The Vince Files

We’ve lowered our listing price by $10,000 to try to entice an offer from a potential buyer.  We’ve been listed about a month with a couple of open houses, some private viewings and no offers yet.  This is how the market is these days; many listings are staying on the market longer and longer.

Our updated listing is now on MLXchange and our real estate agent will be following up with people who left their names in our previous open houses to let them know.  Hopefully something will come up soon.  We’re aiming to sell, and buy another place before our mortgage pre-approval expires.

Part of the BC government’s budget for 2008 is a $100 Climate Action Dividend to every person living in British Columbia.  Anna received $200 which includes Claire’s dividend.  This comes just in time for July 1 when the BC government will raise gas prices by around 2.5 cents per litre as part of their Carbon Tax.

So let’s see…what should I spend my $100 on?  Compact fluorescent lightbulbs?  Naaahhh..  Reusable shopping bags?  Naahhh.

Oh I know.  I think I’ll treat my car to a tank of gas!

Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good.  And believe me, luck plays a factor in Texas Holdem.  Because, if it weren’t for luck, I’d win every time!

In this hand, blinds are 125/250 with 25 ante.  I’m in middle position with 27 offsuit (considered the worst starting hand in Holdem) and decide to raise to 900 for kicks.  Everyone folds to the small blind who goes all in.  The big blind folds and I call.

27o_all-in

This past Tuesday, the Bank of Canada decided to keep their overnight rate unchanged at 3% despite analyst expectations of a 25-basis-point cut to help stimulate our economy.  It seems the BoC now has its sights set on fighting inflation.  How does this affect mortgage rates? Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s my latest victory.  It’s just a small Sit-N-Go tournament with $3.00 buy-in and $0.25 entry fee.  There were only 45 players and the top 7 get paid with first place getting $42.00.  This was a turbo tournament with blinds increasing every 5 minutes.  I like turbos; everyone plays really loose and tourneys don’t take forever.

tourney_win

Since our Open House, several groups have come to check out our place during the day while we were out.  Some came for the open house and want to take a second look.  Others missed the Open House completely.

There were 4 groups that came by yesterday, and one today, and another tomorrow.  We’ve had to keep the place nice and tidy for our home’s visitors; no easy task for this household.

Today was the big day.  We finished our last-minute cleanups before our real estate agent arrived.  She had scheduled our open house to be from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.  So we took the opportunity to do some Open House hopping ourselves.

Anna plugged in some addresses into our Garmin Nuvi 350 GPS and we were on our way.  We stuck strictly to Port Coquitlam with particular emphasis on the Riverwood community.  We also stopped at some Open Houses as we stumbled on to them.  Time flew quickly and before we knew it, it was time to head back.

When we got back, our real estate agent had a surprised look on her face as if to say, “you should have seen how many people came to look.”  She had set up a sign-in sheet for people to sign as they came in and she counted 26 groups of people who came to visit.  Wow - 26 groups in a 3-hour span is quite a few people.  There’s even a prospective buyer who wants to come back on Tuesday so he/she can bring his/her parents.

Anyways, we’ll see how it goes.  Now we just wait for the offers to come in.

Now that our home is on the market and people are aware of our upcoming Open House, it’s time to clean up. Read the rest of this entry »

Previously, I mentioned that our home is on the market. It just went up on MLS.CA today so it’s now visible to the public. Our realtor actually listed our home on Monday so other realtors have actually been made aware of our listing prior to its being made public on the MLS website. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve been looking to move to a bigger home recently and finally we’ve taken the first step: listing our current property. Our property has many things going for it: close to amenities, close to public transit, has an attached garage instead of a parkade, has a relatively low monthly strata fee. I’m confident our place should sell fairly quickly. Read the rest of this entry »