out about them on MLS
-They never met a realtor at my home to show it other than the open house and scheduled showings probably 5 times a week almost always at dinner time so we'd have to tidy up after work get out with my wife, son and two dogs and wander around for an hour or two depending if they showed up on time which honestly 1/3 the time they didn't and some of the times it was a no show so we'd be walking around for nothing.
-No house warming gift on the sale or the buy end

Cons during Buy:
- I would give them a list of homes I'd want to see, half of them they wouldn't get me in and most times not because they were sold either over looked or didn't want me to see them. My wife and I would go see them on our own during open houses.
- They really didn't do much as far as show me different areas I might be interested in.
- Never took us to a showing we'd always meet them there, never a day where they took us around looking at homes.
- Buy end I dealt almost solely with their assistant who was an idiot.
- At one point couldn't find a place was going to rent, they never offered to help in finding us a rental.
-Lastly, they couldn't take criticism. At one point I basically told them they better step it up or I'm firing them, they came back with every excuse and tried to turn it that really pissed me off.

Would I recommend? Hell no! What I learned? If I ever list again I will have a 2 hour window once a week for showings and that's it, if my realtor doesn't agree to that or if someone can't make it during that time it's probably not the listing/house for them.

Edit: One funny thing that happened. We had an accepted subject to sale offer on our home for like 3 months, during that time I had basically taken the house off the market and was like if this doesn't go through that's fine we don't sell. During that time I had them remove their stupid sign. It finally did close and he called me and is like can I put our sign back up with a sold sign so the neighbours know we did sell it? I'm like absolutely not, my little bit of a go fuck yourself to them.

[Hondaracer]

Originally Posted by 6thGear.

When it comes to listing a property there's a lot of other associated costs even if it seems minor like $200 for a floor plan.

MLS list fee
Photos
Matterport tours
Videos
Title search fee
Strata docs ( if applicable)
Form B
Form F
Fixing up eyesores/damaged issues
Staging ( lots of clients ask for this)
Sellers fee ( that's obviously the big one)
gas spent to drive back and forth for weeknight showings
Brokerage percentage cut
Housewarming gift

Then there's the final nail, clients asking for kickbacks/covering lawyer fees/disperserment fees/moving costs. That $20k pre split commission looks grand but all said and done can be as low as $2k-$3k

The statement a property sells itself is such a misconception especially these days. Every seller thinks they're sitting on a goldmine and expecting competing multiple offers for their worn down home. The media glamorizing the market doesn't help either. Any realtor who doesn't offer even half of the above list should be giving up portion of their commission.

If a realtor ever came to me talking about the gas it took to get to my open house, that would he the last time we spoke.

Some of those things on your list are just part of doing that job. It’s like a carpenter showing up to work and asking where the hammer is.

[Gh0st]

Originally Posted by Hondaracer

If a realtor ever came to me talking about the gas it took to get to my open house, that would he the last time we spoke.

Some of those things on your list are just part of doing that job. It’s like a carpenter showing up to work and asking where the hammer is.

facts

[68style]

Originally Posted by 6thGear.

When it comes to listing a property there's a lot of other associated costs even if it seems minor like $200 for a floor plan.

MLS list fee
Photos
Matterport tours
Videos
Title search fee
Strata docs ( if applicable)
Form B
Form F
Fixing up eyesores/damaged issues
Staging ( lots of clients ask for this)
Sellers fee ( that's obviously the big one)
gas spent to drive back and forth for weeknight showings
Brokerage percentage cut
Housewarming gift

Then there's the final nail, clients asking for kickbacks/covering lawyer fees/disperserment fees/moving costs. That $20k pre split commission looks grand but all said and done can be as low as $2k-$3k

The statement a property sells itself is such a misconception especially these days. Every seller thinks they're sitting on a goldmine and expecting competing multiple offers for their worn down home. The media glamorizing the market doesn't help either. Any realtor who doesn't offer even half of the above list should be giving up portion of their commission.

Some of these are just cost of doing business for everyone...

BUT... I do understand, especially you outlay like $5k of stuff on a listing, and then it's Acura604's wife and she says she doesn't want to sell anymore and cuts you loose lol

[6thGear.]

Originally Posted by Hondaracer

If a realtor ever came to me talking about the gas it took to get to my open house, that would he the last time we spoke.

Some of those things on your list are just part of doing that job. It’s like a carpenter showing up to work and asking where the hammer is.

I won't disagree. Cost of doing business much like every other self employed and business out there. I was merely pointing out what costs can/is associated with listing a property for sale. It's not like you get an invoice of fees are involved unlike a a roof quote, etc.

Originally Posted by 68style

Some of these are just cost of doing business for everyone...

BUT... I do understand, especially you outlay like $5k of stuff on a listing, and then it's Acura604's wife and she says she doesn't want to sell anymore and cuts you loose lol

There's just as much as shit realtors as there are clients. No one's a saint when it comes to their money

[supafamous]

According to the commission calculator the commission on a $1.5m sale is $44k with $19.4k going to the buying agent and $22.6k (the rest is GST). I'd be really curious how that actually breaks down and how much does the agent pocket after expenses - I'd guess they get about half of it but I could be way off.

