One Of Our Own? The Interesting Story and Insights Of A Modern Real Estate Agent

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Wrapping up the end of the summer this week with yet another inspiring guest blog! This time, it’s Chris van Kasteren from London, ON. Growing up in a family of 6 in a local Lucan, ON farm, he was raised to treat future clients like family and keep a strong work ethic.

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I grew up playing most sports, learning to be a great team player and these sports opened up a lot of doors for me as I was offered a scholarship to a US university but refused it as my heart was set in Canada. Sadly, some years ago, I lost my best friend and moved back to London to rethink my life. This is where everything changed when I met my current wife, Jessica.

I got my first house with an asking price of $209k to start for $180k ! And so began my love for barter…

In my first year in real estate, I made approximately 5 sales, about 10 in my second and so began the snowball effect. Last year, I sold my rental place in London at the start of the year because I wanted to buy my ‘forever home’ with my wife! 🙂

So here are my thoughts on current market trends:

Just over 4 years ago, Toronto’s market exploded and thus created a ripple effect, moving slowly away from Toronto making the market value increase very swiftly, on average around 8-9%, but with houses on the lower end at $200k went up to $300k, where as the more expensive houses have only increased 3 or 4% in some cases. The under $350k market is at an all time high with my guess of around 3/4 of the market (either first time home buyers, down-sizers or investment properties) has never been in such high demand! That being said it is an amazing time to sell your house for under $350k and buy a house in the second level of 3$50-500k or even $500k-700k range if you can afford it because the high market hasn’t been effected as much because not as many people can afford this price range. First time home buyers are buying properties for under $350k and still needing to put work into it, when you might as well buy one for $400k that’s already done, but because of the stress test it is keeping the first time home buyers at bay or even not even letting them get approved to get in the market.

I feel the stress test is ridiculous, I can fully understand the banks’ point of view if they lend you money they guaranteed and want it back, but by the amount of interest you pay in your first five-year mortgage term would easily cover any loss they might encounter on a 5 year mortgage term of $300k at an amortization period of 25 years to pay it off in full, you are paying $1450.80 a month. At the end of 5 years you have paid $83,988 of which $39765.25 is interest; yes, almost 40k in interest in just 5 years. As long as you don’t default within 5 years your bank will at no way be at risk of losing money. The market is not going to be sustainable in going up this much this fast but I believe it will plateau. Interest rates can’t spike too fast, because if you paid 300k for your house and interest goes up to 12% and drops your house value to 200k but you owe 250k on it you will just walk away from it, hand the bank your keys and it will crash the market. Putting a stress test of making it harder for first time home buyers to get in the market almost keeping the poor poorer and making the richer have an advantage. If you can never get out of the rental game you will never truly get ahead because whatever you pay in rent is being throw out the window, into the pockets of the guy smart enough to buy a rental property, and there is only so much land on the earth, hence why it’s your best investment.

Even if you bought a house for $300k and rent it for 20 years and only sell it for $200k, you’re still up $200k because your renters bought you that property! We shouldn’t have a stress test because we should be helping first time home buyers and “the poor” who can’t afford houses, this does keep the first level of houses down due to less demand, but we need to figure out a way to let first time home buyers get in the market and my opinion is let them have 0% down payment, have a government funded program, and not charge them mortgage insurance…

This is all my opinion but a few short years ago I was barely able to get into the market and if I didn’t then I probably still wouldn’t be, but because I did and got rentals when I did now they are worth almost twice as much!

“Nothing is more important than the community you surround yourself with!”

If you have ever run into Chris you would think he is one of the most optimistic people you could meet! His nickname growing up was smiley, and it has never left his face. People have wondered how an individual can remain so happy but doing what he loves and helping people definitely contributes to his positive attitude.