Coldwell Banker - Westburn Realty

How do we start fresh in 2009!   2008 is a year that most of us would like to forget.  From rich to poor, all of us lost money in all forms of investments. In the past, a lot of us would blame our financial advisors or stock brokers for we would have to rely on their expertise and judgement.  With the technology of the internet, we were able to do our own research and we still could n ...

INTRINSIC INVESTMENT VALUE     I just attended a economic seminar sponsored by the real estate board which brought in an analyst who used to work for CMHC. Cameron Muir states that BC's economy is much better than the rest of Canada because our U.S. trade is 45% of our total, compared to 80% in Ontario but the BC consumer confidence is rattled, just like the rest of the world, from all t ...

Excitment is over, what is next?   US Bail Out/Rescue Plan finally passed.  After the unexpected failure on Sept. 29th, the whole world was waiting for this to be passed.  The stock market rallied up before the legislation was passed and then went downward once it was passed.  Unexpected and completely the opposite of what you would think would rationally happen but that's where the ...

Change of Canada mortgage lending policy Canada's lending policy has always been a lot tighter than US especially among all the major banks.  A couple of years ago, a few major banks started not granting mortgages to apartments less than 500 sf or they would approve the lending only depending on which part of the city.  Down payment for those properties are going to be varied based on ...

Whoever holds the gold makes the rules  I hope you have a strong heart and low blood pressure in order to handle this pass week financial crisis.  Who can imagine a 150 years old, Lehman Brothers would go bankrupt.  I thought the US government said after Eron and Arthur Anderson crisis, they would have a stronger system to prevent financial crisis but once again, it's not the case.  Af ...

Who are the volatile groups in today's market? Everytime when the real estate market or the stock market goes through its cycle which is normally once a decade, I noticed it always affect a few groups of people:   1) Virgin buyer.  They are usually renters or buyer who has been living at home.  This is because they never had any real estate transaction experience.  However, I noticed if ...

Is it a good idea to sell and rent?   NO! NO! NO!   I've been hearing a lot of home owners including some colleagues in my industry believing our market has topped and are considering selling now when the market is still high(according to their own definition), then rent a while and wait to buy back when prices are lower.  It seems that all of a sudden these people have a crystal ball and l ...

Perfect Market for 3 groups of Buyers  I believe the audience must have heard of the real estate report from the real estate board on the media. You can read the whole report at http://www.tinamak.com/VancouverArchives.ubr.  Yes, our housing prices have dropped but only by an average of 2.3% for the detached properties, 1% down from the attached property and 2% down from apartment.  Sa ...

US Housing Market Recovery Bill:   On 27 Nov, 2007, an article by Joe Kay said the credit crisis reveals widespread accounting manipulation by top US banks.  The whole situation got out of hand and that's why their housing market is in today's turmoil condition which threaten the economy as a whole.    If you remember last week I talked about the survey done in US saying home buyers be ...

Sweden and Holland real estate general information  It was a great experience to visit Amsterdam in Holland and a few small and big city in Sweden, of course including Stockholm, the capital of Sweden.  As we know there are a lot of histories in Europe.  Most buildings in Amsterdam were built in the 16th and 17th Century & up.  For Sweden, it's 14th Century and up.  They don't demolis ...