Follow local house hunters as they experience the highs and lows of trying to buy a house in the Vancouver real estate market. Elaine L. is the first to share her search with us. We check in with her every couple of weeks to see how it's going.
"We fired our realtor," says Elaine.
In the months we've been following her Vancouver real estate adventures, she's become a whiz at finding new properties to look at, and learning what's going on in the market in general.
Turns out, she had no choice. She had to find listings herself because her realtor wasn't doing it for her.
And when it got to the point of negotiating offers and preparing documents, Elaine and her family just didn't feel well represented. So Elaine made the very difficult decision to find a new realtor.
The breaking point came after the experience she told us about in House Hunter Chronicles 7 when her offer on a house in Fraserview was turned down.
"The worst was when I asked what our initial offer should be and he told me, 'Offer over million and however much over is up to you.' So he basically told us we were on our own. Then, during negotiations, the seller asked for our maximum price, which we shouldn't have given, but we didn't know that. The seller turned it down and our realtor came back and asked for something more! He wasn't helping us with our negotiations, he was just being the middle-man.
"He also prepared a contract that said our offer was based on a mortgage of so many thousand dollars instead of a percentage of the sale price. My sister was in the mortgage industry for 10 years and said she'd seldom seen that done before. She's been out of the industry a few years and she's not sure if things have changed since then, but she didn't think it made sense and it didn't protect the buyer. Not only that, but the amount he wrote wasn't even what we needed to borrow - we actually wanted to borrow more. Then, instead of fixing it, he talked down to my sister, asking how long she'd been out of the business. And said that if the mortgage falls through we'll find a loophole to get out of the contract. He was making mistakes that left us without any protection."
"It was really hard, but I wrote him an email explaining all the reasons we weren't happy with his service and telling him we'd no longer be using him. We had signed a contract with him to sell our condo, but we didn't sign a contract to buy, so there were no legal issues. But still, it was a really tough thing to do."
It took only a day for Elaine to find a new realtor, once she'd made her decision.
She booked some viewings on her own, and at one of them she met a realtor who impressed her so much she asked him to represent her.
What was it that impressed her so much?
"We asked him a lot of questions about the house he was showing. He seemed re-ally smart.
"He gave us a good explanation of what's happening in the market. He said it is starting to be a buyer's market but it's not being reflected in the prices so far because sellers haven't come down yet. We really respected that. Our other realtor was telling us the market was still going up.
"And when we told him about losing out on the house with the small lot, he said it was under standard lot size, and half of his clients wouldn't even consider buying it. Before him we didn't even know there was a standard lot size. Our old realtor said it was a small lot, but he didn't explain that it was under the standard size."
Elaine is already noticing a huge difference working with her new realtor.
"When I first met this guy I sent him a batch of properties I was interested in and he replied that they were already booked for a tour he set up for us that weekend. I apologized for bothering him, because I'd forgotten what a real realtor was supposed to be doing. He's shown us a whole bunch of other houses and recommended other neighbourhoods for us. And that's what our other realtor hadn't been doing at all.
"He also has a background in renovations so he can tell us what this change would cost and what that change would cost. It made us think that maybe we didn't have to have something brand new - maybe we could buy something and make some changes and stay within our budget."
The new realtor is opening up a world of new possibilities for Elaine, and she's excited and hopeful about finding a house in the near future.
Follow along as Elaine and her mom chronicle their house-hunting adventures. You can read the full series on www.REW.ca, Vancouver's online hub for local real estate.
ELAINE L. BIO
. Family size: Two-a single woman and her mother.
. Current residence: Owns a condo.
. Budget $800,000 to $ 1.1 million.
. Desired neighbourhoods: Collingwood, Fraserview, Renfrew, Renfrew Heights, Killarney.
. Looking for 2,000 to 2,500 sq. ft. newer detached house with rental suite downstairs, move-in condition.
