If you live in an area that is outside city limits, but still think of it as “Nanaimo” (ex. Cedar, Extension) you are in the Regional District of Nanaimo which is a different municipal entity.

For more information you can contact the City of Nanaimo directly at the number shown.

Ryan Coffey

Having said that, the money to run the province has to come from somewhere and not being a political science major or having a background in macro economics it’s hard for me to say what they would replace this tax with. I suppose this is why I have kept thinking about this article.

I am still grumpy about the HST though.

Ryan Coffey

Time to axe transfer tax

By Darrell Bellaart, The Daily NewsAugust 11, 2010

It’s time the provincial government started taking a hard look at eradicating the property transfer tax.

The B.C. Real Estate Association is keeping up its push to axe the PTT and has been busy arranging meetings with senior members of government for this September.

Now that the province has followed Ontario’s lead by harmonizing provincial sales taxes with their federal counterpart, it takes away one of the province’s biggest arguments for keeping the tax in place.

Provincial officials wonder how they would replace the millions of dollars the PTT brings in. In the 2002-03 tax year, it added

$400 million to provincial coffers and that amount grew by about $100 million each year afterward, reaching a peak of more than

$1 billion before the real estate market retreated in 2008.

Anyone who has bought a house in the past decade will be familiar with the shocking experience on closing day of sitting at the lawyer’s office and learning that the price of the transaction is several thousand dollars more than expected.

The reason is that in B.C. the first $200,000 is taxed at 1% but anything above that amount is taxed at 2%. The total is tallied up and inserted as a line item on closing day.

For the average Nanaimo homebuyer closing the deal on a $350,000 property, they can expect an additional $5,000 in taxes, which most people will likely add to their mortgage.

Add that to the legal fees, real-estate commissions, assessment and inspection costs and annual property taxes and insurance costs and it contributes considerably to the total the average person shells out each month to keep a roof over their head.

B.C. is not the only province with property-transfer taxes. Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island also use them, but in a recent analysis done for BCREA by economist Stanley W. Hamilton, he said the way B.C. applies the tax makes it “the highest property-transfer tax in Canada,” outside metropolitan Toronto, where a separate municipal tax jacks it up even higher.

Taxation pays for important services like health care and education and social services for the poor and needy.

But a shelter tax has unexpected social costs. It affects rental rates and that means it affects everyone, especially those people surviving on welfare and pensions who suddenly can no longer afford renting.

Many people now live in alleys, under bridges and in abandoned buildings. Suddenly, the province has a homelessness problem, requiring even more tax money to solve.

Taxes alone didn’t drive shelter costs up, but it did play a role.

Nanaimo realtor Jim Stewart was the chairman of the association’s committee fighting to axe the tax for more than 15 years. He says the government “does a terrible job of dealing with issues like affordable housing.”

He’s right. When the government gets involved, projects become more expensive due partly to standards unknown elsewhere in the marketplace. It drove the unit costs of a housing project on Meredith Road through the roof.

When former premier Bill Vander Zalm introduced the PTT in 1988, he said it would be a rich-man’s tax since it only applied to properties beyond the reach of the average worker. Twenty years later, it affects virtually all homes sold in the province.

The BCREA calls for a gradual phase-out of the tax, starting with eliminating the 1% portion applicable on the first $200,000. A year later, it proposes removing it on homes below $500,000, before abolishing it completely.

It’s time to axe the PTT.

But apparently this isn’t the reaction everyone is having. Some people are under the impression that it’s going to be really hard to buy now. Not true. Don’t make firm decisions about what you can and can’t afford without talking to a mortgage broker. My life is saturated with real estate information and even I don’t know for sure what I can afford. I have a good idea, but as things are changing every day in the mortgage world and I’m a Realtor, not a Mortgage Broker, I can’t say for sure. So neither should you.

I’d like to say “hats off” to the people running this aspect of the economy. After watching our country fare so well compared to others in the recent real estate debacle and have our banking system become the envy of the world, I have developed a certain respect for their ways.

