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New Listing – 2705 Doubloon Crescent Offered at $340,000
JUST LISTED! This very cozy, attractive home is located on a quiet, no through road and features a stone clad fireplace, cathedral ceiling, and lots of natural light. This one level and well maintained home is perfect as either a recreational property or a permanent residence. 0.44 acres of FLAT useable land is easy to maintain and the property is located within easy reach of trails, tennis courts and Thieves Bay marina. Most of the furniture is included with sale and property is on sewer and mains water. High speed internet available at lot line. Priced right and a must see! Contact Howard Sanders @ howard@propertyonpender.com or call Dockside Realty at 1-866-629-3166 and ask for Howard. Live the island dream today!
Dockside Realty Pender Island Market Update – April 2010
Here is the April 2010 Update for the real estate market on Pender Island, BC, from Howard Sanders and Dockside Realty:
Dockside April 2010 Update
There have been 19 Sales (38 Ends) Total all Pender since Jan 1, 2010 to May 15, 2010
Dockside has 17 Ends. Next Company has 14 Ends. Independent Agents have 7.
There was 1 Sale on Saturna Island
Dockside is the top Selling Office (according to MLS statistics).
The Average Home Price for April in all Gulf Islands is $518,917 (Victoria $624, 5149)
The Average Lots + Acreage for all Gulf Islands is $253,300 (Victoria $289,974)
As you can see from these Averages Pender Properties are becoming comparable to Victoria’s pricing.
This will likely result in a price correction because we do not have the infrastructure or the same ferry service here.
There are Currently 155 properties for Sale on the Penders
Dockside holds 74. Other Agency holds 77. Independents have 4.
There are currently 31 properties for Sale on Saturna
Dockside holds 14. Other Agency holds 11. Independents hold 6.
Number of Listings is way up both here and in Victoria, with product outweighing number of buyers. This provides buyers with more selection, hence pricing has to be more competitive (buyer’s market).
SOLDS Jan – May 15, 2010 – 19 Sales or 38 ENDS
Dockside had 17 ends
Next Company had 14 ends
Independents had 6 ends
TOTAL SOLDS HISTORIC
2009 – 72 1999 – 36
2008 – 49 1998 – 26
2007 – 111 1997 – 41
2006 – 96 1996 – 47
2005 – 79 1995 – 26
2004 – 125 1994 – 27
2003 – 163 1993 – 27
2002 – 106 1992 – 22
2001 – 49 1991 – 32
2000 – 31 1990 – 23
1989 – 17
When you look back to 1989 it appears that our market was very stable and prices rose gradually from 1989-2001 when there was an Average of 31 sales per year
In 2002 Sales jumped to 106 from 49 and continued with an Average of 113 Sales per year until 2008 when the market dropped to 49 Sales. We did do better in 2009, but we do not know yet about 2010 now so many listings.
We are doing everything we can to encourage people to come over to Pender Island!
Our TV commercials have been seen by some, and our Real Estate Magazines are all over Vancouver Island, the Lower Mainland, Calgary, and Edmonton and on the BC Ferries. Our New Website has just been launched. You can check us out in a couple of days, when it will be in full operation. Next month we will tell you more about our website’s special features.
Fond Regards from all of us at Dockside
New Website Features #2 – PRIVATE CLIENT SERVICE (PCS)
Looking to buy property within the Greater Victoria area and the Southern Gulf Islands? Then my Private Client Service is one of the best property search tools available for both buyers and sellers, bar none. As realtors we are restricted as to which current listings we can show on our personal websites. Only our own listings and those of our brokerages are allowed to be displayed, so it is sometimes difficult to present the whole property inventory of a particular location. This is where the PCS comes in. The only information I will need to get you started is a name and email address in order to deliver the results and then you’re off and running with your own personalised property search! I never sell or distribute my client’s contact information and you can unsubscribe at any time. The system automatically notifies you of any changes to the MLS (sold, newly listed, price changes etc.) and is updated in real time so you are always on top of the market of your choice. Best of all the PCS is FREE, and without any obligation!
Go to my website and sign up for a PCS account at http://homesonpender.com/property-search/ , the system will then give you a username and password with which you can access the system and set up your individual search parameters. You can restrict your search to a particular island, all the islands, or the entire Victoria Real Estate Board area. You can also search for current and sold listings if you are a buyer, or by sold listings if you are a seller who wants to keep an eye on the current market value of their existing property. As you can see below, the interface is clear and easy to understand, and you can change the parameters of your search at any time. Clicking on an individual property opens up a new window (below) that allows you access to details, photos and a map.
So try out my PCS today and find your perfect piece of real estate in the Gulf Islands or Victoria from the comfort and privacy of your own home.
New Website features # 1 – THE INTERACTIVE MAP
By now I hope most of you have had a chance to browse through my new website and see what’s on offer. The next few blogs are going to be about the new features I have added and how to best use the site to learn about Pender and also find the perfect property on our beautiful island. I operate in a very specific market so wanted my website to reflect this. I want prospective buyers to learn about Pender Island first, to see if this would be a community they may like to join or buy into, before deciding on the perfect property. So this first blog post will look at:
The Interactive Map – Google mapping technology is both amazing and extremely useful. Luckily for Pender, we have a high resolution image of about 90% of both North and South islands, so you can really see the detail. To start with, the whole site is best viewed in the Firefox browser. Firefox is by far the best and most secure browser anyway, but the site will work well in IE or Safari too.
