We had 18% mortgage rates !

You kids don’t know what a crisis is.

This is nothing but a blip……if you’re worried, pay off your credit lines and credit cards….the rest will come around.

And if you’re only putting down 5% you deserve what you get…..in any market….good or bad.

Who cares if your home’s market value is less than what it was two years ago, it will rebound! Stick it out!
You want to rent for the rest of your life? Then you better prepay your cemetery plot now!

I am a realtor. I work very hard helping people. I will admit some transactions do proceed smoother than others but it’s not just about driving people around, showing them a few houses, and doing paperwork. On average I show each buyer approximately 30 homes. The highest amount of homes I’ve shown to buyers is 97 homes. Am I complaining? NO WAY. Realtors who are doing their job negotiate, do leg work in advance, provide statistics that are not slanted, help purchasers and sellers make an informed decision, deal with emotional people & diffuse tense, volatile situations. Not to mention take on an enormous amount of risk brokering the deal. It’s not a 3 month course to become a Realtor. More like 18 months to 2 years. Not to mention the continuing education MANDATED by real estate associations.

I am the first to admit to all my clients that no one really knows what values are going to be in the future. We can only speculate. Presenting the positive and negative facts in an honest and non slanted way is responsible and looking out for your clients best interest. The fact of the matter is, it’s not a very nice economic state the world is in right now but there are still opportunities out there for everyone. Here in Toronto, some homes are still selling over asking price much to many’s disbelief while most are getting close to asking, and some selling for significantly under asking. There are always curve balls in every market. In my opinion, the market is doing exactly what it was designed to do, correct itself.

I found there was no peace and security when renting and I was constanly worrying about things. To each their own. Buying my house was the best thing I ever did. I pay an amount similar to what renting would cost for a similar property. I do not think of my house as a bank account.

Those who I know that pursued a post-secondary education and are able to participate in the knowledge economy or those who gained a viable skill set (i.e. they can fix things that are broken) tend to have relatively stable and secure jobs. In fact, despite the doom and gloom, several of these sectors continue to face worker shortages…such as a shortage of auto mechanics in NB.

Those who appear hardest hit by the correcting economy are those that felt they should be able to make as much or more than such workers, while investing less time and effort in their career paths. The easy fast road is not necessarily the best road.

The others who are suffering are those that felt there was nothing wrong with leveraging themselves to the point where they had little to no discretionary income. While living pay cheque to pay cheque may have seemed fashionable, we should all think twice about such lifestyle decisions.

Nevertheless, the lesson of the story should really be that if you need not sell right now, don’t — and if you must, chances are you will also buy a new place at a reduced price…if the value of my house has dropped by 5, 10 or 20%, so has that of my neighbour’s who I would need to buy.

It is articles like this that will cripple consumer confidence and I want you to know that you have my commitment to ensure that as Canada’s leading real estate company, we will continue to challenge the media with this type of reporting. http://www.remaxoa.com/09/regional/macleansletterfeb2009.pdf

The larger picture here that the “rose colored glasses crowd” refuse to fess up to is the fact that to have these insane prices you need a middle class population able to pay them. Middle class and then some. The truth is, it has been a long time coming, but in the new global economy, the North American middle class is no longer required and the corprate greed heads have trown them overboard as uneccessary baggage. I’m not sure who they think will now buy their poisionous crap from China. I hear these people were just stunned when the economies of China/India have also come to a grinding halt. Considering those poor buggers working in these hell holes don’t have enough money to buy toilet paper, that leaves no one to be a “consumer” or house buyer for that matter. Cheers.

thanks for publishing a balanced article. I’m sure the fact you don’t rely on real estate advertising helps, but couldn’t you have published something like this a year ago.

Also, for anyone hassling Scott Simmons on Salt Spring, I can say I don’t know him personally, but he has been taking the same open-minded approach for a couple years, in acknowledging prices are too high in various public forums like Realty Talks. Give the guy some credit for that. Not all realtors are busy spinning the market situation to the disadvantage of the buyers – though I admit todays’ release of February 2009 numbers by the Victoria Real Estate Board full of spin…

Time to wake up as a society and pull our heads out of the sand. We are going to experience a financial and economic crisis that many of us have not seen in our lifetime. Don’t let the mainstream media form your opinions and beliefs, form your own opinions. Everyone acts like a bunch of sheeple (definition: people that are like sheep and follow the herd).