Below is some more reading on the topic if you are interested. It came from Canada Realty News.

Ryan Coffey

How Will the New Mortgage Rules Affect the Canadian Market?

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty recently unveiled new mortgage rules aimed at stopping housing speculators and ensuring homebuyers can adequately handle their debts when interest rates inevitably rise. Mr. Flaherty stressed that Canada’s real estate market is healthy, and that the new rules, which take effect April 19th, would stop “negative trends” from development.

“There’s no clear evidence of a housing bubble, but we’re taking proactive, prudent and cautious steps today to help prevent one. Our government is acting to help prevent Canadian households from getting overextended, and acting to help prevent some lenders from facilitating it,” commented Minister Flaherty.

“The underlying message is that Canadians should be prudent in the obligations they take on because we can all expect that mortgage interest rates will rise over time,” Flaherty added.

Here is a quick look at the changes which apply to government-backed insured mortgages:

1. Borrowers must now qualify based on a five-year fixed rate even if they choose a mortgage with a lower interest rate and shorter term. The government’s rationale for this change is that it will help borrowers prepare for higher rates, although it may squeeze the purchasing power of home buyers. It remains unclear whether borrowers must qualify at the five-year posted rate or the five-year discounted rate.

2. The maximum amount Canadians can withdraw in refinancing their mortgages will be reduced to 90% of the value of their homes, instead of 95%. This change will help ensure home ownership is a more effective way to save. The impact of this change is expected to be minimal as relatively few homeowners withdraw equity from their homes to this extent.

3. A minimum down payment of 20% will be needed for government-backed mortgage insurance on non-owner-occupied properties “purchased for speculation,” which realistically means rental properties. While this measure is intended to hamper the speculative buying of properties by reducing the leverage of buyers, it will also impact those buying real estate for general investment purposes.

How will these changes affect the Canadian real estate market?

For most consumers, the changes are unlikely to make it harder to get a mortgage but it could reduce the size of the mortgage an individual consumer can negotiate with a lender. And they might have to look at buying slightly less expensive properties.

People buying real estate for investment purposes including those looking for rental properties may find it harder to get into the market as they have to shell out more money form their own savings.

Undoubtedly there will be a rush of mortgage applications to beat the April 19th deadline. However it is expected some lenders will start to implement these guidelines before April 19th.

Some volatility is expected in the housing market in the short term as home buyers rush to beat the April 19th date. After that, the activity will likely fade because so many buyers moved up their purchases. This could end up softening the sharp year-over-year price increases that have been characteristic in many cities recently.

The economic implications of this rule change are unlikely to be severe, and we expect the housing market to slow its ascent without crashing down.

First off, I couldn’t agree with the poster’s comments at the end more. I so often see people drawing conclusions about the price of their home from information like this without taking time to understand the deeper working of it. I see the same sorts of conclusions being drawn from property assessments, what the neighbour’s house sold for (which of course isn’t as nice as their own) and  a price based on how much they paid for the place plus how much the average sale price has gone up plus how much it cost them to do their renos.

There’s only one thing that counts when pricing your home and that’s what people are willing to pay for it. When Realtors give you an estimate on the value of your home, we give you this price based on what has sold recently that is most similar to your home combined with  the experience and knowledge gained from spending pretty much every day thinking about the value of every property we see. And we see a lot.

If we’re really stuck for comparables, (rare) we might include average sale price changes as a factor. I for one, only do this if I really have no better option.

Why? Well, they only measure an average of what people are spending at a certain time.  Take on year ago for example, a time when hardly anyone was buying any real estate. A lot of people were scared off by the nonsense the mainstream media was spewing, those who were buying were being more modest with their purchases than usual and we had a higher number of first time buyers than usual. Those first time buyers were smart. The only deals I was doing at the time was with people like that and I was excited for them because I believed that it was the best time to be a first time buyer in quite a few years due to the low interest rates and the slight slump in the market. All in all, the although these stats do mirror the changes in actual value of real estate, they are only a general guideline. Unfortunately, I can’t think of a better way to measure the overall changes of vlaue in a given real estate market. The Vancouver Real Estate Board is trying a new way of doing these things, but I’ve yet to be convinced of its value. Pun intended.

