All of you who go looking for the cheapest Strata fee you can find, should be aware of the following, so should anyone who owns a strata unit. Sometime next year the Strata Act will be updated.

http://www.leg.bc.ca/39th1st/3rd_read/gov08-3.htm

There are some disturbing modifications about to be made; the bill has passed 3rd reading that will probably affect your strata fees. Section 94 will require stratas to bring experts on site to do depreciation estimates. I.e. Roofs, how long is left for the useful life and how much approximately will it cost to replace it. The stratas' will have 2 years from the bills passing to complete this task. The strata will then have to fund this in contingencies. In other words the strata fees could be increased to cover this and build up the funds over a period of time. There has been no consultation with the strata organizations about this, similar laws were enacted in Alberta and Ontario and do exist in some other provinces.

The unknown is that when the 2 year grace period is up the government has told no one so far how much time must elapse for the funding to take place. In Alberta the government did not allow very long , resulting in some horrifying increase and special assessments, in Ontario on the other hand more time was allowed to phase the collection of monies in. There are other changes also and perhaps the best place to start getting information is

http://bcstratachanges.ca/

Townhouses could be especially hit hard as the sewer and water lines that run under the roadways and common property will probably have to be factored in also. If you live in a strata make sure your strata council knows about this and gets the strata manager on it, most of them already are, but there are a few who do not know anything about it.

Well here we are again, at years end, well almost, and what a year it’s been.

We started the year a slow Real Estate market and by the end of July had experienced the busiest month ever on record for sales and the market kept going. Even in December usually a quiet month the market is very active and looks to be for the first 1/2 of 2010.

What the impact of the HST will be remains to be seen but it really will only effect the new house market and the resale market stands to benefit form that. The only concern most sellers will have is the change, on commissions, in sales taxes from 5% to 12%.

The prime rate appears to be stable for the next few months so that will be good news for those locked into variable mortgages. The fixed term rates of 3 years and more are not affected by the prime rate and those have been creeping up a little in the last 2 months and several “experts” think they will slowly increase over the next year. Of course “experts” have a 50-50 chance of being right the best definition of an economist I have heard is “someone who has to explain tomorrow, why the prediction they made yesterday, did not happen today” perhaps not entirely true but close enough from my point of view.

Anyhow I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a happy and health New Year when ever you New Year Starts (see Happy New Year maybe Dec 08.