If I had a chance to speak to Frank Wu I'd have two words, bummer dude.

"Wu says the tax won’t deter him from plans to invest more than $100 million over the next two to three years to build mainly residential properties in Canada for Chinese buyers."

http://ci.memecdn.com/1072613.gif

Not racist but more opportunist. If there are more black multi millionaires he will be building housing for black buyers.

:yuno: get the right race

Hey Revscene. I know this is more about real estate and not renovations but there seems to be more traffic on here. Here's my story.

I am moving into my condo in kits after purchasing and renting it out right for 3 years. The building is 2001, about 800 sqt ft, 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, and a den/storage room in the unit. The wife and I want to do some renovations to it before moving in and we are not sure what cost is ideal to do the whole apartment from bathroom, kitchen and living spaces and rooms, which is our ideal bucket list. We are both working professionals and work about 10 hours a day so in terms of renovating the place ourselves it's just not cost effective for us because of the nature of our jobs. We have been given two quotes so far by two contractors and one "seems" on the low side and one is quite high. Low end about 40k and high end 70k-80k to get what we want done. Our ideal time living in the apartment will be shortest 5 years middle 8 years and max 10 years depending on kids and extra space needed. The place does look dated and want to make it look fresh for us to be excited to come back home from our long hours of work.

Any advice or idea would be appreciated in terms of what is a good reno estimate that is cost effective for us to live in an updated apartment that we are satisfied and also how much is too much money to put in and not make any profit when we sell the place to purchase something in the future.

So are we talking about getting all that totally redone (bathroom, kitchen and living spaces and rooms)? What's the size of each?

Does the estimate include both labour and materials?

What type of materials are we using here? Marble, quartz, etc...?

All of this is important as the marble for my bathrooms (2) were a little more than 2000, the toilets were 650 a piece, the shower faucet and accompanying system were 1000+.

Honestly, things add up quickly. Without more information, it's hard to give an estimate.

In terms of cost-effectiveness, I would look at it this way:

You're planning to stay there, say, 7 - 8 years. So your amortised costs is effectively around $10k per year. The question then becomes -- do you like this condo well enough to shell out $10k per year as sunk costs? That's a question only you can answer.

If you're going to use a legit contractor not some handy man make him sign a contract that lists the complete scope of work. He should have insurance and you should be holding back 10% off each invoice (assuming it's more then 1 month to complete) not to be paid out until the work is complete per your agreement. So many guys working out of their truck want to charge the same as established contractors but want terms like you're their employer which is bullshit.

Now if you're going to use some guy doing it all on his own who is just a small time handyman it's different rules IMO. You might need to purchase the materials for him which is fine, that's one of the reasons you're saving so much money. Use your due diligence and be smart about it.

As well since it's a strata property things can add up/change very quickly.

Your plans could have a wrench thrown in them at every turn due to the layout of plumbing etc.

Also you will need strata approval, permits, etc

One is an established contractor. I can source out materials and save some money from Mark up but even then it's still too much.

I did something really similar at around the same time last year. We bought an old townhouse (1200sqft) and it need work and we spent around 40k including materials and new appliances. We hired a handyman that's been doing house work for us for over 10 years. I'll give you some idea of the break downs, appliances cost around 10k, and materials was around half the rest of the cost iirc.

We redid:
Master bedroom washroom (tub, sink, cabinets, tiles, basically everything)
Kitchen - everything except for cabinets (counter top, appliances, floor, faucet, backing tiles, etc)
We pulled all the carpet, put flooring in the living room, 2nd and 3rd bedroom and hallway. Replaced the carpet on the stairs and master bedroom. Redid the fireplace facade. Replaced all counter tops. All new baseboard heaters and floorboards. Added lighting in living and swapped out all the old light fixtures and got all LED bulbs.
Other interesting non-standard things was we dug out the back wall of the laundry closet because it was designed for condo sized units. This allowed us to put in full size units. The laundry room was also using vinyl flooring, so we put in tiles. We also filled in two windows that were quite frankly, useless.

We saved lots of money by painting the house ourselves. The handy man quoted around $2-4k to paint the whole house. We instead just paid for paint and did everything ourselves. Plus I was OCD and insisted on sanding down all the old paint before painting.

They brought in "experts" in wherever they can't do the work, such as counters and carpets. They had contacts where we got decent to good deals. We used synthetic stone for all our counters and it came up to around $2200 including cutting and install (the installer said it's more durable especially in the kitchen, and cheaper). Carpets was $1800 for stairs and master bedroom.