To sum it up, what I’m trying to say is that I think most people make too much of the average sale prices. For real estate investors and real estate professionals they’re something to keep a finger on the pulse of. For most homeowners, they can be a source of making conclusions that appear more informed than they really are.  So, don’t get too detailed in your calculations.

By the way, what you should be paying at least as much attention to in my opinion is mortgage rates. Those can affect what you pay quite a bit more than market value.

Ryan Coffey

New house construction is starting to recover after rough economic times saw financing and purchasing dry up.

Photograph by: Files , Times Colonist

Nanaimo was the brightest spot for new home starts on Vancouver Island in the past year, the Canada Mortgage and Housing said Monday.

While the “Hub City” had 13 per cent fewer starts last year than in 2008, other Island communities saw annual declines of up to 53 per cent year-over-year.

Recovery from a struggling economy looks promising as the last three months of 2009 had more new housing starts than the last five quarters.

“The modest rebound in new construction activity observed during the fourth quarter of 2009 is a sign that builders are starting to respond to the recent surge in resale demand,” said Travis Archibald, CMHC senior market analyst.

On Vancouver Island the total number of homes getting under construction last year was 2,345, down 39 per cent from 3,823 in 2008.

Last year’s numbers are not a surprise. The worldwide economic crisis and crash in the local multi-family housing boom led to lower monthly start-up numbers in 2009.

However, national house construction rose more than expected in December as Canada’s real estate market continued to show signs of recovery.

Housing starts in Nanaimo slipped just 13 per cent for 2009, compared with far larger drops elsewhere on the Island. A total of 789 homes were started in Nanaimo in 2009, down from 921 in 2008.

At year’s end, Greater Victoria had the highest number of total starts, at 1,034, down 45.7 per cent from 2008’s total of 1,905.

In December, 129 homes were stated in Victoria, down from 159 in November, but a huge increase from just 38 in December 2008.

Duncan’s total starts for last year came in at 168, down 38.9 per cent from 2008. The Courtenay area saw starts slide by 52.6 per cent to 245 in 2009, from 517 the previous year, CMHC said.

Finally, Parksville-Qualicam ended the year with 100 starts, a drop from 205 in 2008.

CMHC said the number of seasonally adjusted housing starts across the country were up 5.9 per cent from November, to 174,500 units. Most economists had expected an increase of between 160,000 and 165,000 units in December, following an upwardly revised 164,800 starts the previous month.

“The improvement in housing starts was broad based in December,” said CMHC chief economist Bob Dugan. “Solid increases occurred in both single and multiple starts to end the year.”

The Bank of Canada may shed further light on whether that strength has pushed Canada into a housing bubble when one of the governor’s advisers talks about the real estate sector in a speech Monday afternoon in Edmonton.

The speech will be closely watched for clues of growing concern among Bank of Canada policy-makers on the red-hot recovery in Canadian real estate. It is to be delivered by David Wolf, an adviser to Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney.

According to CMHC data, urban starts were up 6.6 per cent to 157,100 units in December, CMHC said in its report. Multiple-unit starts totalled 77,700 during the month, up from 72,800 units in November, while single-unit starts totalled 79,400, up 6.4 per cent from the previous month.

Urban construction was up 17.8 per cent in Quebec, 15 per cent in Atlantic Canada, 8.7 per cent in British Columbia and 2.9 per cent in Ontario, the report said. In the Prairies, urban starts declined 3.8 per cent.

Rural starts were unchanged at 17,400 units.

“Overall, the uptick in Canadian residential starts underscores the improving response of builders to the dramatic rebound in overall Canadian housing market activity,” said Ian Pollick, economics strategist at TD Securities.

