Keeping it Real
Meet Jacquie McCarnan your host for Keeping it Real, the Vancouver and area residential real estate podcast that aims to demystify all things real estate in our crazy market.
Jacquie has been a licensed Realtor since 2016 and, in that time, has come across just about every scenario you can think of in our residential market. From hoarder homes to those for sale by owners to crazy strata situations and more, Jacquie provides real stories to help you navigate real estate in Vancouver and surrounding areas.
Each episode of Keeping it Real is short and to the point and provides you with great information about the topic discussed. Jacquie is always available to answer more in-depth questions and is happy to feature your own experience in future episodes.
Episodes also contain additional, non-real estate info about local businesses, experiences, and hidden gems around town that will make you sound like a local expert!
If you live in Vancouver or surrounding areas you know that the #1 thing people talk about is real estate (then the weather) if you want to sound knowledgeable and up to date on the real estate part listen weekly to hear topical issues that affect our market. We try to pick the most interesting and current issues to demystify each week and eagerly anticipate your input.
Join us every week for the very newest info on residential real estate in Vancouver and area.
Keeping it Real
Ep. 31 Don't List Your House for Sale...Yet!
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Is now the perfect moment to buy your dream home in North Vancouver? Find out why the market is currently favouring buyers, even with interest rates dropping, as only 10 single-family homes and 37 condos or townhomes have sold. Join me, Jacquie McCarnan, on Keeping it Real as I decode the stats and metrics defining our sluggish market. I'll offer insights into why potential buyers are still hesitant and what this means for those looking to make a move.
Considering selling your home in this unique market? I'll share practical advice on how minor updates and decluttering can boost your property's appeal and why waiting a few weeks might be a wise strategy. Plus, don't miss out on where to find us—Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and NorthVanHomeSales.com—and a sneak peek into upcoming true crime content that our listeners love. Packed with data-driven insights and real-world tips, this episode is your guide to navigating the North Vancouver real estate scene.
Hey everybody, welcome back to Keeping it Real, the Vancouver and area residential real estate podcast that aims to cut through all of the noise so that you can actually know what's happening in our market. My name is Jackie McCarnan and I am your host for Keeping it Real. I am a North Shore residential realtor. I work in Burnaby and downtown Vancouver and East Vancouver and all over the North Shore and Squamish, and I'll even go out to New West if you want me to. But I'm more comfortable here because this is the market that I know the best and if you are ever thinking of selling or buying, it's always a good idea to use somebody who really understands the market that you are either selling or buying in. And just so you know many people don't know this we realtors have a referral program. So let's say you come to me and say I want to buy a place in Surrey. I don't really know the Surrey market very well. So if I am doing the best job for you and looking out for you as my client, I'm going to refer you to somebody out there in Surrey and they will give me 25% of the commission they make. So I didn't know that before I got into the business, and I quickly learned that referral commissions are a great way to kind of keep the ball rolling when you're not getting a ton of business on your own, especially if you're new to the business. So it was really cool to know that I could refer people even in Ontario or England or wherever. So because I have a huge referral network, I can refer people all over the country or the world. Even I even know someone in Spain. That's how fancy I am.
Speaker 1:As always, I like to throw in a bit of a disclaimer at the beginning of the podcast to say that any of the information in this podcast is my own opinion, based on research and experience. There are lots of different experiences out there, lots of different kinds of realtors, and this is just. You're going to get the real me on all these podcasts. This is how I work and the way that I talk to my clients. Essentially, what I try to do on Keeping it Real is pretend I'm speaking to my specific clients. So this is the kind of conversation we would have.
Speaker 1:Last week. I promised you that I would be doing an episode on current market conditions here on the North Shore and whether you should list your house for sale now and without further ado, let's talk about that, all right. So every single realtor I know gets this question all the time, all day long, all week long. Anywhere we're at, somebody will say how's the market? And I used to kind of laugh when people asked me that. But I think it's more just.
Speaker 1:People think that the market is the same everywhere or the same for each different kind of product, like the market for single family homes. Might some people think that that's going to be the same as the market for condos and you think you want to downsize, uplive? You may be very interested in the market for single family homes in North Vancouver, which is much more specific than how's the market and it's more specific than how's the North Van market. So let's say you're asking me today, right now, today, on August 16th 2024, you want to know how's the market for single family homes on the North Shore and I'm going to say this is a not the best time for you to sell your home. If it's a single family home in North Vancouver, that may be different for places like Surrey. I don't know because I am not looking into the data for Surrey right now.
