Jane Chu | Rennie & Associates Realty

I am Matt Parker, your host of the House Rich Homeowner podcast. Managing your home finances is hard. After many years in the mortgage industry, I've decided to combine my knowledge, resources and connections and turn them over to you. Each week I'll be featuring different home finance experts or my own personal insight to help you achieve financial peace at home. Let's. Hey, Matt Parker here. You know, super grateful, very excited to have Jane Chu with me today. Jane, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you for having me. Nice to meet you guys.

A quick intro of Jane. Jane is with Renny. She's a Rennie advisor and has been with them since 2011. Coming up on that sort of 10 year mark next year, which is amazing. Congratulations on that, Jane. She is a Reny Leader award winner. She's also a medallion club award winner. So her expertise and her sort of insight on the Vancouver market will be very valuable for us. Jane, just to start off, I like to ask more of a fun question, not necessarily real estate based, but what's one thing not many people would know about you?

Yeah, I went down to Bali in November just a couple months ago and I caught the surf bug over there. So some of my goals this year is to hopefully, you know, when Covid is over, get over to Tofino and do a little bit of surfing.

Oh, cool, cool. I know that Tofino I've heard, is an amazing, amazing location for that. So we're so blessed to have that so close.

Yeah, we are.

Cool. Well, thanks for sharing. That's so fun. That's something I definitely need to put on my list of things to try and get into. That's very cool. Back to real estate. So what got you in the industry? What brought you to real estate? And do you want to just give us a quick brief overview of how you got here?

For sure, yeah. My family had a home in the North Burnaby area on Capitol Hill when I was maybe a preteen. And every single weekend I was helping my parents, you know, vacuum prepare the home with the decor items. And, you know, it took a while at that time, I think 2000, the market was very slow to sell that home. So I think it took about a year and a half to sell. So during that year and a half of a period, I really played around with the idea of becoming a realtor. I fell in love with, you know, decorating a home and transforming it to be, you know, listing ready.

Cool. Yeah, no, it's a, I mean, it's fun. It's. We get to Work with such amazing people. I know that, you know, we get to wake up every day unemployed. If you want to. If you want to call it that way, try to go out and find someone to serve that day. What kept you in the industry now coming up on 10 years, you know, you mentioned the design aspect and just, just real estate in general. But what do you love about what you do on a daily basis?

I think it's just, I believe in real estate, you know, as a tool for a hedge against inflation. It's great for just building your personal wealth as well as your generational wealth. So I think that is just a classic investment tool, but not even just an investment, but a personal home for people that is going to be their protection against any inflation in the marketplace.

I love, I love what you said on the website where it says, best part of my job is helping clients filter through information to arrive at a better understanding of the market so they can make decisions wisely. I think that's perfect because there is so much information, you know, if you just Google real estate or mortgages or whatever, it's overwhelming. I get confused because a lot of it doesn't make any sense. A lot of it's inaccurate. So I think the way how you, how you presented that is very cool. So great job on that.

Yes, exactly. You know, the media always has something to say. The neighbor, your boss, everyone has something to say. However, a lot of information is constantly moving and not everyone has access to that information. And data doesn't really lie. So, you know, at Rennie, we have an analyst team and we're constantly on the pulse as real estate agents that are licensed on exactly what's happening in the neighborhoods.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. Now, if you weren't doing this, if you weren't, you know, helping clients achieve real estate dreams, what would you envision yourself doing?

I think at this point in my life lately, I've been really interested in kind of wellness psychology, counseling, even coaching. So I think I would probably be in sort of that wellness space.

Oh, cool. Yeah, it's. And so important, especially, you know, just to give an idea of. While we're recording this, we're mid April 2020, so we're kind of in the midst of, you know, history right now and in the midst of the COVID 19 pandemic. And I think wellness, mental health, all those kinds of things are just so important right now. So, you know, that's probably helping you personally and also people that you know in your core sphere of friends and family as well. So That's a great, great. I think it's a very, very good thing to be interested in.

Thank you. Yeah, I think it's just, you know, mental health is probably, you know, one of the things that Vancouver Police Department was posting a lot about on Twitter. And I think right now it's really important for kind of do a lot of self care and just, you know, care, care for others as well. And yeah, it's, it's an important thing right now during COVID Yeah, I know.

