Changed my monthly to bi-weekly mortgage payments since I had the extra cash sitting there each month anyways. Easier for me to visualize the outflow.

Scotia tells me if I make bi-weekly payments. I must pay Monthly amount / 2 x 26 weeks lol. So I can overpay 1 month extra per year.

Apparently there's a mortgage helper in the basement, so they probably added the one upstairs for the upstairs suite.

Honestly, I wish my washer and dryer were on my bedroom level, it would make life so much easier.

Having it in living room isn't ideal, but it's not horrible.

This house is like 4 houses away from my parents house, I grew up my whole life in that neighbourhood.

Great place to live.

This house was for sale before for $1.4M and it didn't sell... it's always been a flop house... bottom and top floors rented out.

Right now, there are a million sketch looking construction guys all over it, there are piles and piles of concrete stone in the front yard and all kinds of other junk it looks like they're doing a superficial and very quick renovation on it. I'll take note again when I drive by tonight to pick up my dog haha

https://cdnparap130.paragonrels.com/.../262743419.JPG

This listing photo is weirdly unsettling... it's like they took photos at 3 different times of day and (poorly) Photoshopped them together?

The sky is dawn/dusky. There's direct sunlight on the plants/lawn. The interior lights are visible through the windows (see garage in particular). It also looks like they tried to edit in soffit lighting? I don't think it actually has soffit lights.

Minus it looking like Stranger Things, the crazier/unrealistic the photo, the more clicks for the realtor
Marketing 101

But your right, probably just a bad photographer

Perfect example of "just because you can [make it HDR], doesn't mean you should"

^That house is weird. What's with the tiny ass kitchen island? Is it used for playing mahjong?

Also love the half ass reno. From the overpainted and uneven crown molding, keeping their old ass lighting and staining their exterior siding without properly prep work.

Probably bought the house in the 90's for <200k and spent <10k to upgrade the millwork.

Bumping this because HEU which represents some health care workers.

If HEU's recent signing is any sort of foreshadowing of what is to come for the nurses union

"New 3-year contract will see wages increase by 3.24 per cent in the first year, 5.5 per cent in the second"

sauce:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/briti...deal-1.6617491

https://www.redfin.ca/bc/vancouver/4...home/155993779

Does anyone know if this is a leaky condo?

I don't know if it's A leaky condo but I bet there was some leaking going on in that place whether it be the plumbing or the residents.

By the looks of recent solds in the building, of other non-crack units, the prices are much more realistic/higher for the age of the building.
I would guess no

House in Vancouver you might be able to install a couple of 2 post lifts. https://www.realtor.ca/real-estate/2...reet-vancouver

I wonder why they aren't trying to sell as a land assembly.

Prices don't seem to be dropping. Just stabilized

Hmm. Might be a good buy. Plumbing isn't really that big of a deal. Unless there's a crack in a main line or something, which is really rare. If it's a leak at a termination that's easy to fix.

I'm suspecting it will go over asking. I can see a $30k reno and it'll be good to go.

For those of you on a variable how are you deciding to do a lump sum or not at this point particularly if it involves selling stock? I'm expecting rates to keep going up a bit more and while I can afford the payments I am sitting on a sizeable chunk of Amazon stock that, while down from its peak, is worth far more than what I got it for years ago. I could knock as much as 10 years off my mortgage I can lump sum all of it.

That’s a no brainer. Do that ! Anything to minimize these inflated interest rates you’re paying.

Or go batshit crazy like me and dump half my savings into stocks and pray this is the low point.

I think this depends on your risk tolerance.

AMZN is -30% Year to Date, they have their earnings coming out in a few days so if you're thinking of selling your AMZN stock you should consider how the earnings will affect the stock price.

If you can tolerate more risk, many would say to keep your mortgage as long as you can and do not sell your amazon stock.

If you're more conservative, many would say to sell the stock and pay down your mortgage.

If you're on the fence, maybe the happy medium is to sell enough to pay off five years of your mortgage and let the rest ride?

Personally, I think the prudent thing to do is to sell a little bit of stock to hold cash in this environment. The narrative right now is that the market will continue to fall and interest rates will continue to rise. The fact you're still up on your AMZN is great, you can realize profits and still be happy that you made money. In the short-term (1-3 yrs) it's better to have cash to weather out a potential storm than to be all in the market and miss out on whatever the upsize may be.

I wouldn't sell everything because I think you still need exposure to the equity markets, but there's something to be said about having cash and not having to worry too much for the next few years.

My mother would say, "Better to be safe than sorry". My buddy would say, "You gotta risk it for the biscuit". I would tend to lean more towards my mother, but not all the way.

Curious.. What stocks did you buy?

I need to dump in big 6 figure sums to make a huge difference, so if I had money I rather just hold on and invest at this point.

There's also a limit on how much you can lump sum at a time.

All Canadian stocks. Cibc, royal bank, air Canada, cp and CN. A lot of air Canada. Like majority of it is air can.

don't catch a falling knife.

Thanks, I'm up 16x on Amazon even at current prices and the money was always intended to go pay down the mortgage before renewal in 4 years so I'm trying to decide if it's realistically going to be much higher between now and then. With recession a pretty sure thing (I'm expecting a bad earnings call). I think Amazon is undervalued right now but it might also be time to cash out some of it to get a bit more peace of mind (I'd net $200k even at current prices).

OTOH, I can deal with another 2% increase in rates - it's just not fun at all watching it go to interest and definitely does delay some fun stuff I could do with our money (if rates go up another 2% my payments would have gone up $4400/mo in a year). Gonna call the bank and see what my lock-in options look like too.

Not a great building but not leaky. Leaky condos will have difficulty securing financing but you can check with the lender if the building is blacklisted.

@supafamous why not sell some calls against maybe half your position, capture some extra premium

Thanks but I'm probably too dumb to know what I'm doing with that kinda stuff.

OTOH, I found a fixer upper down the street from me that's just calling for my cash: https://realtylink.org/en/apartment~...w=Summary&uc=2

A mere $430k for a 2 bedroom by Metrotown...

Born the same year as me and it looks like how my body feels most days.