If it's half then I'd say on the buying side that my agent delivered enough value to me that her cut was worth it (even if the total amount isn't) - we looked at a tonne of houses with her over a 9 month period. On the selling side I would say my agent helped us sell the house for $80-100k more than we expected so money well spent (her cut at least) - the house was really well presented, she negotiated better terms for us (out of 9 offers), and provided really good advice along the way.

It's hard, the total amount is totally ridiculous but if I assume my agent only ends up pocketing half of her cut then it doesn't sound THAT unreasonable.

[Gerbs]

How much does the realtor spend on a listing? Other than MLS and photographs, I'm thinking next to nothing.

Brokerage split, car expenses, and MLS listing to me are just the cost to do business.

[Hondaracer]

The good, full time, career realtors probably end up taking larger chunks of the profit home VS the smaller guys because the smaller guys have to find all this shit like photographers, staging companies etc.

Where as the big players have all that lined up at will. There’s no stress or waiting on people, it’s the opposite. their minions are waiting on the realtor to feed them business

When selling our old condo I dealt with two pretty “big” realtors, Emily Oh and Doris Gee, both are pretty big players in general. When I sat down with them at our condo they had never been there before but both instantly presented a hefty package to me, the contract, sales data, comparables, the full breakdown of their costs and commissions, and both told me straight up we will do this many open houses, I will be the one doing them etc. they then walked the whole building with me noting down everything, gave me a further estimate on what we could ask and our listing strategy, and then left me a contract if I was to go with them.

In the end we went with Emily Oh figuring the Korean market would be a good hedge in the area. She was fine and did 3 open houses herself which I’m sure was small fish for her. She was always responsive and even took our suggestions etc.

Then on the flip side before we listed our condo we were going to sell our current house with a smaller “boutique” RE company, I met 5-6 realtors and finally said we’d go with them. In the end I kind of fucked them over because they did all this work and a month later I said I had a change of heart and we weren’t selling lol..but this guy was totally scattered, necer presented me with any sort of package, or a contract. he couldn’t even tell me if we should install a basement suite or not, they basically didn’t have a clue what it would sell for, given it was in the height of the madness in 2016.

In that time I also dealt with Mark Hammer who frankly seemed like a total slime ball but he was the only person who was honest and who actually was bang with his assessment. He sat down and gave me his card and said do not do a thing, you list ASAP if you want as much money as possible because this train is almost over. And he ended up being 100% right on the timing.

[Manic!]

Anyone cover there balcony with fake grass or composite deck tiles?

[Manic!]

wrong post.

[quasi]

Originally Posted by Hondaracer

In that time I also dealt with Mark Hammer who frankly seemed like a total slime ball but he was the only person who was honest and who actually was bang with his assessment. He sat down and gave me his card and said do not do a thing, you list ASAP if you want as much money as possible because this train is almost over. And he ended up being 100% right on the timing.

Sounds more like a porn star than a real estate agent.

[EvoFire]

Originally Posted by Hondaracer

In that time I also dealt with Mark Hammer who frankly seemed like a total slime ball but he was the only person who was honest and who actually was bang with his assessment. He sat down and gave me his card and said do not do a thing, you list ASAP if you want as much money as possible because this train is almost over. And he ended up being 100% right on the timing.

Would be a guy that I would like to do business with if he's bang on. Slimeball or not as long as he's not fucking you over he can slime all he wants. Reality of life.

[Tapioca]

Originally Posted by Gerbs

How much does the realtor spend on a listing? Other than MLS and photographs, I'm thinking next to nothing.

Brokerage split, car expenses, and MLS listing to me are just the cost to do business.

Even at ~$15K-ish, net expenses, for the average ground-oriented home in Metro Vancouver, a realtor would have to close a deal at least once a month, on average, to make a decent living.

That's not a glamourous life - it's comparable to the average income of a middle manager in the corporate world or public sector. Though, for someone with little actual education or hard skills, it's probably more glamourous than corporate sales.

[JDMDreams]

Where are you putting this? Like detached balcony or high-rise? I heard from a contractor guy that said for detached don't do it cuz it traps all the crap from trees and shit and clogs your drains. I guess it's ok for high rise as exterior isn't your problem

Originally Posted by Manic!

Anyone cover there balcony with fake grass or composite deck tiles?

[Alpine]

Originally Posted by Tapioca

Even at ~$15K-ish, net expenses, for the average ground-oriented home in Metro Vancouver, a realtor would have to close a deal at least once a month, on average, to make a decent living.

That's not a glamourous life - it's comparable to the average income of a middle manager in the corporate world or public sector. Though, for someone with little actual education or hard skills, it's probably more glamourous than corporate sales.

