100: Celebrating the Century Mark PLUS 5 Essential Steps When Buying & Selling a Home

Taylor Atkinson: Welcome back to the Columbia Real Estate podcast. I'm your mortgage broker host, Taylor Atkinson,

Matt Glen: and I'm your real estate agent host, Matt Glenn. And for the hundredth time, how's it going today, Taylor?

Taylor Atkinson: A hundred episodes, man. Yeah. Did you think we would make it here when we first started?

Matt Glen: Honestly, no, but I don't think I thought we wouldn't make it.

Taylor Atkinson: Yeah. I don't know.

Matt Glen: But I've I've impressed with us. It's pretty good. Two and a half years. We started at the beginning of twenty twenty three. That's a long long relationship, man.
That's a lot of conversations. That is Yeah. A hundred recorded ones. Yeah. So

Taylor Atkinson: Yeah. And it takes us about two hours pre show just yeah, rambling before we get into anything. Yeah. I think, you know, when we originally started this, like, we have had that question before. Like, what's the purpose of the show?
Why did you guys start it? And I think for you and I, and I'll let you speak on this too. But I think it was just for fun. You know? Often and thought there was a void in the market that that Kelowna could use a podcast.
And we wanted to talk to interesting people which met over a hundred shows, like, I'm amazed some of the guests we've had.

Matt Glen: I know it's pretty cool. We just asked people to come on and, like, most of the time, they're like, sure. Really?

Taylor Atkinson: Yeah. Yeah. Now people know our secret. They're like, ugh.

Matt Glen: No. It's been awesome.

Taylor Atkinson: It's been great. I mean, thank you to you. Very grateful to have such a good cohost.

Matt Glen: I wasn't sure if you're talking to the listener of that wall.

Taylor Atkinson: I think Thank you to the listener. Singular. Yep. And to the guests again, like, we have had some amazing guests and repeated. They've come back on multiple times.

Matt Glen: So Yeah. Honestly, you know, like, for me, the biggest strength is like, I know that the key to being successful is consistency, and I feel like working with you has been extremely good to keep me consistent showing up to these. We're doing them regularly. And it's been, like, very rewarding. Yeah.
I gotta say thank you to you for that and to the just the podcast in general Yeah. And listener. But I think this has been very good a steady thing to have in my life and my business for sure.

Taylor Atkinson: Yeah. There's an accountability factor to it when we're both like, oh, crap. We need to get an episode of Yeah. And, you know, somebody we also need to thank as their producer, Nikki. She's been an absolute rock.
So Yeah.

Matt Glen: Yeah. Honestly, she's been so good if anybody listening wants to start their own podcast, reach out to Nikki because, holy shit. She makes that sound so much better than we used to out in real life. So it's a she's just impressive work, so I cannot show her enough. So, yeah, if you're looking for any help like that, definitely reach out to her.
Yeah. I'll get her her own beats in the comments. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.
And this episode, like, every other episode is sponsored by Century twenty one Assurance Realty, Best Brokerage in town, Best Brokerage in the Okanaga. We're growing, grown in Kelowna, Vernon. Calhouns, Cootenies. We're here. So if you're an agent looking for a new place to land or a buyer or seller looking for an agent, give us a shout.
Love to talk to you.

Taylor Atkinson: What does the next two and a half years look like? What can people expect? What are we gonna do for an another hundred shows. You got any ideas?

Matt Glen: I think people will still be buying and selling and pondering over what's happened in the real estate market. Hopefully, there's less rule changes and stuff for us to breakdown and more, like, market cycle stuff. Yeah. Kelowna is also changing a lot so, like, Dyer's comment to

Taylor Atkinson: talk about there. Honestly, it seems hard to keep up with sometimes, like, the amount of legislation changes and policy changes that they come up with.

Matt Glen: Yeah. I kinda feel like those are gonna start not being as much. What do you think?

Taylor Atkinson: Put that. Yeah. Hopefully, I feel they're coming out with a lot of changes, but with caveats to them that, like, the headlines seem like a big change, but the impact might be quite small. Yep. Which isn't, like, the worst thing.
But, yeah, I feel there'll be, like, a lot of little tweaks as we go. You know, even when we recorded with Ryan Smith, City of Kelowna, was, like, yeah, we'll review this in a year. You know, like, we just have to keep tweaking, but we can't make big changes because we don't need that volatility.