We'Re both in our new home offices or old home offices, whatever you want to try to do our part. I know. So getting into the next question, it's a tricky one because we're in a very unique, just unknown right now. But based on that, more maybe just real estate in general because I always envision real estate long term will be just fine. You know, things will happen like this that no one could have foreseen. I know the market was getting very active at the start of this year. Do you have any advice for anyone that would potentially be looking to purchase or, or sell in either this market or potentially when we get through the COVID 19, just this initial phase of just adjustment period till we get to that next normal, whatever that ends up being or whenever that is. Do you have any advice for anybody?

For sure. I think just from a kind of like we kind of zoom out a bit and look at the marketplace and exactly what's been happening in Vancouver. You know, the market really just started to pick up around June, July, August of last year. So 2019 and it picked up in volume but not necessarily in price increase. The price started to increase marginally probably around January, February, March and then Covid happened mid March. So really there hasn't been a lot of inflation in the price. So everything now, you know, before the curve started to flatten for our B.C. covid curve, a lot of sellers that needed to sell were just counting their prices and there were a lot of good deals. You know, any point in the market, you know, there is a seller that is motivated to sell and there is a buyer that needs to buy. So I think that at any point of the market, but now, especially given what the market has been doing for a 15 month period and then just slowly starting to recover and then now Covid, you know, I think that there is a lot of good deals out there for whether you're an end user looking for your own personal use or an investor that's looking for something that's cash flowing. I think at the end of the day. If you're an investor that's looking for something that's cash flowing or through the capital gains method, you're always just looking at what am I buying at and where has the market been. And there's always opportunities in that sense. And cash flow is just, well, is the rental income going to be higher than what I'm paying on a monthly basis in terms of expenses? So I think there's always a window of opportunity. But overall the prices are at a record low for the last two years.

Yeah, yeah, no, well said. I, you know, I think it depends on how long this lasts, like in terms of the lockdown or just the isolation tactics that are put in place, how long does that last? Because that's going. That will just automatically have an effect on the market. But does it automatically just put huge downward pressure on values short term? I don't know, maybe not. But I think if it's a long period of time, we'll probably see that adjustment kick in. I have a just, you know, my thought in terms of a theory of when we get through it is interest rates will be low, probably most likely very difficult to see it not be that way. And inventory in terms of real estate will probably be on the lower end. So could that potentially create a seller's market in the future when buyers look to get back into the market but inventory's low, builders have stopped building to the level that they did over the last few years. And especially now, do you envision that having an effect on long term values potentially regaining over the next five plus years because of that?

Given all of those factors, I definitely still believe in the Vancouver real estate market. At the end of the day, if there's a place to be quarantined, what more beautiful than in Vancouver where we have, you know, access to hikes, trails, sea walls? We have a very stable political system, we have a very stable banking system, our medical system as well. I just can't even imagine other cities that don't have what we have access to. So I think at the end of the day, if anything, Vancouver is still a really livable city. It's a great place to have an exceptional quality of life. I think that always still stands for volumes about the demand that we have. And people are constantly still trying to come to the city, whether they're, you know, just workers or professionals or students, they still want to come to Vancouver. So I definitely still believe that that demand and through the numbers of immigrants coming to Vancouver, there's still a high demand of housing So I think it's interesting.

Yeah. Because I know population growth is still probably going to outperform real estate production. Right. So it's like everyone needs a place to live. So if that continues long term, that just continually will put diminishing supply available for home buyers. So, yeah, it'll be, you know, given that we just. Just don't know what the next few months hold, it'll be very interesting. And we're definitely living through a historic time. So, you know, might be a bit.

On during COVID but, you know, afterwards, I mean, at the end of the day, it's like, wow, like, where else would you want to be in a pandemic with great medical system and amenities? Yeah.

Yeah. We're so lucky. We're so lucky. You've been doing this for a good amount of time now, and you've probably seen quite a few properties, quite a few transactions. Is there a property that you've been a part of that is. Or even just a situation from a transaction standpoint that stands out as the most memorable or one of the most memorable to you?

