REW.ca
Follow local house hunters as they experience the highs and lows of buying a home in the intense Vancouver real estate market. Elaine L. is the first to share her search with us. We'll check in with her every couple of weeks to see how it's going.
It was a bit like falling in love. The house ticked all of Elaine's boxes: 2,300 square feet, three bedrooms on the top floor with the kitchen and living area downstairs, and a two bedroom rental suite on the same floor that would cover $900 of the mortgage. It was built just last year, so it's like new but without the HST. Her mom, Patty, liked it, too.
Perfect. But alas, her love was unrequited. When her realtor inquired about putting in an offer subject to the sale of the condo the seller said don't bother. "No one wants to sell to you if they have to wait for you."
That's why every day last week Elaine and her mom were hard at work-lugging a heavy elliptical trainer down to the storage locker, taking boxes of bric-a-brac over to a sister's garage and removing all traces of Elaine's Hello Kitty collection. They're staging their condo, and by next week they hope to be able to get their Realtor in to take pictures and put the condo up for sale.
"I don't want to go through that again," says Elaine about having her subject-to-sale offer rejected. "We have some places where we can stay for a few months if we don't find anything. And when we sell we'll try to set a really late possession date." Meanwhile, "It's a great feeling to be tidy. We've decluttered and depersonalized it to get an open, contemporary look. We had the floors redone with a dark laminate and it really opened up the space. We've cleaned all the walls. The place looks fantastic.
"A friend warned me not to fall in love with it and decide not to sell. But I want to live in a house."
The house she fell in love with-actually a half-duplex-has been sold. But the good thing is that there are lots of similar places in the same neighbourhood, so Elaine's optimistic that something with the same appealing layout will come up... after she's sold the condo.
"It's around $900,000, and at first I thought it was expensive for a half-duplex, but it feels just like a detached house. The two halves barely share a wall. Only the rental suites connect. I haven't seen anything like it in Vancouver."
Though Elaine was looking to buy a house in Vancouver, this place is in Burnaby, which hadn't been on Elaine's radar until a friend alerted her to the listing. It turns out, it's just across the Burnaby border, only two minutes from where she is now, so she'd still be close to friends and family.
Of course, that's if all this works out.
The upheaval is stressful. Elaine says "I'm always worrying. What if we sell this and don't have another place to live? What if the market crashes and my house ends up not being worth what I paid for it?
"But then I remind myself that I'm not biting off more than I can chew. I'll be living comfortably, even if the market crashes. I always plan for the worst case scenario, so I'm planning everything as if the suite isn't rented. We'll be OK."
Follow along as Elaine and her mom chronicle their house-hunting adventures.
REW.ca is a local real estate search website for Vancouver and the Lower Mainland.
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 down, move-in condition.
