Spacious and bright corner lot 5 bedroom home near Newlands Golf Course. Large sun deck overlooking a lush green backyard. Short walk to schools & senior centre. Located in a great neighbourhood. 2 bedroom legal suite with full size window s giving it lots of light. Suite features new carpet and a large white kitchen with newer appliances. Upstairs features new laminate & new vinyl windows. Roof replaced 7 years ago & newer hot water tank!

Retreat from the heat in this air conditioned & beautifully maintained home on wide lot with spacious open floor plan. The main floor features a large great room, den/family room & open an island kitchen with maple cabinets, granite counte rs & upgraded stainless steel appliances plus a laundry/mud room off the garage. Upstairs you'll find the big master bedroom with a a walk in closet plus luxury ensuite including granite counters & jetted tub, plus two additional bedrooms & a loft area. Large front veranda with mountain views & low-maintenance backyard with a huge deck for entertaining or a kid's play area. Fully self contained 2 bed + den basement suite with side entrance & separate laundry. Security system & b/i Vac.

Reasons to Buy

Buying your first home is an exciting prospect. If you have been renting for a while, then getting out of the rental market probably seems quite appealing. Most of us start to want to put down roots once we get to our late twenties or early thirties, and it can be difficult to feel as if you have a secure home if you are renting. Owning your own home gives you a level of control that you just do not have as a renter, even if you have the best of landlords. Owning your own place means being able to decorate as you like without having to check with your landlord and even knock down walls or take up floors if you want to. If you have a bad landlord, the urge to own is even greater. Anyone who has had to deal with a landlord who has not bothered with basics such as professional indemnity insurance will know how frustrating trying to get basic repairs done can be.

These are good reasons to get out of renting, but are they good enough reasons to buy? They are, if you approach buying with a little caution.

Finances

While we do not think that the housing market is likely to crash imminently, as some scare stories in the press suggest, prices can always go up and down, and so can interest rates. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking everything will always stay the same: the buyers that do that are the buyers that find themselves in trouble a few years down the line. Buy somewhere that you want to live in for the long-term, rather than viewing your home as an investment. If you can make it an investment, great, but remember that it is primarily a place to live. Then, if prices drop, as long as you can still afford your repayments you will be unaffected. Be cautious about buying with the minimum 5% deposit. If you do, make sure you are buying a home you want to stay, not sell up and move on from in a few years. This infographic shows what would happen to those with small deposits if prices dropped 15%. That is an unlikely scenario, but it is one worth thinking about.

Your personal finances are just as important, if not more so, than the wider economic conditions. If your mortgage repayments will be higher than your current rent, think very carefully about buying. Are you sure you can afford the repayments? What about if your salary dropped? Some careers have a steady upwards trajectory, but by no means all of them. Remember that interest rates are likely to rise from their current low level, and you will still owe your mortgage when they do. You cannot plan for every scenario, but you can give yourself a fighting chance.

Your Dream Home

Getting your finances right is vital when you want to buy, but as long as you make sure that you are buying for the right reasons, you are unlikely to regret anything. Buy a home you really love, and that you will want to stay in year after year. It is the newly-built condos in the big cities that overvalued, because they aren’t the kind of homes people love. They are homes people buy just because they want to buy, planning on moving on in a few years. If you can’t find what you want for the price you can afford, consider looking in another area, or waiting until you have saved a bigger deposit. Find the home you’ll be happy in ten years time, and you’ll weather any economic storm.

View this recently sold Apartment or see all my home sales

1. Behavioural finance tells us that when extrapolating into the future, people tend to give too much weight to recent events. Accordingly, a number of bloggers and many in the mainstream financial press presently appear to view a U.S.-style housing crash in Canada as a near certainty. But if one looks back in time over many decades, such calamities are rare, “fat-tail” events. On this basis, it seems importune to urge homeowners to sell for the sake of avoiding what historically is a low-probability event.

2. It is anomalous to see financial journalists talk about the futility of market timing in the stock market but then give the impression houses should be sold to avoid an anticipated collapse in prices. Why should trying to sell a home at the top and buying it back at the bottom work out any better than the dismal record of those who have tried timing the stock market? In fact, the comments section of the above mentioned article has many stories of people who did sell in past years because they thought house prices were too high, only to subsequently watch from the sidelines as prices continued to march upward. And even if one does exit at the peak, there is the tricky task of timing re-entry. Not to be overlooked, as well, is the extent to which the exorbitant transaction costs in the housing market may eat into any possible gains.

