A home is usually one of our biggest financial assets. It’s also an emotional asset, tied to memories, experiences and relationships. When it comes to retirement planning, it’s often difficult to decide what to do with that asset.

There is no shortage of options to tap into the equity of a home, but they all boil down to two basic options: Sell it or borrow against it. Here are some ways to get equity out of your home for retirement:

DOWNSIZING

One common strategy is downsizing, in which you sell one home and buy another for less money, thereby freeing up some of the equity from your original home. It’s not for everyone, though.

For those with tremendous emotional attachment to a home, downsizing can be a difficult choice. In other cases, downsizing may not net the homeowner any cash, if their original home is older and needs work. Monthly expenses such as condo or maintenance fees can sometimes make downsizing more costly.

RELOCATION

Relocation can be another way to tap into the equity of the home, especially if you are moving to a location where houses are less expensive. Moving from a desired neighbourhood in the city to a home in the suburbs to be closer to kids and grandkids could work in your favour.

SELL AND RENT

You can choose to sell your house, access the full equity and then rent a home. For example, it can be quite useful to have that money on hand when the time comes to move into an assisted-living or care facility. However, as practical as this may be, many people find it psychologically difficult to rent once they have been owners.

REVERSE MORTGAGES, LINES OF CREDIT

For homeowners who don’t want to sell, another way to access equity is to borrow it. The two most common debt solutions are reverse mortgages and home equity lines of credit (HELOC).

A reverse mortgage lets homeowners access a portion of the value of their home to

use today, while still retaining ownership. This converts equity to cash, which can be received as a lump sum, regular payments, or a combination of the two.

The biggest advantage of a reverse mortgage is there is no need to make any payments. Instead, interest costs accumulate against the equity and the total debt has to be paid when you sell your home or when you die.

Home equity lines of credit let you access higher limits, but you must make minimum monthly payments against any outstanding balances.

Going into debt should be done carefully, but in retirement it is prudent to be particularly cautious.

Financial expert Jim Yih publishes the award-winning blog RetireHappyBlog.ca.

It’s a question that can create severe anxiety disorder among baby boomers: Who will buy their single-family homes when they decide to downsize into smaller units?

Pessimists feel baby boomers could soon flood the market with detached homes as health and financial issues force them to sell, creating an oversupply situation that forces prices down.

But a Conference Board of Canada report Monday said new young families and increased levels of international immigration should boost the demand for single-family homes in the future, at least partly offsetting any increase in the supply of baby boomers’ homes for sale.

Conference Board economist Julie Ades feels the relative supply of single-family homes will drop in the future as construction levels decline and some detached homes are converted into semi-detached units.

“The market will gradually adjust on the demand side and the supply side,” she said in an interview. “That will help balance the market and we will likely see a mitigation of the negative impact on the price of single-detached dwellings.”

The average Multiple Listing Service selling price for a single-family home in Greater Vancouver has skyrocketed in the past 30 years – from $130,000 in 1983 to $1.1 million last month.

Baby boomers hoping to cash in on increased home values by selling and downsizing shouldn’t be too concerned about a possible surge in the number of aging people chasing the same strategy at the same time, according to Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver president-elect Ray Harris.

“If a flood of homes did come on the market, I think the situation would correct itself very quickly,” he said. “Prices might drop but people who don’t have to sell would take their homes off the market, so it becomes a self-controlling mechanism.”

Harris said health issues are the biggest reason owners decide to sell their single-family homes.

“Going from a home with two levels to a home with just one level is very common because of mobility issues (among older people),” he said. “Some owners just can’t maintain a big home because maybe their partner has passed on or had to move into a long-term care home.”

Abbotsford resident Marlene Nunn said health and financial issues were the biggest factors in the decision by her and her husband, Herb, to sell their Maple Ridge house this year and buy an Abbotsford condo.

They sold their 1,700-square-foot rancher for $446,000 and bought a 1,200-square-foot condo for $261,000.

Herb Nunn developed a heart issue that made it hard to keep up with the maintenance work required on the house and cashing in the equity was “absolutely” another reason to make the move, Marlene Nunn said.

“It wasn’t an easy decision and it took a while for us to come to this conclusion but it was just the right thing for us to do,” she said.

Port Moody realtor Derek Love doesn’t expect to see a glut of baby boomer homes for sale any time soon.

“More than half the people in my neighbourhood are over 65 and most of them want to stay in their homes for as long as possible,” he said. “I’m still selling single-family homes in the $2-million range to people in their 50s whose kids have moved out.”

