Vancouver’s hot real estate market isn’t showing signs of slowing. January saw year-over-year growth of more than 20 per cent for the Metro region, according to the Canadian Real Estate Association.

That brings the average price of a home in Metro Vancouver to $775,300.

Thanks to hot markets in B.C. and Ontario, the national average home price grew a staggering 17 per cent to $470,297 – but without those two provinces, there would have been a decline of 0.3 per cent to $286,911.

“January 2016 picked up where 2015 left off, with single family homes in the GTA and Greater Vancouver in short supply amid strong demand standing in contrast to sidelined home buyers and ample supply in a number of Alberta housing markets,” said Gregory Klump, CREA’s Chief Economist in a statement.

“Tighter mortgage regulations that take effect in February may shrink the pool of prospective home buyers who qualify for mortgage financing and cause national sales activity to ease in the months ahead.”

New rules for mortgage rates took effect on Tuesday. Canadians are now required to put down a minimum of 5 per cent for the first $500,000 and 10 per cent for every dollar amount after that.

Two-storey single family homes posted the largest year-over-year gains nationally of nearly 10 per cent, followed by one-storey homes at 6.9 per cent, townhouses at 6.5 per cent and apartments at 5.2 per cent.

In stark contrast to Vancouver and Toronto’s housing markets, average home prices in Calgary saw a decline of three per cent year-over-year.

Nationally, the number of newly listed homes in January fell five per cent compared to December, and Canada’s largest housing markets such as Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Calgary, and Edmonton were to blame.

Source: Lauren Sundstrom, Vancity Buzz

Sales — and prices — have hit new records in both Toronto and Vancouver this year. A further interest rate cut by the Bank of Canada could further fuel flames in the country’s two biggest real estate markets which are once again showing signs of overheating, housing watchers say.

“It’s another log on the fire for the Toronto and Vancouver housing markets,” says economist Sal Guatieri, vice president of BMO Economic Research, who expects to see a cut next week in an attempt to kickstart lagging growth.

“It’s not the amount that matters — the reduction in borrowing costs will be quite minimal — it’s the message it sends to homeowners and potential buyers that rates are going lower rather than higher and will almost certainly stay low for quite some time. That just encourages more people into the market.”

Both of Canada’s priciest cities are already swamped with far more buyers than properties for sale.

Sales — and prices — have hit new records in both Toronto and Vancouver this year. The frenzy has been driven by low interest rates, an ongoing shortage of listings and a growing sense of panic, especially among first-time buyers, that if they don’t get in now, they will be locked out of the market forever, particularly the low-rise house market.

“We are becoming concerned again about the possibility of a housing bubble in Toronto and Vancouver because prices are rising so much faster than incomes and because interest rates are continuing to fall rather than go up,” says Guatieri.

“We were much more comfortable a year or two ago when both markets seemed to have cooled off a bit and prices were rising more moderately.”

Both Toronto and Vancouver set new sales records for the month of June.

Almost 12,000 houses and condos changed hands last month across the GTA, up 18.4 per cent from a year earlier. The average sale price of a detached house was $816,583 – and over $1 million in the City of Toronto – up 14.3 per cent year over year.

Greater Vancouver’s 4,375 sales were up 28.4 per cent for the same period. The average detached house was $1.45 million – and a staggering $2.39 million for a stand-alone house in the core City of Vancouver – up 20.2 per cent from June of last year.

Condo sales skyrocketed in both regions, up 22.4 across the GTA and 35.6 per cent across Greater Vancouver, year over year.

All that demand helped push up condo prices 6.3 per cent in the GTA, to an average of $390,894, and up 5.6 per cent in Greater Vancouver to $479,450.

Last January’s surprise Bank of Canada rate cut to .75 per cent has been a contributing factor to those escalating sales and prices, says Penelope Graham, editor and spokesperson with mortgage comparison site RateSupermarket.ca.

A cut to .5 per cent, as is expected, would see the five-year fixed rate dip below the current low of 2.39 per cent and further boost the illusion of affordability, she said.

“There are more people now entering the market with just five per cent down, because that’s all they can afford. There is a real sense of urgency in the bigger markets to get in now, before it’s too late, and get in with what you have,” says Graham.

“That’s potentially putting people in a really vulnerable position in terms of their debt levels.”

Toronto realtor David Fleming says he’s seeing a surge in demand even for condos — especially under $400,000 — and younger buyers than ever, backed by low interest rates and help from their real-estate rich baby boomer parents who want only the best for their children.

