Record year for Luxury Real Estate in Calgary

This week the Gelderman.ca Real Estate team set a record for the highest non-acreage home sale in Abbotsford, B.C.; breaking the previous record by over a million dollars.

We aren't the only ones breaking records - according to the Calgary Herald, 2013 has been a record year in upper-end residential real estate in Calgary and the surrounding area.

How small can you go?

Small living spaces have been a trend in the news this past year with new micro-condos being built in Vancouver and across Canada - but how small can you go?

A Vancouver-based company, NOMAD Micro Homes, is hoping to start selling these tiny homes early next year.

These 100 square foot homes are about the size of most people's garden sheds - yet include a bathroom, kitchen, heat and a bedroom loft. There is even an option for solar panels and rainwater collection so you can live "off-the-grid".
You can order them online, and they ship the ready to assemble home to you to build yourself - kind of like IKEA.

Great time to go to a VARIABLE rate mortgage!!

Macleans - The Bank of Canada is adopting a neutral stance on the direction of interest rates over the next few years, signalling it may be as prepared to cut the cost of borrowing as to raise it, in light of persistently low inflation and a weaker forecast for economic growth through 2015.

As expected, the central bank announced Wednesday it is keeping the overnight rate which impacts short-term interest rates at one per cent, where it’s been for more than three years.

But removal of the central bank’s so-called tightening bias — in place since April 2012 — suggests at the very least that it’s even less anxious to raise interest rates than a few months ago.

Read the entire article at Macleans.ca:
http://www2.macleans.ca/2013/10/23/bank-of-canada-downgrades-economy-for-next-three-years/

Vancouver building council bans the doorknob

Say goodbye to doorknobs...they are about to become a thing of the past.

Vancouver has adopted new amendments to the city building code that will require lever handles on all doors for all new construction in the city, effective March 2014. In the past, changes that have been made in Vancouver have spread to all of B.C....then to all of Canada.

BC Homes sales - Strongest October in Four Years

 

Vancouver, BC – November 15, 2013: The British Columbia Real Estate Association (BCREA) reports that a total of 6,673 residential sales were recorded by the Multiple Listing Service® (MLS®) in BC during October, up 26.5% from October 2012. Total sales dollar volume was 34.5% higher than a year ago at $3.6 billion. The average MLS® residential price in the province was $540,432, up 6.3% from October 2012.