Most British Columbinas Don't Know - 94% of BC Land Is Going To Be Co-Managered By First Nations

Hello, everybody. I'm Debbie Simmons with the Simmons Lifestyles real estate team. We are in central Vancouver Island. We market, list sell all types of properties, residential, commercial, and so on in the central Vancouver Island area. Today is February 20th. This usually we do our weekly broadcast on a Monday, but yesterday was a holiday. So we're Tuesday instead this week. Anyway, very eventful week this week. So with your market update for the week, we'll start with our interest rates. That's the most important thing to us in this industry. So last week, I had stated that we were going to see some decreases starting in about May. Well, we now think that's June, maybe sort of June, August, October, and December, a quarter percent decrease in each one of those months. This is just what the analysts are saying now as of this week. So hopefully by the end of 2024, our interest rates will be down a full percentage point. And this is already impacting the market. Just the news alone is impacting the market. And I will share a screen with you to show you how that looks. Okay, so this is our weekly hot sheet. This is all the market activity in the central Vancouver Island Couch and Valley area. So this week we have 10 new listings. So this is a very strong sign, a great sign that the market is waking up and it is picking up. And the listings were between 185,000 and 5.4 million waterfront. And the 185,000 listing was a mobile home, an older mobile home in Ladysmith. And the 5.4 million dollar waterfront is a gorgeous home in Ladysmith out Coffin Point area. We have five new pending sales. So five new accepted offers this week. We have five price decreases, four sales, and then a cancellation. There's another page here. And some expires, more cancellations and some expire. But the good news is really at the real news is really at the beginning of the report here, where you see all these new listings coming on. This is the beginning of the spring market. And we're going to see a lot more listings coming on, especially starting March 1st, and these new pending sales. So that's really good. And then I want to search for you. All single family dwellings in the Cowichan Valley under 700,000, just to show you that we have them. So, here we go. So, and we start by price. So, the lowest price is 199.9. I don't really count that because that's a float home. And right up to 650. So, there's 35 listings in the Cowichan Valley under 700,000. Okay. All right. So, the next thing is the topic of the week. And I'm going to read this because this is very, very important to all of us. And this is going under the radar screen. And the poll was done last week. And most British Columbians don't know this is going on. And it's going to profoundly affect all of us. So, here goes. Again, like last week, the main topic is the housing crisis, but it's being made worse by the federal government, moving the foreign buyers ban from 2025 to 2027, now being made exponentially worse this week with the announcement by the BC government, EB government, to make First Nations co-managers of all Crown land in BC. Crown land co-managers of all Crown land in BC. Crown land in BC is 94% of our land. Indigenous approval would be needed on everything land use related. Adding a second group of decision makers will slow the process down and make everything even more expensive than it already is in this province. This will not only add to our current out-of-control housing crisis, but will make it even our housing more expensive. Correction from last week. Okay. Last week I said that we already are five million dollars short in housing. We are five million residential units short already in Canada. And this is just going to heighten the problem. Whenever the government makes these moves, there are unintended consequences. And this is going to be the consequence. We already know it. They're trying to push this through by May 16th. And we need to stop it. We need at least to have a lot more discussion with the public how it's going to impact us, how it's going to impact forestry, mining, fishing, tourism, real estate, all segments, all small business. It's going to affect all of that to the negative. So this is a huge red flag. Yeah, the entire BC economy is going to be hit very, very, very hard by this. So if you want to learn more about this, I'd say you can Google it. It's everywhere now on the internet. But listen to Michael Campbell's money talks. He always does a really good expose on these kinds of things that we should be aware of, but we're not being told. And anyway, that's the big red warning, red flag for the week. I'm going to be phoning my MLA. I'm going to even try to phone the Premier's office if I can and say, listen, we all need to talk a lot about this and not shove this through by May 15th and destroy what's left of the economy. So anyway, that's my big concern this week. Strongly encourage you to all phone in and write in and stop this before it's too late. Anyway, that's the market update for this week. Please call us with any of your real estate needs. My partner, Mark Brotherton and myself are standing by to help you with either commercial, residential, recreational, whatever kind of real estate you're interested in, investment properties. We are capable and very experienced at all of it. Please give us a call at 250-246-0708. Have a fantastic week ahead.