Monday, February 8, 2016

The real estate technique fuelling Vancouver's housing market - The Globe and Mail

The real estate technique fuelling Vancouver's housing market - The Globe and Mail: "The Rappaports’ home, on Vancouver’s West Side, would net the couple $5.2-million last year. Jo and her husband had bought the stately Craftsman home in 1987 for $362,000. They raised their sons there and loved it. But the neighbourhood had changed. Investors were razing the houses and it was time to move on.

“It used to be the prettiest block,” Ms. Rappaport said. “And it has been a construction zone for the last two years.”

The couple suspected the house would be torn down, like so many others on their lush and lucrative street, but they stood to profit nicely. There was some toing and froing over details, then a slight change of plans. For reasons the Rappaports never quite grasped, they were no longer selling their property to the foreign businessman whose offer they had accepted. Instead, they were selling to his real estate agent, Wayne Du of Amex Broadway West Realty, who told the Rappaports that he and the businessman’s wife would be purchasing instead, as co-owners.

The Rappaports weren’t thrilled, but there was nothing they could do to prevent it. Their contract, after all, contained what’s called an “assignment clause,” which gave the businessman the option to sell or transfer his interest in the property before the closing date.

Three months after the deal closed, the new broker-owner relisted the house – which he then had a stake in – and resold it for $6.2-million, a substantial if not unusual price increase that works out to roughly $11,000 a day. Mr. Du is now advertising the house for sale again for $6.58-million. It’s all perfectly legal, even if it displeases the Rappaports"



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