3. Selling one’s house to become, for example, a renter entails giving up the inflation hedge represented by a hard asset. Prices for gold bullion and other precious metals have climbed over the past decade to new heights as investors sought protection against the erosion of incomes and wealth by inflation. This is a material threat given the vast quantities of money that central banks are printing to keep the banking and government sectors from defaulting on their monumental financial obligations. Indeed, the response to huge debt burdens historically has been to inflate them away. Owning a home is an inflation hedge, and unlike precious metals, the owners get to live in their hedge.

4. Housing bears base much of their case on price-to-rent and price-to-income ratios showing substantial over-valuation. But as I suggested in "What the housing bears may be overlooking," valuation isn't extreme when looking at the yardstick most ordinary folk use: mortgage payments relative to family income. Over-valuation doesn’t look so severe by this measure because a big component of mortgage payments—interest rates—is very low and incomes have continued to rise over the years.

5. Housing doomsters argue that interest rates are abnormally low and poised to climb, which would make houses less affordable and result in a popping noise. However, as I wrote in "5 reasons why the housing market won't crash," the Bank of Canada will only allow its rates to climb as long as the economy is growing vigorously—which, in turn, means that employment and income levels are trending upward. Historically, job increases and wage gains have buoyed the housing market and served as an offset to rising mortgage rates, warding off extreme scenarios such as plunging house prices. 

6. Before the U.S. crash, the general view was that house prices could only go up. Such a psychology led to reckless behaviour and contributed to the excesses now being worked off in the U.S. Their plight has largely cured Canadians of that dangerous mindset. In the old days, for example, the government responded to high prices by legislating tax breaks for first-time home buyers. This time around, Finance Minister Flaherty has taken steps to restrict the availability of mortgage finance, and just recently moved to put the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. (CMHC) under the supervision of the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI).

7. It hardly needs to be said, but housing should be considered primarily as a consumption item. Simply put, its main purpose is to provide shelter. Uprooting could mean leaving behind niceties such as good schools for your children and the circle of friends they have acquired—just to cite a couple of inconveniences. Taking an investment approach and trying to speculate on the ups and downs of prices can lead to undesirable outcomes both financially and in terms of quality of life.

8. The crash in the U.S. had a lot to do with circumstances unique to that country. The banking system was hyper-competitive and quick to take risks in pursuit of profits; policymakers aggressively pushed homeownership through measures such as tax breaks for mortgage interest payments; and weak recourse laws let mortgage defaulters off the hook. Canada has a different environment—a more stable and regulated banking sector, less of a policy push toward home ownership and recourse laws that allow wider latitude for mortgage lenders to go after delinquents.

9. What’s especially different is the phase the monetary cycle is in. When the U.S. housing market keeled over in 2008, the Federal Reserve was deliberately trying to slow down the economy. At first its higher interest rates had little impact because momentum in job and income gains were offsetting. But the Fed kept on tightening until short-term interest rates surpassed long-term rates, creating “inversion in the yield curve.” It was this severe degree of monetary restraint that ultimately punctured the mania. In Canada, monetary policy is currently highly expansionary, along with the rest of central bankers around the world. It is nowhere near an inversion of the yield curve—probably years away. The catalyst for over-valuation to end traumatically is missing, and will be for some time.

So relax, homeowners. There are many reasons not to put the ‘For Sale’ sign up. True, there could come a day when the yield curve in Canada inverts and there is a retreat in house prices. But even then, there is no inevitability to a housing catastrophe. A unique confluence of events came together in the U.S. during 2008—a once-in-a-lifetime event from which Canadians had the good fortune to be spared.

 By Larry MacDonald

View this recently sold House or see all my home sales

View this recently sold House or see all my home sales

6 new homes by experienced builder Reno Quality Homes. All homes back on to protected greenbelt and front on to ALR farm land. This spacious traditional plan with den features laminate floors, granite counters, crown mouldings, 2 fireplaces and 4 large bedrooms upstairs. Basement is fully finished with huge rec-room and games room and 2 more bedrooms. Quality Construction and finishing with Hardi-Plank and premium vinyl siding, 2 sundecks and 2-5-10 Home Warranty Protection.

View this recently sold Townhouse or see all my home sales

I have a single friend sitting on the fence between buying and renting. She’s financially ready to make the leap into homeownership, but hesitant about doing it solo in case she meets someone soon.

