In the predecessor post, I touched on some clichés, facts and fallacies about the Greater Vancouver housing market as an investment. That word is thrown around very loosely and often by unqualified propagandists with a vested interest.

But hey, if it’s your money-maker, you have to sell sell sell!

Truth is, people spend more time reading the Nutrition Facts on the back of a bag of Doritos Cool Ranch than they do researching claims that “Housing is the best investment”.

Your friends, your parents, your brokers and especially your real estate agent will always tell you that “housing is the best investment.” There might be some skewed truth to that (depending on many factors).

The truth is, for something to be “the best investment” it has to
a)    Pay for itself
b)    Pay you
c)     Appreciate in value

So where can we find this?

If you had a Reese Peanut Butter Cup bar for every time someone in Vancouver told you that real estate is a good investment then you’d own the entire Reese factory by now.

Though this pitiful and borrowed cliché analogy that I will reveal shortly doesn’t just apply to Vancouver, but most major metropolitan areas of Canada – namely Calgary, Toronto and Montreal.

The most tired cliché and the grand daddy of them all – It’s different here.

Of course it’s different.

Before You Buy Your First Home, Beware The Selling Process

Look up, pause briefly for a moment, and remember the good times you had when you bought your home.

We’ll compare those brief moments when the world was your Oyster Rockefeller (because that’s the only way to eat oysters). The emotion you felt when you were buying your home was exciting, thrilling, exhilarating, heck even titillating whatever that means. This emotion was downright erotic.

But what happens when you pull the plug and want to upgrade your place or sell and head for Costa Rica where you can buy twice the house, some beachfront and open up a surf school and still have money left over? You have to sell your place.

And it can be a HUGE pain in the part of your body that regulates sitting.