Matt Glen: Yeah. I just have to talk on this right now. So talked to you with Ryan Smith, and I've been talking a lot on his pod and off about modular housing and prefab housing. Yeah. Like, we talked about last week with Ryan.
And last week, we find out just after that show that SRI is closing in Kelowna. Oh, yeah. It's like, what? That's like a major employer a. I don't know how many people are employed, but gotta be in the hundreds.
And it feels like modular housing is just on the cusp of Mark Carney talks about it all the time. Brian Smith mentioned it in his Kelowna plan. And then, like, the very next day or a couple days later, they announced they're closing that. That's pretty crazy.

Taylor Atkinson: Wow. Yeah. Maybe an opportunity for another company to to take over that and then

Matt Glen: I think there is a major opportunity. Like, The problem is with the business, they can't just wait forever for, like, things changed. So, like, we need to have money coming in, and I'm sure there's other factors too. But everyone seems to be talking about it, and it does seem like the most logical thing to hit the housing needs. So, honestly, that surprised me that one.

Taylor Atkinson: Yeah. Sure. Sure. Where do we see the market, like, in the next little while? What's your take on it right now?
I mean, spring market's kinda like we've just kind of, like, finished it really. Yeah.

Matt Glen: The spring market has been extremely lackluster. Right? Like, I don't think it's been off a cliff. It's definitely not booming. Like, this has been a below average year.
I don't know the exact stats, but it's definitely below average. Like, my personal business is doing okay, which I'm super thankful for for all my clients. So thank you. But, you know, like you just hear about it, listings are harder to sell. Every subject is a battle.
You know, like, it feels like we gotta be near the bottom or nearing the bottom. I've been hearing a lot of comments like, is this slowdown different? Is this a recession? Is this different than all the others? I was just like, you know, when the market was just pumping in twenty twenty, twenty twenty one, and twenty twenty two.
Everyone kinda thought that was gonna last forever. And then it starts slowing down and then you think this is gonna last forever. And it's just as a collective, I think we need to get better at just realizing that it just goes up and down and up and down and, like, we said a lot at the beginning of our show. In our first episode, it's like, the housing market, it really is like a Yoyo on an escalator. Right?
Like, sometimes Yoyo bounces a little farther down, but still on its way up in the long term. And, like, I'm not saying that you're gonna have massive gains if you buy now, but, like, I'd also don't think that you're gonna lose a farm.

Taylor Atkinson: Something I've learned over the last few years too is it's very asset specific and geographic as well. Like, you know, we can't just say on a broad scale, oh, this is where we're at in Canada or BC or or even Kelowna. You know, big white will act totally different than Kelowna to Peachland to Panticton. The condo market right now is like looking pretty saturated, but, you know, if you have a home that's like a single family home for nine hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I bet you that's gonna sell pretty quick compared to the condo at five hundred.
You know?

Matt Glen: Yeah. Honestly, so in my own life, so I had rented out a basement suite. I had West Kelowna. And I put an ad up. I got a lot of calls.
Like, normally, when I rent these out, I get a lot of calls. Right? And then a lot of applications that I gotta send out. Like, I feel terrible every time, like, it's, like, sending out breakout notices to everyone. Right?
Like, it's honestly, I hate doing this terrible. Like, why didn't you pick me? It's, like, I have to draw the line somewhere. I can't give it to two people or three people. So, like, you know, you gotta pick someone, but this time, I still had a lot of calls.
I showed it fifteen people. Out of the fifteen people, three people applied, and, like, two of them ended up withdrawing their applications. So, like, it was markedly different. Building on these rentals is having an effect for sure.

Taylor Atkinson: I agree. Absolutely.

Matt Glen: Yeah. And it seems like there's more coming, so I don't know. Like, I think that is an interesting because now I didn't have a trouble doing it. Like, it shows to fifteen people. So I was never worried about it, but, like, it was different than normal.

Taylor Atkinson: Yeah. I mean, maybe we were just complacent. Used to being, like, as soon as you put a some enough for rent. Somebody's gonna pick it up right away and I was acting up. But it does seem like from a government position, they're kind of forcing more rentals.
Like, it feels like, you know, the systems are just being built that in Canada now we're just like, supposed to rent for a longer period

Matt Glen: of time. So Well and they're also making it, like, attractive to rent. Like, rents are coming down. All the rules favor themselves. Yeah.
Yeah. Like, so it's kind of, like, Their rental buildings are becoming newer and nicer. Some of them are having nice amenities. The landscape is definitely changing where being a renter is not like the worst thing. Right?
There are pros to it for sure. Obviously, I'm still pro home ownership, but there is something to be said about just being a long term renter, you know, like, definitely.