“I’ve seen a serious culture change. Young buyers used to be 26 or 27 years old. They’d graduated university, worked for a few years and lived at home then rented and bought. Now buyers are cutting out those middle steps.”

He’s seeing first-time buyers as young as 22 determined to own rather than rent. And he’s hearing from people who stepped to the sidelines three or four years ago, thinking the much-talked-about bubble was about to burst.

Instead, they’ve watched prices climb further out of reach: Back in June of 2012, the average sale price of houses and condos combined across the GTA was $508,622. This June, the average sale price was $639,184.

Where the average sale price of a condo in the sought-after City of Toronto was $364,597 in June of 2012, last month’s average was $418,599.

That was up seven per cent just over June of last year as bidding wars and bully bids — long the hallmark of the highly competitive low-rise house market — have pushed up prices for well-located, unique or larger condos seen as sound investments and house alternatives for the longer term.

“That’s a testament to the froth in the house market,” says BMO economist Guatieri.

“So many people are now priced out, they have no other alternative than to get into the condo market, and that’s pushing up prices, even though there is ample supply.”

Apart from the oil-impacted markets of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canadian house prices are holding up well and consumer confidence appears to be strong, even in the midst of growing talk about a possible recession.

“None of my clients are talking about the Big R word,” says Toronto-based mortgage broker Jake Abramowicz.

“They’re confident that rates will stay low for a very long time now and that the market — both condos and houses — will not correct anytime soon.”

Source: Susan Pigg, Toronto Star

If the Conference Board is correct in its latest prediction, things could become interesting in B.C. next spring. Not “good” interesting. “Scary” interesting.

“We believe the Bank of Canada will begin raising (interest) rates in March 2016,” a new report from the Ottawa-based economic think-tank says, predicting slow and gradual rate increases thereafter.

The bank will be pressured to act in response to “inflation pressures (which) will begin to brew early next year.”

Clearly such a scenario could hit hardest in B.C. where home buyers have taken on big mortgages to deal with stratospheric property prices and where a low interest rate environment has added kindling to a red-hot housing market.

British Columbians are second only to Albertans in the average per capita consumer and mortgage debts they are carrying.

Could an interest-rate hike in March act as a bucket of cold water on consumer and real estate activity?

Could it finally slow down the bidding wars that have been driving property prices higher in a fiercely competitive market?

For those with both mortgages and large debt loads, the effect of any interest-rate increase will be “unambiguously negative,” says Blair Mantin, vice-president of bankruptcy trustee Sands & Associates.

Mortgage payments take priority in people’s budgets, he says, and so, “we might also see increased needs to restructure unsecured debts,” such as credit-card balances.

Mantin believes interest-rate hikes would trigger “a deflationary impact on house prices in the Lower Mainland.”

The only way that would not occur is if incomes were to rise in tandem. But that is unlikely because “when interest rates are increased to control inflation, the economy often cools and any upward pressure on wages would be relieved.”

The real estate and finance industries are highly influential in the Vancouver region. Yet the Conference Board does not forecast any slowdown here in either the housing or retail sectors.

“We have a favourable outlook for retail sales and the housing market in B.C. next year,” said Marie-Christine Bernard, the board’s associate director of provincial forecasting, “because even though interest rates start to gradually move up at the beginning of the year, we have strong economic growth boosting labour demand and household disposable income.”

Certainly, for now, says the report, “the housing markets, both new and resale, remain in good shape.

“The resale market in Vancouver is the hottest in Canada, with solid demand and price increases so far this year.”

The report forecasts an increase in housing starts next year.

Retail sales in B.C. are projected to increase 9.2 per cent this year, against an average increase of 2.6 per cent nationally. An anticipated increase of 4.5 per cent in 2016 will keep the province in first place in retail sales growth.

The report, outlining its predictions for all the provinces, singles out B.C. as “the (economic) leader,” the only province that will see GDP growth of more than three per cent in 2015, at 3.1 per cent, followed by 2.7 per cent growth in 2016.

Only Manitoba is expected to surpass B.C. in economic growth next year, with a 2.8-per-cent increase in GDP.

With oil prices low, the two provinces have supplanted Alberta and Saskatchewan as Western Canada’s economic kingpins.

At present, B.C.’s jobless rate is 5.8 per cent, which is pretty close to full employment, usually measured at 5.5 per cent.

