So first, we have to define the term “strata”. A strata complex is one larger property where portions of it are bought and sold as “units”. The most common example is a condo. If you buy a condo, the interior of the condo is exlusively yours but the other condos in the complex (obviously) aren’t yours and the exterior of the bulding and the common areas like hallways, garden, foyer and the like and shared with the other condo owners. This “common property” has to be maintained and managed. There may also be some hot water or heat that the owner of the unit gets from the complex.

All of this common property maintenance and management and everything else that comes with it costs money. The amount each owner pays every month is (as a rule) determined by the size of their unit compared with everyone else’s. Each owner pays their own share and that share is called a “strata fee”.

It is worth noting that if you buy a typical house (a single family home that is not part of a strata) that you don’t have to pay for such things as a monthly fee, but still have to pay for the maintenance of the exterior of your property directly out of your own pocket. The upside is that you are in charge of your own destiny, but this can be the downside too. It’s a matter of perspective.

In some cases, there may be things like “special assessments” as well, but that is another post.

Ryan Coffey

Of course, there are a variety of retirement homes in the area which offer varying levels of comfort and care but not all are interested,  ready or in need of such a lifestyle. For this reason, there are many 55+ communities of condos, townhomes, patio homes (here is a patio home listed with me that is 45+) and mobile homes. Such communities offer a balance point between the vigorous and sometimes chaotic community populated by younger people and the sometimes overly tranquil and restricted lifestyle of a retirement home.

Some like to retire in homes that have a small yard for them to do gardening in. Mobiles like this one are an option for people like that who are on a budget. Depending on price range and tastes there are a wide variety of strata communities that specifically cater to an older crowd and offer facilities for holding events, having guests, getting exercise andd just plain connecting with your neighbours.

But one doesn’t need to join a retirement oriented community in order to have a feeling of tranquility. The photo above is of a listing which you can see here which offers many of the things mentioned above but is not in a retirement community but still offers the sense of quietude and privacy without great expense.

Not everyone wants to deal with all the rules/bylaws that come along with strata properties. They like the sense of freedom that comes with owning a house and as their knees begin to lose strength, stairs start to become more tiresome. This is why another popular type of home for people to retire in is ranchers (aka bungalows) such as this one. Ranchers of various styles, ages and prices exist all over Nanaimo.

And that, is the coles notes of what general sorts of properties are popular with those who wish to retire in Nanaimo. Or perhaps I should say that it the tip of the iceberg as there really is such a wide variety available which is beyond the scope of this post. It bears mentioning though that all of this is within the context of a wide variety of community activities, attractions and events that are designed to appeal to our already large and growing retired population. Have a look around the rest of the blog for more on these topics.

Ryan Coffey

The City of Nanaimo is generally an easy organization to get info from. Lots of knowledgeable staff to take your calls and their website has this great map that, if you can figure out how to use it and ask pertienent questions to staff at city hall, is often one of those bits of info that can really make a difference between being not quite sure and being quite sure about what’s going on regarding various rules, regulations and changes that concern a given property.

But now they have something new and it’s easier to get the info. Have a look.

Ryan Coffey

The term 'assessment'  as I encounter it in my daily work refers to the tax assessment of your property. This is, as I see it, part of the local governement's way of distributing  the cost of their budget in a fair way among the various property owners. (Some will no doubt want to criticize the governement here because I used the word 'fair'. That's a different conversation.) Assessments are usually ball park accurate but sometimes way, way off which is something I explore here and here.

As for 'appraisal' it refers to someone being hired to come and look at properties inside and out and compare them to other properties in a detailed manner that combines the experience and knowledge of the professional from having been through so many properties before with the data on hand that is specifically chosen to compare the property with. 'Appraisal' usually refers to cases where someone from a property appraisal firm is hired. Realtors like myself will usually use words like 'Comparative Market Analysis' (CMA) or something like 'Market Value Estimate'.

I'm sure there is a Lawyer somewhere who will tell you that these CMA and Market Value Estimate are distinct from the term appraisal.  I must say however, that from what I've seen, it's the old "You say potato, I say potato. You say tomato, I say tomato." And yes, they all sounded the same in my head too, at least until I started overthinking it.

The short of it: Assessment generally refers to the number issued for tax purposes which aren't so accurate for the purposes of pricing a property. Appraisal is done specifically with as much accuracy as one can reasonably expect from a professional who is focused on that task.