Taylor Atkinson: Yeah. I guess I'm becoming a little more cynical with my investor hat and maybe that's just getting a little bit older and trying to protect the nest egg a bit. But Right. I agree with you. I think, like, best investment in real estate is your primary residence?
Yeah. There are times where, like, renting may outweigh that with, you know, where mortgage rates are or not. But the incentives are still there for exemption on capital gains on your primary residence. And, you know, even if you throw a suite in, having some of that rental income, like, that stuff really helps out. So, yeah, I agree with you.
I think everyone should own their own home if they can.

Matt Glen: Actually, August podcast, my thinking on this has changed a little. I used to just be like, yes, everyone will know. But now I've worked with many people. I think we talked about this with Ryan last week on the pod is that who have had a mortgage for their entire lives, like, entire adult lives are talking thirty years, whatever it is. And they just pay the mortgage, and then they eventually pay off their house, so that's nice.
But then they don't ever do anything with their equity, and they just kinda just wait until they pass away. It's almost like the mindset is to just hold on to your house and then just give it to the next generation. Right where I feel like if that's your only goal, then why is home ownership better than renting? You know?

Taylor Atkinson: Yeah. Interesting point. Like, in my mindset right now Yeah. If I was older and had my house paid off, I would absolutely sell go rent a a wicked pent up This is what I owe maintenance and then travel and retire.

Matt Glen: But you've just reminded the clock twenty years, like, you gotta pay a mortgage anyway. Why don't you just pay a rent? Rental have no risk. Right? You can put that money somewhere else.
So, like, it's just my mind has changed because I know so many people. Like, I'm talking to half people out there. Just do this. They don't never use their equity for anything else besides moving, like, putting it towards the next house or to just sit there. So if that's the goal, maybe rental isn't that bad.
But if your goal is to, like, split the equity, buy rental properties and invest it other ways, then, like, obviously, it's different. So that's where my my shares shifted. So I still believe that home ownership is awesome, but I think that you gotta kinda have a plan to do what you're gonna do with it.

Taylor Atkinson: Yeah. I I still feel like homeownership, one of the biggest issues in Canada, is the expectations of what you get with the home. You know, like we complain about the cost of housing being so, you know, unaffordable, but, you know, is truly because we want a three car garage with a pool and a view and walkable and, you know, it's like, wow, we gotta start making and one of the nicest cities in country. Yeah. But, I mean, the government has been coming out with some incentives for, you know, first time home buyers.
Essentially trying to get, you know, people that aren't in homes to migrate that way. So, yeah, I do wanna chat about that a little bit.

Matt Glen: Yeah. So just the other day, GST on new builds is now waived if you're a first time home buyer. Up to a million and then tears down to a million and a half after that. Like, that's a big deal. So, like, right now to buy, I'm a four plex listing on ethyl right now.
And two of them sold, like, sold for seven twenty five. And those first two people were both first time home buyers, as far as I know, I'm bezel listers. I don't know exactly, but I'm pretty sure they're first time home buyers. So they had to pay GST, which was on seven twenty five, it was like almost thirty five thousand dollars. Because their first time home buyers, they wouldn't have had to pay the property transfer tax.
So now those are the first two units of the build. So there's still two for sale. And now the other two, they get the GST waived if their first time homebuyers, they have thirty five thousand dollars off. Plus, they have no property transfer tax. So, like, a first time home buyer compared to a second time home buyer, you're saving, like, almost fifty grand on a seven hundred and fifty thousand dollar purchase.
That's a huge difference.

Taylor Atkinson: I mean, it's great for first time home buyers. Yeah. Man, if I was a first time home buyer and I had some six months ago that bought new condos, I'd be kinda pissed

Matt Glen: six months ago dude six days ago. Yeah. Well, wait. It's like it's like, you know, I don't think it's fully past yet, but it's supposed to take effect a couple days ago,

Taylor Atkinson: at least

Matt Glen: in the seventh. But I think it says right in there that you can't just kill the first contract. You can write a new one with a newer date. Yeah.

Taylor Atkinson: They're good, but some of these changes are tough. I mean, we spoke a little bit about this off air. I think to me, it kind of frustrates me a little bit when they come out with, like, a headline that excites people, and then they put these conditions on it that it's like, it's not applicable to everyone. And I think something that would resolve, like, homeownership and, I mean, you brought this up. As long as it's your primary residence, like, let people be more flexible on their owner occupied.
Yeah. If you're gonna buy rental, sure. You can tax that investor. But, like, as an owner occupied primary rental, if you want builders to build and you wanna waive GST on a very small group of people. Like, yeah.
Great for first time homebuyers, but just like, what if someone bought a condo two years ago, they got married, had a kid, they need a bigger place to move into a new townhouse, let them roll that over, like, wave the GST.

