Location or Quality – Which to Prioritize in Terms of Your Investment?

Is it better to focus on the neighbourhood or state of the property listing – or can you get both? 

I suggest that you should choose location, every time, especially in the Vancouver market. Even in its surrounding areas, like New Westminster, Burnaby, Port Moody and North Vancouver. These are all great locations that have some good neighbourhoods to keep an eye on. It will appreciate more in time.

Things to keep mind are that the quality of a home can change – or be changed – but location never can, and it’s the most crucial aspect of property value.

Now also be sure that you and your Realtor are doing the research in that area too. Including on the buildings you are looking at. That means being very careful about researching the way the strata manages the building to ensure that even if it’s older, it’s still a solid building that won’t end up with you paying large special levies for major repair works. There are strata buildings that look the same from the street, but some can be financially in a mess with lots of remediation work that is long overdue and others have stratas that are more proactive and taking care of a lot of that stuff – and oftentimes the units are selling at the same price. So you really have to do your due diligence on that.