Love said many potential clients in their 60s have told him they would sell their suburban homes and move to a downtown Vancouver condo if those condo prices weren’t so high. But those dream condos are unaffordable, so they have decided to keep their homes.

Love feels condo prices could be under more pressure than single-family home prices in the future because so many new units are being built and many older buildings will need a lot of capital investment for maintenance purposes.

About 60 per cent of Canadians now live in single-family homes but the Conference Board report notes the prevalence of people living in detached homes declines after the age of 55.

According to 2011 census data, 67 per cent of Canadians aged 50 to 54 lived in a detached house but the proportion dropped to 59 per cent for those between the ages of 75 and 79.

The report also said smaller multi-family units will account for a growing share of future residential demand in Canada because of affordability issues and demographic trends.

The proportion of one-person Canadian households rose from 25.7 per cent in 2001 to 27.6 per cent in 2011, due to factors such as a rising divorce rate, fewer marriages and common-law relationships and the aging population.

Source: Bruce Constantineau

Home buyers extended a trend of increasing sales into its fourth consecutive month, according to the Canadian Real Estate Association as mortgage rates also crept up last month.

However, economists suggested Monday the higher rates could help cool the market through the second half of the year.

“Interestingly, the recent move up in five-year fixed rates might have actually stoked sales activity in June, with buyers making their move before their lower rate contracts expired,” said Robert Kavcic, a senior economist at the Bank of Montreal.

“If so, that could set the stage for another cooling off period this summer.”

CREA reported home sales through its Multiple Listings Service were down 0.6 per cent from June 2012, but up 3.3 per cent from May.

Canada’s big banks have been raising rates for fixed mortgages in recent weeks as rates in the bond market have also climbed.

TD Bank economist Diana Petramala said she expects sales to slow down during the summer and fall, but noted they should remain at healthy levels.

“Conditions for housing demand are actually still quite good in most major markets, including good employment markets and decent affordability, with the exception of maybe Toronto and Vancouver,” Petramala said.

“Demographics are still quite supportive of sales roughly around the level that they currently are. So more of a stabilization going forward.”

Despite the drop in sales from June 2012, the national average sale price last month was up 4.8 per cent from a year ago, rising to $386,585.

CREA’s house price index, which adjusts for the difference in different property categories, was up 0.12 per cent from May and up 2.27 from a year ago.

The association said home sales improved in two-thirds of the markets it tracks compared with May with the biggest gains in Victoria, Vancouver, the Fraser Valley, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Winnipeg and Montreal.

When compared with a year ago, Toronto and Montreal were lower, while Vancouver, Calgary, and Edmonton were up compared with last June.

The number of newly-listed homes was down 0.5 per cent on a month-over-month basis in June.

Economists have suggested changes to rules for mortgage lenders and borrowers announced about a year ago have been a major factor behind a slowdown in Canadian residential real estate sales starting last August and continuing into early 2013.

CREA president Laura Leyser said “Whether those sale gains reflect temporary factors or a fundamental improvement after a slow start to the year really depends on where you are.”

The association said some 240,068 homes have sold in Canada through its MLS system so far this year, down 6.9 per cent from the first half of 2012.

Source: Alexandra Posadzki, Canadian Press

The Canadian Real Estate Association says home sales in June were down from a year ago but up from the previous month.

The association says sales last month were down 0.6% from a year ago, but up 3.3% when compared with May.

Looking at the city-by-city picture, when compared with a year ago, home sales in Toronto and Montreal were lower, while Vancouver, Calgary, and Edmonton were up compared with last June.

Despite the overall drop in sales from June 2012, the national average sale price last month was up 4.8% from a year ago.

The number of newly listed homes were down 0.5% on a month-over-month basis in June.

The association says some 240,068 homes have sold in Canada through its MLS system so far this year, down 6.9% from the first half of 2012.

Source: Canadian Press

Greater Vancouver’s housing market is showing early signs of a revival in sales, an uptick that bodes well for the bellwether market and the rest of the country.

In June, sales surged 11.9 per cent in Greater Vancouver compared with June, 2012, for single-family detached homes, condos and townhouses – the biggest percentage jump in two years. In May, residential sales volume climbed a mere 1 per cent in Greater Vancouver, following a 19-month stretch of year-over-year declines in the number of properties sold.

The Vancouver, Victoria and Calgary markets all displayed strength in June sales.

