Menno van Driel

What, really, is the use of a real estate  “Open House“. They are being used as a marketing tool for real estate agents. Do they help selling your house or are they just a hassle and a burden, one that won’t work at all?

What happens during an open house? We open the door to those that would like to see the home, possibly even purchase it. It's part of our marketing efforts, these days.

Peo ...

The Lower Sunshine Coast measures something like 80 km from ferry terminal to the next. That’s quite a bit of territory – no surprise then that there are distinctly different areas here waiting for you to all be discovered.

Where's Bellingham? Where's Seattle? Where's California? Most people in Vancouver will point you due South. But ask about the Sunshine Coast and many won't have a clue!

A screaming headline that the market has gone up 5% (or down, for that matter) will get people’s attention. Humdrum articles that the market is “stable” or hardly going up or down – well those grab nobody’s attention.

No news is good news - as the saying goes. Not so in the media where they prefer screaming headlines broadcasting the extremes. They don't like "no news".

For ratings in the m ...

Almost every day, a property sale is recorded on the Sunshine Coast, sometimes even more than one a day. At the same time, we see listings come on the market and sometimes not sell. Can we call this a buyers’ market?

What is that, a buyer's market? There are many definitions on what constitutes a buyer's market. However, it's not on-or-off, there are many shades of grey to "buyer's market" o ...

Simply put, if you’re selling your home, you probably think it’s a very special place with many special memories. If you’re planning on buying a home, you’re most likely to look at that same house if it were a product.

It's only natural that different people have different views of one and the same house - this is most noticeable a difference between buyers and sellers.

A major similarity b ...

Now that we’re all used to Daylight Saving Time, we should start looking more seriously at real estate on the Sunshine Coast. Perhaps this is the best time of year to either buy or sell. What do you think?

Every year January/February, our sales are fairly minimal. Then Spring comes and everything is better, the same every year. Each time, we're amazed with this phenomenon.

For visiting the ...

A buyer’s greatest fear is to pay too much for a house. Similarly, a seller will fear to sell for too low a price. It’s a fine line, a very fine line, to price a house just right, being equally fair to buyers and sellers.

Pricing correctly is one of the first things a real estate agent must learn to do. Priced too high, a property won't sell. Priced too low, the seller's interests may be har ...

It happens that people look at a house and immediately know that THIS is the home for them. One might call that a “sale at first glance”. What do you need to do to YOUR house to make it so attractive, is there perhaps a trick to this?

You go home shopping with a long list of conditions and wishes - then you suddenly see that ONE house and you immediately know that THIS is the one. How does t ...

You have a credit score; do you know what it is? There’s really no shame in not knowing the correct answer to this question because interestingly enough hardly anybody can answer this basic question correctly.

From a young age, virtually all Canadians are taught to be prudent with credit and make sure you pay back on time. That's because we all want to have a good credit score.

Granted, it’ ...

When is the Sunshine Coast real estate market going to change? Well, how about … right now, tomorrow and for ever more. Specifically: real estate markets always change, they always have and they (most likely) always will.

The real estate market, there is not just one such thing. It consists of many different developments that are often hard to capture and categorise.

There are many separate ...