Matt Glen: Also, I was thinking about this last night, it kinda skews the market. All first time home buyers are just gonna buy new because you're getting a massive discount. Yeah. Right? So not all obviously, but, like, you can't even really buy a brand new house in that region you are in the Calando Yeah.
Townhouse land. But, like, what a major discount?

Taylor Atkinson: I mean, condos have been pretty saturated, Kelowna specific for twelve months, eighteen months. No. Do you think this has enough legs to, like, revive

Matt Glen: the condo market at all? Bump, for sure. I don't think it's gonna revive Like, it's not gonna be all of sudden condos are booming. I was thinking that the developers and the marketers for these presales are gonna start targeting first time home buyers massively now. Totally.
And even just for an agent agents who also be trying to meet these people. Yeah. Because, like, you're talking about almost a fifty thousand dollar discount on a seven hundred fifty thousand dollar place compared to the same buyer that just happened to buy a place a couple years ago. Oh. Right?
So, like, it does have a kinda weird effects like that.

Taylor Atkinson: Yeah. I mean, so obviously, I was thinking about when I bought my first place and it was new and I was like, ugh. Why can't I waive GST on that? Twenty years ago, come on.

Matt Glen: Yeah. Honestly. Yeah. I guess, you know, like, you think the, well, why don't they do this? Why don't you do that?
We've talked about this a few episodes of COVID. I think the government just wants the money or needs the money or it's already spent the money or, you know, like, they probably just can't just give GSTU for free because it's a massive amount of money. But it's five percent on the sale, like, everyone knows how those aren't cheap. So five percent is a lot of money. Yeah.

Taylor Atkinson: But, I mean, if it's gonna let people build, they're gonna tax them on other areas. Right? Like, we need builders to build at this point. Yeah. Okay.
Well, on that note, we wanted to kind of review, like, a very basic five steps how to sell and buy a home. Because speaking to, you know, a lot of first time homebuyers, yeah, we're getting a lot of people come in and just aren't sure of the process. Which is totally fair, but we thought we just kinda lay it out in five simple steps. So I'll just highlight the steps, and then we'll kinda dive into it. But essentially, step one is preparing to sell.
Okay? If you have an existing home, obviously, if you don't, skip to step two. Step two is getting a preapproval and a mortgage budget. Step three is going to buy a home. Step four is getting an accepted offer, and step five is possession.
Of that home. Okay. So, Matt, how about you take the lead on? Number one, just what does it look like preparing to sell your home if you have an existing home? How do people find an agent?
What does that look like?

Matt Glen: Yeah. So good question. So most people, a lot of people, like, a a agent referred to them through brand or they know somebody. And I honestly I think that's a great approach. End of the day, you have to still interview them, make the agent, go through their listing presentation.
They're still selling your biggest asset. It's a big deal. You gotta interview the agent. Make sure you like them, especially right now, listing a house can take a long time. So if you just don't like the agent, that's probably not a great idea if you gotta be in touch with this person for a long time.
So I think to keep that in mind. Second thing to keep in mind is when you go to buy a house, there's two ways to do it. Right? You can buy a house first or you list your house. Depends on your financial situation.
You need to talk to a mortgage broker about how you wanna do that. It's kind of personal for everybody. Like, one thing to keep in mind is when you buy a house, you have to come up with a deposit on the purchase when you remove all your subjects generally. Right? So A lot of people have a lot of equity in their house as we were talking about before, not a lot of cash.
So that can be something to think about where you're gonna need two to five percent of the purchase price on the deposit line of your purchase. And a lot of people don't have that or are struggling to come up with that because all the money is in their current house. So that is something to think about also. There are ways around it, but something to think about. When you wanna list your house, And you need to sell your house to buy another one, which most people do.
You list your house in any way for an offer to come in. And then when that offer comes in, you just put in there a seller subject to be able to find a house. And that way, you're not selling your house before you found anyone, so you're not homeless at any point. Or when you're going out to buy, you buy a house first and subject to sale, and then you list your house, and then you gotta wait for your house to sell. So there's kinda two different ways to protect yourself in that way, make sure that you know how myself.
It's a bit of a confusing situation and very subjective, but those are general outline of that? What do you think too?