Speaker 1:I'm just looking at North Vancouver for the purpose of this podcast, and what I will tell you is that we are currently in a buyer's market, which does not happen very often in Vancouver, but we are in a buyer's market here. There have been only 10 sales in North Van since August 1st, on 271 active listings, which makes this and this is math so if you know me, you know I don't really do math, but this math I can do that's 0.36 of the listings that are active were sold. So that puts us very firmly into a buyer's market for single family homes in North Vancouver. So let's just keep that specific role going. Now, if you are interested in an attached home which constitutes a condo or a townhome or a triplex or a duplex all products that we have here in North Vancouver there have been 37 sales on 436 listings, which is 0.085, which also qualifies as a what's it called a buyer's market. So, basically, I'm going to drill this down for you guys, and forgive me if you know this. Not everybody knows this. Lots of people do, though. So A balanced market is between 0.15, so between 15 and 25% of the active listings are sold during a specific period of time. If we're below that 15%, then it's a buyer's market and if we're above that 25%, then it's a seller's market, and it's really easy to tell because we have access realtors have access to the stats online, so I can see all of the active listings and I can see how many were sold in a specific period of time. And so that's what I did for the purpose of this podcast, because I really just want to explain it and be very clear.
Speaker 1:A lot of people thought that when the interest rates started dropping, that the buyers would go bananas and start buying up all the listings, and at the time there weren't a ton of listings, and what happened with the first interest rate drop was that sellers thought, okay, buyers are going to go crazy and buy everything now. So sellers listed their homes for sale and have essentially flooded the market with listings, and buyers are not keeping up. I don't know why. I mean, I can speculate, and my speculation is that they may be waiting for further interest rate drops, which I don't think is the smartest of plays, because if interest rates continue to drop and buyers kick it up a notch really quickly, then prices are going to go up. So if it were me, I would buy now, when we're at the very lull in the market, the very low part of the market where we have a ton of inventory and lowering interest rates and not many people buying. So that means that there are deals to be had, rather than wait until, say, the spring, when perhaps there will be another interest rate drop or two and then the buyers start to move much more quickly and then we're going to sell through the inventory faster and the prices are going to go up, which is it's not just that part's not speculation. That's how the market works, so um. So that's maybe one reason why buyers aren't moving too quickly.
Speaker 1:But another reason is that it's summer. I mean, we just don't sell a lot of real estate here in Vancouver in the summer. So if you have your home listed and you're a single family home and you're trying to attract a family, lots of families, you know, the kids are out of school, so lots of families take summer vacation and they're not often thinking about real estate. And that's been the case forever, since the dawn of real estate. I don't, I don't know. I wonder when the dawn of real estate was like, do you think? Do you think there were real estate agents in ancient Rome? I'm going to have to ask some man who thinks about the Roman Empire all the time if that's true. I don't know if you guys know this, but because I have Gen Z daughters, apparently there is this meme going around saying how often do you think about the Roman Empire? And all the Gen Z girls said I never, ever think about the Roman Empire. And all the Gen Z boys say, well, once or twice a day, which is, I don't know, just weird to me, but anyway, so I'm not prattling on. I mean it might sound like that, but you're just going to have to put up with it if you want the info.
Speaker 1:We're currently in a buyer's market, so very, very firmly in a buyer's market. If I were going to buy something, I would be looking right now. I would be looking at things that have been sitting on the market for a little while that meet the criteria that I want, and I would be snapping something up at a lower price than the list price, that's. You know, this is a really great time to buy. However, if I were selling my home, I would not be listing it right now. That does not mean that things are not going to change even in the next couple of weeks Because we've had a second interest rate drop recently. Sometimes it takes a little bit of time for the market to catch up and maybe a whole bunch of buyers were off getting pre-approval from their mortgage broker and now they're ready.