We picked and picked up most of the items ourselves and had it in the house ready to go for them, which saved money. 2 car loads of flooring (48 boxes from store on Bridgeport Richmond), all the toilet pieces except for the glass door(home depot) and tub(Lowes).
They gave us their accounts for some of the places which obviously saved money as well:
Flooring in Richmond
Sherwin Williams for paint
Olympia Tile (Willingdon)


After typing all that out, I think we obviously got a good deal with a guy that we trust. If you trust that handyman to be able to do a good job and get you deals etc then I don't see why the handyman is not the way to go. only thing I didn't like was it took almost 3 months to finish everything, which was a little too long.

Side notes:
Garbage is expensive because the garbage type needs to be separated(dry wall, tiles metal, wood etc), which wastes time. Taking the garbage to collection costs money, and driving there costs gas and money.
Older building plumbing really sucks.
If you want to put in flooring when it used to be carpet, make sure the strata is ok with it. My strata had regulations on the standards which underlayer we use had to meet.
My handyman only worked 10am - 6pm because he said he's received complaints at many places about noise.

Finding a handyman type deal or one person companies/contractors can save a tonne of money, it's just finding the quality people that's hard

Our house had knob and tube in 2/3rds of the house plus I needed a suite wired from scratch. I had three different quotes from "bigger" companies who were going to only replace what was existing, so if there was a light there, they'd wire that light again, if there was a plug in this spot, that was the plug they'd re-wire

The quotes from "big" companies were 12-15k for the replacement, no additional work, no extra lights, not doing the suite.

I found a fantastic electrician who works on his own through my contractor, I gave him a hand through the entire process. We rewired the entire house, added a sub panel, added approx 25 new LED pot lights in the house, and he wired the entire suite with another 20 pots

All said and done, he probably did double if not more work than the "big" companies quoted and he was half the price.

Your main constraint is the strata.. check your strata rules in terms of contractors first. Some like mine, need to be bonded / insured, there are limited work hours, time table when the work will be done etc. It will whittle down, who can do / willing to do your job really quick (basically it eliminates 1 person handy man type companies). The best is to ask around your neighbours to see if anyone had done similar work before... then check your strata rules see how much wiggle room you have. Different stratas work differently.

Also consider the cost of packing and moving somewhere during the renovation too.

That's the cost of living in an apartment.

Hope everyone got in while they could..

Fucking bullshit, slowly the tax is gonna be gone again

What are your opinions on buying a second parking spot these days? Will I break even or gain value buying the extra spot.

With uber and driverless cars coming. Will parking spots become obsolete or am I over thinking it haha?

People aren't stoping driving anytime soon. Its worth it. It was the deal maker in my condo in edmonton when there were 8 other units for sale in my building. The other ones sat for weeks to months after mine sold. It was a huge selling point.

When I bought my condo in 2010 they were selling extra spots for 30k, couldn't justify spending that much.

I doubt it was ever intended to stay in the first place. She wanted to look like the hero who's catering to BC families who can't survive here when it was implemented. Now that elections are coming up it seems like her desperate attempt to attract more votes because she knows she's going under.

Depends on your plans with the unit.
Most new builds are charging $30K for a spot.
I rent my parking spot for $60 per month.
It would take 41.67 years to break even at this rate, and that doesn't take into account inflation, or taxes.

Personally, I don't think not having a spot is a deal breaker.
Just have to adjust the price accordingly, especially if there is adequate street parking or spots to rent from the strata or other owners.

i've rented in an area with 1 spot and street parking is very hard to find. it's a PITA when you're a couple with 2 cars but also depends on cost of the parking spot. at the time my area had spots renting for $100/month

You can't make this stuff up I clicked the link and saw in the artcle

Clark did not elaborate on the proposed changes. She was discussing U.S. President Donald Trump's immigration order that bars citizens from a select group of Muslim-majority countries.

Clark told reporters that her government opposes the ban.

"We are going to fight to make sure that people who are dual citizens, Canadians who may hold a passport from Iran or Iraq or Syria — can continue to travel. Those are the values we stand for as Canadians."

Then on the side bar todays top headlines! Quebec deadly mosque shooting :lawl::lawl::lawl:

I'm pretty close to some of the developers and you can smell the desperation starting on condos. 15% deposit has crept up to 25% in some cases.

MLA Report - over 100,000 new units to come out in 2017. With over 30,000 ones in Burnaby coming out. Metrotown's over $900/ft and Brentwood's a bit crazy at near $850/ft. No one's assigning for less.

City of Lougheed (facepalm) got 22 more towers to sell. Going to be interesting...
LOL at Bob Rennie's $16M lawsuit vs. Shape

https://www.biv.com/article/2017/1/l...erties-owes-m/