Ryan Coffey

Now…. if I had never been to Nanaimo, and knew next to nothing about it what’s the first thing I would want to know? Location? Cost? Lifestyle? Job opportunities? Well, a map can answer the first part of that…

View Larger Map

Looks like we’re in the middle of nowwhere doesn’t it? Zoom in. You’ll see that the middle of nowhere is just a couple of hours drive away and that the well known city of Vancouver is just next door and would be in commuting distance if it wasn’t for the water. (But yes, there are a few people who do that commute anyway.) We’re a town of about 80,000 people on the east coast of Vancouver Island. We’re just about 2 hours drive North of Victoria, and a slightly longer travel time from Vancouver via ferry. But only 20 minutes from Vancouver by seaplane. Our area is a very green place where, as you probably saw during the 2010 Olympics next door, is full of alpine forests and oceans and not nearly as cold as the rest of Canada.  Cold winter day out here? Maybe freezing, but usually not.

As for the the cost, lifestyle, work mentioned above the points are generally covered in this post   throughout my main website, and more in depth in the links section of that website.

But it’s the beauty and pace of life of Nanaimo that I think catches people’s eye right away and the lifestyle and convenient size and location of Nanaimo that makes people stay. I’ve put up a lot of photos of the area on my blog over the years which you can view all of here and you can see a wider variety of photos of Nanaimo here and here.

Again, this is just a taste of what there is to learn about Nanaimo on my website(s) alone but the above is enough to keep most anyone busy for quite a while. In the end, there’s no substitute for getting off the computer and coming to have a look. I can help you with that.

Ryan Coffey

Ryan Coffey

The 2012 budget introduces new relief for first-time buyers of newly built homes. It’s giving consumers a break while supporting the new-home construction sector. Effective February 21, 2012, to March 31, 2013, the $10,000 B.C. First-Time New Home Buyers’ Bonus will give a temporary, refundable income tax credit for first-time buyers purchasing newly-built homes.

More info here.

Ryan Coffey

Click here.

Ryan Coffey

Let’s start with why I’m talking about potatoes. Did you do a double take there? If not, my guess is that you speak some Japanese. Part of why Nanaimo is such an exotic place to people from a certain corner of the world is that it has a funny name. In Japanese, “nana”  means “seven” and “imo” roughly translates as “potato” or “starchy root vegetable”. So from their perspective, our town is a pretty funny sounding place. So much so that a local once told me a story of him working in a gas station and seeing a car pull over but not opening the windows/doors or otherwise interacting with him. When he approached the car to offer his service, he saw a car load of Japanese people laughing to the point of being in tears and having to pull the car over for reasons of safety. When they caught their breath and  explained why, the experience clearly stuck with him enough to recount it to me many years later.

But here’s the thing, Nanaimo is actually pretty darn amazing from their perspective regardless of the name. I’ve travelled enough and met enough people from various corners of the country/continent/planet to know that what I’m about to describe is one part of a general theme. That theme being that we are so lucky to live here. I didn’t really understand that growing up, and the gradual discovery of this is one of the various factors that led to my career in real estate. It is after all easy to sell what you believe in.

It’s very hard to put the experience of living in another culture into words.  So let’s start with some images:

Ok, so I’m not much of a cameraman nor is my Japanese more than basic. But you can see the beginning of my point. As I allude to in the video, the greater Tokyo area has a population of about 35,000,000 people whereas all of Canada has about 34,000,000. Nanaimo’s greater population, that of the Regional District of Nanaimo is 138,631 but even that is trying to make Nanaimo look big considering the areas that includes as Nanaimo proper is about 87,000. Something I edited out of the video were my comments that it is in fact a totally clear day, it’s hard to see with the low resolution and all, but what you see on the horizon are not clouds that’s smog and it’s always that way over there. In Canada, we flip out about smog in Toronto or Vancouver because we can actually see it. Imagine never seeing the sky without it. Imagine only ever seeing as many stars as you can count on your fingers. Imagine a 90 minute commute on the “sardine express” being normal. Each way, every day… and you did lots of overtime this week, you have to come in Saturday, maybe Sunday and you get no overtime pay because you’re on a salary. All of this (and more I’m not getting into) is normal.

As I often say, Nanaimo is a nice balance point between city and nature. Within the confines of what is generally considered Nanaimo, one can go to anywhere to most anywhere else in 25 minutes or less. In fact, most of the time it’s more like 15-20 minutes. Nanaimo is big enough to have everything one needs to stay entertained and happy in their daily life but close enough to both ends of the nature/city spectrum for one to easily make a trip there. I mean, like within an hour. More on that here.  There really is a lot to say about this so please check out that link if you’re not already living in Nanaimo.

On my way back from Tokyo a couple of weeks ago, I was flying in one of the float planes that Harbour Air runs from the Vancouver airport to downtown Nanaimo and I saw:

…and even though the BC Ferries travelling the route between Nanaimo and Vancouver is something I have been seeing regularly for the majority of my life, as it is the lifeblood of our connection with the rest of Canada, it blew my mind. I was experiencing some reverse culture shock here. For you, see, I had just spent a few weeks at my other home where there are hundreds (thousands?) of train stations where during most of the day there are trains coming and going every couple of minutes or in some cases more than that as some stations have a dozen train platforms plus cars, subway, taxis, an awful lot of bicycls and even more people on foot. My guess is that there are more people on your average Tokyo train than on two of these ferries but Vancouver island is so much bigger than that area.