Total June sales reported by the Calgary Real Estate Board increased 5.5 per cent year-over-year while overall sales in Greater Victoria rose 6.6 per cent.

Calgary “somehow managed to post yet another gain last month, despite the incredible disruption of the flood,” BMO Nesbitt Burns Inc. chief economist Douglas Porter said in a research note Wednesday. “More telling, Vancouver popped 11.9 per cent above (admittedly soft) year-ago levels in June.”

Last month, 2,642 Greater Vancouver properties changed hands on the Multiple Listing Service, compared with 2,362 sales in June of 2012.

“If these results are at all indicative, it looks like Canadian home sales remained surprisingly resilient again in June,” Mr. Porter said, adding that the housing market’s tentative recovery now faces another test owing to longer-term mortgage rates edging up in recent weeks.

Still, the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver noted that last month’s sales of single-family detached homes, condos and townhouses were 22.2-per-cent below the 10-year average for June. Also, June’s sales were down 8.3 per cent from May’s 2,882 homes that were sold on the MLS.

While the Vancouver area’s residential housing prices slipped 3 per cent in June, Mr. Porter thinks the worst may be over for the local market. The benchmark index price, which strips out the most expensive properties, was $601,900 in June for resale single-family detached homes, condos and townhouses. That is a decrease of $18,700 from $620,600 in the same month of 2012.

Index prices in June climbed 2.3 per cent from January’s $588,100.

In the Fraser Valley, which includes the sprawling and less-expensive Vancouver suburb of Surrey, benchmark June prices for existing single-family detached homes, condos and townhouses slipped 0.6 per cent to $428,400. Sales volume in the Fraser Valley decreased 9.3 per cent in June to 1,327, underscoring the cautionary view from housing experts who say a broad-based recovery in sales will take time.

A measurement closely watched by the real estate industry, known as the sales-to-active-listings ratio, registered 15.3 per cent in Greater Vancouver last month. B.C. real estate agents consider it a balanced market when the ratio ranges from 15 to 20 per cent. It is deemed a buyer’s market below 15 per cent and a seller’s market above 20 per cent in the Vancouver region.

A balanced market means that key housing indicators such as prices are stable, with more buyers and sellers able to reach deals than a year earlier, said Greater Vancouver board president Sandra Wyant.

In two key neighbourhoods, index prices for single-family detached homes dropped year-over-year but perked up on a six-month basis. On Vancouver’s west side, the benchmark price of $2.07-million for a detached house was down 6.1 per cent from June of 2012, but up 3.3 per cent from December’s figure. On Vancouver’s east side, detached homes had a June benchmark price of $845,900, down 2.2 per cent year-over-year but up 2 per cent over a six-month period.

Source: Brent Jang, Globe and Mail

Not so fast. The purported collapse of Canada’s housing market does not appear to be in sight, and any correction down the road could likely be a mild one.

Recent data have defied warnings from market watchers of an impending plunge – caused mainly by the impact of tighter mortgage rules imposed by the federal government last summer to slow the race by consumers for record-low lending rates.

The latest figures show sales of existing homes strengthened for a second month in May, up by a seasonally adjusted 3.6 per cent, after declining 10 per cent between July and March.

The Canadian Real Estate Association, in a report Monday, also said home prices were up 3.7 per cent in May from the same month a year earlier, to a national average of $388,910.

For all of this year, CREA pegs the average price rise at 2.1 per cent, to $370,900, weaker but far removed from correction territory. And in 2014, the average value is expected to rise 1.8 per cent to $377,700, the Ottawa-based industry group said.

“Prices remain stable, perhaps maddeningly so for the legions of bubble mongers,” said Douglas Porter, chief economist at BMO Capital Markets.

Porter noted the May data show “housing remains on track for a fabled soft landing … making a mockery of talk of an imminent collapse.”

While CREA still anticipates sales to fall 2.5 per cent in total during 2013 compared to 2012 – to 443,400 units from 454,573 – home buying should rebound to 464,300 units in 2014, a jump of 4.7 per cent.

Last July, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty announced stricter mortgage lending rules, the fourth such move in four years. The changes included a shorter amortization period for mortgages insured by government-owned Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. in an effort to limit lending to those least able to afford it.

Flaherty went even further, subsequently warning banks not to pursue “race-to-the-bottom” rates for mortgages that could further pile on household debt beyond already record-high levels and reignite those concerns over a possible housing bubble.

Much of his expressed concern was focused on condominium building in Toronto and Vancouver, which it was feared might result in a glut and possible crash in those markets.

