Langley BC Real Estate | Condominums And Town Homes

The Home Buyers’ Plan (HBP) is a program that allows you to withdraw up to $20,000 from your registered retirement savings plan (RRSPs) to buy or build a qualifying home for yourself or for a related person with a disability.

Conditions for participating in the HBP Only the individual who is entitled to receive payments from the RRSP (the annuitant) can withdraw funds from an RRSP. You can make withdrawals from more than one RRSP as long as you are the annuitant (plan owner) of each RRSP. Your RRSP issuer will not withhold tax on these amounts.

Generally, you will not be allowed to withdraw funds from a locked-in RRSP.

To participate in the HBP, ONE of the following conditions must apply:

• You are withdrawing funds to buy or build a home for yourself as a first-time home buyer.

or

• You are withdrawing funds to buy or build a home for a related person with a disability.

In addition, ALL of the following conditions must apply:

• You must enter into a written agreement (Offer of purchase) to buy or build a qualifying home. The agreement may be with a builder or contractor, or with a realtor or private seller. Obtaining a pre-approved mortgage does not satisfy this condition.
• You intend to occupy the qualifying home as your principal place of residence.
• Your repayable HBP balance on January 1 of the year of the withdrawal is zero.
• Neither you nor your spouse or common-law partner owns the qualifying home more than 30 days before the withdrawal.
• You are a resident of Canada.
• You buy or build the qualifying home before October 1 of the year after the year of withdrawal.

You are responsible for making sure that all HBP conditions that apply to your situation are met.

If a condition is not met while you are participating in the plan, your RRSP withdrawal will not be considered eligible. You will have to include the RRSP withdrawal as income on your income tax return for the year you received the funds.

If you do not meet the conditions to participate in the HBP in the current year, you may be able to participate at a later date.

Read more about HBP on Canada Revenue’s page.

What makes one house go on the market, have a number of showings in the first week and have a contract in place shortly thereafter, while an apparently similar house sits on the market for months? Of course, luck may have a little to do with it, but there is a good chance that the quick selling house (and its owner) was prepared to sell while the other house and owner were not.

Although pricing is a very important factor there are other issues that will have a great deal of effect on whether or not you have a quick sale.

5 Steps for Helping Your House to Sell Quickly

1. Prepare yourself to sell your house. Do your best to see the house, no longer as your home, but as a product to be marketed. This takes some work, especially if you have been in the home for a number of years and have many memories there, but it is necessary if you want to maximize your potential.
2. Consider a professional whole house inspection. An inspection will most likely uncover any major defects before they can cause trouble with a potential buyer. It also is a signal to buyers that you are a responsible seller.
3. Prepare the house. Stand back and look at your house as objectively as possible. Would you buy this home? Ask friends and neighbors to do the same, asking them to be totally honest. Overlooking flaws could cost you money! Get them fixed before you put the house on the market. 
4. Do what is necessary to make your house stand out from the competition. Make certain that your house is fresher, cleaner, and better maintained. Familiarize yourself with effective marketing and advertising techniques.
5. Remove most of the “imprint” that you have made on the house. Having a few family pictures around is fine, but if your house is a “shrine” to your family–walls full of personal pictures–you should take some steps to depersonalize it. Buyers must be able to envision themselves in the house, which is nearly impossible if everywhere they turn they stare at you!

VANCOUVER, B.C. – April 2, 2008 – The Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver (REBGV) reports that while there were fewer housing sales in March 2008 compared to last year, residential prices continued to climb.

Residential property sales in Greater Vancouver totalled 2,997 in March 2008, a decline of 16.3 per cent from the 3,582 residential sales recorded in March 2007, and a decline of 25.7 per cent compared to the 4,033 sales in March 2006. New listings for detached, attached and apartment properties increased four per cent to 5,674 in March 2008 compared with March 2007, when 5,456 new units were listed.

“The market is continuing to balance, with sales and listings beginning to re-align with our 10-year averages,” says REBGV president, Dave Watt. “The selection of inventory hitting the market is wider than we have seen in the past few years, which gives prospective buyers more choices.”

Sales of detached properties declined 20.2 per cent to 1,116 from the 1,399 detached sales recorded during the same period in 2007. The benchmark price, as calculated by the MLSLink Housing Price Index®, for detached properties rose 12.1 per cent from March 2007 to $764,616.

Sales of apartment properties in March 2008 declined 10.6 per cent to 1,370, compared to 1,532 sales in March 2007. The benchmark price of an apartment property increased 11.5 per cent from March 2007 to $389,609. Attached property sales in March 2008 are down 21.5 per cent to 511, compared with the 651 sales in March 2007. The benchmark price of an attached unit increased 10.6 per cent between March 2007 and 2008 to $473,543.

Bright spots in Greater Vancouver in March 2008 compared to March 2007:

Attached:
New Westminster………………..up 142.9 per cent (17 units sold up from 7)

Apartments:
Port Moody/Belcarra…………..up 31.6 per cent (50 units sold up from 38)
Maple Ridge/Pitt Meadows….up 48.5 per cent (49 units sold up from 33)

For Immediate Release: April 2, 2008

(Surrey, BC) – In March, selection reached a 10-year high on the Fraser Valley Real Estate Board’s Multiple Listing Service (MLS®), with the number of active listings reaching 9,361, an increase of 27 per cent compared to the 7,351 listings available during the same month last year. The previous March that offered as much or greater inventory was in 1998, when Fraser Valley had 10,148 active listings.

The total number of sales processed through Fraser Valley’s MLS® in March was 1,315, a decrease of 25 per cent compared to March 2007 when 1,743 sales were processed.

The number of new listings in March also decreased slightly with the Board receiving 3,277 compared to 3,369 new listings received during the same month last year, a decrease of 3 per cent.

In March, average Fraser Valley home prices continued to increase in the strong single digits for detached and townhomes and remained in the double digits for condominiums.

Kelvin Neufeld, president of the Fraser Valley Real Estate Board explains, “With a significant increase in product and properties taking longer to sell, we have a more competitive market for sellers in the Fraser Valley right now, yet enough demand to keep prices trending upwards.

“Our advice is that to sell your home this spring, work with your REALTOR® to ensure it’s priced correctly because buyers are taking a careful look at the broader range of homes available on the MLS®.”

In March, it took almost four days longer on average to sell a Fraser Valley detached home, 50.7 days compared to the 46.9 days during March of last year. Apartments took almost eight days longer to sell with the average
days to sell in March at 47.3 compared to 39.4 during the same month last year and townhomes saw the smallest increase in average days to sell, increasing 1.8 days, going from 33.6 in March 2007 to 35.4 days last month.

The price of a single-family detached home in March averaged $550,259, an 8.1 per cent increase in one year. The average price in March 2007 was $509,197. The average price of a Fraser Valley townhouse in March was $346,949, an increase of 8.6 per cent compared to last year’s average price of $319,592. Average apartment prices in the Fraser Valley increased by 13.6 per cent compared to last year. In March 2007, they averaged $203,874 compared to $231,669 last month.