The most expensive home on the market in Canada today has a reality show star as agent.
That’s Layla Yang, lead character in the new series Unbreakable Agent.
Actually, the $37,990,000 property being sold by Yang has been on the market for almost five months.
The founder of Dracco Pacific Realty first listed the Vancouver mansion on September 29, 2020 at the same price.
Guess who owns this luxury residence at 4868 Drummond Drive?
A title search identifies the owner as Hanying Chen.
The owner’s occupation?
Student, according to the document.
The title search was generated by a person named Tim Xu.
A Tim Xu works at the Richmond-based Dracco Pacific Realty.
Just because the mansion is priced $37,990,000 doesn’t mean that this is the actual worth of the property.
B.C. Assessment placed the 2021 value of the property as of July 1, 2020 at $16,649,000.
According to real-estate site Zealty.ca, the asking price is 128.2 percent more than the assessed value, or more than double.
Zealty.ca has also tracked the property’s history.
On November 18, 2005, a buyer picked up 4868 Drummond Drive for $5,927,600.
After about six years, it was listed on June 13, 2011 for $19,900,000.
It sold on December 8, 2011 for $14,680,000.
Back to the title search, Hanying Chen, identified as a student, became the property’s owner in 2015.
In 2016, a mortgage was registered with CIBC or the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce.
A new mortgage was registered about three years later in 2019.
Going back to Zealty.ca’s tracking, Yang’s Dracco Pacific Realty listed 4868 Drummond Drive on September 29, 2020.
The listing expired on January 16, 2021, and a new listing was made on January 18.
Earlier last January, B.C. Assessment released a list of the 500 most expensive homes in the province.
The seven-bedroom, eight-bath home being marketed by Yang came 112th on the said list.
In 2020, the most expensive home sold in B.C. was 3019 Point Grey Road in Vancouver.
The property once rumoured to have been eyed by Prince Harry and wife Meghan Markle sold for $27 million.
On B.C. Assessment’s list of 500 most expensive properties, 3019 Point Grey Road came 39th with a 2021 assessed value of $21,922,000, which is more than the assessed value of 4868 Drummond Drive.
The 4868 Drummond Drive property sits on a half-hectare Vancouver lot in Point Grey.
An agent who can bring in a buyer for Yang’s listing is up for a big payday.
The star of Agent Unbreakable is offering a commission of 3.255 percent on the first $100,000, 1.1625 percent on the balance, plus a bonus of $100,000.
The 4868 Drummond Drive residence sits on a half-hectare lot. It includes a tennis court and an indoor pool.
Yang’s reality show is being produced by the guys who created the series Ultra Rich Asian Girls in 2014.
The Straight’s Craig Takeuchi was not impressed by the show, and did a review here.
TORONTO – One expert predicts Ottawa‘s changes to mortgage rules will help spur demand among potential homebuyers but says policies aimed at driving new supply are needed to address the “core issues” facing the market.
The federal government’s changes, set to come into force mid-December, include a higher price cap for insured mortgages to allow more people to qualify for a mortgage with less than a 20 per cent down payment.
The government will also expand its 30-year mortgage amortization to include first-time homebuyers buying any type of home, as well as anybody buying a newly built home.
CIBC Capital Markets deputy chief economist Benjamin Tal calls it a “significant” move likely to accelerate the recovery of the housing market, a process already underway as interest rates have begun to fall.
However, he says in a note that policymakers should aim to “prevent that from becoming too much of a good thing” through policies geared toward the supply side.
Tal says the main issue is the lack of supply available to respond to Canada’s rapidly increasing population, particularly in major cities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17,2024.
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.
