Dispatches By Steve Threndyle
A Covid-fuelled Real Estate Boom?
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Real Estate Guru Asks “Will Your Home Be Taxed?”
This past spring, realtors from the Fraser Valley to the Okanagan to Vancouver Island were deluged with inquiries from prospective buyers looking for more space to spread out their pandemicchallenged families and home offices. Single-family home prices have remained remarkably resilient, especially in communities within an hour’s drive of a larger hub. In Greater Victoria, benchmark single-family home prices reached an all-time high of $1.03 million. In Vancouver, multiple offers and quick sale are still the norm. In the Central Okanagan, there were almost 50 per cent more sales of single-family homes in July 2020 than there had been a year earlier.
Thanks to the principal-residence exception, generations of Canadians have enjoyed tax-free capital gains when selling their homes. However, housing and investment gurus have noted that a pandemic-indebted government may consider taxing profits on the sale of principal residences. Housing guru Ozzie Jurock points to a Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation study into making homeownership more affordable for the socalled Generation Squeeze of younger Canadians as one red-flag indicator. He muses, “In the last seven years we have seen a lot of gains [in housing]. If you are sitting on $500,000, a million or two—think about how long it would take you to earn this tax-free?”
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Packaged Homes: Building Trends
Families hoping to escape the city for a new work-at-home-friendly locale can get settled quickly with packaged homes, which utilize prefabricated construction. Builders like Discovery Dream Homes, Pan-Abode and Linwood homes have long offered buyers pre-sized kit homes or customized dwellings, in any size. Owners can save money on economies of scale, reduced building times, on-budget delivery and the convenience of sourcing dozens of construction components from a single supplier. Advanced building material lists, staged delivery and virtual 3D-graphic design previews are some additional advantages. discoverydreamhomes.com
Good things come in packages, like the pre-fabricated elements in this home. Photo: Discovery Dream Homes
Fall 2020 Right Sizing
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