“History tells us that the impact from changes to mortgage insurance rules tend to be temporary, lasting up to three quarters,” said Diana Petra-mala, at TD Economics.

Petramala agrees Canada’s housing market appears to be headed for a soft landing, “with sales and prices growing at more sustainable levels than had been the case through 2010 and 2011.”

The spark that helped ignite the housing frenzy initially came from policy-makers at the Bank of Canada. Led by then-governor Mark Carney, the bank slashed its trendsetting lending rate to 25 basis points in 2009 to spur spending by households and businesses coming out of the recession.

While that rate was subsequently raised to one per cent in September 2010, it has not been adjusted since. Many economists do not expect that to change until at least late 2014.

“As long as interest rates stay low, affordability will remain relatively high. We have many times changed the mortgage rules, and we were attacking the wrong source of the problem,” said Charles St-Arnaud, an economist at Nomura Global Economics in New York.

“The reason why the housing market was so strong was, basically, interest rates were so low. The issue was not the availability of credit, it was the price at which it was given,” he said.

“If you were to give the same availability but, let’s say, 200 basis points higher, I don’t think we would be here in terms of the housing market.”

Carney has also been adamant – along with Flaherty – that consumers need to tighten their belts, warning household debt posed the biggest threat to the Canadian economy.

That mantle of concern has been passed to Stephen Poloz, who on June 3 replaced Carney – soon to be the new Bank of England governor.

Source: Gordon Isfeld, Financial Post

If you’re a young twentysomething first-time homebuyer looking to get on the property ladder in Metro Vancouver, where should you start looking for a home that you can afford?

I recently came across this article by Michael Ferreira of Urban Analytics which could help to point you in the right direction.

Generation Y has many advantages over others, but when it comes to buying a first home it appears the “good old days” truly did belong to baby boomers.

Today’s twentysomethings are not only having trouble earning meaningful pay cheques to put toward a mortgage, but the Canadian government has made it even tougher by tightening lending rules to keep a leash on the housing market. Combine this with a decade-long rise in house prices across Canada, it’s no surprise Gen Y is feeling down about buying their first home.

While it’s a discouraging time for young people with a dream of owning their first home, it’s not impossible for Gen Y to buy. At Vancouver-based Urban Analytics, we’ve watched the evolving first-time homebuyer market for years and can offer some advice to young people – Metro Vancouver in particular – who are contemplating buying their first home.

Tip #1 – Consider “best buy” locations (not the electronics store)
By “best buy” we mean the five areas in Metro Vancouver with the largest selection of new condos and townhomes. These include: Richmond, Coquitlam, Southeast False Creek, Surrey Central, and neighbourhoods south of the Fraser. In fact, Richmond is now the most competitive new condominium market in the region as developers have become increasingly aggressive in their fight for market share. Six major new condo projects totaling more than 1,000 units have launched in Richmond in the past two months alone. Another five condo projects are potentially launching in the next few months. Now may be the time to invest in Richmond.

Tip #2 – Think like Donald Trump: Negotiate
When it comes to buying a new condo unit from a plan, don’t be afraid to ask for a discount or for an upgrade feature to be included. Your real estate agent can also do this for you – just let them know what you want. Some developers are more willing to negotiate than others, depending on their sales targets or those of their lender, so it never hurts to make a pitch.

More and more developers are offering incentives these days. Some include: Bohème on East Hastings where buyers of units more than $330,000 receive either a new Fiat car or $15,000 in cash; at The Rolston in downtown Vancouver, renters who buy in the building receive $1,000 off their mortgage payments for three years, or $500 off for six years; at the Wall Centre Central Park in Burnaby, buyers receive a 3.2-per-cent credit off purchase price. These incentives result in significant savings.

Tip #3 – Tis’ the Season? Or is it?
Spring typically brings with it a sense of renewal, which seems to get more people thinking of buying a new home, is a traditionally strong home-buying season. That means more competition for properties, and less incentive from sellers to offer discounts. Unless your timing is tight, consider buying during traditionally slower times of the year such as mid-summer when there are fewer buyers, and sellers and developers may be more willing to negotiate.

Tip #4 – Become a Landlord
Buying a house doesn’t have to mean carrying the entire mortgage on your own. A lot of first-time homebuyers purchase properties with two or more bedrooms or units, and rent out the extras to roommates or tenants. Becoming a landlord isn’t for everyone, but if you’re up for a little extra work, and some company, it could make the difference between changing your status from renter to buyer.