“It is increasingly looking like the ‘fever’ in the existing home sales market is starting to catch in the new residential housing market. Further, the pullback seen in permits strikes us to be an unwind from unsustainably strong gains due to one-off factors.”

Meanwhile, Statistics Canada said Monday that Greater Victoria’s building permits climbed to $68.6 million in November, up by 48 per cent from $46.4 million October, and higher than November 2008’s total of $49.3.

The Victoria construction industry received a boost Monday with the announced of $42.5-million in renovations to six UVic buildings.

The value of national building permits fell in November by 4.6 per cent from the previous month to $5.9 billion. Still, that was 23.1 per cent higher than November 2008 and 62.8 per cent higher than February 2009, “when the lowest value during the economic downturn was recorded,” the federal agency said.

“However, November’s value remained below values recorded in 2007 and early 2008.”

The decline was due to a drop in the non-residential sector, which offset increases in the residential sector, the agency said.

In a separate release, the Construction Sector Council said the industry the housing recovery is helping the industry emerge from the recession “relatively unscathed,” as a result of government stimulus spending and pre-recession record levels of investment.

The not-for-profit group said construction employment has been rising since August after falling from October 2008 to July 2009.

“This will likely continue because of new infrastructure projects, renovation and maintenance work, and strengthening housing starts,” it said.

Canwest News Service

Ironically, the way most people perceive real estate markets, thanks to our mainstream media, is backwards. The very best times are almost by definition the times when no one is buying because most people are thinking it’s a bad time to buy. (When do you get a better price on skis? In the early winter or the spring?) I bring this up because the article below mentions how a few months ago no one was buying. Well if  by “a few months ago” they mean February or March, then that was the absolute best time to buy a property that you intend to hold onto for a bit. Prices were still on their way down, interest rates were at record lows and no one knew for sure if we were at the bottom yet so sellers were often willing to take quite low prices because for a while there only about one in six places were selling. Only a few months later now, and it’s different story.

Not that things are  now either. Interest rates are still super low (albeit not quite as low as before) and will be until at least part way through next year, prices are still lower than they were at the peak of the boom (only by a bit now) and although there will always be the alarmists and naysayers out there, most believe that 2010 is going to be one helluva year. I know this fall sure has been and Realtors are usually in stand down mode by now as Christmas approaches, but many of us are still working hard myself included.

You may be asking yourself “If Ryan is telling us that whether or not we can afford to make the payments is the most important thing, then why is he talking so much about what markets are doing?” Well, it’s because although the easiest safest way to invest is to buy a place to hold onto and rent it out while the property’s value increase while the rent does too. That’s the bit that anyone can make use of and understand. This is in fact what I am intending to do over the years myself. However there are ways to make some cash off markets for people who are handy for example. People who have professional experience with renos/building can do really well over a short period of time by flipping properties. But that’s not for most people. Desp[ite my knowledge of things real estate, and my ability to recognize a properly done reno or construction job, I don’t think I should be doingthis because I would probably cost myself money rather than make it. I say this because I’ve seen far too many people who presumably watch a lot of HGTV try it, fail miserably and cost themselves lots of money. That’s always sad to see.

For more info on my thinking on this subject, see my six part series on “When To Buy And Sell”

Here is the article that inspired this post.

I just want to add that if a landlord allows a tenant to live in the rental property for three months even though they haven’t paid the rent, that was the landlord’s doing as much as the tenant’s. In B.C. the landlord can kick them out in 10 days if they haven’t paid.

Ryan Coffey

Anyway, I haven’t suddenly lost my mind and started posting nonsense. yes, I’m departing slightly from my usal menu of topics, but there is something about real etsate here.

