BC Budget 2016: First-Time Buyers Sidelined, Local New Home Buyers Win
Posted by Steve Harmer on
Province focuses affordability towards Canadian buyers of new homes, paid for by hiked luxury home tax;also promises collection of data on overseas buyers
It doesn’t matter if you’re a first-time buyer or not – the province is focusing the much-needed affordability measures in its 2016 BC Budget towards buyers of newly built entry-level homes, Finance Minister Mike de Jong announced February 16.
In an unexpected move, which had been widely predicted to be a cut in Property Transfer Tax (PTT) specifically for first-time buyers, de Jong announced that buyers of new homes up to $750,000 in value will no longer have to pay PTT (although GST still applies), effective February 17. This exemption is available to Canadian citizens and permanent residents…
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This is it! This is where I want to live. I'm home suite home. Why? Because this master suite is perfect. It's sweeter than all the other suites.
Secondary suites, a common feature of larger, older homes in several Canadian municipalities, have been in existence for many years but became illegal in some jurisdictions when zoning bylaws set stringent requirements for the type of housing that could be accommodated in low-density areas. Since the 1980s, secondary suites have been recognized by policy makers as one of the most cost-effective ways of providing affordable rental housing and are an important part of the Canadian housing stock, especially in urban areas. Secondary suites make up close to a fifth of the rental stock in Vancouver and Edmonton. They are also an important source of…
Price, square footage, location: "All that can be trumped by the visceral reaction of seeing a home," says June Cotte, who teaches marketing at Western University's Ivey Business School.
Whole industries and sub-industries have formed to help ease the understandable anxiety we endure before we sign on the dotted line to close a deal: real estate brokerages, real estate lawyers, mortgage brokers, property inspectors. That’s a lot of people doing a lot of things for us, and it’s not always clear what we should expect from each.
A mortgage is a word that has been in the English language since the late 1300s and comes from the French “mort,” which means “dead,” and “gage,” meaning “pledge.” Therefore, a mortgage, in the real sense of the meaning of the word, means that the security pledged to the mortgagee for the debt will be taken from him if he fails to pay the debt, and will, therefore, be “dead to him upon condition.” on the other hand, the mortgagee fulfills the obligation to pay the debt, the pledge is dead. Either way, something dies.
Some real estate agents won’t even work with you until you’ve been pre-approved for a mortgage. This is an important first step in the home-buying process. You don’t want to start house-hunting and fall for a home you can’t afford.
The process of selling a strata property is not the same as selling a house, and it tends to be much more involved when it comes to drawing up the paperwork.
Multiple Listing Service® (MLS®) residential sales in the province are forecast to edge back 6.2 per cent to 96,100 units this year, after reaching 102,517 units in 2015. Strong consumer demand is expected to push MLS® residential sales up by 2 per cent to 98,000 units in 2017.