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May 2014

Found 3 blog entries for May 2014.

With affordable housing in Greater Victoria having been in short supply for decades, secondary unauthorized suites are prevalent throughout our region. Of the over 1,200 single family homes sold since January 1 of this year, more than 200 had an existing secondary suite and an another 140 were identified as having suite potential. As a Realtor and a homeowner, I witness the demand and understand well the pros and the cons. Based on affordability alone It's typical for prospective home buyers to specify for example, "we're looking for a home up to $450,000 or we can go up to $600,000 with a suite." The reality is that the income from a suite will easily support over $100,000 in mortgage and the extra gets the home buyer a much nicer home and/or

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Following prior moves to tighten lending guidelines including reducing amortization period, tying qualifying to posted interest rates and numerous other qualifying factors, CMHC now says it plans to get out of the market for second homes and is adding restrictions for self-employed Canadians. Effective May 30, CMHC said it will discontinue insuring second homes and will require self-employed Canadians to have third party income validation.

Second home and self-employed without third party income validation business have accounted for about 1 in 33 or 3% of CMHC’s insured business volumes in units.

CMHC first introduced the program for self-employed people in 2007 in response to “industry competition” which at its peak saw some U.S. players enter the

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At the end of March we celebrated our fourth consecutive quarter of increased sales over the same period in the prior year and general optimism in our marketplace is still on the rise!  The trend is continuing and the momentum seems to be increasing. April last year was when it started and this April we surpassed last April’s sales by a healthy margin. Our own team’s sales increased dramatically over the previous year with 21 accepted offers this April, nearly doubling our last year’s numbers. Although the number of new listings is up, the total number of listings for sale is still a little lower than this time last year. With the increased sales the overall market has become more balanced with the absorption rate at 15% of the overall supply per month

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