You see, through my endeavours with the Nanaimo Green Group (a coalition of local eco-oriented businesses I founded) I came into contact with some people who are working to convince the city to pass a bylaw that will allow people to have chicken coups in their backyard. That is, in areas that are within city limits.  A concept new to Nanaimo but not the world at all, I have to say I am totally behind it for all the reasons Robyn lists below and in particular how it gives children the opportunity to better learn respect for their food producing animals. Having grown up on a small hobby farm myself where we had chickens and cows for example, I always felt that those who don’t have this opportunity never seem to think about where their food is coming from and how it is treated. Not because they have cold hearts, but simply because it’s not on their radar. If more people had some concept of how livestock is, can and should be treated/raised, I feel that the animals will be happier and healthier and so will the people eating them.

Read on.

Ryan Coffey

Have you heard the news! Urban gardens are producing delicious fruits, vegetables, nuts and yummy eggs from backyard chickens.  That’s right chickens; they are not just for farms anymore. There is a genuine movement across the country, as people join the urban backyard chicken movement. This is not a unique concept. There are many cities in the Canada and the United States including Victoria BC, Vancouver BC, New York, Portland, San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle, that allow chickens.

Why chickens in your backyard?

Well here are some reasons:

1. Fresh, healthy, delicious eggs, free of pesticides and antibiotics.

2. Chickens eat table scraps, reducing municipal organic waste.

3. Chickens produce a rich fertilizer by-product, high in nitrogen, which in one of the best fertilizers you can find for your vegetable garden.

4. Educational – teaches children where our food comes from and demonstrates responsible pet ownership (chores). Getting back in touch with nature.

5. Great pets – Chickens are people-friendly.

6. Chickens eat bugs, reducing our backyard pest population.

7. Allows families to take control of their food and “eating locally”.

8. It’s a humane way to raise chickens.

Presently in the City of Nanaimo the current bylaw restricts poultry to parcels of land over an acre in size, which excludes most lots within the city.  The Nanaimo Poultry Collective is a local community group formed by individuals who love all things poultry and who desire to be able to legally raise and keep chickens within the city limits, in Nanaimo backyards.

The City of Nanaimo has an intention to promote sustainability. This means making proactive decisions to help people improve their own lives, the lives of their children, and those of future generations. The Nanaimo Poultry Collective (NPC) is slated to go before City Council on November 23rd, 2009 at 7pm in the Shaw Auditorium at the Conference Centre. We will demonstrate the importance of food security and how raising poultry in the City of Nanaimo will fit well with their sustainability goals, as stated in the Official Community Plan.

The NPC meets regularly and are willing to aid in education, providing resources and backyard chicken coop tours.

If you are interested in supporting the change in the bylaw you could do the following:

- Become a member of the NPC by emailing the NPC Secretary, Robyn Quigg, at Quigglet@shaw.ca. Membership is free.

- Join us Monday November 23, 2009 at 7pm.

- Sign petitions found at the Green Store (Port Place) and Island Naturals (Near Home Depot).

Today I received an announcement from the local real estate board that updated us on the issue’s development and it seems there has been some improvements made but I am still concerned about the effect it will have on builders in higher priced areas like Vancouver and Victoria as $525,000 isn’t very much for a new home there. Here in Nanaimo though, that’s a pretty nice home, even for a new one.

I am still concerned though that as Realtors, this will mean a 7% increase in what it costs to hire us. This will affect our industry. There are also the high end builders who will now be trying harder than ever to build home that come in under the wire of $525,000.

The announcement in question follows:

Ryan Coffey

HST transitional rules on housing

• Generally, builders’ sales of newly constructed or substantially renovated homes would be subject to the provincial component of the HST where both ownership and possession of the home are transferred after June 2010. Grandparenting would be provided for certain contracts.
• The proposed transitional rules for new housing, including builder reporting and disclosure requirements, would be administered by the CRA.
• Generally, sales of new homes under written agreements of purchase and sale entered into on or before Nov. 18, 2009, would be grandparented, such that these sales would not be subject to the provincial component of the HST and would not be eligible for B.C.’s housing rebates.
• Grandparenting would be provided for newly constructed or substantially renovated single unit homes, including detached homes, semi-detached homes, and attached homes.
• Grandparenting would not apply to traditional apartment buildings, mobile homes (including modular homes) and floating homes, as the general transitional rules would apply differently to those homes. However, these homes may qualify for B.C. housing rebates.

