Collapsing Vancouver Real Estate Separation Lawyers warn of financial rip tides ahead. The crashing Vancouver real estate market has hit owners, developers and realtors and luxury retail sales entities hard. The halcyon days of easy money and rapid gains in real estate are over and savvy family lawyers need to help their clients minimize their losses and maximize their gains.
Our founder Lorne MacLean KC remembers buying a home in 1986 when interest rates were near 22%! In today’s blog he explains what can be done to protect yourself in a flat or rapidly declining Vancouver real estate market.
MacLean Law’s Canadian Family Law Firm Of The Year Helps In Down Real Estate Markets Tel: 604 602 9000
Maclean Law’s award winning high net worth family lawyers handles multimillion cases involving property developments, construction businesses, realtors and valuation and division disputes related to residential to large commercial projects. Our team deals with real estate property and development worldwide and with a particular emphasis on China and BC family property separation disputes. Our winning collapsing Vancouver real estate separation Lawyers deal with alacrity with rising and dropping markets.
The huge price gains in the past as well as a now huge oversupply of homes may have been a result of flawed government policies that let developers rely on foreign capital, artificially low interest rates and easy money says a BIV article.
The Vancouver and BC real estate market is on life support as are developers, realtors and more sadly for cash-strapped buyers who may have overpaid for pre-sales or who can no longer afford the homes they bought at a higher value than they are worth now. A recent Globe article provides a trenchant analysis of the tsunami of financial woes hitting the real estate market.
Collapsing Vancouver Real Estate Separation Lawyers Tel: 604 602 9000
As a high net worth divorce lawyer, we like everyone else, see a market collapse reflected in crashing values, developers forfeiting buildings and land, bank foreclosures, failed projects, unsold listings and massive staff cuts at developers, and flagship realtors.
We are in a perfect storm and as Vancouver Sun article opines developers and realtors who lived the highlife for so many years now need to tighten their belts. This affects spousal and child support payments for these income earners, who may be paying support on past multi-million dollar incomes. It also drives down values of development owners and real estate company owners and individual realtor PREC’s.
But what happens if you’re going through a divorce and you need to sell your home? We see increased applications for interim real estate sales before trial on the basis that interest rates and dropping values make it necessary and expedient for both spouses to sell a home. How do you reserve the right to bid on your home while not paying real estate commission because you bought your spouse’s half share of the real estate?
The silver lining to the real estate collapse is that this can lead to a buying opportunity for the separated spouse, who wants to retain the home because they can now buy out the other spouse’s share for less than they thought they would have to.
Test For Interim Sale Of Family Home In Vancouver Tel: 604 602 9000
In British Columbia, during separation, a spouse can apply for an interim sale of the family home before a final divorce decree is issued, if it’s deemed “necessary or expedient” by the court. This is governed by Rule 15-8 of the BC Supreme Court Family Rules. The court will consider factors like the parties’ financial circumstances and whether a sale is inevitable or advantageous to both.
See our article on factors to be considered here.
Best Family Lawyer Strategies For Interim Sales Tel: 604 602 9000
We may see sealed bid auctions at court or in mediation with both parties, trying to take advantage of the collapsing real estate market and avoiding the need for real estate commission.
If you are an UHNW spouse going through divorce get immediate advice on new strategies for divorce if you want to try to sell your home or buyout your spouse at the new lower value. We may see real estate commission prices dropping in the future as realtors adjust to the new normal after homes selling in a couple of days now sit for months or years if at all. The problem from the past overheated market means there are now too many realtors for too few homes that will sell unless sellers are forced to drop prices dramatically and below what they may have paid for their homes.
Collapsing Vancouver Real Estate Separation Lawyers Tel: 604 602 9000
We think real estate industry reports showing ALLEGEDLY modest declines are flawed in that many people are struggling to pay for homes worth less than they want to ask for them on sale as they hang on to them to avoid massive losses.
The winners are those wanting to enter the market who don’t own real estate and old timers whose homes cost $12,000 are now worth only 2.5 million not 4 million. But with even bigger drops expected – even the winners who don’t own real estate- will hold off until prices drop even farther. Realtors, developers, banks, third party lenders, construction employers, luxury watch and car dealerships and more are the losers in today’s market.
Call our Collapsing Vancouver Real Estate Separation Lawyers now to get key strategies.
