I'm merging in to more social media linking. If I've done it right, this blog will now use feedburner to associate with Facebook and through to Twitter. You can receive this RSS feed directly or through these other tools. My aim is to post things that hold interest, not jsut what i'm eating at the moment! Enjoy and feel free to comment.

IMPACT OF NEW HARMONIZED SALES TAX

 I’ve been known to ‘Soap Box’ here about the impact of taxes on the real estate industry, and the Liberals in Victoria have prodded me to do it again.

There is a new Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) coming to BC July 1st next year. Basically they are taxing the Provincial Sales Tax (PST) and converting it to a Value Added Tax, the same format as the GST. The Harm ...

...and the weather was pretty bad too. The real estate winter is starting to melt and I’ve found a pulse. Needless to say, based on the barrage of negative press, you have all noticed that the real estate market has been down.

To give you an idea, the list-to-sell ratio in November, December and January was 5% or less. This means that for every 100 listings, only 5 were selling in month. A ...

CREA has now launched REALTOR.ca! This new site will now run parallel with MLS.ca. REALTOR.ca has the ability to seach and view listings based on a real map seach. This is a really cool site that is definately worth taking a look at especially if you're over browsing the MLS.ca site. Check it out at www.realtor.ca

CMHC has just held a conference and the hot topic is, as always, what is in the future for the market. The pundits have stated that they expect the Vancouver market to grow by up to 8% in the next year.

In a discussion with other Realtors in my office we found it hard to see examples where the market was up 8% this year in Langley. There have been rises however 8% would mean a $500,000 home ...

BIG BANKING CHANGE

The Federal government has quietly changed the Banking Act with respect to mortgage lending. This is a huge change that was relatively unnoticed by the media.

For over 40 years the Bank Act required that buyers with less than 25% cash down had to have an insured mortgage. This meant that most young buyers paid an additional fee of between 1%and 3.75% depending on amount b ...

The Langley real estate market has taken off with a bang this year. As expected the market has regained it's vigor that was lost in the latter part of 2006. So far this year i am ahead of last year in sales and our RE/MAX Treeland office has done more sales in January 2007 than in January 2006, which was a record for a Janaury back then!

Although prices haven't risen yet i do expect some pric ...

Christmas Memories from Brookswood

The weather promises very little winter excitement over the Christmas break this year, but I can remember Christmas’s past in the winter of Brookswood.

In the early 1990’s perhaps ‘92 we had a cold snap where it rained onto an already frozen ground. This was the first time I saw serious rime ice in the Lower Mainland. Trees were encased in a thick layer of i ...