Taylor Atkinson: I think there, it's very market dependent. Right? Like, right now, we see a ton of subject to sales because Yeah. It's hard to sell homes. Three years ago, you would buy a home and then you would sell yours because you knew you would sell yours in five days.
Yeah. It really depends on where the market is. And when it's a more balanced market, it might be a bit harder to make a decision on that.

Matt Glen: There's just so many factors, and you're right. It's like your personal situation. It's a market situation. So there are a lot of ways to do it, and this is where you need an agent has a bit of experience kind of guide you through this. Yeah.

Taylor Atkinson: I guess one question for you for an agent. Like, say, I'm listening my home and I have three agents come over and they do a lesson presentation. It must be hard for clients not to go for someone that's like, hey. I'm gonna list it at the upper price. How do clients know how to set expectations?
Like, you guys come up with the CMA, like, a a marketing analysis and say, you know, here are the current sales. Here's what's currently the inventory. Here's where I think your home is going to sell for. But if another agent comes in and, you know, they wanna price it a hundred grand over, like, how do clients know who's right and who's wrong?

Matt Glen: When you go into a home, you have to be honest like, it's a big deal for sellers. So I think just being honest, show them what the market is doing. And everybody's in a different position. Right? So if one agent is just gonna promise them in the world, like, is that the true?
Like, is that the end of the day, it's the market is gonna tell you how much is worth Right? So if the seller is okay to wait a little while and then you'd laid out the situation and they wanna price a little higher, like, we can do that. You just have to be honest with the situation and say, like, well, if we don't get any action in two weeks, maybe we start lowering our we test the market here. A lot of the times the agents know what the host is gonna sell for? I at least have an idea.
That being said, single family houses in Kelowna are all pretty unique because we don't live in a grid. Right? Like, there's different views. Like, this part of the lake are different than that part of the lake. Like, do you even have two houses on the same street that are the same might not be the same day of different way.
So it's really hard to compare. That's a science and an art mixed in. At the end of the day, you just have to be honest and go

Taylor Atkinson: with that approach. You see it far too often, and I I would probably put myself in this position too. If people are looking at upsizing right now, now is probably a good time to do it because there's a bit of a discount on everything. But if you're in a, you know, six hundred and fifty thousand dollar townhome and you listed at that and somebody offers you six thirty, You can probably make that up on the buy side, but so many people get caught up on, like, no, six fifty is my bottom line. I have to sell for six fifty.
But it's like, yeah, but to shave twenty grand off a million dollar price, is far more achievable.

Matt Glen: That is actually a a great point. And a a lot of times, I do break that down. It's like, don't look at the at your sale price and look at what's the difference in price you wanna handle here. Right? So if you go with that mindset, it does make things a lot easier and it's kind of more palatable, and it just makes sense in the end.
So I I love that approach.

Taylor Atkinson: Yeah. Alright. So number two of this process is getting a preapproval. And this kinda ties into the last piece. So when I do a preapproval with clients, know, I said, no.
An application takes about twenty minutes to fill out. We front load the process, so we collect all the income documents, make sure that, you know, we've actually underwritten the file before you go out shopping as well as if you do have a property to sell, We break down NSL proceeds. So if you're gonna list for x amount of dollars, we put that in. We take out real estate commission, legal fees, you know, paying out your existing mortgage, estimated on penalty. So we have, like, a very rough ballpark of, okay, when you sell your home, you're gonna be left with a hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
Then we take that over to the purchase and we also account for, you know, do you have any savings you wanna add to this purchase? Or do you wanna keep some of that equity out? Or do you just wanna use the full one fifty? For that purchase. And then we have to account for things like property transfer tax, legal fees, appraisal, you know, any of the other closing costs associated with that.
So we really wanna break it down pretty much to the dollar with the transactions gonna cost. And then in turn, you know, once we get the max preapproval amount, some people would like to see or some people wanna know what their max monthly, you know, mortgage payments gonna be. We then break down the monthly mortgage payments, strategies if applicable, home insurance, property tax, you know, utility stuff like that. So people know exactly how much the transactions are gonna cost, but then also how much their monthly costs are going to be for that house. And we do that almost in sync with, you know, if Matt's doing a listing presentation.
Because then we know what, hypothetically, what the home's gonna sell for, and hypothetically, what that transaction's gonna cost. And, you know, at the end of the day, people are not gonna sell their home if they're not gonna then be able to afford a new home. Right? Like, you have to know that you can then go purchase a home if you're gonna sell a home. So we wanna do that.
And specifically now, because, you know, if somebody bought that home seven years ago, when interest rates were incredibly low, they probably would have qualified no problem. Now, it might be a little bit harder to qualify. So just because you bought a six hundred thousand dollar condo six years ago, you may or may not be approved for that same value. So, yeah, that's kind of how the preapproval works. Then you go out start shopping.
And then once you get that accepted offer, then, you know, we just push the button and we have all the documents. And, you know, ideally, we can remove subject to financing very quickly because we've done all of that legwork and think it puts you guys in a better position to negotiate because you can say, hey, we're going in with, like, minimal subjects or we can do a quick close.

