If you are considering selling your home in Burnaby, now seems like a really good time.
Houses are flying off the market in record time as buyers can’t wait to snap up properties – likely for redevelopment.
The latest was a home on Price Crescent in the Garden Village area near Metrotown.
The house is 68 years old and looks its age. It’s rotting with all the same carpeting and appliances. The home wasn’t even staged as part of the sale and it still sold in six days for $5,000 over the asking price of $2,050,000.
The house is only 2,200 square feet and some of that isn’t even finished in the basement. It does, however, have a rentable suite downstairs, but look for this property to be torn down and replaced.
According to the most recent statistics from the Canadian Real Estate Association, home sales in this country rose 4.6 per cent in February. Sales levels for the month were roughly 35 per cent above pre-COVID norms, as buyers raced to lock in historically low interest rates that are set to rise this year.
According to the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver (REBGV), in Burnaby there was a big jump in sales in February, with 459 in total – way above the 314 in January. In Burnaby, the average price for a detached house was going from $2.2 million, up from $2,062,000 in January and way up from $1.7 million in February 2021.
And it’s not just here in Metro Vancouver. I did some research and found an interview that talks about the Toronto market.
"In this market — especially the Toronto market but it’s also shifted to Ottawa, Barrie, Burlington, and elsewhere — it would be very rare to see a condition on a home inspection," said John Lusink, president of Toronto-based Right At Home Realty. "Most realtors would be saying, 'If you put that condition in, you will never ever get a home in the current market.'”
Lusink said some buyers who know they won't get a home if they make their offer conditional on a home inspection choose to hire a licensed home inspector or someone else with specialized knowledge to come to showings and open houses with them instead.
"Doing a pre-inspection — yes, it has to be on your own dime — is still something I highly recommend," he said. "Find an expert, maybe a home inspector or someone with a good construction background, to do a walk-through with you."
So, some helpful advice if you are looking to get into the local real estate market.
- With files from the Canadian Press
Follow Chris Campbell on Twitter @shinebox44.
