We Got the Call
posted at 6:38 am
on Feb. 18, 2008
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The Year of Not Buying In
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So, we just got the call.
The house we’re renting (I first wrote “our house” but that ain’t right, and that’s the crux) is going to be put on the market in March.
Anyone want to buy it and rent to us? 
The owner is offering us a $500 rent discount for the month it’s on the market. This is to pre-thank us for our co-operation during two open houses. It’s a nice gesture; she didn’t have to do that.
If a sale happens and goes through, we’ll need to find a new place to live April 30 (unless the new owners also want to rent to us.)
An interesting scenario might be that the new owners would want to keep renting to Matt in the downstairs suite. Ha ha, ha, wouldn’t that be quirky… but he doesn’t need two bedrooms, and that’s just hypothesis anyway, and there’s not even a buyer yet, so who knows what’ll happen.
This is the first time in my life that I’ve been faced with having to leave where I live involuntarily. Every other move (and there have been a lot of them) has been at my behest. It feels really different, in a way I didn’t realize it would.
I don’t know what the house will be put on the market for. The public taxable assessment data looks like this from 2005-2008, and give you a pretty good idea of why she’d want to sell:
2005 - $691,666
2006 - $774,000 (up 12%)
2007 - $902,333 (up 16%)
2008 - $1,191,000 (up 32%)
We’d basically have to start paying $150,000 a year in rent to continue to match that average return on investment. And that’s unlikely, even in Kits.
Oh, and one more interesting note: it turns out the owner is a professional realtor. When real estate professionals are selling their rental properties, what does that mean for the market?