In October, B.C. residential sales totalled 8,624 sales, a 115-per-cent increase over 4,018 sales in October 2008, according to the report. The average price in B.C. also rose from $420,259 in October 2008 to $493,328 in October 2009.

B.C. led Canada in new monthly records for residential sales in October, according to a report released Monday by the Canadian Real Estate Association.

“Of all the provincial monthly gains, B.C.’s was the highest,” CREA chief economist Gregory Klump said in an interview. “B.C. had the most dramatic decline in sales activity last year [and] it’s also had the most dramatic rebound in recent months. They fell the furthest so they have the biggest ground to make up. And that’s what’s happening. It’s rebounded to a new all-time monthly record for sales activity.”

Klump said a lot of buyers who had moved to the sidelines are returning to the market due to price discounts and lower mortgage rates.

“The pent-up demand in B.C. has been bigger,” he added.

The CREA report was released as a separate survey by the Canadian Association of Accredited Mortgage Professionals (CAAMP) and indicated that British Columbians are the most optimistic in Canada that home prices will increase in the coming year.

“People in B.C. are thinking that the overall economy is improving,” Jim Murphy, president and CEO of CAAMP, said in an interview about their Annual State of the Residential Mortgage Market report. “Perhaps they’re also feeling more positive because of the Olympics.

“And B.C. has always had the highest housing prices and the highest average mortgages. B.C. is the most optimistic that housing prices are most likely to increase.”

According to the CREA report, B.C. residential sales in October totalled 8,624, a 115-per-cent increase over 4,018 sales in October 2008. The average price in B.C. also rose from $420,259 in October 2008 to $493,328 in October 2009.

The national report noted that home sales hit a record high in October, leading CREA to boost its outlook for 2009 and 2010.

Nationally, resale home activity was up 41.5 per cent in the month, reaching a total of 42,288 units.

“Low interest rates and upbeat consumer confidence continue to release the pent-up demand that built late last year and earlier this year,” said CREA president Dale Ripplinger.

“The release of that pent-up demand has boosted national sales activity to new heights and is drawing down inventories.”

Further, said Millan Mulraine, economics strategist at TD Securities, “we expect the recent strong gains in the housing market to remain largely intact, though we suspect that the back-to-back double-digit advance in sales seen earlier this year may not be repeated.”

As a result of the sector’s strong performance, CREA increased its forecast for sales in 2009 by 6.6 per cent to 460,200 units.

For 2010, the national industry group said sales would rise seven per cent to 492,300 units.

The average home price nationally also reached new highs in October, climbing to $341,079, up 20.7 per cent from a year ago.

A separate measure, which limits its focus to Canada’s major markets, showed the average price rising 22.1 per cent to $373,095.

At the same time, the sharp rise in housing demand has eaten into inventories. With 194,994 homes listed for sale in Canada at the end of October, the number of listings is 20.8 per cent below the peak reached in October of last year.

It is the sixth month in a row in which inventories have fallen from year-ago levels, bringing supply to 4.1 months on a seasonally adjusted basis, the lowest level in more than two years.

Klump said new listings are expected to rise in coming months.

According to the CAAMP report, Canadians are increasingly confident that the value of their homes is rising and optimistic about their local housing markets. It also said that the Canadian mortgage market is rebounding and will surpass the $1 trillion mark in 2010.

In B.C., 47 per cent of people surveyed feel their house prices will increase in the next year, compared to 43 per cent in Alberta and 42 per cent in Ontario, the other top provinces. The national average was 40 per cent, more than double the 18 per cent who felt that way when surveyed in the spring of 2009.

The CAAMP survey also found that B.C. residents are the second most optimistic that now is a good time to buy a home, as well as the second most likely to buy a home in the next 12 months.