The unemployment rate in 2016 is forecast to decrease to 5.7 per cent, which would be lower than that of Alberta, at 5.8 per cent.

B.C.’s per capita household income, at $38,890, will exceed the national average of $37,588 next year, and will be second highest in the country, behind Alberta.

Two points of uncertainty cited by the Conference Board were job creation in B.C. and the future of an LNG industry.

Source: Barbara Yaffe, Vancouver Sun

Affluent Canadians are sitting on an average value of $1.5-million for their homes, a recent poll indicates. That compares with an average price of $448,862 for homes sold in April, according to the latest figures from the Canadian Real Estate Association.

Excluding the red-hot markets for the greater Toronto and Vancouver, the average figure in April was $339,893.

Indeed, the poll published Monday by the Bank of Montreal puts the average value of an affluent homeowner’s primary residence in Vancouver at $4-million and at $1.8-million in Toronto.

High-net-worth Canadians are those with investible assets of $1-million or more, the BMO report says.

The poll also indicates that 95 per cent of affluent Canadians own their residence, as opposed to renting, and that 58 per cent state they have paid off their mortgage.

Among those carrying a mortgage, the average amount they have left to pay is $176,000, the poll shows.

“There have been substantial wealth increases in the last decade, decade-and-a-half, partly as a result of the rise in real estate values,” said David Macdonald, senior economist at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

“If you owned a house that was paid off in 2002, then this is very good news for you. Those folks who managed to do that are going to be relatively well off,” he said. These homeowners will tend to be older, he added.

But people in their 20s, 30s and 40s who just got into the housing market or are at the halfway point of paying down their mortgage are carrying high debt levels, Mr. Macdonald said.

“My real concern isn’t so much ‘can they carry it today?,’ but 10 years from now as the cost of carrying debt rises.”

Among other findings of the BMO survey:

* 36 per cent of high-net-worth Canadians own a second or additional property
* Of those with a second or additional property, 40 per cent own two or more extra properties
* The top reason for owning a second property is to have vacation time, 47 per cent said
* Among those with an additional property, 80 per cent own one in Canada, 27 per cent in the United States and 11 per cent in Europe
* The average value of a high-net-worth primary residence in Quebec is $678,600, compared with $719,500 in Alberta

The survey results are from an online poll conducted by Pollara between Oct. 15 and Oct. 28, 2014, using a sample of 306 Canadians 18 or over who have at least $1-million in investable assets (excluding employers’ retirement plans, insurance products or their home).

Source: Bertrand Marotte, The Globe and Mail

Metro Vancouver housing affordability continues to slide. Housing affordability in Metro Vancouver continued to slide in the first quarter, making it even more difficult for Vancouverites to own a home the country’s least affordable region, according to the latest Desjardins Affordability Index released Wednesday.

The report, which compares housing prices with income in metropolitan areas outside Atlantic Canada, shows the average property sale in Metro Vancouver is nearly $850,000, twice as high as the combined average home price ($424,000) of the other Canadian cities cited in the report.

The report only includes data from 18 metropolitan areas in Canada and excludes Atlantic Canada because Desjardins only collects information in markets where it conducts business.

That puts the average sale in Metro Vancouver 10 times higher than the average household income of around $86,000 a year.

Toronto, which is the second least affordable market, had significantly higher average salaries than Vancouver at $92,000 per household, and lower average housing prices of nearly $560,000.

Housing remains very affordable in Calgary, where the average household income is nearly $120,000 and the average cost of housing is around $445,000.

“It shows that people from Vancouver don’t have the income necessary to buy a home. Maybe the investors market is more important in Vancouver, especially for condos, and that looks like a factor,” said Hélène Bégin, Desjardins’ chief economist. “It would be really hard to buy a home without help from your family or someone else.”

Despite Vancouver’s continuous slide into an affordability crunch over the last three years, Vancouver’s resale market is growing, and is up two per cent since the start of the year and 12.9 per cent from the previous quarter, according to the index.

Vancouver’s affordability has the lowest index level in the country at nearly 70, while the index level for Canada is 117. That level indicates that Canadians on average have a salary around 17 per cent higher than the salary needed to buy a home at the average price, said Bégin.

In Quebec, the income is nearly 40 per cent higher (index level 156.5) than needed to buy a home at the average price of $275,000, according to the index. The DAI is calculated by determining the ratio between the average household disposable income and the income needed to obtain a mortgage on an average-priced home, or qualifying income. Qualifying income is calculated based on the cost of owning a home, including mortgage payments, property taxes and utility costs.

