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Call Your Local Professionals
We have seen no shortage of headlines this year, or any of the past 5, 10 or 20 years, from ‘credentialed’ observers of the Canadian Real Estate market from around the world offering dire forecasts. Another year another story of the IMF, a foreign bank analyst, or some other entity or random individual making predictions about a market that does not exist. For there is no National Real Estate market, no provincial, and no ‘Greater Vancouver Area market. And sweeping forecasts on Real Estate are as useful as forecasts about Canadian weather.
All that really matters is whether or not it is hot or cold in your specific neighbourhood. Answering this question often takes a local expert with their feet on your street.
Here are a few things about the home that you own which most of these analysts seem not to consider:
- You live there, and you have to live somewhere. You are not leaving very easily.
- CDN mortgages are ‘Full Recourse’ mortgages. You cannot throw your keys on the bankers desk and walk away, the banker will follow you wherever you go and they will get the very last pennies owned to them.
- CDN mortgage qualification standards are among the most stringent in the world. Even still most CDN’s borrow significantly less than they qualify for. We CDN’s are a prudent bunch. Especially homeowners who tend to have higher incomes, stronger credit, and reasonable equity.
- Unlike the stock market, where a position can be liquidated with the click of a button, liquidating Real Estate is slow, cumbersome, and often tedious. Taking weeks, if not months. Thus a ‘crash’ is not so instant to occur and far more difficult to predict. Clearly.
On this final point, many a Real Estate investor can attest to wishing that at 4am when roused from a deep slumber to race to a tenants property to stop a leaking pipe flowing into the unit below – that if there were a ‘sell’ button it would get pressed at that moment.
Just as many a homeowner, watching tall trees swaying near their home in a windstorm (or worse) may also press that button ‘just to be safe’.
But Real Estate is neither bought nor sold in split second decision driven by emotion pushing logic from the equation. Instead cooler heads prevail and while nearly every purchase and sale decision around Real Estate is driven by emotion, they are emotions which are driven by life circumstances more so than kneejerk reactions.
Wonderful circumstances drive purchases and sales alike. Just as challenging circumstances can drive sales and some purchases as well.
Understanding that you are emotional is the first step. The next is enlisting your best allies;
- A level-headed Realtor.
- A level-headed Mortgage Broker.
The right team will protect you from selling too low, buying too high, moving too quickly, and even from moving too slowly.
Seek professional guidance, a third party that will offer perspective that could be missing from an otherwise overheated experience.
Thank you
Dustan Woohdouse[/vc_column][/vc_row]