Nationally, the CAAMP survey found that Canadians are very satisfied with their current mortgage, with 77 per cent either completely satisfied or satisfied.

The top reason cited is the mortgage rate, which averaged 4.55 per cent over the past year, a decline from 5.41 per cent the previous year.

Instead, I offer my insights based upon my living a life saturated with real estate information and having lived in this area just across the water from Vancouver for most of my life. For a change, I won’t delve deeply into the inner working of real estate any deeper than talking about the creation of demand. One way demand is created is via advertising and you’d be hard pressed to convince me that holding the world’s largest media event isn’t going to have the effect of some major advertising for our corner of the world.

When it was announced that the 2010 Olympics would be held in Vancouver, I had just moved to Japan and heard this announcement that was certain to cause some excitement in the far off land I call home. I knew then that this would be the beginning of a major change of some kind to the west coast. On one hand I was concerned about how much natural space they were going to tear up to build everything for the Olympics, but I was also excited about how it would change the face of the west coast in the years to come.

For much of my student years I had worked in the tourism industry and I had already seen how a big international event could and did change the face of the economy in my corner of the world. I’m of course referring to Expo ‘86, the great source of hats, t shirts and random trinkets laying in cupboards and the bottom of closets in B.C., and presumably the world, for many years after the fact.

During Expo ‘86, B.C. had some time in the spotlight, as far as I know this was a first for us and this was therefore the first time many people in the world had even heard that we existed.  I mean, let’s not fool ourselves, we’re far from being a bustling urban centre. (Unless you happen to be a Canuck, a Kiwi or an Aussie.) We’re a young part of a young nation that has long subsisted on harvesting natural resources like forestry and fishing. Our province, at 944,735 square kilometers is larger than the average country (767,731 square kilometers) yet we only have about 4.5 million people who mostly live in the southern part of the province. I don’t think it would be going too far for me to say that Expo 86 literally put Vancouver (and those of us nearby) on the map.

Expo ‘86 caused a big change in our economy. After a few years, people started coming back to explore B.C. further, and they brought or sent their friends too. Why? Because it’s beautiful, safe, the government is sane most of the time, the air is clean due to an abundance ofnature and the people are nice. Over the years we have seen more and more people coming to the west coast to vacation and speaking as a Realtor I can tell you that it’s not uncommon for people to travel somewhere on vacation and then fall in love with it enough to want to make it their home. Those of you from Vancouver Island will no doubt have noticed how much Tofino has grown since the early 80’s. It was then this isolated, remote beach town in the middle of tons of nature and now it’s a full blown resort town that has millions of visitors every year.

I think you get my point about what a difference Expo ‘86 made, but here’s the thing that makes me think investing in real estate here is a great idea:

Without looking anything up, that is, just off the top of your head ask yourself where the last world expo was.

Where was it? Do they have it every year? I don’t know. I know they had one in Japan in 2005 because I was there. I also heard about one in Australia once… was it 1988? I’m really not sure, I’d have to look it up.

Now ask yourself the same question for the Olympics: Where were the last Winter Olympics? And the one before that? And the one before that? How often do they have them? I bet you can name the places going back quite a few years as well as accurately say what year it was held there. I still want to go skiing in Nagano, but for some reason I never did.

This corner of the world is already a very popular place to come and do things athletic in a natural setting, or just to come a visit and enjoy the natural beauty. And yes, we’re becoming more and more popular of a place to come for a skiing trip too. But think of the effect that the olympics will have on taking that to a new level. Who wouldn’t want to ski on the same hills as the top pros or hold some major event on the ice they played on? Can you imagine how many people will want to train in those places for years to come? But never mind that, think of all the minds who will be looking at images of our homeland thinking “Wow… it’s nice there…”

And for those of you who don’t already know. Nanaimo is literally a 20 minute float plane ride from downtown Vancouver, and it costs about one third of the price to buy real estate here. It’s also much safer in my not so humble opinion. (Had to plug Nanaimo in there somewhere!)

Ryan Coffey