Nationally, the index shows households’ financial capacity to buy a home stayed close to the historical average, although affordability has declined since the start of the year.

Source: Tiffany Crawford, Vancouver Sun

BMO’s 2015 Home Buying Report found that 42 per cent of first-time buyers told an online survey that they expected their parents or relatives to help pay for their first home. A Bank of Montreal report suggests first-time home buyers are increasingly turning to the “Bank of Mom and Dad.”

BMO’s 2015 Home Buying Report found that 42 per cent of first-time buyers told an online survey that they expected their parents or relatives to help pay for their first home.

That’s up 12 per cent from last year’s report.

The bank also said 40 per cent of the first-time buyers said they couldn’t afford a home without financial help from family.

The study found the first-timers were anticipating a downpayment of about $59,413 on average and had a budget of $312,700 for the purchase — slightly less than last year’s average price of $316,100.

The bank also found that 42 per cent of current home-owners surveyed said they were looking for family help with the purchase. Their average budget was $473,000 and their average downpayment was $123,214.

The BMO report is based on online interviews with a random sample of 2,007 people aged 18 years or more between Feb. 24 and March 5.

The polling industry’s professional body, the Marketing Research and Intelligence Association, says online surveys cannot be assigned a margin of error as they are not a random sample and therefore are not necessarily representative of the whole population.

Prices in Canada have been rising since 2009, resisting regulators’ efforts to cool the market by restricting credit. In Toronto and Vancouver, values have surged as much as 56 per cent in six years. Now as the European Central Bank’s bond buying helps drive down rates to near-record lows in Canada, the housing market is poised to ascend even higher.

Re/Max, the country’s largest residential real estate agency, raised its forecast for home price growth to 3 per cent from 2.5 per cent last week because transactions and values were so high in the first three months of this year. In March, housing sales rallied 4.1 per cent, the most in 10 months.

Toronto home sales increased 11 per cent to more than 8,000 transactions in March over the prior year, according to the Canadian Real Estate Association. Prices in the country’s most populous city jumped 10 per cent to about $601,500.

In Vancouver, Canada’s most expensive home market, sales soared 53 per cent and the average cost to buy a home rose 11 per cent to $870,000.

Source: Canadian Press with files from Bloomberg

Home prices continue to soar in Vancouver and the North Shore, where the average two-storey detached home is now selling for more than $1.27 million. The average price for detached bungalows and two-storey houses across Vancouver, North Vancouver and West Vancouver have jumped by 10.6 per cent and 10.3 per cent in the last year, according to Royal LePage’s House Price Survey, released Wednesday. The average bungalow now sells for $1.175 million.

“The average price for homes in Vancouver shot up in the first quarter, particularly for detached single-family homes. This is being caused in large part by a scarcity of product and the high demand to live in the area,” Royal LePage broker Bill Binnie said in a news release.

Realtors on the west side are claiming that prices for single family homes in some high-demand areas have jumped by as much as 40 per cent.

Condominiums have gone up in price, too, showing an increase of 4.9 per cent to reach an average of $506,624.

“The market for condos has improved, but it is nowhere near as active as for detached homes,” Binnie said.

“Vancouver real estate has been a hot topic locally and nationally in recent months. With all of the discussions taking place, people are coming to the realization that there are a lot of prospective buyers chasing a limited number of detached homes. Would-be buyers are trying to get in now while they still can.”

Nationally, a Royal LePage survey found that the average price of detached bungalows was up 6.6 per cent to $405,895 and the average price of a two-storey home was up 5.3 per cent to $451,463.

The Canadian Real Estate Association also released its latest home sale numbers last week, showing a 7.19-per-cent increase over last year’s prices for all greater Vancouver real estate sales.

“Greater Vancouver and the GTA are really the only two hot spots for home sales and prices in Canada,” Gregory Klump, CREA’s chief economist said in a news release.

“Price gains in these two markets are being fuelled by a shortage of single family homes for sale in the face of strong demand. Meanwhile, supply and demand for homes is well balanced among the vast majority of housing markets elsewhere across Canada.”

The number of Canadian home sales in March was up by 4.1 per cent compared with February. The CREA says sales through its Multiple Listing Service last month were up in nearly two-thirds of the markets it tracks, led by gains in Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton.

