Vancouver's Real Estate Market

[SSM_DC5]

6 months reno... Dunno of that is optimistic or reasonable......guess it depends if you have all materials on hand before the 6 months starts.

[roastpuff]

Depends on the reno extent, 6 months is doable. Roughly what it took to do ours which included new flooring, new kitchen, taking out a wall, etc. Just a pain to do it while working (we DIY'd about half the things) and organizing trades etc.

[unit]

ours took like a year but thats cause our guy was slow af.. always juggling other jobs, only one helper and usually only one of them are here, sometimes not here at all for a week, etc..

that being said we did a lot.. 2 bathrooms, two skylights and all the repair work for the skylight chutes, full garage and exterior of the garage, half the house resided and insulated, windows, both doors.. prob forgetting a lot of other stuff too.

also he did a great job with everything so i cant complain.

[noclue]

Do your research/vetting and try to buy the materials yourself instead of giving the contractor an advance.

[donk.]

Originally Posted by zetazeta

For those that have done renovations in the past... for a basic-ish renovation to modernize the place without anything too fancy, how much did it cost for the kitchen? washroom(s)?

Our place: 30 years old, washrooms/kitchen last updated 10-20 years ago.

Bathroom: bought 120$ worth of glue on floor, 100$ sink, 70$ of cabinet and counter "marble" + "wood" wrap, 70$ in paint, 80$ new faucet, 80$ in fake plants, new shitter 200$.
16hrs-ish hours later, and the bathroom went from grandma lives here to lets fuck on the counter.

Kitchen: ours was decent minus the sink, spent 600$ for a new sink, faucet, piping, thats all we needed.
Took about 5hrs for sink including abs drain pipe, new feed lines, cutting out the counter larger, etc.

I do have most tools i needed for all the above, if i did not, probably add 500$ to the above bills. If you havent done any work on water lines and drain piping, careful, its very easy to cause water damage. Not rocket science tho.....

The above was completed within 2 weeks of moving in.

You can easily transform any "old" room for 1000$, and make it look great, while you wait to save up 10-30k for a proper reno. (Or 30-60k for you rich RS folk.)

[donk.]

Originally Posted by zetazeta

I

We are planning to rent a short term place for ~6 months during the renovations.

Scrap what i said above, your renos arent basic lol

[underscore]

6 months seems like a long time to do a kitchen refresh and a bathroom vanity + shower. When I DIYd our main floor we took out a wall, extended a wall, added a half wall, added an island with an outlet, moved the fridge and the lights, new cabinets/counters/backsplash/sink/appliances/etc, and did 600sqft of wood flooring in 2 weeks. A pro completely gutting two bathrooms and doing all new everything took 2 weeks.

Prices would be from 2015 and 2018 so probably not super relevant to you.

[badgerx3]

I just completed a renovation for my single-family home. We did the whole main floor, which includes the kitchen, washroom, and living room/common space. We have just selected the fixtures, cabinetry, paint, and carpets (while retaining some of the existing hardwood flooring in the main areas). The contractor took care of the rest, and we were pretty hands-off in the process. From demo to move-in date, it took around 5 months. Based on my calculations, it was roughly $11.50/sqft for this project.

Overall, I am very happy with the entire process and, most importantly, kept it within our budget. Send me a PM if you want the contact.

[yray]

YouTube

are they trying to sell or make fun of the buyer

[Gumby]

Well that's a new approach to advertise a listing...

[zetazeta]

Originally Posted by EvoFire

I have some time right now so I'll play.

IMO some of the HEAVY hitters in terms of aesthetics that can make a HUGE difference without a lot of cost

- Bathroom fixtures (towel racks, faucets)
- Ceiling finish (a 20 yr old townhouse should have popcorn ceilings, getting it leveled would be a huge deal, but labour intensive)
- Cabinet colour
- Door hardware
- Wall colour fixture colour (plugs, switches, and plates)
- Painting the doors (! most older places the door finishing has yellowed, and simply a new coat of paint makes a world of difference)
- Lighting
- Baseboard heater colour (huge one surprisingly, I did it myself. Cost was reasonable but again very labour intensive)
- Baseboard design, doorframe and window framing (questionable as it's very labour intensive)
- Window coverings

I don't know how the mission critical things are with the townhouse, but if the water tank is >7-8 years old, I'd get it replaced while the place is being torn up for renos. All in I'd have all the functional stuff dealt with first, and especially things that are hard to do once you are moved in such as flooring/tiling, plumbing, and even electrical (adding plugs, updating things)

EDIT: to follow TOS'd's point. Our townhouse was super lax on things and they didn't care what we did. Some places are super anal. The aesthetic things I listed though shouldn't require approval from strata.

Thank you! We have most of the things you've listed as items we would like to renovate. Thankfully the water tank is new, just from earlier this year or late last year so we won't have to worry about it for a while.

As for the 6 months, I'm hoping it is done sooner than later but if need be we can most likely extend our short term rental.

[EvoFire]

Start shopping for things, I don't think the availability is as bad now compared to covid, but you never know. Lead times for some faucets and shit that we wanted were 9 months in 2021

[donk.]

Did the faucet call you handsome and had a built in dishwasher?

Jesus fuck 9 months for a faucet?

[EvoFire]

Originally Posted by donk.

Did the faucet call you handsome and had a built in dishwasher?

Jesus fuck 9 months for a faucet?

Built in handjobs what could have been.

No seriously. We wanted a black finish but it was 9 months out, we ended up with chrome which was a 3 month wait.

[bcrdukes]

Ironic that your hand is broken.

[Gumby]

Originally Posted by bcrdukes

Ironic that your hand is broken.

Can't wash dishes with a broken hand...

