Hi folks, I bought a house in Vancouver Canada 9 years ago. The last few years the houses have been selling for ever increasing huge amounts.
It's become this big deal and no one of course knows where its going.
http://www.moneysense.ca/spend/real-estate/8-factors-that-really-mess-up-vancouvers-real-estate-prices/I posted a similar post to this last year and its resale potential has since gone up around 200k !
I ran into some problems with the city as I had the house split into 3 suites.
To resolve this I have had to
1. do some upgrades to authorize the basement suite and
2. take out the stove on top floor and make main and top floor one suite.
3. I have a garage attached to house the city dont like it. An option I have is to knock it down and build a second 600 square foot house at the bottom of garden. I have finance in place to do it plans being processed and I'm in construction and plan to do it for a wholesale price.
It's been a hassle but at the end of the day I'll have 2 houses and the main house will have an authorized suite which makes it attractive to a buyer.
With the new smaller house and renovations on main house I think I could sell for around 1,900,000 next year.... thats a lot of doe!!... more than I ever imagined it would be!
Reason I'm writing this is, I'm a bit of a plodder, by that I mean I'll plod along and not pay a lot of attention to where markets are going and what options I might have. I focus mostly on my work, family and fitness.
If I sell it what would I do with the money? Is investing in markets scary and could I lose a lot of it? I'm wondering what the risks are.
I don't mind what I do for a living, I do small renovations and mostly not too bad... though would certainly like to work less, but still work some.
At the moment the money is all in the house and has been for the 9 years since I bought it, I've thrown most of my money at it, and for the first 5 years it was a huge! pain in the neck and still is at times but a lot less than it used to be, also is a good place to live and run my business out of.
Ideally if I could sell the small house separately and pay off the bank it would be great but at this point can't be done and has to be sold as one with main house. Though theres rumour that might change (or maybe not)
It's like Im asset rich, but not cash rich.... would hate for the bottom to fall out of things, but also if I'd sold it 5 years back as I almost did, I'd be having a fit right now as its since gone up about 700 thousand.
Although if I build the small house and rent it out on air bnb plus the rent from basement suite, I'd more than cover bills and end up with around 1000 to 1400 a month after expenses. Also mortgage paid down about a thousand a month. plus any upside in the value ( currently about 4 grand a week , but it surely cant go on like that) and a place to run my business from.
If I sell next year I could retire if I wanted to. That would be huge and I'd hate to miss this opportunity, it really is that once in a lifetime lucky break.
My own thoughts on it are that the bottom could fall out of it, but maybe 25% which is still a lot of money to leave on the table. ( around $375k!)
and depending on if/why it went down, it may be it would go back up.... theres a lot of Chinese money being invested here and looks to me like its at the point people cant ignore the elephant in the room.. if it goes down because the government stops the money coming in, then that might be a big blow.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/sfu-real-estate-study-foreign-buyers-1.3572499If only I had a crystal ball. It's almost a bit of financial and life style , philosophical question I think.
Any thoughts appreciated.