Retirement
So what does retirement mean to you? Is it the idea of continuous weekends without the pressures of work? Perhaps it’s the opportunity for you to travel and see the world? Maybe on the darker side it’s just the start of many stressful years of worrying about how long your finances hold up and how your health will be?
Hopefully your retirement is thirty or more years of the best years of your life. Plenty of time for you to reflect on what you have done with your life, time for you to pursue activities you haven’t had time for and even time to spend with family. These are going to be your golden years and you deserve to enjoy them, after all you’ve worked hard to reach this point.
Now for a reality check. How much time have you spent preparing for all of these pending retirement years? Remember that daydreaming about writing a book or lying on a beach in the tropics is not retirement planning. Planning involves mapping out what you think your financial requirements will be during those retirement years.
Spend some time evaluating how much you believe your expenses will be during your retirement. If you plan on spending the time reading books and gardening your expenses will be significantly less than someone who wants to play golf and travel to every golf course in Europe to play. I will include some links at the end of the article that may help with some of your evaluations for your retirement years.
What I’m hoping you realize is the importance of being prepared to retire versus being actually retired. We all anticipate our retirement lasts a long time, so you should be required to spend some time planning it so you can make the most of it.
My inspiration for this was article was one of our new tenants. I had a nice little chat with him when he moved in and he informed me that he is hoping to retire in the next five years, yet he gave me a blank look when I asked him about retirement savings and investments. So delving further into this with him, I discovered he has no real savings, minimal credit as he doesn’t believe in credit cards, and yet he is hoping (notice I didn’t say planning, since he didn’t plan anything) to retire soon.
It was rather eye-opening to say the least. And it may be even more so for him in five years. Do yourself a favour, if you haven’t already, take a look at some of these calculators, do some homework and planning. Complete a strategy for your future so you can live out a great retirement.
Canada Life Retirement Income Calculator
SeclonLogic Retirement Planner
Note that many more can be found out on the internet, and this is just a sampling. So plug in some numbers, learn some new information and go in with your eyes wide open! I couldn’t find any Canadian data, but some of the U.S. numbers show the average median savings of American citizens at retirement was only $27,000. Now that is eye opening!
Market Observations
8,972 total property listings for the end of July in the Calgary area that is a staggering amount of properties when you first look at it. At this time last year there were only 4,469 listings which is about half of what we see now. Translated this means there is significantly more properties for a prospective home buyer to look at which allows a buyer to take their time in making a decision.
Last year July was the time frame that the listings started to skyrocket and supply started to meet demand turning it back into a balanced market. From January until almost the end of May in 2006, the number of listings simply kept getting swallowed up faster than they were listed. We saw this re-occur again in 2007 during a smaller window of January to March where properties were selling so fast it became a seller’s market yet again, and led to more price spikes. While the trend of price increases has stabilized from June to July, you can be assured we are not done yet. We are just in another breath taking stage.
Several factors are still very important to look at right now. We saw a huge surge in listings during the month of March and this trend has continued with the peak in June of 3,652 new listings. If you have watched the Real estate market for a while, summers are typically slower selling months as people focus on vacations and less on new homes. While July is a huge month for people moving, the properties were usually sold in May or June with possession dates set in July. This allows families with children in school to avoid transferring school s for just a month or two and provides a fresh start at the beginning of the school year.
Another factor is the amount of listings which went on the market from March until June. The earlier listings have started to pass the 90 to 120 day mark which means the listing contract (typically 90 or 120 days) have started to expire for the properties that have not sold. Although inventory is showing a huge total (the 8,972 stated at the beginning), this number will start to rapidly decline once we are through August and into September and the combination of expired listings and increased activity occurs.
This information all points to another surge in prices in the fall. The market as usual slows, may even reverse a bit, before it starts up again and moves forward bringing higher prices than previously seen. With the larger inventories we won’t see the large 5 to 10% jumps month to month, but we will see a few percent increases per month which equates to 5 to 10% (or more) over the rest of the year. So while it appears now is not a great time to buy, the reality is now is an excellent time to purchase, as long as you don’t get caught up in an overpriced property by someone else trying to make money in the market.
Remember that Alberta’s economic engine is still running strong and will for many more years. If you have comments about the Newsletters or this article feel free to email me at bill@housez.ca, or register at www.investors.housez.ca and post your own comments!
A New Era
We hope you like the changes to the Newsletter as we release it in it’s new format. We still have some tweaking to do, so if you have any comments or suggestions to improve it please send them to us.
Also over the next 30 to 60 days we hope to launch the new web site. Since we love feedback and are looking for help to improve broken or missing links if you have a few moments check out www.housez.ca/newsite and take a look around!
One other new feature we are starting to release is the new Web log or blog which is tied into the new Newsletter. This is a great place to post questions, request information, or just to check up on what we are doing. This can be found at the following link www.investors.housez.ca and should be a great addition to our site.
In Closing
Wow, the summer is just flying by. We have less than four weeks before the kids are back in school, and the weather starts to cool off.
We have had a phenomenal summer so far, so if you haven’t taken advantage of it yet, take some time to kick back and enjoy yourself. We live in a fast paced world and it doesn’t seem to be slowing down, so take a few moments for yourself every now and then and put your feet up! While you have time!
I cannot wait to hear some of the feedback from you on the changes, so have a great August and watch for more updates in September!!
Regards,
Bill & Karen Biko
KatSid Housez Inc.
www.housez.ca
Calgary, Alberta
Tel: 403.870.4663
Fax: 403.203.1753