Waiting for Mr. Right can derail a number of women’s homeownership plans, according to Sandra Rinomato, a realtor and owner of a full-service brokerage in Toronto.

“I can’t tell you how many times a client asks what she’ll do if Mr. Right comes along, and I always say if he does, then okay, you can keep the investment in your portfolio and rent it, he can move in, or you sell it and take the equity,” she says. She speaks from personal experience, having at one point purchased property on her own while in a serious relationship. She was ready to start climbing the property ladder and he wasn’t.

More and more single women are entering the market, making up roughly one in four new buyers, according to Ms. Rinomato, who is currently hosting the new HGTV series, Buy Herself, focused on helping singles navigate the world of real estate.

The first step for those interested in home ownership is to run the numbers and ask themselves if they are financially stable. Start with a snapshot of your personal finances, to review where you stand with your assets, liabilities, and credit score. Then, dig intomortgage rates and get preapproved.

“If you are not preapproved, forget about starting your search. There is no reason to even look online if you have no idea how much you can afford,” Ms. Rinomato says.

I see her point, but it’s so tempting to click through MLS, browsing the homes you could buy if you had a little, or a lot, more money to work with. You come back to reality pretty quickly though once you start touring places that are within your budget.

“If I could pull a rabbit out of a hat I would, but we work within the budget,” laughs Ms. Rinomato. Searching outside your financial scope can derail the process, or financially stretch you further than you should be if you fall in love with something a few rungs out of your reach on the property ladder.

Aside from down payment, monthly mortgage costs, and emergency funds for the unexpected, it’s your responsibility to have a grasp on the countless other costs associated with buying your first place, like inspection, legal, and appraisal fees.

Ms. Rinomato says it’s not unusual for solo buyers to have unrealistic requirements, so sitting down with your wish list and prioritizing your needs and wants in a place is the launch pad to starting the search within your financial parameters. A strong team in your corner is also essential for a first-time buyer, and an understanding of the steps of buying, and how to will help you make the right investment decision.

Ms. Rinomato hopes her new TV series inspires women to at least ask if this is the right time to buy and not to hold back because they’re scared, or don’t think it’s an option, or think Mr. Right is around the corner. More importantly, she hopes women have the courage to leap confidently into homeownership if the time and the investment is right.

Angela Self is one of the founders of the Smart Cookies money group. Readher weekly column on managing debt and saving money at the Globe'spersonal finance site.

ANGELA SELF  

Whistler inspired West Coast masterpiece fit for entertaining. Custom designed and built by ProMaster Homes w/ sweeping valley & mtn views. Fine craftsman finishing w/ rounded doorways, millwork, wainscotting, built-ins & crown moulding abo und. Solid fir milled h/w floors & dream kitchen w/ knotty alder cabinets, granite counters, travertine tile b/s, huge stone stove enclosure & W/I pantry. Large master retreat has private deck w/ view & 2 way fireplace into spa ensuite. Rear yard has large ironwood deck plus outdoor kitchen, water feature & lighting. Features 4 car garage, h/e furnace, heatpump & wired for surround sound & network throughout plus full irrigation system, alarm & b/i vac. Spacious 2 bedroom suite in basement.

Langley City
 

Charleston Place is proposed for the property at 203 Street and Industrial Avenue presently occupied by China Beach night club. The $55 million commercial and residential development is expected to be complete by 2015.

By Brenda Anderson - Langley Times
Published: April 19, 2012 5:00 PM 
Updated: April 20, 2012 4:09 PM

It promises to be a place where Jay Gatsby would have felt right at home.

On Thursday afternoon, the City of Langley unveiled plans for a new 15-storey mixed commercial/condominium development, designed on a 1920s theme.

Construction is scheduled to begin on Charleston Place next spring, on what is currently the site of China Beach night club at 203 Street and Industrial Avenue.

Described as a luxury development, the New York-inspired building will include six floors of commercial space, topped with a roof garden. From there, 46 residential units will rise another nine storeys.

In addition to the garden, the seventh floor will also house two guest suites and a multipurpose room, which will feature a dance floor inspired by the popular 1920s-era dance, the Charleston.

Crown mouldings, heated bathroom floors, old style box planters, transom windows and concierge service are among the features that will lend Charleston Place its luxury cachet.

The strata units, which will range between 850 square feet and a 2,100 square foot penthouse, will be priced from the $400,000s to $1.2 million, said David Phan, president of P2000 Developments, the Calgary-based firm which purchased the property in 2011 after keeping an eye on the community for about five years.