I would say it's probably earlier on in my career when I was a assistant to a top realtor, and I was kind of just dropped off at this house and was supposed to help this client prepare her home for the market. And I think that you get to see a bit of a more serious side of people, the more real side people. So she was a lady who was a widow, and she started to find comfort in stray cats. So her house was open to stray cats, and so she had white carpets. And let's just say that it was like a giant litter box covered with everything that you can imagine. And it was just, you know, it's in those moments that you just feel really like you're doing something meaningful, like you're helping someone who's. She's obviously, you know, quite depressed as a widow who lost her husband, and as I was helping her pack her stuff, you know, I saw that she used to be a ballerina. She, you know, had a full life before losing her husband. And so, you know, when we help her sell her house, it was very memorable because she was such a kind lady. And, you know, although I was allergic to cats, you know, and I was suffering from allergies, that was a very memorable experience for me.

You saw enough cats in that period of time?

Well, they weren't in the house, thankfully, at the time.

Oh, okay. Okay.

There was a lot of excrements. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm. You know, it's so interesting. You know, you know, things, life events can really, really do things to people that you just don't envision. Right. And that's so cool that you were able to help her achieve that next step in life. Probably alleviate stress, alleviate all these different things that could get her to where she needed to be. So that's, that feels good and it's doing, doing service that, that is, well, very important. So that's very cool. Thanks for sharing. I talk to clients about House Rich a lot because I know a lot of people think of Vancouver like, oh, we all have these big mortgages, it's very expensive, all these kinds of things. But you know, I see a lot of the. Not the opposite, but I see a lot of opportunity. I see a lot of Mike a lot. Most of my clients are very well situated. Cash flow, all that kind of, you know, all the different ways you want to look at it. So what I talk about house rich is more of having assets that we can be leveraged to create wealth to further prepare for the future. And it's not just about now. It's about long term planning. When I say house rich to you, what do you think of and what comes to mind?

Yeah, I love that you use that term house rich rather than, you know, a lot of people use the term house poor. So I think it's, you know, like, it's a perspective, like anything in life, it's what you choose to frame it in. So I think like with house Rich, you know, I am a big fan of Robert Kiyosaki, rich dad, poor dad, but even more his board game, the Cash Flow game, which teaches you how to use your property. And you know, in Vancouver there's a lot of great zoning for if you live in a single family home, you could have an Airbnb in your primary residence and you can probably build a laneway or you could have a basement suite. But there's just a lot of ways that you can make your property work for you while you still live there as well. So I don't see it as, oh, house poor. I see it as well, you can now build equity in this home and then get cash flow and at the same time also wait for, you know, like a second mortgage on this property as you build equity here so you can take refinance this property. So it is a great, it's a great term that you use house rich, not house poor.

I think too many people worry about what is my home value today when they have the house already. It's like I look at it as though there's really only a few times that it really matters what your house is worth. It's when you buy it and when you sell it and when you want to refinance and excess equity out of it. I mean, what it actually does throughout the lifetime of owning that property, as long as it trends where we wanted it to trend and it doesn't plummet so significantly, which is again very hard to imagine in a market like Vancouver, then it's okay. So I think everyone, especially right now, if there's fear, if there's concern about their home, that it's okay because the market will work itself out. What goes down comes up. What goes up comes down a little bit. It's just where does it trend? And we can see historically that it's trended very well. So yeah, no, that's great. I love the advice on utilizing space to maximize cash flow to create a very livable situation where you can actually have fun and live life and do all the things you like to do instead of just worry about, you know, finances and that kind of thing. So well said. Thank you.

Thank you. Yeah, I think my parents came here around the 70s and purchased around the 80s and you know, like if the price of a car used to be the most expensive car was probably 70k and then now, I mean a car is up to 500k or even a million dollars, you know, that's inflation for you. So like why wouldn't a property continue to be your hedge against inflation as well? So, you know, since they've been in the market since the 70s, 80s, it hasn't gone down and it logically wouldn't go down.

Yeah, exactly. Well, thank you so much, Jane. I really appreciate you being here. Where's the best place for anyone that would like to reach out to contact you to get in touch?

Yeah, you can find more information on my website, Jane, Chew ca or on my Instagram, which is Aenechu Renny and just send me a DM there.

Perfect, Perfect. That's perfect. We'll put that in the, we'll put that in the description, in the show notes and all that fun stuff so everyone can find you very easily. But thank you again. Super grateful to have you stay safe. Thanks so much and we will talk to you very soon. Thanks again.

Awesome.

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