The very international social scene that one finds themselves in as a foreigner in Japan, and increasingly as a resident in Canada, is full of people from simply EVERYWHERE.  Those internationals who have been to my corner of the world always say the same thing. They tell me how beautiful it is and many of those people will say that we’re lucky to live there. Of course, one must tolerate the rain but life is very easy here compared to where most people live in the world. Most of us here worry about having to work some job we hate for very little pay whereas I have heard so many stories over the years from people who’ve lived elsewhere in the world where simple things like getting clean water and enough food or not getting shot at is the challenge. Those are the extremes, of course, but even those who are from the so called “first world” countries keep telling me how nice the location is and how relaxing and easy life is here.

In Canada, life is good enough for people to really care about the finer details of life and be able to share compassion rather than be in survival mode all the time. A lot of Canadians complain about relatively small things as there isn’t really a lot of big stuff to complain about but if there is one trait that we are proud of as a nation it is our capacity for compassion. Sure, we’re not perfect as a people and neither is our govenment, but really it’s pretty darn good here. And given the choice between a rainy winter and a really cold one I’ll take the rain every time.

I could write a lot about this but I think that going through the section of this blog called “Nanaimo Profile and Events”  in addition to the link above to my website will help the more curious readers get a better idea of where I am coming from.

Ryan Coffey

So... assessments. Homeowners around these parts have just gotten their property assessments last week. This governement issue document  is mainly about what they think your home is worth and from this number (combined with a slew of other factors mainly about which services are available) they calculate how much property tax will be owed on that property this year.

In my line of work, the assessed value of a property is fairly frequently brought up by Sellers and Buyers alike to justify what they think a given property is worth. It is understandable that the layman would rely on such numbers for their conclusions, but when scrutinized from the perspective of actual market value these numbers do not hold up. But don't worry, they are typically on the low side... but not always.

In May of 2009, I wrote this post but as it is something that continues to come up, I will write about it once again. I will borrow from the post but I will use the latest available information to show that my position is not just something I'm pulling out of a hat.

Before attacking the accuracy of assessed value I want to point out that I think it is understandable why the taxing system works the way it does. I am not trying to blame anyone, I just want to clear up this all too common misconception as it affects people's decisions regarding real estate. This is, of course hte most valuable thing most of us ever own so it's pretty important to have a clear understanding of it.

Quite often people will tell me the assessed value (for taxes) of their property, or they will ask about the assessed value of a property on the market that they have some interest in. My answer is that although the prices are generally in the right ballpark, that they are not usually very accurate and in many cases way off the mark. Not everyone takes me for my word, and thanks to my university years I am in the habit of being able to back up what I claim. So when someone challenged me on it one day I pulled up a large sample of recently sold properties and compared the sale prices to the assessed values and created an average by use of a computer program Realtors have access to.

I just did this again for the purpose of this post. Read on if you are skeptical, curious or the sort who likes stats and numbers.

According to the program us Realtors use known as “Interface”, there were 126 properties that sold in the Nanaimo area between January 1st 2011 and Janurary 31st 2011.  I chose these numbers from a year ago as the new assessment values have not been entered into our database as of yet. These numbers do however show the same pattern as when I did the same thing in May of 2009. There were 3 properties that didn’t have assessed values attached to them so they were removed from the list. I averaged the numbers on all of these listings and here is the pertinent info I found:

Average List Price:               $328,356

Average Sale Price:              $319,168

Average Assessed Value:      $308,805

Of course, we know that the people making these assessments have not been inside the properties so they are only guessing what the places are like inside. As I understand it, hey have a budget that needs to be payed for and they have to find ways to justify the way they collect it. Now before you start complaining, think of how much more it would cost to run the system if they went to each home and made sure it was totally accurate. I don’t know about you, but I’m glad they don’t. Again, I’m not saying the system needs to change, I just think people should know what these assessments are NOT for: pricing a property that’s to be sold.

I might be labouring the point, but here are some of the more notable differences I found in that list of recently sold properties. You’ll notice that they tend to under value the properties rather than overvalue.

Sold Price           Assessed Value

$299,900           $120,000

$198,000           $146,900

$145,000           $176,600

$219,900           $177,000

$130,000          $178,300

$239,900           $187,200

$257,250           $343,000

$305,000          $351,000

$352,900           $299,000

$325,000           $280,100

$175,000           $260,000

$320,000           $205,600

So, if you want a better idea of what your home is worth just contact me. It will cost you nothing but a conversation with me at your place. This is a big part of what I do for a living.

Ryan Coffey