"We wanted to expand our vision and our development west. We learned about the Downtown Master Plan in 2006 and watched with astonishment as the City of Langley continued to expand," he told a standing room-only crowd gathered in an upstairs meeting room at City Hall for the official unveiling.

The brick and mortar construction will help to make the art deco-inspired building "timeless," said Phan. And, he said, it will serve as a catalyst to attract new development.

While the project must still must pass rezoning and development permit stages, the City made the announcement with great fanfare on Thursday afternoon.

"This is one that we are very excited about," said Mayor Peter Fassbender. "It's the next piece of the puzzle."

However, the City is not losing sight of its responsibility to provide affordable housing, he said.

"It's the right locale, and it is not the beginning of a series of high-rises along Fraser Highway. That's not appropriate to our vision."

The building, which will face onto Industrial Avenue, will be "a gateway to downtown Langley and an iconic landmark," said Calgary architect Steven Ho, who designed the structure, which will include secured underground parking for residents as well as an additional 230 covered spaces above grade.

Construction on the $55 million building is expected to take two years, beginning next March, with completion anticipated in December, 2015. Pre-sales will likely begin this September.

Ideally, the commercial space will draw professional tenants, such as medical offices, a bank and a drugstore, Ho said, adding the commerce will only add to the street life of the area. Phan said the commercial space will be available for purchase, with owners forming a strata corporation.

Speaking on behalf of the Downtown Langley Business Association, executive director Teri James — who also serves a Langley City council member — said the development will stimulate the City's retail economy and be a strong catalyst for business growth.

Frank Bucholtz/Langley Times

John Shmuel  Apr 18, 2012 – 7:18 PM ET | Last Updated: Apr 19, 2012 9:11 AM ET

MARK RALSTON/AFP/Getty Images

While the Bank of Canada has voiced its concern on household debt levels in the past, it went one step further Wednesday by voicing concerns about the rapid growth of so-called HELOC’s (home equity lines of credit).

The Bank of Canada sounded the alarm on growing household debt on Wednesday, taking aim in particular at the growing tendency of Canadians to take out lines of credit using home equity.

6 new homes by experienced builder Reno Quality Homes. All homes back on to protected greenbelt and front on to ALR farm land. This spacious traditional plan with den features laminate floors, granite counters, crown mouldings, 2 fireplaces and 4 large bedrooms upstairs. Basement is fully finished with huge rec-room and games room and 2 more bedrooms. Quality Construction and finishing with Hardi-Plank and premium vinyl siding. 2 sundecks and 2-5-10 Home Warranty Protection.

View this recently sold Bare Land or see all my home sales

View this recently sold COMMERCIAL STRATA or see all my home sales

LANGLEY GROVE - Fully renovated bright 2 bedroom with new large double glazed Low-E Thermo windows. Open floor plan throughout kitchen, living & dining room! Built in hutch to match kitchen in eating area. Crown mouldings. Amazing south fac ing treated deck (24 X 12). Located on quite cul-de-sac against greenbelt. New hot water tank in 2006, 8 year old roof & new furnace. New paint throughout. Excellent Pad Rent, only $490 per month. Great club house with hot tub, sauna and exercise room. Excellent community and well run park. Walking distance to Otter Co-op and other amenities. Small pets welcome! Quick possession possible.

This must see Willoughby Charmer on corner lot has been completely updated, is only a Short walk to Elementary school & has a park right across the street. The main floor features new bamboo hardwood flooring throughout the formal living ro om & dining room. Kitchen with eating area has updated cabinets, counters & tile flooring & adjacent spacious family room with gas fireplace. Home features large media room with tiered seating included & new french doors to fenced yard with large deck & trampoline. All 3 bathrooms have been completely redone plus new roof, windows & doors, gutters, high efficiency furnace with heat pump. Paved side yard has 2 large storage sheds & children's jungle-gym (included) or room for RV parking.

MONTEBELLO - Built by renowned Platinum Group. Beautiful 3 bedroom, 3 bathroom townhome. Featuring 9' ceiling, a nice sized balcony, family room, granite counter tops, stainless steel appliances, crown mouldings & double garage. Huge 20x12 media room in the basement. Upgrades include full built in speaker system and CAT-5 wiring. Great location with lots of available parking. Close to all amenities, parks, schools, golf courses, shopping malls, transit and easy access to major highways.