Buy home in Canada after COVID 19
Hi everyone,
Hope you are all enjoying the beautiful summer weather outside. It was a rough few months before summer with the pandemic and we all had to face some struggles in our life. But as Canada is moving towards phase 3 of reopening, we are all past the nightmare! I completed a huge goal of my life this summer after the pandemic. I bought a house….YAY!!! It was a very challenging task considering the current real estate market after COVID 19. I want to share my whole experience today to buy home in Canada after COVID 19. I will also share some tips and tricks and some great tools I used to calculate mortgage which will help you to buy home in Canada after COVID 19. So let’s jump in.
Current Real Estate market
If you are planning to buy home in Canada after COVID 19, the current real estate market in Canada is your biggest hurdle! There is less supply of houses with a huge demand which has caused the average house prices go up. The average price of all residential properties in Canada climbed to $639,814, a 22.8 per cent gain after the pandemic. So even if the listing prices of the house seems too high for you, that is a problem you need to accept and move ahead. Filter houses which has some good resell value based on location, age, type and size which will justify the price to some extent.
The second hurdle in this market is the competition when you try to buy home in Canada after COVID 19. Even if you get a house at low listing price, you can expect 5-20+ bids on a single house with buyers putting bids up to 100,000$ more than asking price. You never know how much to bid in order to win but from my experience I can say go to the maximum you can if you really like some house. You have to be very aggressive in bidding and try to put no clauses as sellers are taking offer without clauses.
Tools for mortgage calculation
When I decided to buy home in Canada after COVID 19 ended, it was a whole new world for me, specially around mortgage calculations. I am pretty bad at those, so I depended on some amazing calculators I found online. The first thing you need is the Mortgage qualification calculator which tells you what amount of mortgage you are eligible for and the down payment you need to accumulate beforehand. I found the below tool very helpful as it is made for Canadian market and gives you a very clear picture on how ready you are to buy a home in Canada.
https://pigly.com/mortgage/canada-qualifier.php
The next tool you need is a good mortgage calculator for Canadian market which you can see below. It gives you your monthly mortgage payment and amortization schedule once you put your home price, down payment and other details. I played around this tool a lot to understand the best option for me
https://pigly.com/mortgage/canada.php
The last tool I want to suggest is a mortgage payoff calculator which I am planning to use all through the next few years to plan how I can pay off my mortgage strategically and save some money. I am using the below tool specifically designed for Canada and I am sure you will love it too!
https://pigly.com/mortgage/canada-payoff.php
My home buying experience
Once I decided to buy home in Canada after COVID 19, I booked a good real estate agent and started seeing houses. I calculated and observed the market for a month before to filter exactly what type of houses I am going to target and the price range. As I saw houses, I got to know more about the pros and cons of each house and started bidding. I was very aggressive in bidding from the very first but still I lost a few bids because of more aggressive buyers. I bid 38,000 above the listing price for the house I finally got after competing with 7 bids. I did a research on the price of similar houses sold in the same locality in the last 6 months before I came with the price to bid which is very important. At the end I am really happy to get my dream house!
Tips & Tricks
Here are a few tips and tricks to recap which will help you to buy home in Canada after COVID 19
- Do your research ahead and use the tools I gave here to calculate everything beforehand.
- Filter the houses and price range you are looking for and only go after those houses.
- Bid aggressively and early with no clauses preferably for better chances to win bids.
- If you are losing in bid wars, see if you can adjust either in size, age or locality to get a house in your budget.
Hope you guys liked my post on how to buy home in Canada after COVID 19 and will get help if you are planning to buy one. Comment any questions you have on home buying process and I would love to help you out. I am planning on my home design and furniture now and will come up with some beautiful posts very soon showing how I am decorating my house. Stay tuned and subscribe to my newsletter to get notified once I publish the next posts. Best of luck to all of you who are planning to buy home in Canada after COVID 19.
XOXO,
TNG
