David Grimmett dot com

A quick look into the rental market in Vancouver, and its scary. A small place, about 700-800 square feet will run you $100-1200 a month easily. A nicer place, 2 bedroom, could be around $1600-1800.

Right now it is a buyers market here in Vancouver. With low mortgage rates, and housing prices today, a mortgage won’t run you much more than renting. The mortgage on a 1 bedroom place about 600-700 square feet costing about $200,000-250,000 will be about $1200-1400 a month. Not bad considering you are building up your own equity and not filling someone elses pocket!

The housing market in Vancouver has dropped over the past year. In some cases as much as 20%! That, combined with low interest rates, it seems to be the perfect time for 1st time buyers to start looking. I am in that situation right now. I am looking and will be meeting with a mortgage broker and hope to get into the housing market within the next year.

Wish me luck, and I will share with you all my new learnings and invite you to share with me!

Keep posted for a new blog. I intend to go a whole new direction with this blog and begin regular posts. I will post later this week on the area the blog will cover.

What have I done in the past year?

Well, as I have mentioned, I graduated in May with my degree in Music. Immediately following that, I got hired as the Customer Assurance Manager of Caffe Umbria Canada. A smaller coffee roasting company. I really enjoyed this job, however, there were some aspects of the job I didn’t like and thought I could further myself elsewhere. I left this job after 4 months and started my Plumbing and Heating Apprentice in September. I quite enjoyed this, however the hours were long, and I didn’t enjoy the fact that jobs always took longer than they should have and I never got off work at a decent time. I did however enjoy the work and loved using my hands and building things. I would have stayed in this for longer, but perhaps a good thing happened when the economy went down and left our business lacking. I had less and less work from the company I was with so I started seeking other work. I am now a Valet Driver for a hotel downtown. This job has grown into a full time job and I have been promoted to Site Supervisor. I get to pick my hours, and as of right now I am earning the equivalent of what I was earning in Plumbing and Heating, but with much less hours. As summer picks up and hotel business picks up, I expect my tips to increase and it should be a fairly decent paying job considering its just parking cars.

This, however is not my career choice by any means, but it is bringing in money for the time being. I am looking into possible career choices right now.