Source: Bethany Lindsay, Vancouver Sun

From Albertan black gold to globetrotting wealth to lucky heirs, big money is flocking to Vancouver real estate and fuelling huge price increases that show no sign of stopping, according to the CEO of Sotheby’s Canada.

“You’re not only going to be competing with other wealthy Canadians, you’re going to be competing with wealthy people all over the world,” Ross McCredie told Business in Vancouver.

Sotheby’s Canada, which specializes in high-end real estate, released its annual luxury homebuyer report today. The report breaks out high-end real estate buyers into three generations: baby boomers, Generation X and Generation Y.

The report characterizes baby boomers as sitting on a large amount of collective wealth because they have benefited from inheritances from their parents and, especially in Vancouver, have seen their homes greatly appreciate in value over the past 25 years.

Eighty per cent of high-net-worth Canadians are over 55, and that generation now represents 30% of Canada’s population, according to Statistics Canada figures quoted in Sotheby’s report.

In turn, boomers are now helping their Gen Y children — the report defines this group as 15-35 — buy real estate. A Genworth Canada survey of first time homebuyers released April 7 found that in Vancouver, 40% had help from their parents, compared to 25% throughout Canada.

Meanwhile, Generation X (34 to 54) has largely had to fend for itself. McCredie called this cohort “generation screwed.” The high-end buyers in this group tend to be double-income professional couples, but they have been priced out of Kitsilano, Dunbar or Point Grey. They’re increasingly looking at homes in East Vancouver, where detached homes are now commonly priced well over the $1 million mark.

“In Vancouver a lot of families are taking up in East Vancouver, where 10 years ago that wouldn’t have been where they wanted to live,” McCredie said.

Wealth from outside the province’s borders continues to be attracted to Metro Vancouver, a trend McCredie said shows no sign of slowing.

That wealth is coming from other parts of Canada, in particular, from Alberta, as well as from abroad.

According to McCredie, wealthy Albertans have been attracted to Vancouver’s Coal Harbour neighbourhood, as well as Vancouver Island and Kelowna, and treat those properties as vacation homes. So it’s no surprise to him that Coal Harbour has a relatively high number of vacant condos (at 23.5%, the highest vacancy rate in the City of Vancouver, according to a 2013 analysis done by Bing Thom Architects planner Andy Yan).

“A lot of people bought in Coal Harbour because they only want to spend eight or 10 weeks of the year here and a lot of them are from Calgary or Edmonton and Toronto,” McCredie said.

“They’re not working or living here. They love Vancouver and they want to spend a good chunk of time here.”

The high-end real estate markets in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal are all “heavily influenced” by international buyers, according to the report. Buyers from China dominate in Vancouver, from China, Russia and the Middle East in Toronto, and from the Middle East, China, Europe (especially France) in Montreal.

International students from wealthy families are also playing a role in Vancouver’s real estate market, McCredie said.

A common pattern is for the students’ parents to buy a high-end condo or even a large detached house in a wealthy neighbourhood such as Shaughnessy, with plans for the entire family to move to Vancouver in the future.

McCredie said the discontinuation of Canada’s investor immigrant program has had little impact on foreign real estate purchases in Vancouver.

That program required individuals with a minimum net worth of $1.6 million to loan Canada $800,000; it attracted 36,973 immigrants to British Columbia, two-thirds of whom came from mainland China. The program has since been changed to allow only 50 applicants a year.

The change has not deterred the flow of foreign money into Vancouver real estate because many investors are not interested in immigrating to Canada, McCredie said.

“A lot of these guys are very wealthy and they don’t want to pay Canadian taxes,” McCredie said.

Foreign money will continue to flow to Vancouver because the region has developed infrastructure and expertise to help wealthy people buy property. The recently launched official Chinese currency hub will make transactions even more convenient, McCredie said.

“The U.S. right now is a really difficult place to immigrate to or even buy a property in, whereas Canada has been much more welcoming,” McCredie said, adding that HSBC Canada, which is headquartered in Vancouver, is particularly well set-up to handle transactions from foreign buyers.

“Post 9-11, so much gets looked into in banking relationships [in the United States]. It takes a little longer to get your money from China into a Los Angeles bank.”

That means prices, especially for detached homes, which are limited in supply, will continue to rise. A recent Vancouver Savings Credit Union report predicted that by 2030, the average home price in Metro Vancouver will exceed $2.1 million.

Meanwhile, average incomes in Metro Vancouver continue to lag behind those of other major Canadian cities. Over the next three years, the City of Vancouver plans to spend $125 million from its capital budget on efforts to house both low- and middle-income people, as rising rents and tight housing supply squeeze residents.