Moreover, I think realtors ought to get paid about as much as baristas on a per-hour basis for the oh-so-arduous task of driving around showing houses to people, with a small additional flat fee of less than $1,000 for getting the paperwork done on a sale. Giving them a percentage of a house sale is essentially giving them a percentage of a person’s lifetime effort at earning a living, and it’s a key cause of house price inflation (every time a house or condo flips, there’s built-in inflation of several per cent just to pay the damn realtor for doing a little driving around and paperwork-filing). The people who actually build the houses — carpenters, drywallers, plumbers — earn their pay. A guy who goes around opening doors for people and chatting them up should never get paid as much as a tradesman who does real work requiring actual skills. It’s time to replace realtors with online free listings, “key boys” and flat-fee notaries; together, such a package would allow us to get rid of these inflation-causing parasites altogether. Have a nice day.

Sensational headlines and usless statistics are worth as much as last weeks loto numbers.

National Average price is Useless, Increased number ov listings or decrease in sales.. worth less In January there were 1000 Transactions per day! in Canada.

Contrary to what most people think Profit is made when you buy a house… not sell and if you can find a seller who NEEDS to sell (like Mr. Kassam) you will profit.

If anyone believes that Vancouver prices will drop after the eyes of the world see us you deserve to be a tenant.

I don’t know why it makes sense to consumers to buy when there is a lineup of purchasers fighting over “no-subject” offers, instead of when they have time to do due diligence, inspect and take advantage of “vendor finance, and the lowest interest rates in history.

Tenants tend to see the price instead of the cost.

It is a good time to buy and prices will go up. When ? Who knows, they don’t ring the bell when a market hits the top or the bottom, but Population increases, and It is the best place on EARTH to live, and soon half the world will see it.

Yes I am a REALTOR.

Monkeys. When will they finally round them up and take them back to the zoo?

First I don’t know this guy but it’s clear from the article he wasn’t only putting $80k DOWN, he put down an $80k DEPOSIT and the rest of his equity was to come from the condo he was selling. It says so in the text of the article “We reached the point where we couldn’t drop the price any more,” he says, “or we wouldn’t have enough for the down payment on the new property.”

Furthermore, for people who think this guy is alone, you have your heads in the sand. So many people did things like this. And is he partly to blame? Absolutely. Is he solely to blame? Of course not, everyone, from bankers, to realtors, to taxi drivers, to people on the news and in the papers, etc… believed that prices would go up forever and there would always be a buyer on the other side. Well prices can only go up until people realize they’re way too high… incomes have not been going up like prices. When your housing prices are 8X income.. look out.. they should be between 3-4X income.

Secondly, why would anybody purchase a place firm without knowing exactly what he will have from selling his place?!?!? unless they have the ability to carry two places at the same time. Common Sense here….

You cannot arbitrarily ask a certain price for a property basing it on the amout you require to close the next transaction. The public is well educated and will only pay the current market value for a place.

I think this fellow dug his own hole……. This is definately not the norm….

Come on McClean’s, don’t make a story out of this portraying this as the real estate climate in Canada. This is an isolated case of one greedy individual who obviously tried to live the high life but could not afford it!

Don’t come back on here crying about how you never saw this coming. Pick up a book and do some homework. You sheeple think you know it all, don’t you.?

“The dumbest people I know, know it all.”

Good luck! You will all need it.

YOu might then ask why do we do this? For me it is because I like people, truly believe in home ownership and want to provide a reliable service. I’m learning to balance the work so I don’t burn out. One day I hope soon I hope to take a week’s holiday without having my cell phone surgically connected.

B.C. has one of the hardest real estate exams in the country. They have an approx. 1/3 drop out rate and 1/3 failure rate. That said, I am of the opinion that new realtors need to be mentored by experienced realtors with good reputations much like a trade apprenticeship.

At the end of the day a lot of my clients call me friend and like Scott we have shared many a hug and a happy dance upon a successful sale/purchase. That’s how it should be. My friends and even casual acquaintances all know what I do for a living and often approach me for “free” advice which I give willingly. They feel comfortable approaching me because they know the kind of person I am and that their questions aren’t going to trigger hard selling pressure tactics.

The next time around, get references (good realtors should have them). Ask friends, co-workers and see if that doesn’t work better for you. Hopefully you’ll find a good one the next time around.

From the sunny & snowy North Okanagan.