Speaker 1:Another factor that might actually be at play here is that, if you listen to, a couple of episodes ago I was talking about the new Residential Tenancy Act rules and they had changed the notice time to four months, from two months to four months. They have since now changed that back to three months and one of the reasons is that when you get pre-approved for a mortgage you usually get a three-month pre-approval. So let's say you got pre-approved for the mortgage, you put an offer on a house and you wanted to buy the house and everything. All the paperwork got signed by the time you had to pay the money. You would have to get approved again because your pre-approval would have run out. So the provincial government listened to BC Realtors and they have changed that notice time to three months from four months. So the new notice time is three months, but you still have to go through the portal and you have to do all the stuff through the new RTB residential tenancy branch portal.
Speaker 1:So if you are thinking that you would like to sell your home in the next little while, this is actually a perfect time for you to start looking around at what's out there, what the prices are like, and start to think about all the things that you can do around your home to get it ready to sell. And the very first thing I would do if I were you is to call me, because I would come over and say, no, don't replace that bathroom and don't replace the kitchen. You're not going to get your money back from that. But let's do a couple of cosmetic things that make your home show really well when the time comes. Maybe you know. Maybe some paint, maybe if you have yellow bedrooms, which is apparently the kiss of death. I did this whole color theory course one time about what colors on the walls help sell a house and a yellow bedroom is a big no-no. Yellow is for the kitchen if you have to have yellow somewhere in your house. But you know things that are dated, that can be replaced, that are really easy, are things like door handles, or maybe doors need to be painted. Paint is so easy and it's crazy the difference it can make in how a house appeals to somebody who's looking.
Speaker 1:So if you've been in a house for 40 years and you're thinking about selling you, definitely you know. Obviously you want to get the kids to come get all their crap that they've stored in your garage for the last 10 years while they've been making their own lives. That's the first thing. Then you want to get rid of a bunch of stuff that nobody wants, you're not going to want. That's not as difficult as it sounds. There are services that can help you do that and there are some really great services here on the North Shore that, like Urban Repurpose, that will take the things that you want to get rid of but don't think you could sell necessarily. They'll take them. They'll come pick them up, take them and sell them in their store and that money goes back into the community. So that's that's pretty cool. That's Tim down there at Urban Repurpose.
Speaker 1:But changing the pulls on your cupboards sometimes can make a huge difference. Changing doorknobs can make a huge difference. Just having somebody come in who has an eye for what appeals to people when they walk through the door is probably the first step, and I am always happy to do something like that, even if you're not thinking of selling for several months or even years. It doesn't make any difference to me. I always just like to come in and help people figure out what's going to work for them, but that's usually kind of my first piece of advice.
Speaker 1:So this is a shorter episode today, but I just want to make it very clear that if you have a house to sell, or a condo or townhouse or a duplex or triplex and you don't have to sell it today, sit on it for a little bit just to watch what happens with the market over the next few weeks, because there is a chance that it's going to pick up a ton in September and then maybe we're going to get back to that sort of frenzy. We had probably not quite as much as 2020 to 2022. But maybe there's going to be a lot more left to get out of the house, right? So just wait. If you want to know the stats up to the minute, just call me. I'll tell you what's happening in the market. That's easy to do, or maybe I'll make another podcast about it in a couple of weeks, but I just wanted to let you guys know if you're thinking of selling your house. Now is not the best time, but if you're thinking of buying something, now is a fantastic time Lots of inventory, lots to choose from and not a lot of competition. So you do the math. All right, that's it for me.
Speaker 1:Today I'm going to go out and enjoy this beautiful day and soak up the last couple of weeks of summer. I wanted to let you guys know that you can obviously always call me or text me or message me if you have any questions about the market or about your own personal property or about your neighbor's house or anything. I'm always happy to dig through that and find the info you need. Just think of me as your secret agent realtor who can get you all the info you're looking for, and I hope you guys have a wonderful last few weeks of summer before we hit that dreaded Labor Day, and I will talk to you next week.
Speaker 1:Hey, all thanks so much for listening in to Keeping it Real, the Vancouver and area residential real estate podcast that aims to cut through all of the noise that you hear day to day in our market. My name is Jackie McCarnan and I am your host, and you can get Keeping it Real on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or you can get it at NorthVanHomeSalescom slash podcast it at northvanhomesalescom slash podcast. You can listen to any of the 30 previous episodes on there and they cover everything from what the government's doing in the province to what's happening with the district of West Vancouver, north Vancouver or all the way out to some true crime stuff that people really seem to like and I'll do more of. I'll talk to you soon. Get in touch if you want to chat.