While some observers have called for policy makers to take a look at reigning in foreign investment through higher taxes or restrictions, McCredie balked at that suggestion.

“If the government came out and prevented foreign buyers from buying real estate, it would have a huge impact in our market,” he said.

“And you would see a correction.”

Source: Jen St. Denis at Business in Vancouver with files from Frank O’Brien

The much-ballyhooed “soft landing” in real estate may already be underway, Bank of Montreal says, as booming price gains in two of Canada’s three biggest housing markets are the exception rather than the rule in the rest of the country.

While the closely watched national average price figure released on the 15th of every month by the Canadian Real Estate Association is still showing strong annual gains, “strong gains have been entirely a Toronto and Vancouver story,” BMO economist Robert Kavcic says in a research note today.

The latest CREA numbers, released last month, show the national average ticked up another six per cent in March to $431,812.

But there’s much more weakness than that headline figure would suggest.

In three-quarters of the 26 biggest metropolitan areas in Canada, average gains top out at about four per cent, and are actually contracting in many places.

“Suffice it to say that strong Canadian home price gains are now almost purely a two-city phenomenon, and the so-called soft landing (harder in Alberta and Saskatchewan) is well underway across most of the country,” Kavcic says.

Montreal, Canada’s second-largest real estate market, is one of the areas where the average house price across all categories of housing is already in decline, with the MLS HPI down 0.3 per cent in March, according to CREA.

Moncton, N.B., and Regina are also in negative territory.

House prices across all types had been trending downward in Ottawa since the spring of 2014 before an uptick last month. And average house prices in Newfoundland declined by more than eight per cent in February compared to a year ago, CREA data shows.

Although it’s still in the black on an annual basis, new data out of Calgary on Thursday shows that city’s average house price has now declined for two months in a row as the impact of cheap oil filters through the broader economy.

Source: Pete Evans, CBC News

With Vancouver’s housing market racing off the charts, I found this interesting article by mortgage broker Atrina Kouroshnia who explains the risks involved in presenting an offer without subjects.

In competitive housing markets like Vancouver, buyers feel the pressure to move quickly and make seller-friendly offers, often with no subjects such as financing or inspections. In fact, the Vancouver Sun reported a few months ago that some houses and condos in the area sold within a week or two (one house sold with no subjects and for $50,000 above asking price). With low housing inventory and high demand, realtors don’t expect that competitive landscape to change any time soon.

While an offer with no subjects could certainly be more attractive to the seller, I do not advise my mortgage clients to go in without subjects due to the potential risks involved.

The only time I would say to go in without any subjects would be if you’re looking at making a cash offer and you’re paying for the value of the land so you don’t care about the inspections and don’t need time to line up financing. Here, I would also emphasize the importance of having your own representation. Some buyers think that not having their own agent puts them in a more advantageous situation, but the truth is that the sellers’ agent is contracted to represent their sellers and in some situations they can even be encouraging a bidding war and discouraging subjects.

For those who need a mortgage, having at least one subject would allow the buyers to exit the deal if they need to. For instance, if your offer was subject to a home inspection, that could buy you time to get the mortgage financing in place. The vast majority of my clients review strata documents, conduct a home inspection and secure financing before removing subjects.

When you make an offer, you usually have a grace period where you can work through removing the subjects such as reading the strata minutes, booking a home inspection and arranging for your financing. By the end of the grace period, you have to either remove subjects and move forward with the deal or you don’t remove subjects and basically the accepted offer becomes void.

Remember, a pre-approval doesn’t mean you’re 100 per cent approved for whatever home you decide to buy. For instance, if you suspect there’ll be multiple bids on a property and you make a bid that’s higher than the asking price, the home’s appraised value may fall short of your offer.

Another scenario where you might run into financing problems would be if the life expectancy of the house does not support the amortization of the loan. If the value of the property is in the land, most lenders will not finance a tear-down. Instead, they might finance a lower amount (say, 50 per cent of the land) on the property.

With competitive situations, it’s easy to get caught up in bidding wars and succumb to pressure to make offers without subjects, but I think the key is to treat it like a business transaction and maintain a clear head. Have a maximum budget you’re willing to spend and do not go above that amount.

If you try to be more competitive by offering a higher price or not placing any subjects, you could be playing with fire and wind up getting burned. Only you can determine how much risk you’re willing to take on.