House Buying Tips

Finding a house

• Local listings from MLS (the Multiple Listing Service) can be found at http://www.realtylink.org/
• http://www.housingmaps.com/ has a really neat app that adds housing availability on top of Google's map search. Choose "Vancouver", then choose "sale". Clicking on the balloons gets you more info. Currently their data all seems to be from Craigslist.

Recommendations

Real Estate Agents

• Virginia Spicer ((604) 868-0692, vspicer@suttonDELETEthisTEXT.com, Sutton realty) has been very good to us, and has also been used as a buyer's agent by at least 3 other satisfied people in the department. She's good at not pushing things at you that you don't want, but she'll make sure that you know everything that's near your search parameters. To date she's worked with us in an extremely tight market for 9 months and 3 offers. She's a very nice woman, but she's surprisingly tough at the end game - at one point she basically talked us out of spending an extra $50,000, and then talked the sellers into accepting. As if that weren't enough, she was extremely helpful when we were looking at a place that was for sale by owner. She provided us with all the information that she gave us when we were making offers on other places, and this is for a place where she was likely not going to earn a dime even if we bought the place. (Recommendation by Rachel Pottinger and Steve Wolfman, Jan 2006).

Inspectors

• Pierre Lacombe of Metro Home Inspections ((604) 240-5174) is a fantastic and notoriously meticulous inspector. He's not only thorough, but he'll also take the time to explain what he's doing, and what you should know about the house. (Recommendation by Rachel Pottinger and Steve Wolfman, Jan 2006)

Mortgage Brokers

Lawyers

Notaries

Mortgage Info

• Currently a "good" variable rate mortgage should be offering .75% below prime. A few are offering .8% below prime. (as of June 2005)