Matt Glen: Yeah. Or just even knowing what we're going up against. Yeah. I agree.

Taylor Atkinson: So, yeah, then we can kinda move on to buying a home. So let's just for this scenario, say, you know, we've listed the home, potentially has an accepted offer on it. We've done the preapproval. So now you're going out shopping. So what does buying look like?
I mean, you set them up on, like, automated listing search, and then you just start walking through homes or

Matt Glen: yeah. Exactly. So I set up auto search. That's kind of the step one, the easiest. Obviously, everybody has realtor dot c a right now.
So, like, people are looking there too. So, like, the auto searches are kinda hard for us to narrow down for a client until we start to know what the client exactly likes. And even then, it can be a little tricky because you don't wanna set the search up for houses under six fifty or whatever it is. Towns is under six fifty, and then one comes up for six seventy five. That just doesn't end up on the search, but you know, as an agent, you can easily negotiate that down.
So it's kinda hard to figure this out with the criteria. Usually, after we know the client's a little better, it gets a little easier, but still not a perfect process. The client will be looking at realtor dot c a. I will also be doing that too because real Shrestia is awesome for realtors too. It's really nice to have.
Yeah. We'll go look at a few houses. I'd always like to see at least a few houses with everybody because lots of times people walk in and just love the first one, and which is awesome for them in for me, but it's also nice to see the other ones just to make sure. And a lot of time, like, we'll seal the deal for the first house. And then when that happens, we write an offer.
So we'll talk about what the list price is, what the comparables are, what kind of price we should get. What kind of subjects we're gonna put in there. And then I, as the agent, we'll go and draft up the offer, send over the copy to client. We review it together, add anything, change anything, make adjustments, make sure the deposit's accessible. We know when it's coming out.
We know what has to be done here. And then once we get all those deal deals sorted out, I can sign the offer in person or I fire it to you over in DocuSign. We'd sign the disclosures and all that stuff. Get the offer back. And then I'll start negotiating with the listing agent and we'll submit the offer and go from there.
Probably be a couple of counters back and forth, iron out all the details and then get to accepted offer.

Taylor Atkinson: Yeah. So step four accepted offer. Perfect segue. Let's talk about subjects or conditions in there. So, I mean, usually, we see, like, a legal review, which, honestly, most people never get done.
We've spoken to lawyers on the pod before.

Matt Glen: That's like the first thing I always do. Yeah. Who is your lawyer? Like, on the cell, I don't usually get a lawyer till later on. But on the buy, we get a lawyer as soon as we accept that offer.
I usually send over a list of three. Most of them have been on this podcast. They pick one. They can call the office and get a price on all three and kind of go that way if they want, which is interesting because pricing for lawyers has been changing lately. Just seems to be kinda what it is.
So it's nice to know exactly what the cost is. And then as soon as I pick a lawyer, I'll email the lawyer with all the documents they need. I'll email the lender with the mortgage broker with all the documents they need. We go through all the subjects, so if you're gonna have financing, legal review, insurance.

Taylor Atkinson: Yeah. Let's talk about financing for a second. So generally, yeah, subject to financing, you know, we've done the preapproval, but we still need to then submit everything to the lender because lenders are not gonna look at documents if we don't have an accepted offer, it'd be a colossal waste of time. Yep. Yeah.
We can do, like, you know, rate holds and stuff with them, but they don't underrate anything until we have a firm accepted offer.

Matt Glen: Also, the host has to be approved as well.

