Kirk Marsh first noticed the mood start to turn in Vancouver’s housing market a year ago. As a real estate investor who buys homes and condos then fixes them up for resale, Marsh has an excellent vantage point on the market. Since giving up his old job in tech three years ago to flip real estate—“Sitting at a desk was killing me,” he says—Marsh has bought and sold six detached homes and condominiums across the B.C. Lower Mainland. “It’s not like TV shows where you see them making $100,000 or more each time, it’s just not like that,” he says. But he’s done well, always able to find buyers and come out ahead.
Or that’s how it used to be. “Today, everything has stalled,” he says.
While visiting open houses over the past year looking for his next flip, Marsh watched the frothing crowds and bidding wars steadily dwindle away. “There’s just nobody showing up at the open houses now,” he says. “Especially downtown. Usually you’d see a group of very aggressive people coming out.” But he’s also keenly aware of the slowdown because he’s trying to unload a renovated two-bedroom condo in New Westminster, just east of Vancouver. The unit, with an asking price of $569,000, had been sitting on the market for two months as of mid-December, with almost no interest.
– excerpt and image from ‘This is how Canada’s housing correction begins’ by Jason Kirby, Maclean’s, 3 Jan 2019
The whole article is worth the read, and nails many things…
Pretty much what we’ve been warning of on these pages for …oooh… more than a decade.
You can only tell who’s been swimming naked when the tide goes out (and that includes entire countries).
Regarding Kirk, starting flipping three years ago was extremely late to the Lower Mainland party and he should count himself very fortunate if he gets out alive.
– vreaa
Vancouver Real Estate Anecdote Archive 