This past week the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications (CRTC), Canada’s national telecom regulator, was asked to stop imposing a previous decision for a controversial usage-based billing (UBB), or metered Internet bandwidth usage, when Jean François Mezei filed a formal petition. The CRTC’s claim that the imposition of the same retail rate structure onto all ISPs [...]

Based on the most recent year-end data from the BC Assessment Database, here are some interesting local summaries of property numbers in the chart below. In addition, December 31, 2007, is used as an arbitrary but fairly recent benchmark to compare three full years to 2010 year-end. The total number of all taxable properties in [...]

New regulations are finally being developed in British Columbia that will hopefully help improve accountability for the Strata Property Act and Regulations with a focus on depreciation reports and audited financial statements (if you’d like to find out more about depreciation reports give me a call: 778-878-0778). If you would like to be notified when [...]

“If you want into the Canadian real estate market with the lowest possible entry-level lending terms and conditions available then I believe your time could be running out.” Three weeks ago I posted this. Tonight I read this online from the Globe and Mail: Ottawa to tighten mortgage rules. So now I’m taking this opportunity [...]

Buyer Beware Seminar (free): This unique real estate seminar will provide you with insights to avoid pitfalls and ways to protect yourself as a buyer. A mortgage broker, a REALTOR®, a lawyer and a financial planner in the same room at the same time, offering a FREE seminar, and answering all of your questions about [...]

Unraveling Real Estate in 2011… The broad brush used by ‘Talking Heads’ to paint a macro picture of real estate has little bearing on local micro markets and is worthless to the average consumer. All real estate is local and as such only local data should be considered.  In fact most of the national and [...]

Real Estate Highlights of 2010 – continued… Buyer’s Market On April 27th I posted, “Hello Buyer’s Market!” to let my clients know we were in a Buyers Market.  It was four months later that the chief economist of the Real Estate Association mentioned “a summer shift to a buyers market”. Balanced Market Locally this past [...]

Harmonized Sales Tax HST will affect all new homebuyers. When getting pre-approved with your lender you should get a ‘Net-Sheet’ showing you all of your estimated costs. You will need to know this before you can tell your REALTOR® what your upper limit is for buying.  Here is a link to a HST calculator if [...]