Open the Interactive Map and it will load in a new page. I made it nice and big for easy viewing. Please wait for the colourful icons to load as well. Once finished, you will have a detailed satellite image with the roads marked and the icons showing points of interest. In the top right hand corner of the map are 4 smaller buttons;
1) Map – this removes the satellite image but keeps the road, icons, and the low detailed map. Useful for a quick reference.
2) Sat – stands for satellite. This is the default view for the map when first opened.
3) Terrain – This is a great feature that provides a 3D representation of the contours of the island. This allows you to see if a property you are interested in is on a hill, in a valley, or mostly on the flat.
4) Earth – By far the best way of viewing the map. Click on Earth and a 3D Google Earth image will begin to load. Wait for this to finish loading. Now the map slants at a 45 degree angle and is draped over the contour model of the island. It’s just like looking at Pender from an airplane.
You can navigate the first 3 maps by using the ‘+’ and ‘-‘ buttons to zoom in and out and the directional arrows to move left and right and up and down, although better way to move in these four directions is just to click and drag the map around, it’s easier and more fun. On the Earth view, the best way to view is to click and drag the map as before, but this time use the mouse wheel to zoom in and out. Now you have full control of the map from just the mouse. Try it, it’s a lot of fun.
Icons – Each of the icons represent a feature, viewpoint, photo op, public beach access, and any other useful island feature I can think of. I’m trying to be selective as you could clutter the map easily. I haven’t placed my real estate listings for example, they are on a separate map for clarity (see under the MLS listings tab for the ‘Map of my Listings’). Each icon is clickable and I’m in the process of adding links, pictures, and video to these icons. When this process is finished you will have a multi-media Virtual Tour of Pender Island all from this one map and controllable with just a mouse.
So that’s it, I hope you all have fun with the Pender Island Interactive Map and if you have any comments for improvements on this or about homesonpender in general, I’d love to hear from you.
Avoid listing your property too high in a local market
The first quarter of 2010 is coming to a close, as have the Olympic Games, so let’s have a look back over the last three months regarding the real estate business on Pender.
As I have mentioned in previous blogs, the real estate market on Pender has been fluid in the last couple of years. Many sellers, thinking that the Olympics would bring potential buyers to BC, started off the year listing their properties high and most of these are still on the market without offers. In fact, of the 10 sales so far this year, 80% were either listed last year or were listed after a sale had already been negotiated. The two remaining sales were listed in 2010 and have sold for fair prices, but less than list.
Since the beginning of 2010, some sellers on Pender have been telling us that they ‘want to test the market’ when they list at a price higher than we recommend. This is one strategy, and can work in cases where the seller is not in a hurry to sell, or has a property that is unique within the market and therefore has no competition. The problems arises when this ‘let’s test the market’ strategy becomes the norm within a local area. If one market becomes overpriced, and buyers have choices, they will go somewhere else. Either that or it will only be low ball offers that come in, resulting in hard negotiations that most of the time go nowhere. With a tightening in the financing requirements to purchase all real estate, particularly rural bare land with existing structures such as trailers or other structures that have no occupancy permits and where at least 50% down is required, banks are going to want appraisals and are not going to finance a buyer if a property is listed for way more than the appraisal. A better strategy for sellers would be to listen to your realtor and list your property within reason of the existing fair market value, being prepared to reduce slightly if a good offer came in but holding close to your list price when negotiating. This way, the local market reflects the fair market value of the real estate inventory at the time and will encourage more buyers to the area.
Creating real estate bubbles in local markets is easy to do and it affects all aspects of that market. Sellers have to wait longer for offers, those offers are generally are a lot lower than the list, and the final sale price ends up close to the original realtor valuation. In the meantime, however, it has taken months to sell an overpriced property when it could have taken weeks or even days. 80% of buyers look to the internet to find property nowadays and the way they do it is by searching. If you list a property too high within search parameters, for example the buyer is searching online for properties between $300K to $400K, and your property is really only worth $275K but listed at $320K, you will get not get any interest because there will be better options for the buyer within that searched price range. It’s as simple as that. Real Estate markets are changing quickly at the moment, so a house down the road from you that sold at a certain amount last year will not necessarily sell for the same amount this year because of the fluidity of present conditions.
In an up market, a seller’s market, the same rules apply but in reverse, the danger then being under-listing a property and not getting the fair market value. Pricing properties is what realtors do. We eat, sleep and drink the market we work in and know within reason either what price a property will sell for or what it is worth to a buyer. When I list a property I want it to sell as fast as possible for fair market value, a bit more if I can get it (there are always buyers that fall in love and will pay over the odds to secure the deal but these are rare), but most sellers want to move on as fast as they can when they put their home up for sale. Price it right and it will sell, price it low and of course it will sell even faster sometimes with multiple offers driving up the price (one strategy in a seller’s market), but price it too high and it’s almost a certainty that it will sit there until that price is reduced and reduced to what it should have been in the first place.
It can be an expensive lesson to learn. So trust your realtor, we do have our client’s best interests at heart and are most happy when a deal is brokered where both parties are satisfied by the transaction.
Howard on Pender Island – Call 250-222-4663
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