tabishhomes

Should you rent out your current home to buy again? Figure out the tax implications, whether you qualify, and even the emotional attachment to your home. “Becoming a landlord can be intimidating if you’ve never done it,” says Phil Peterson, managing broker at RE/MAX in Schaumburg, Ill.  “There are definitely pros and cons to renting out your house. I’ve been there. But at the time, I wasn’t aware of all those ups and downs.” Peterson says the situation really depends on the price of your house and what you paid. “Part of the advantages of owning investment property, you get to write off all improvements and all the maintenance. But when you sell it, as the value appreciates, you have to pay capital gains on all the profit. It can be a big expense especially if you bought a house back in the day when prices were appreciating a lot.” For example, let’s say you bought your house for $100,000, and now it’s worth $200,000. You decide to rent it for a few years. You get t...

Kirk Marsh first noticed the mood start to turn in Vancouver’s housing market a year ago. As a real estate investor who buys homes and condos then fixes them up for resale, Marsh has an excellent vantage point on the market. Since giving up his old job in tech three years ago to flip real estate—“Sitting at a desk was killing me,” he says—Marsh has bought and sold six detached homes and condominiums across the B.C. Lower Mainland. “It’s not like TV shows where you see them making $100,000 or more each time, it’s just not like that,” he says. But he’s done well, always able to find buyers and come out ahead. Or that’s how it used to be. “Today, everything has stalled,” he says. While visiting open houses over the past year looking for his next flip, Marsh watched the frothing crowds and bidding wars steadily dwindle away. “There’s just nobody showing up at the open houses now,” he says. “Especially downtown. Usually you’d see a group of very aggressive people coming out.” But he’s...