Jerry Charlton

How's the Market?

The answer is "it depends." Are you buying or selling? What are you buying or selling? Where are you buying or selling?

If you are buying only, lucky you, it's a buyers market.

If your buying and selling, it's relative, what you lose selling you should make buying.

If you are selling only, beware of lots of other sellers, fewer buyers and lower prices.

If you are looking for fix and flip opportunities, you have lots of competition, so you better be ready to write offers quickly with few conditions.

If you are looking for rental properties, check out Rentfaster.ca to study the home rental market. Find the obvious property types and the income they generate. Then look at properties to buy that can at least break even after paying the mortgage, taxes and insurance.

Is it a good time to buy or sell? Yes!

But only if that's what works for you. Everybody is different. Home ownership isn't for everyone. It costs more than renting but allows freedom and has restrictions not found as a homeowner. And you could do both. I know many landlords that are also tenants because they found properties that are really nice and really cheap.

We've done it all and continue to do it all.

Helping people sort through all the different options to find what best suits them is our specialty. We don't know your situation yet, but when we do, we can help you fill in the blanks that allows you to make the best real estate decision for you!

	Detached Foreclosures
	25 Active Listings
	17 Sold in the Past 30 Days
	$224 Per Square Foot - Average Sold Price

	Attached Foreclosures
	42 Active Listings
	15 Sold in the Past 30 Days
	$209 Per Square Foot - Average Sold Price

	Apartment Condo Foreclosures
	48 Active Listings
	12 Sold in the Past 30 Days
	$233 Per Square Foot - Average Sold Price

Banks are not motivated sellers of foreclosed homes.

Foreclosure Supply is controlled by banks and mortgage companies. It is against the best interests of the banks and mortgage companies to increase the supply beyond the demand. If lenders flooded the market and drove down prices that action would damage the value of the mortgages they still hold on similar properties. It would take a major financial market meltdown before Canadian Banks and Canadian Mortgage Companies became forced sellers of real estate. A rare event, but never say never....

The Court of Queens Bench are not motivated sellers of pre-foreclosure homes.

The Court is working on behalf of the home-owner. The Court will turn the property over to the bank after all home-owner equity is used up. Penalties, interest on interest and legal fees add up quickly. At that point, the courts evict the former home-owner and legal title transfers to the bank.

Foreclosures that appear to be a good deal, in general, are priced appropriately for the condition they are in. The really bad ones offer at most an opportunity to build what's called Sweat Equity. That means you do the work required instead of paying a tradesperson. But you don't need to limit yourself to looking at just foreclosures. Sweat Equity opportunities can be found in the much larger pool of regular MLS® Listings.

Our VIP Home Finder System does the work for you. We set up a custom search based on your filters to weed out properties not matching so you get the newest and best property matches emailed to you automatically. Try it here.

Calgary Off-Leash Dog Park searches are easy with the City of Calgary's website mapping tool powered by ESRI. Your furry best friend has endless opportunities to socialize all over the city. You search and find all the off-leash parks close to your house or your future house. Not everybody is a dog lover so this map of the dog parks is a useful tool to find communities to avoid as well. You can view the maps as plain maps or satellite aerial views. There are loads of features to make your Dog Park Search fun and user-friendly. Check It Out the next time you are looking for a dog park. Share this with your friends as well.