Based on the quality of the stereotypical "shitty" realtor that gets a bad rap, the true comparison for them is probably a 60k salaried job.

$200k net expenses = a decent living? unless i'm reading that wrong, damn lol.

[Gerbs]

I've done some audits on real estate brokerages recently and the one's I work with are clearing Director level + salaries net of expenses.

[Gh0st]

Originally Posted by Gerbs

I've done some audits on real estate brokerages recently and the one's I work with are clearing Director level + salaries net of expenses.

some more info would be nice.. what are the $ ranges? and size of brokerages? # of realtors in said brokerages that are clearing those numbers?

[Badhobz]

they might clear director level money (what is that 200k a year) but majority of these realtors popularity die out pretty quick. Most of the "in" realtors ive seen are phased out within 5+/- years.

I can only comment for richmond, but the older ones like Patsy H, Anita C, Fred M ... hardly see any of their stuff anymore. This new batch that came in the last 5-10 years like Sandra L, Morning Y and Wendy Y also seem to be dying as these young up and commers are replacing them.

[donk.]

Originally Posted by sonick

Lol at the nitpicking on some of the issues in recent listings reminds me of the old 2/10 would not bang sharp knees memes, except grown up:

]

You forget this thread is full of 0.1%ers, nothing but the best for them!

[6thGear.]

Originally Posted by Hondaracer

The good, full time, career realtors probably end up taking larger chunks of the profit home VS the smaller guys because the smaller guys have to find all this shit like photographers, staging companies etc.

Where as the big players have all that lined up at will. There’s no stress or waiting on people, it’s the opposite. their minions are waiting on the realtor to feed them business

When selling our old condo I dealt with two pretty “big” realtors, Emily Oh and Doris Gee, both are pretty big players in general. When I sat down with them at our condo they had never been there before but both instantly presented a hefty package to me, the contract, sales data, comparables, the full breakdown of their costs and commissions, and both told me straight up we will do this many open houses, I will be the one doing them etc. they then walked the whole building with me noting down everything, gave me a further estimate on what we could ask and our listing strategy, and then left me a contract if I was to go with them.

In the end we went with Emily Oh figuring the Korean market would be a good hedge in the area. She was fine and did 3 open houses herself which I’m sure was small fish for her. She was always responsive and even took our suggestions etc.

Then on the flip side before we listed our condo we were going to sell our current house with a smaller “boutique” RE company, I met 5-6 realtors and finally said we’d go with them. In the end I kind of fucked them over because they did all this work and a month later I said I had a change of heart and we weren’t selling lol..but this guy was totally scattered, necer presented me with any sort of package, or a contract. he couldn’t even tell me if we should install a basement suite or not, they basically didn’t have a clue what it would sell for, given it was in the height of the madness in 2016.

In that time I also dealt with Mark Hammer who frankly seemed like a total slime ball but he was the only person who was honest and who actually was bang with his assessment. He sat down and gave me his card and said do not do a thing, you list ASAP if you want as much money as possible because this train is almost over. And he ended up being 100% right on the timing.

Doris Gee is an old school realtor along with her husband Phil Moore. Both have over 25 years of experience and now their son Brandon Gee-Moore gets to ride that coat tail. Of course someone that experienced will be walking in with a ready to go folder that their assistant put together.

Originally Posted by supafamous

According to the commission calculator the commission on a $1.5m sale is $44k with $19.4k going to the buying agent and $22.6k (the rest is GST). I'd be really curious how that actually breaks down and how much does the agent pocket after expenses - I'd guess they get about half of it but I could be way off.

If it's half then I'd say on the buying side that my agent delivered enough value to me that her cut was worth it (even if the total amount isn't) - we looked at a tonne of houses with her over a 9 month period. On the selling side I would say my agent helped us sell the house for $80-100k more than we expected so money well spent (her cut at least) - the house was really well presented, she negotiated better terms for us (out of 9 offers), and provided really good advice along the way.

It's hard, the total amount is totally ridiculous but if I assume my agent only ends up pocketing half of her cut then it doesn't sound THAT unreasonable.

Most use the usual 7% on 100k 2.5% on remainder that works out to $42k gross. Buyer side takes 3.255% on 100k 1.1625 on remainder which is 19,530k. Listing takes 22,470k. Brokerage cut around 20% = 17,976.

Then the cost of business kicks in referring to my list I posted. If the client isn't asking for kickback then everything I listed I will cover (lets take gas out of the equation, since that's a touchy subject here) no problem. That also includes lawyer fees on both sell/buy (add that with staging costs) that's about $6k, minus the pictures/matterport/videos/etc (another $2k)
brings the net total to $10k-ish.

[Badhobz]

and you gotta pay taxes on that 10k... thats not a easy life man. Yikes

[Hondaracer]

Originally Posted by 6thGear.

Of course someone that experienced will be walking in with a ready to go folder that their assistant put together.

Well yea, that’s like the bare minimum I’d expect from any realtor frankly