Sometimes life presents you with a situation, and most times we don't understand or don't want to understand.

We rather believe our pre-conceived ideas.

Danny Griffin says it so well.

Or you can read Danny Griffin's Monday Morning Mojo  here..

If you are looking to Buy or to Sell real estate in Vancouver area, give me a call. My consultations are FREE. The benefits to You, may be worth a lot of money.
Call Jeff Stark at 604-506-8481 or email me at jeff@jeffreystark.net

Thinking of Selling your home?

 So you are ready to renovate. Found the old house with lots of potential and a big dream.

Just make sure you have enough money to get it done.

Avoid the 5 most important mistakes home renovators make.

1/ Using the wrong general contractor.
    make sure to check his background and get some referrals if possible. But, if he doesn't come across as trustworthy, don't hire him It could be a big mistake

2/ Getting bids with no specs/design.
    If you don't have proper specs or a good design, you are looking for big trouble. How are you going to figure out what the contractor is doing and why?  If you don't have any specs you are open to a lot of extras. And you know what that means. Extra cost, that's what it means.

3/ Losing sight of your dream and budget, and acting on impulses. Impulses are costly. Keep them controlled. You better spend extra time planning than winging it.

4/ Changing the plan.
    Delays, extra costs and impatient contractors who are losing time with sometimes small inconsequential changes.

5/ Ignoring the hidden things.
    It is nice to be picking the paint colors, but make sure you keep an eye on the job from day one. Make sure you are getting what you pay for, in the materials used on the job. That may save you a lot of trouble down the road.

And now, whatch the video.

If you are looking to Buy or to Sell real estate in Vancouver area, give me a call. My consultations are FREE. The benefits to You, may be worth a lot of money.
Call Jeff Stark at 604-506-8481 or email me at jeff@jeffreystark.net

Here is the latest as to what mortgage rates are doing.

The US job less figures were lower than everyone expected and marked the first reduction in job losses in the US since April 2008. That coupled with the recent success of the US stimulus package "Cash for Clunkers" has sparked some positive moves in the equities markets.

GM has reported that they are very happy with the "Cash for Clunkers" program and are now looking to increase production to restock vehicles.

Bonds sold off a bit on the expectations of rising stock prices.

The spreads for mortgages has been stable over the past few weeks, however, the 5 year spread is only 1.69 today and we could see very small increases in the fixed rates if the stocks continue to gain strength. Variable rate mortgages are very stable at this time.

Today's Best Rates:

1 yr               2.55%
2 yr               2.85%
3 yr               3.45%
3.5 yr            3.75%
4 yr               3.89%
5 yr               4.15%
7 yr               5.15%
10 yr             5.25%

Variable        prime +.3%

Courtesy of;

Paula Siemens -AMP
INVIS - SIEMENS GROUP

If you are looking to Buy or to Sell real estate in Vancouver area, give me a call. My consultations are FREE. The benefits to You, may be worth a lot of money.
Call Jeff Stark at 604-506-8481 or email me at jeff@jeffreystark.net

So you put up your home for sale and because the realestate agent priced your home correctly, to the market, you got multiple offers.

Just great, right? It's every sellers dream to get multiple offers on their home.

But, be careful. There are pitfalls that you have to be aware of.

Here is an example. My seller, after the first weekend of showings gets 15 offers!! Wow! A little overwhelming. Where do you start? Offers are not all about price. There are other things to consider. Closing dates, subjects (conditions), buyers profiles, and general attitude of the buyers agent and buyers themselves if you get a chance to meet them.

Back to my seller. We have set the time for all the offers to be presented or sent in, and just before we are about to do that, an offer comes in at $17,000 over the best offer on the table. What would you do? Would you take the offer or look into it a little deeper.

Against my recommendations the seller took the last and highest offer. I warned the seller that the offer was contingent to one more party looking at it, and had financing conditions that some of the other offers did not. To me it looked a little flaky.

You see, when you get an offer accepted, as a buyer, you are in control for the period of the condition dates. Seller can't do anything. He has agreed to the price and must wait on the buyer to make up his mind if they are to proceed with the sale.

There were some good and fair offers, over the list price that to me were more genuine than the high priced offer. Don't forget, if you are the seller, in a multiple offer scenario, the buyers in most instances push their limit and offer more than they would normally. It is important that all offers are looked at very carefully. My seller got carried away and fell for the highest offer.

As it turns out, the buyers did not remove their conditions and walked away.

Now what? Call everyone back and tell them the property is back on the market. The excitement is over and now the buyers are taking a different look at the property. Why did the buyer walk? Is there ab problem? Maybe we offered too much in the first instance?

All these thoughts are running through buyers minds.

The best time to make the deal is the first time you get an offer. If there are multiple offers, as a seller. be very careful and take your time in looking at all the offers. In the end a few thousand dollars more or less means nothing.

If you are looking to Buy or to Sell real estate in Vancouver area, give me a call. My consultations are FREE. The benefits to You, may be worth a lot of money.
Call Jeff Stark at 604-506-8481 or email me at jeff@jeffreystark.net

Here are the average prices by city and province.

Vancouver is still te most expensive and in the eyes of the world the most desirable city to live in.

Most of the prices have come down to close to 2007 levels, but interestingly, both Regina and Saskatoon are way ahead of the 2007 prices.

It is interesting to see that it costs 50% more to live in Yellowknife than in Montreal.

If you are looking to Buy or to Sell real estate in Vancouver area, give me a call. My consultations are FREE. The benefits to You, may be worth a lot of money.
Call Jeff Stark at 604-506-8481 or email me at jeff@jeffreystark.net