[underscore]

3 months for a faucet? When mine broke I just went to Costco and it was fixed within an hour.

[6793026]

well to be fair, i bought delta / grohme shower cartilages regulartor for hot / cold water etc.
Replacement parts (free) took 6mths to come.

[roastpuff]

Our tub was originally on the Evergiven and we had to get another tub lol. The original tub got "delayed with no further ETA"

[Tapioca]

Originally Posted by zetazeta

I guess TLDR is that we're not looking for any structural changes in any way, everything as-is in the current spots but just modernizing it. It is a 20 year old townhouse that we are purchasing and we would be ecstatic to get it to look like the 7 year old condo that we just sold. There are things that we would love to do like moving the sinks/stoves but that would be way too expensive for our budget. Easier to just keep it as-is. As for the washrooms, similar deal, just tryna make it look less dated. We plan to keep the tub and just replacing/updating the shower, and the countertops/sinks and maybe refinishing the existing cabinets. Haven't done any research into this yet, but will spend time from now until closing to learn as much as we can.

We've done the upgrade from a newer condo to an older townhouse, which we renovated and later sold to upgrade to a detached (our likely forever home).

The first question you should ask yourself is: do you plan to live in your townhome for longer than 5-7 years?

If not, then you should limit your upgrades to something that will get you through the short-term that will allow you to sell the property relatively easily in 5-7 years time.

How handy are you? Once we upgraded to a townhouse, I learned to be handy pretty fast, with the help of my father-in-law. Cutting new baseboards, especially if all of your walls are square is very easy, especially with compressor-free brad nailers, flat stock baseboard, and small mitre saws that are now sold at Home Depot, etc. for cheap prices. New baseboards and door trims make a huge difference to appearance. Floating flooring products are very DIY-friendly these days as well. Start building a small arsenal of tools for your garage. Become proficient at caulking and get a good caulking gun. Demolition of old cabinets and flooring is very easy, as long as you have a good drill and impact driver combo (Ridgid, Dewalt, Milwaukee, etc.), some good crowbars, and a bit of elbow grease. Demolition of a kitchen and bathroom can easily be done in a day, especially in a townhouse.

If you're not too fussy, modular cabinets made overseas, are very affordable. Quartz countertops from China can be very affordable as well, if you're not fussy about the pattern or perfect edging.

I don't think you need 6 months to renovate a townhouse. If you do some of the work yourself and project manage the trades yourself, you can easily do what you need to do in half the time, perhaps less. We have also done significant renovations in our current detached home: we did a complete main floor renovation (demolition, flooring, new kitchen, and refinished ceiling) in less than 2 months with several trades that we project managed ourselves. The key to saving money and time is to be organized and to get your hands dirty when you can.

And if you want to deal with no waiting time for parts, buy mainstream brands like Moen or Delta for your water fixtures, where replacement parts are easily available at Andrew Sheret or even big box stores.

[6793026]

Originally Posted by yray

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZQ_tDIl5pI

are they trying to sell or make fun of the buyer

not joking, this is my friend's actual unit. oh shiiit***

[Hehe]

Anyone watching Whistler property care to share some insight?

Thinking about grabbing a small unit as kids are getting more serious with snowboarding.

Ideally it's in phase 1 so that we can rent out when not using and below 1M. Any building I should avoid? And one thing I noticed that there's a huge difference in maintenance fees from one building to another. Any particular reason for that? If mostly equal, I'd prefer buildings with lower maintenance fee (duh), but not sure what I'm missing.

[JDMDreams]

^ I was up in whistler, and I was curious at looking at the prices. It doesn't make sense. Houses are easily $4m plus, unless you live there year round. There's nothing to do up there. Plus tourist prices on everything. How much rent can you get back. Squamish is more $ than Pemberton. But there's some really nicer houses with ocean view in porteau cove, Britannia area for around $2m.

But still it's a lot of money to drop, and it seems like a lot of work to rent it out part of the year, and not long term rental. As I'm sure the best rent is when you also want to be up there. Can you even air BNB in those areas, or the communist government banned it.

[Hehe]

Originally Posted by JDMDreams

^ I was up in whistler, and I was curious at looking at the prices. It doesn't make sense. Houses are easily $4m plus, unless you live there year round. There's nothing to do up there. Plus tourist prices on everything. How much rent can you get back. Squamish is more $ than Pemberton. But there's some really nicer houses with ocean view in porteau cove, Britannia area for around $2m.

But still it's a lot of money to drop, and it seems like a lot of work to rent it out part of the year, and not long term rental. As I'm sure the best rent is when you also want to be up there. Can you even air BNB in those areas, or the communist government banned it.

Definitely not going into houses as they are absolutely nuts. But some of the smaller units say a 1br condo/studio can be had for under 1M. Which is under 5k a month based on today's rate. I usually spend about 250 a night during the winter and if I were to be up there every weekend and kids' days off, I'm looking roughly 3k a month. I figured if we rent out the x'mas/new year season and all the time we are not using, trying to make 2k a month average to cover all the expenses shouldn't be that hard.

[EvoFire]

Originally Posted by Hehe

Anyone watching Whistler property care to share some insight?

Thinking about grabbing a small unit as kids are getting more serious with snowboarding.

Ideally it's in phase 1 so that we can rent out when not using and below 1M. Any building I should avoid? And one thing I noticed that there's a huge difference in maintenance fees from one building to another. Any particular reason for that? If mostly equal, I'd prefer buildings with lower maintenance fee (duh), but not sure what I'm missing.

How old are your kids? Whistler is just as much a party town as a snowboarding town. IMO you have much better snowboarding in the interior, Big White, Sun Peaks, Silverstar are all hands down better ACTUAL snowboarding experiences.