dbd33

There are CGT concerns there as well. When my ex sold what was once our house it was to people who intended to McMansion the lot. They lived in the house for exactly one year before bulldozing it; something to do with staying long enough to avoid taxation.

It may be though that the price of houses in rural NB or NS is such that there will never be a capital gain large enough to warrant reporting.

Lion Heart

Wow, looks like Vancouver is very strict. Sounds like you basically can't do very much at all - even plumbing and basic electrics??? So basically it's VERY expensive to do renovations there as the biggest cost is usually labour, which you can save entirely if you are able to do the work yourself of course (but only if they allow you to!!)

Maybe it's a big city thing, and so the same in Halifax, NS. Maybe the rules get more relaxed when you're outside of major city area's???

Nova Scotia (and New Brunswick) are the two places we are considering, so would be very interested to learn the rules for those. Anyone know any links?

Dorothy

Before jumping into thinking that flipping houses in NB or NS will be like the UK, I would take a look at realtor.ca. We've been looking at property in the maritimes as a retirement place and have seen how cheap real estate is there. Are you sure you will be 1) able to sell it after and 2) make back the costs you've put in?

Lion Heart

We've been thinking exactly this as well! You can see how cheap fixer-uppers are there, but of course you also need to look at what they sell for in those area's when done up to a decent level - and agree whole-heartedly that it might not be a viable route to make worthwhile money.

For example, if you buy for $50k, spend a year renovating yourself and spend $30k in renovations, and it's worth $99k finished - what a waste. $20k for a years work for two people - there are much easier ways to make money.

This was my major concern and why I started the thread TBH. If you can't do the majority of work yourself in the maritimes then house-flipping starts to look very, very impractical indeed.

Dorothy

We're looking at acreages with houses on the land for $150-200k. So long as the house has good bones we figure we can put $50k in and have a retirement home for either no or a very small mortgage. Between us we have renovated a fair few houses including the mortgagee sale house we bought last year here in Australia.

BristolUK

I can't offer any expertise but I sold a duplex in 2016 to a guy who's business is flipping of a different sort.

His website (sorry, can't find it now) talked about buying sound places in desirable locations and renovating. Not so much turning a fixer upper into all mod cons, more about turning already good into an executive home.

I think with my place he just took advantage of the depressed rental property market (lots of new apartment builds had put the rental vacancy right up ) and the low price and was going to rent it until the market picked up, then sell. He has replaced the siding though.

With a still depressed rental market (but not as bad as it was) you might actually pick up a bargain duplex already in good nick which could, maybe, be converted back to a single home with less involved than complete renovation.

That might have more sell-on appeal in a central residential area than somewhere more out of town.

MillieF

I am in Fredericton, but I am not rural. We built a garage, but we had to get permission to do so, and there was a lot of discussion about the depth of foundation given the frost line. Then we knocked the roof off and put dormer windows in, and built a veranda, and that was quite a hoo hah to get the architect's plans agreed to, and then we had to change the sewage and water lines, as whilst they were fine when built, if you then change the property drastically you have to make it agree to current building code. The City also came and checked that the roof was being done safely several times, and we couldn't continue the work until it had been signed off on.

Internally we had no problems, we knocked down walls with alacrity! It was on our heads so to speak! With these houses all being wood, it does make changing things about terribly easy.

There are rural properties for sale here, very cheaply, but we have such a depressed economy and few employment opportunities.

scilly

We found there were more rules that would cost much more when we were re-doing our cabin in a semi-rural area about 800km north of Vancouver.

The Rural District insisted that any change or renovation costing more than $450 had to have a permit, and the property had to be inspected beforehand, paying particular regard to sewage and water supply. If either of these were not up to current regulations, then that had to be done AND inspected. Our septic definitely wasn't up to "current" standards, and the water was "iffy".

We would have had to upgrade the septic box to a septic field, requiring septic field tests in several areas of the property to find a site suitable (charge for each test of course). Then find a contractor to come and install all the piping from the house to the septic field, and set up the field. Plus pay for the inspector to come out for several inspections.

The largest amount of extra cost was because we would have to pay travel time and expenses for the inspector to come out ....... the nearest "big" town was 60 km away (120 km round trip), but he might have had to come from 200 km away (400 km round trip). Plus we were on 12 km of gravel road, part of which was not maintained to high standards (former Forest Service Road), and could have been liable for damage to a car (so we were informed).

If the local contractors knew and liked you, they would help to circumvent these rules, because they hated rules and regulations! If they didn't like you, if you came over as "big city kids", they wouldn't do that.

The one we used divided jobs into half, so for example, 2 outside walls needed replacing and new windows, he did one wall in one year and the second wall the next year, using as much of the original timber as possible. We decided to extend the roof line over a flat-roofed sun room because the joining of the sun room to the rest of the cabin was likely to allow water (rain or snow melt) to run the wall between the two. The contractor made sure the cost came in just under $450.



Remember rural here often really does mean rural!!

We literally had no services .......... our only electricity was by generator. The nearest telephone line was 3 km away, the cost 10 years ago for BC Hydro to run a line from there to the property line (not to the cabin) was $1,000 per kilometre. No other cabins between the cabin and the road and the nearest neighbour on the other side was at least 10 km away, so no-one to share the cost with us. Cell phones didn't work ............. no cell company provides the necessary cell tower(s) when there isn't a large enough population to make it worth there while. A satellite phone would have been the only option.

Some permanent residents in a little village at the 12 km mark had radio phones.

scilly

Some walls are still weight bearing even though the majority of houses here are built of wood*, although they can be removed as long as they are replaced with a weight bearing beam.

We removed two walls like when we did major renovations in our house .............. the plan had to be approved by the Planning Dept, and the work inspected before the contractor could move on to the next stage.

Collapse caused by removal of one of the walls would have had the roof falling in and the back of the house collapsing, and the other would have had us fall into the basement and the back of the house collapse!


* I'm not sure what the situation is in other provinces ........ there are lots of old brick and stone houses in Ontario and Quebec. I think those are built of brick or stone, unlike here where the brick has usually been brick tiles attached to the wood framing.

MillieF

Sorry...just to clarify...we did check first! I fully understand the ramifications of load bearing bits...just that here they don't carry 'quite' the load they might do in other parts.