Selena’s February 2018 Newsletter

Happy Valentines Day And Happy Chinese New Year

Happy Valentines day!
And Happy Chinese New year for our Chinese friends!
And Happy Family Day to our Alberta friends.
This year is very special to have Valentines day (Wed) and Chinese New year (Friday) in the same week, and Alberta Family day is next Monday, so for all Alberta family and friends, we will have a nice long weekend.

The Gate Keeper For Real Estate Investors

I have been investing in Edmonton Real Estate since 2005. I find the most challenging aspect is property management. Regardless if you self manage your properties or hire property management, you still have to put eyes on it. The main reason my husband Andy and I moved to Edmonton back in 2008 was because of poor property managers not looking after our properties. Since we moved here we learned a lot about Property Management business. It is not easy business, good property manager make sure there is good cashflow for owners, reliable tenants, and internal operating business. The profit margin is very low, so it is a number’s game. However, when the number increase, the staff also need to increase, otherwise lot of small daily issues falling by the wayside. These things add up until finally it become a big issue like the snowball effect. In some Real Estate brokerages, the unproductive realtors help with property management duties, because that will bring them some cash. However, there is a reason they are unproductive. They cannot sell in the first place, lack of training and they have no idea about Real Estate investing. Common sense would say they are not the right person to do the job, but at end, the clients suffer the loss. So, for out of town investors, it is very important to choose the right property manager to manage your valuable assets. I’m lucky get to know Davies Property Management in Edmonton, because they have 3 full time licensed Property managers, plus 4 full time staff. They also have a policy that property managers cannot sell real estate so that eliminates a conflict of interests, plus they can focus on managing your property. They have great training program to training their staff how to deal with tenants’ issue, how to handle the run down properties. They have standards and refuse to accept properties in poor conditions or owners who refuse to keep the property up to date. The owner of the Davis Property management agreed to attend my coming Buy Edmonton Buy Now event on Feb 24th, hosted in Burnaby, BC. He is going to share his insight of successful property management that every Real Estate investor must know. This event is FREE, so if you are interested feel free to Sign Up!

How Is Edmonton Real Estate Market

It really depends. There are so many factors at play you really need to spend a lot of time studying it all to know what is happening. Or you could just listen to a market update by someone who sorts through all this kind of data for fun. In general however, we are seeing some movement in the market. For example, I listed a property last year and almost no showings. Just a couple weeks ago I re-listed this same property and within 14 days, this property sold, plus we also received a back up offer. This is not an isolated incident so it seems the market is slowly changing from buyers market to more balance market. We are going to give an in depth market update on Feb 24th ( Saturday) in Burnaby, BC. This is a free event so if you would like to know more about the Edmonton Real Estate market please RSVP!

Latest Sales Data

Every Month the Edmonton Real Estate Board gathers the latest sales figures sorted by property type, price ranges, listed and Sold. Click the above link to download a copy from our website.

Housing Trends

Its one thing to download the latest sales figures from Edmonton Real Estate Board and its another to actually understand what all the numbers mean. Click the above link link for a summary from the President of the Edmonton Realtors® Association, or reply to this email and we will be happy to discuss it with you or provide sales figures for different months.

Fionna Is Turning 5

Our little girl Fionna is turning 5 by end of Feb, instead have us to plan her birthday, this year, she decided to plan her own birthday party. She gets to choose who she would like to invite, what kind food to prepare, and what kind of birthday cake to order, and what’s the budget. She also told us instead to buy her birthday gift, we can pay for the food and cake. In our opinion, it is never to young to learn money management, budgeting, and planning in advance. And it is really fun to teach little ones these concepts.

Disclaimer: Not intended to solicit buyers or properties under contract.
This article contains the opinions of Andrew Barrett and Selena Cheung. Licensed Realtors® with COLDWELL BANKER Venture Realty.
The trademarks REALTOR®, REALTORS®, MLS®, Multiple Listing Service®, and the associated logos are controlled by
The Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) and identify real estate professionals
who are members of CREA or identify the quality of
services provided by Real Estate professionals who are members of CREA
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