Taylor Atkinson: Yeah. Once we get that, we send it in, it generally takes a few days depends how busy lenders are. You know, when it's really busy, it could take, like, five business days for them to get a commitment letter back to us. And then on the commitment letter, it states everything in there, you know, hey, we need x amount for income. You gotta prove that these are the property taxes.
We need an appraisal. So they'll list a bunch of conditions. Hopefully, we've already satisfied most of those. We send in all the documents. They review them.
And as they're reviewing them, they'll basically tick them off. And, yep, that's good. That's good. That's good. The one that generally slows us down the most is the appraisal.
If it's an insured purchase with less than twenty percent down, lots of times we can get the appraisal waived. Sometimes if the loan value is like sixty five percent or less, we can get it appraised, but I'd say most of the time we need appraisals. So that system's a little bit frustrating because it's generally a blind order. So we don't have the ability to control it at all. And the reason is because lenders don't want us as brokers or agents or anyone to manipulate it.
Right? So we order it. It goes out to a handful of appraisers. Somebody contacts the listing agent, gets in there, takes photos, writes a report, and then sends that directly to the lender, and we don't know the value or the report until, you know, it's already in the lender's hand. So that's something, you know, we have to facilitate pretty quickly.
Something that's a little bit confusing for people is the difference between an appraisal and an inspection. So a home inspection and an appraisal is

Matt Glen: entirely different. That's actually a good point. That's come off a few times.

Taylor Atkinson: The home inspection, you can elect to do one or not. I highly suggest to do one specifically on homes. You know, condos may be less of a need, but it gets a a licensed home inspector in that house for three or four hours crawling in the attic, checking out the furnace, seeing what the roof looks like, checking the foundation, and then they provide you a report. And I guess, you know, in that, sometimes things come back where you may wanna walk away from the property entirely, and that is why you have, you know, subject to home inspection. Much like subject to financing, if something doesn't come back with the financing as you wanted it to, you have the ability to back out of that with just cause.
But the home inspection, you know, maybe they come back and say, hey, the roof is actually thirty years old. When in the listing, it didn't say that. And we had no ability to see that the roof was that old because we're just walking through. Maybe then Matt goes to work and negotiates know, a bit of money off or something.

Matt Glen: Yeah. That's a good point to say that. Because when you write an offer, like, if you can see the problems, generally, they're not that great to negotiate during the home inspection, the attributes. Right? So, like, what you can see that the home inspection is for really for issues that or unforeseen that you just don't know about that come up.
Right? So if you open the furnace as out of date and full of rust, right, that that happens quite a bit and Mhmm. Probably needs to be addressed or a roof that's leaking in a spot or is way past date or a hot water tank that is uninsurable because it's fifteen years old. Stuff like that, right, that you don't know about before you offer, that you can help negotiate after the home inspection. But so you use a home inspection as just straight up tool to negotiate a price offer offer.
It doesn't usually go over well with the listing.

Taylor Atkinson: Yeah. Totally. Like you said, it's for unforeseen stuff. If the listing agent puts in, hey, roof is twenty to twenty five years old, and then you get a home inspection and it states, hey, the roof is twenty five years old. You're not gonna then go negotiate on that, you know.

Matt Glen: So yeah. Exactly. So gotta be a bit a good faith there. For sure. So once you work through all your subjects and you've satisfied all of them, you've got you an insurance quote.
Maybe a binder. A lot of times you can't get a binder because it's too far out. For insurance, but that's kind of another issue. But you've got a quote, you know how much the insurance is gonna be. Lending's approved.
You're satisfied with the home inspection. The lawyers approved all the documents. You're all good to go. And any other subjects you need, if there's a septic tank you need to get in septic inspection, like all those things. But every house is different.
The strata documents. You'd review all those if it's a strata property. So there's a lot of different subjects. But once you get to the end of that and you approve it, you have to remove your subjects. Basically, sign up for them.
It says we're waiving or all these subjects are fulfilled. The deal is now firm. And then usually, at that point or two days later, is your deposit is due. So your deposit anywhere from five to fifty grand, really, depending on what you're buying. It goes into the broker's trust, and it goes towards your down payment and towards a purchase price of the place.
Right? So now at this point, the house is sold, is posted on Instagram, buyers are doing their happy dance, and then there's a weight of however long it's in contract, week to couple of months away before the closing date.

Taylor Atkinson: Yeah. And during that point, you know, we've wrapped things up on the mortgage side. Instructions will then be sent to your lawyer. Yep. And those instructions will be sent directly from whenever the lender it is TD Yes.
Scotia of Manulife, whatever. The lawyer then reviews those. He'll call you in or she'll call you in for signing an appointment a few days, you know, before closing. You'll sign the legal documents. And if there is a shortfall of funds, like, if you need to come up with another thirty, forty, fifty grand or if it's your first home, they'll tell you exactly down to the dollar, hey, bring in a check of this much or deposit a check here, and that will cover, you know, property transfer tax and all the things associated with closing

Matt Glen: in the rest of your down payment.

