Menno van Driel

If you are a tenant on the Sunshine Coast, it’s quite likely that you are living in unauthorized accommodations. These are sometimes referred to as “illegal suites” although the word “illegal” might be too harsh to describe the situation properly.

Affordable homes on the Sunshine Coast are sometimes available; many accommodations are of the non-authorized variety (basement suites).

The rent ...

When you go to the lawyers to sign up for your new mortgage, are you really going to bother reading that 200-page contract with all your mortgage rules and the set of early termination charges of that mortgage?

Your mother might have taught you to suppress your (natural) feelings of greed and selfishness. Some people (or should we say: some institutions) have forgotten about that message.

T ...

If you don’t really need the money, many banks will be glad to let you borrow lots of money from them. Conversely, those that are in dire need of some money often have a really hard time borrowing the smallest amounts.

Banks are quite conservative, no matter where you go. It might help, however, to find a local banker who understands the intricacies of the local market. There could be benefi ...

Many home owners dread the “Open House” when nosy strangers come parading through your home on a dreary Saturday afternoon. Is an “Open House” really a requirement when you wish to sell your home?

What actually goes on at Open Houses is the topic for "another book", one that you won't find in the regular reading section at your favourite book store.

Are open houses useful? There are many po ...

May it never happen to you! Imagine that you’ve sold your house and the buyer, after all conditions have been met, decides to back out of the deal. What looked like a firm deal is NOT a deal any longer. Have you sold your house or not? What’s going on here?

Collapsed sales, fallen sales and dead deals are extremely rare on the Sunshine Coast. However, you should know about them because it co ...

No matter what the market is doing, there will always be folks who’ll insist that it’s soon going to get better; just like there are people who’ll say the opposite: that it’s soon going to get worse. Have you decided yet what side you’re on? Pessimist or optimist?

Forecasting the future of the real estate on the BC Sunshine Coast is like any kind of forecasting: a very vague science. In real ...

Nobody knows what the market is going to be doing. If we did, we’d all be rich. Many people have an opinion on market direction and it’s amusing to hear the opposing views of what’s to be expected for our futures.

Take a wild guess! Is the market going to go up or down? Of course, nobody precisely knows this but that doesn't stop throngs of people from making wild predictions in either direc ...

There’s the beginning of the mortgage (the application and funding cycle) and there’s the end of a mortgage (termination). What happens at mortgage renewal; how do you not turn that into a mortgage midlife crisis?

A lot is written about mortgages - that is about NEW mortgages. Hardly anybody talks about mortgage renewal although one could treat that as a new mortgage all over again.

Pretty ...

Oh dear. The market is going to change – so you’d better take action right now. But wait … how is the market going to change, is it going to go up or down? If only we’d know that, we’d all be rich.

Markets go up and down. That also applies to the real estate market. If you're in it just to buy and sell, you may not make a profit each time.

As often as I hear “should I sell now or later”, I ...

When uncle Bob wanted to buy a house in which a whole family was brutally murdered a few months ago, should he know about that fact before he puts in an offer? In a nutshell, this is the question of the stigmatized property. What is that exactly?

Alleged ghosts are just one example of a possible "stigma" that may surround a property. The question is what should be disclosed to a buyer and wh ...