Vancouver real estate: listed $17.3 million, sold at 60 percent discount for $7 million, villa cited best deal in 2020 - The Georgia Straight | Canada News Media
The heavily discounted sale of a French-inspired villa may be the best deal in Vancouver in 2020.
That’s according to Adam Major, managing broker with Holywell Properties, a real-estate company that also runs Zealty.ca, an online property-information site.
When asked by the Straight to name the most interesting transaction in the city for the year 2020, Major pointed to 3688 East Boulevard.
The listing details of the property located in the tony neighbourhood of Shaughnessy were tracked by Zealty.ca.
The mansion was listed on January 23, 2017 for $17,388,000. The price was reduced to $14,880,000. It did not sell, and the listing expired July 29 of that year.
The property came on the market again on August 1, 2017, with a price of $14,880,000. The listing by Macdonald Realty – Manyee Lui expired on January 1, 2018.
A week later, on January 9, 2018, the same agent listed the property again, this time for $14,689,000. It spent nearly a year on the market without getting sold. On January 1, 2019, the listing expired.
After two days, on Junary 3, 2019, Macdonald Realty – Manyee Lui listed the property once more. The price was reduced to $13,980,000.
Finally, on February 20, 2020, the villa sold for $7 million.
Major noted that the sale price of the 3688 East Boulevard property represents a nearly 60 percent discount from its original 2017 list price of $17.3 million.
As well, the buyer offered and paid a $30,000 bonus commission to the buyer’s agent, Multiple Realty Ltd.
“The seller end up with a fair bit less,” Major told the Straight.
Inside the luxurious home at 3688 East Boulevard.
There’s more to the story.
The mansion also sold below its assessed value.
Major noted that the 2020 B.C. Assessment value of the two-story-plus-basement home totalled $9,370,000.
“So at $7 million, it also sold for a 25 percent discount to assessed value,” Major explained.
According to the Holywell Properties managing broker, this was one of the lowest sale-price-to-assessed-value ratios in 2020.
The home has five bedrooms and eight baths. Luxury features include manicured gardens and a golf putting green.
As for Zealty.ca, Major said that the site had over two million visits last year.
Also, his company made enhancements for the real-estate-information portal in 2020.
These include adding bonus commissions for buyer’s agents, expired listings, daily sales, information of live-stream open houses, and others.
OTTAWA – The Canadian Real Estate Association says the number of homes sold in August fell compared with a year ago as the market remained largely stuck in a holding pattern despite borrowing costs beginning to come down.
The association says the number of homes sold in August fell 2.1 per cent compared with the same month last year.
On a seasonally adjusted month-over-month basis, national home sales edged up 1.3 per cent from July.
CREA senior economist Shaun Cathcart says that with forecasts of lower interest rates throughout the rest of this year and into 2025, “it makes sense that prospective buyers might continue to hold off for improved affordability, especially since prices are still well behaved in most of the country.”
The national average sale price for August amounted to $649,100, a 0.1 per cent increase compared with a year earlier.
The number of newly listed properties was up 1.1 per cent month-over-month.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
MONTREAL – Two Quebec real estate brokers are facing fines and years-long suspensions for submitting bogus offers on homes to drive up prices during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Christine Girouard has been suspended for 14 years and her business partner, Jonathan Dauphinais-Fortin, has been suspended for nine years after Quebec’s authority of real estate brokerage found they used fake bids to get buyers to raise their offers.
Girouard is a well-known broker who previously starred on a Quebec reality show that follows top real estate agents in the province.
She is facing a fine of $50,000, while Dauphinais-Fortin has been fined $10,000.
The two brokers were suspended in May 2023 after La Presse published an article about their practices.
One buyer ended up paying $40,000 more than his initial offer in 2022 after Girouard and Dauphinais-Fortin concocted a second bid on the house he wanted to buy.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
MONTREAL – The Quebec Professional Association of Real Estate Brokers says Montreal-area home sales rose 9.3 per cent in August compared with the same month last year, with levels slightly higher than the historical average for this time of year.
The association says home sales in the region totalled 2,991 for the month, up from 2,737 in August 2023.
The median price for all housing types was up year-over-year, led by a six per cent increase for the price of a plex at $763,000 last month.
The median price for a single-family home rose 5.2 per cent to $590,000 and the median price for a condominium rose 4.4 per cent to $407,100.
QPAREB market analysis director Charles Brant says the strength of the Montreal resale market contrasts with declines in many other Canadian cities struggling with higher levels of household debt, lower savings and diminishing purchasing power.
Active listings for August jumped 18 per cent compared with a year earlier to 17,200, while new listings rose 1.7 per cent to 4,840.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 6, 2024.
