No, it's completely different. P.Eng. is just a law and ethics and experience-based certification with an occasional interview.

P.E. is a rigorous technical exam and interview afterwards. They want you to know what you are talking about.

Bump...

My wife and I will be searching for a home in the next 6 months. We will probably be comfortable with a $3000-$4000 monthly mortgage. We want a newer place, preferably a detached home if possible.

Any pointers to get us started?

House buying is about making compromises (unless you have unlimited budget)

Make a list of things that you absolute need and see what options you can find. Then from there, decide the price and location by marking your vision 10 years from now (will you have kids? different job? cars? so on...)

If you can find something still left while within your price range, talk to a realtor or someone with access to information to see what is a fair value for the house and plan an offer on it.

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If the market is anything like it was 3-6 months ago, be prepared to move fast and to bid against multiple offers.
We looked at several detached houses in East Vancouver/Burnaby, anything priced well and in a good location was snapped up before an open house or immediately following the first open house. There were multiple bidders in all situations.
Know exactly what you want, the max that you will pay, and move on it.

If it's cooled down... then you're in luck :)

$3 - $4k monthly mortgage payments... How much house does that buy? Is that roughly $1.2M - $1.6M, assuming the "typical" mortgage terms?

that's with a hefty down payment to boot,like $500k or so.

My friend is an real estate and this is true. In one of her open house ppl were already bidding within the first hour of the open house. House was sold that same day. I was pretty shock lol. This isn't like buying a box of cookies is buying a house!

Even when I purchase my tiny apartment I was in doubt the whole time. Even after I sign the paper and left there were times when i want to go back to cancel it (I have 7 days to cancel).......

Shxt... I was only expecting a 20% down payment or so -- ie. $240k -$320k or so since Special K is looking for a place for himself. I thought mortgage rates were still cheap?

We would be looking at $700-800k with 20% down.

ya we were in that boat a few months ago and it was just like that. had to move fast and be decisive.

sorry i might have been a little on the far end. i tend to pay my mortgages aggressively to cut down how much goes towards interest.

If anyone needs a morgage. Wife works for cibc and can hook anyone with the lowest rate at 2.89 right now. Depending on credit of course. She's trying to bring in clients so giving deals and word of mouth helps. Can also help with cashback on legal fees and appraisal fees. Message me and I'll give you her number.

Is it me or do the numbers not sound right? Ur mortgage would be a much shorter than 25 amort with that payment.

If u want that payment, u could rent a much better place

Yeah, we heard you the first time dude a couple pages back. If your wife wants to advertise here tell her to pay up.

Or maybe he wants to pay it off ASAP if he has the ability to, looking for a home and area he can settle and plant roots in? If he was wanting to rent, I'm sure he would have asked what he could rent for 3-4k/mth?

To OP, figure out the area you want to be in first and foremost. You may find that what you are willing to spend and what you want may not line up if you want to stay in Van/Rich/Bby. Which opens the doors to spending less for a lesser property while you continue to save up and upgrade later. Or moving on your location to get the house you want for the price you want.

We spent about 12 months eyeing the market in our area before really watching closely for another 3-4 months, and then started working with a realtor to actually look and get a sense of what was available for what we were willing to spend. As previously mentioned, there seem to be many people recently who are happy to spend more than what we were willing to on any given property, and that did become a point of frustration for us too. So it does get pretty easy to start thinking with your heart over your head especially when you try to justify the few extra thousand dollars over the next 25 years.

Right, exactly as I pointed out too.

We are currently renting but it's time to settle in for a house. No way we will spend $3000 on rent.

With our budget and the current market, we definitely cannot afford van/bby/rich. Coquitlam, New West, and North Van seem to be reasonable.

Perhaps the better question is what websites do you use to find out new listings and settled prices? And can we just assume the bank rates for mortgages are indicative of what we going to actually get?

40listings.com is a good website. The site has been quite unstable lately but I have extensively used this website while I was house hunting over the last 4 months. It lacks some of the search by price range functions which I couldn't get used to in the beginning, but this site was best at compiling and capturing the latest real estate postings.

As someone above said, you need to start listing out what exactly you want as well as your budget. Then you will start narrowing down the affordable areas. It's a long-term purchase so consider other things like, public transportation, school (if you have kids or plan to), etc. Understand the financing and how interest rate may impact your ability to refinance and mortgage rate. I built an excel model myself that allowed me to stress test with interest rates and play with various scenarios, but I'm sure there are online tools that will help you achieve that as well, probably just not as versatile.

My wife and I have been looking for a house in the Port Moody/Coquitlam/PoCo areas because that was the only area we could afford based on our strict criteria (anywhere else were easily 1 million plus). I can assure you Westwood Plateau areas are still very heated, and good houses get snatched up at above asking price in a few days. This also depends on seller's pricing strategy. They may intentionally list a bit lower to instigate a bidding process, which I very much despise. We have even encountered some outrageous situation where a buyer offered a price with NO subjects (not even home inspection). Anyway, real estate market is a emotional one, and it's very difficult to obtain a house at a price you valued. You are just forced to play this dumbass game. We ended up finding a nice place in PoCo in Citadel Heights, which is a very nice area and also the only area in PoCo we could accept.

Keep looking, go to see many houses, and you will start to get a feel.

But u would spend that on a mortgage? Really, what's the difference? They're both financing options.

Do you think renting for say $2000 is a worse financial decision than buying with a $3000 mortgage?

For most people, spending $3k on rent is almost certainly a poorer financial decision than spending $3k on mortgage.

We plan to have kids soon. So having a bigger place is ideal compared to the 750 sq ft we live in now.

We want to own a place that's "ours" because the landlord can always kick us out with 1 year lease or month to month lease.

I appreciate the pros and cons about renting vs. owning. But we have both decided that a detached house or newer town house is the way to go. I want to keep this conversation within scope of buying real estate.

Thanks for the 40listing website. I will check that out.

I think the point 4444 is trying to make though, which I thoroughly agree with is that 3k rent and 3k mortgages get you a substantially different place. That's without even mentioning the 200k or so that you get to keep in other investments or to spend.

Right that is exactly what you were saying...

Get connected to a realtor special k. I can refer you to one whose listing info was quite comprehensive, showed the price of sold listings, and new listings came up quite quickly vs. the realtor we ended up working with. even if it's by just a day or two, it can make all the difference

and most people are idiots. there's a reason why there's a 99% and the 1%, the 1% aren't idiots that make decisions based on emotion.

let's just put it this way:

if you have $1M in free cash would you invest it in 1 financial asset? say shares of TD bank, or shares of Apple? I bet 99.9% of people would say no.

Let's say you have 200K and 800K of debt, the above question is asked, with the same answer.

so, why on earth do people do this with houses? You say "well you have to live somewhere" - you do, and you can rent.

others will say things such as renting is throwing away money, it is if owning is cheaper (some other factors ignored), but do not for a second discount the opportunity cost of the trapped funds.

The most important factor here is risk. 1 asset, the majority of your assets in that 1 asset, and debt that eclipses all of that in the same asset, that screams risk. And i HATE financial risk.

now, for specialk, he has his reasons for wanting to own, and I will assume he's thought about the downside to the financial risk he is opening his family to buy making the buy decision at totally unreasonable prices when renting is a valid option. And as for being kicked out of a rental, well, i don't know anyone personally that's ever had it happen, only read about it once for some kid in a dodgy illegal basement suite on revscene.

i just couldn't imagine paying more than 5x average income on a house, unless the government were basically guaranteeing a certain amount of the value (tax deduction on interest), but that's me...