This is where your finance takes place

It all started when my wife and I fell in love with a house in our neighbourhood. We visited the property and made an offer the very same day (and we got late for our Easter supper with my parents!). The next morning, we put our own property for sale in the hope of a fast sale. We put it in the newspaper, on the internet and even tried the TV! After three weeks, we had about five visits and several phone calls but no offer yet. The owner of the house we wanted to buy we still having visits and phone calls as we only made a conditional offer. After a month, even though we already spent about $1,000 in ads, we decided to accelerate the process and give the mandate to a real estate agent. Big mistake!

No results whatsoever

I wrote in my introduction that I have a tendency of doing things myself when it comes down to finance. Well I should have done it in this case! We kept having the same rate of visits per week and most of the time, the potential buyers were coming from other agents, not even ours! In the end, it took him four additional months to sell our property and he convinced us to drop our asking price by a couple of thousands in order to make sure we don’t scare the people away.

How much does it cost?

Since he “sold” my property, I had to pay him a pretty fat commission. 5% of the selling price were making 10K that I could have keep for myself. Instead, the agent simply created additional miscommunication between all parties. In result of this communication breakdown, I had to pay an additional $600 in interest penalty to the buyers. This fee could have been easily avoided if communication were related to each party properly. As we have no right (or so every agent is telling us) to contact the other party without going through any real estate agent, it just creates a big mess.

The reason why it is my favourite money mistake is because even if I loss 10K out of this story, I learned a lot from it:

#1 The use of a real estate agent does not accelerate of your property

#2 They cost way too much for the service they provide

#3 They add more confusion and miscommunication as the buy and the seller can not talk to each other directly

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The location of your property is really important as you have little control over it once you have moved in. If there is a commercial center in your backyard, chances are that you will hear trucks loading and unloading goods all day long. No matter what you do and how many petition you have signed, the commercial center will stick in your neighbourhood and you will have to live with it. Therefore, you must establish in what kind of environment you wish to live before looking for properties. If you do not determine this factor upfront, you may fall in love with a property in a wrong location.

Think about the others too

Most people will live in the same property over a long period of time. I rarely sleep in the same bedroom more than three years. My parents used to buy, renovate and sell properties as a living. I guess it is now stuck in my blood as I lived at three different places in the last five years. When you buy a property, its location is not only important for your needs but also for the time that you will sell your property. Others’ perception is really important when you want to sell your house.

I bought my first house at the end of a street. I really liked it because I did not have neighbours behind my house. My backyard was ending on an empty field. I liked the fact that it was more peaceful and quiet. However, when I put this house for sale, I noticed that many people were reluctant to buy a property without neighbours around. They were asking about possibility of having rats or were asking how was it during winter time with the wind and the snow.

The worst part is that I thought it would be more peaceful based on the fact that I had only two neighbours. I was shocked to realize that it was a quite busy area. In fact, every single person with a dog in my town was going there to take walks. They were leaving their puppies running free in the field. Almost everyday, they used to end-up in my backyard or my front yard doing what they do best (just think about Paris ). The other things that bugged me is that many teenagers were going back in forth at the of the street to trade w..e..e…d…. or hockey cards maybe?

My latest purchase

I bought the house live into about a year ago. It is in a new area with neighbours surrounding my house. Believe it or not, this neighbourhood is much quieter than the field. All this because people mind their own business. I must admit that I had to pay a higher price to live in this area but it worth every penny! My street is about 40 houses and I am less than 10 minutes walk from the bus stop. I definitely might stay longer in this one!

Some key points to look at:

- Transport proximity (bus, metro, train)

- School proximity (5-10 minutes would be perfect, you do not want to have a tons of kids right beside your house either!)

- Neighbourhood quality (just by looking at their yard, you will have an idea of what is going on within their walls;-))

- Electric lines (we don’t know yet if it dangerous or not, but one thing is sure is that it’s ugly!)

- Be close to a boulevard or a highway (then again 5-10 minutes would be perfect. You can easily get out of town but you are not in the middle for the street noises)

- Look at newer development (in general, properties in those areas will gain in value over the next ten years after their creation)

- The city itself (a young city will gather all the newest and coolest stores and the infrastructure will be in a much better shape)

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