Taylor Atkinson: Yeah, the rest of the down payment. If you sold a home and all those, you know, costs are being covered from your net proceeds, you won't have to bring in anything. Sometimes they'll cut you a check for the difference if there's a surplus. And then it's possession time. That's when Matt gets to hand you

Matt Glen: the keys. Yeah. Possession day is usually the day after closing. Sometimes it's the same day. The problem is we don't always know what time the sale completes, like, anytime from ten AM till five PM, it can complete.
So if you're planning on moving in on completion day, you're really hard to plan around because, like, sometimes we don't know. And there is the occasion where there's a snag and somewhere in the system and a cadium close that day, it has to wait till the next day. That's why most of the time, the possession is scheduled for the following day, just for that reason. Right? So when we get the keys, once we get possession, I organize with the listing agent, how to get the keys, I go pick them up or they drop them off or whatever it is or they give us a code for the front door or whatever it is.
We get the keys. I meet you there. Give you your little basket, bottle of wine, gift cards so you guys can go have some cocktails. All these kinds of thing. And then we walk through the property, make sure everything's good, make sure everything's cleaned, the things that they promised they would do during subject removal are all done, test the stove, and all that kind of stuff, then you get to start moving.

Taylor Atkinson: It's crazy how not perfect. That is. Right? Like, there's a handful of times where something comes up where the dryer doesn't work or Yeah. The garage door opener is missing or, like, whatever.
There's lots of little things.

Matt Glen: So there's a lot of those things. Yeah.

Taylor Atkinson: Yeah. Make sure you definitely do a walk through and, you know Yeah. You're happy with it. Yeah. And then after that, yeah, what I do on the mortgage side is I have a software, sends out a monthly report, and it basically tells you, you know, hypothetically, here's how much your house is worth, here's your current mortgage rate, here's how much you've paid down on principal, all that stuff.
So every month, you'll get an email kinda showing you, you know, your updated mortgage position. And if rates drop and there is an opportunity to break that mortgage and save money, you'll be notified every single month like, hey, there could be a potential savings of eight or nine or ten thousand dollars if we wanna restructure things. You wanna refinance and pull equity out. So I'm constantly monitoring that in the background and you're being updated every month. And that will include, you know, prepayment penalties or penalties associated to break the mortgage and restructure and stuff like that.

Matt Glen: Now I didn't know you

Taylor Atkinson: did that. That's awesome. Yeah. We've kind of always been doing it with Excel, but it's obviously pretty labor intensive. So, yeah, there's a new software that's come out for brokers that a lot of us are using.
It's called Onwell. It's pretty slick, but it it gives you, like, a hypothetical hey, here's a potential opportunity for savings. So instead of people constantly wondering if they're in the best product and a year goes by and rates drop by a percent, they're like, you know, it just does this every month for you. So Yeah. It's pretty slick.
And if anybody just wants me to put it in the system, I can always just do that. And, you know, if you're not a past client, and we can just watch your mortgage for you.

Matt Glen: That's an opportunity. Yeah. I like it.

Taylor Atkinson: That's kind of a process of selling buying. I'm sure there's a ton of stuff in there that there is a

Matt Glen: ton of stuff like we didn't talk about because It's hard because every situation is so different. Right? Like, this is again why an agent with experience is so nice because, like, there are as a ton of things that can come up, like, that we didn't even cover. So that is definitely the nice high level of what's going on.

Taylor Atkinson: Well, one of the awesome things is you can scroll back a hundred episodes. And if you listen to everything, you'll probably find all the information Yeah. Somewhere in there.

Matt Glen: It will be best friends by then. So

Taylor Atkinson: Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. That kinda wraps up this show, but Yep, Matt. Thank you again for for this journey, man.

Matt Glen: Yeah. A hundred episodes. So now when we send out episodes, so it's gonna be, like, episode one hundred and some let's go some flare to it, man.

Taylor Atkinson: Yeah. Yeah. We should have just started at episode one hundred, if you Yeah. We would have that flare red up.

Matt Glen: Real estate one zero one. Oh, dang. Yeah. We missed that one.

Taylor Atkinson: Have an awesome day, buddy. Yeah.

Matt Glen: You too, dude.

Taylor Atkinson: Thanks again for the listeners and guests and everyone that supported us along the way. Thank you, Nikki. Stay safe. Have a good one, dude. You too.