Kit Matkaluk | Kit and Coop of Oakwyn 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. Very excited to be with Kit Macaluk. Thanks Kit, for joining us today.

You betcha. Thanks for having me.

I know. Yeah, my pleasure, my pleasure. So you are the, you wear a few hats, you are the owner of Kit and Coop real estate team and then you also are the managing broker of the Oakland North Vancouver location. So you're obviously very busy. So thank you for carving out some time for us. I appreciate that. Just to start off, I know that I always like to ask a fun question on what would be one thing that not many people know about you?

I'm a pretty big Dave Matthews Band fan. I've seen that band live 65 times. I usually follow the band around every summer, so it's kind of my stick. I usually do it with my twin brother as well. Most people would know that I have a twin. But yeah, this summer is gonna get a little messed up as I had 10 shows in the pipeline. But yeah, no, it's a cool thing. I've been following them for, I don't know, 15 years now and that's kind of my stick is chasing around the Dave Matthews Band when I can in the summer.

Keeps you. That's a great. Thanks for sharing that. I appreciate that. I know what to get you now for.

Oh, it's a no brainer.

How did you get started in real estate? So what made you want to jump in? What's your story there story there?

My dad was a commercial developer and he ran his own company for many years on the retail development side. So real estate was always in the family or was always around it. But so kind of after my undergrad I did my urban economics diploma at Sauder Business School in Real estate and uniquely I actually got hired by them after that program and I actually worked there for three years and this was in around 09, 1011 when the market was kind of slow and I wasn't really sure what I was going to do and so I kind of took on a little bit of an academic job there managing and developing the academic material for the appraisal program across Canada and then the real estate licensing program for B.C. and eventually I kind of got a little bit tired of that, Nancy. And I knew I was going to be in real estate. I just wasn't sure what arm of the industry. And I kind of tested a few things out and realized that sales was more my thing. And I liked people, and I didn't like the 9 to 5 desk job lifestyle, so got my license out of the urban land program, kind of comes with it, and got licensed up and the kind of. The rest is history.

Oh, you might have touched on this a little bit. But what would you say is why you love what you do?

Well, I mean, first off, I love working for myself. I've always had an entrepreneurial spirit at heart, so that was the natural inclination to go towards sales. But at the end of the day, I love helping people. And the situation I'm in now is that I have an incredible business partner to bounce ideas off. And collectively, it's great that we get to motivate each other and keep each other honest over the years.

Yeah. Hold each other accountable. Ideas.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's. It's so important, right? Yeah.

Very lucky. We've been partners for five years, so, you know, among. Among that. I mean, just helping people, it's just a passion of mine. So it was a natural thing to go to that.

Oh, very cool. That's wonderful. If you weren't doing what you're doing, what would you envision yourself doing? What where would you be?

For sure I'd be working for myself, whether it's in the same industry as real estate. You know, I love the stress and flexibility of working, you know, for myself. There is a chance it could have been a hockey coach. I spent a lot of time volunteering. Still to this day, the BC hockey programs. The other side. I'm very interested in the stock market. I think that I'm just intrigued by how it works, and I could maybe see that or the development side. But wherever would pique my interest outside of this would probably be those two other stock market. Development would probably be where I would end up.

Yeah. Perfect. We're in an interesting time as we're recording this. We're just getting to just till the start of April 2020. And we're in the midst of the COVID situation. And given that, or just given your advice in general, historically, whichever you prefer to kind of go with, because I know we will, you know, eventually we'll get through this and things will probably normalize or get back to where they're supposed to be. Any advice for home buyers or home sellers on the current market and what's.

Happening I think, you know, it's interesting time from my mindset before we got into this and what I told people is this is going to be short term, so you've got to prepare in the short term and keep the right mindset and that when we get in the trenches that you're going back to that mindset. This is short term, this is short term. I think for buyers it's educating them that, hey, listen, not everything's gonna be a fire sale here. So if you're gonna wanna write 20, 30, 40% below ask on something, you're probably gonna waste a lot of time, especially expose yourself to a potential virus issue. Safety is paramount for now. But with buyers in this market, the interest rate has come down not so much on the borrowing side. Banks are still holding up on their long term rates. So I do think some leniency there in the next few months as the bond market potentially come down on the sales side. Listen, just be patient. This guy's not falling. Vancouver's market's mainly driven by interest rates. I think the biggest piece of advice would relate to submarkets. Where are you owning? Where are you selling? Housing markets like West Van and North Van are probably a little bit more shock resistant than outliers and other markets that are higher price points. West Bend, North Van has been kind of hit for the last three years, been driven down. So they were bouncing out. January of every March we started to see a big rebound in that detached market. I still think you've seen the bottom of the North Shore. So sellers hold tight and buyers, you got to be patient as well.

Yeah, I agree. I think that we're probably in a situation where it's not as though people are going to start giving their homes away and just start selling them. I think it's either you'd probably just hold on to it, maybe postpone your sale if you were planning to list unless there was some sort of urgent factor with, you know, relocation of employment or just something that's kind of unforeseen. But I have to agree that I don't know what your thoughts are, but I have a thought process on once we get through this. And let's say interest rates are quite low because they're heading that direction. I mean, we've seen a bit of a difference in terms of how the banks are pricing, how they're changing their variance off of prime rate and things like that. But I think that once we get more normalized that we'll see that sort of come back to where it probably should be, but I'd imagine that inventory will most likely be lower than we thought and also interest rates will be quite low. So we might be in a situation where it becomes more of a seller's market in the future because of that. Would you want to speak on that a bit?

Yeah, for sure, absolutely. And it's a great, great comment. Interest rates throughout the market. So, you know, coming out of this year, beginning of the year and end of last year, we were starting to see a lot of pent up demand that was finally coming to the market. So price points under 155 North Van multiple offers. And so you saw the bottoming out. Now all of a sudden you're dropping interest rates here. And regardless of what happens in the stock market, I don't think a lot of people under the 1:5 price mark get affected by the COVID virus. None of those people have extra money lying around that was in the stock market to begin with. There are people that have equity in their homes. They're people that have been saving their down payment. So I think it could be fuel to fire, you know, and I do see that, you know, there's potential where people that wanted to get out of condos probably have that, you know, final nail in the coffin where it's like, yeah, who wants to be in the condo right now? If you're stuck inside all day long sharing elevators, it's kind of giving you that motivation to finally make that move to detach. And so, you know, even with my current example, like I'm refiing a couple properties this year, we have to refi an office space and we have to refi a rental property we own. Couldn't be a better time in the last five years to refine on cheap money or at least, you know, moving up the market.

Yeah, no, great points. Thanks for sharing that. I know that'll be very useful for the client base. What would be, is there a property that you've sold or were part of the purchase process that was the most memorable to you, that you just. That just stands out as one?

Yeah, I mean, I think the one sale I always remember I double ended a door knock in the west side like 2016 and it kind of kick started my career and it was this old German guy. And yeah, I brought my own builder to the project and you know, everything went dandy and everyone was happy. But I remember I took that commission check and I bought a pre sale in Lower Lonsdale literally within weeks of closing. And then kind of the rest is History. I turned that into a house and we bought an office space and all from like literally showing up at a guy's doorstep at the right day and yeah, I'll never forget that. That totally was a changer in the career.

Oh, very cool story. That's how it all comes together, right? Is pretty amazing.

It's crazy. Yeah. Super, super fortunate there and, and I count my blessings all the time.

I talk about house rich with clients and just kind of the complete opposite of when people think of house poor or that kind of thing in Vancouver. When I say house rich to you, what does that mean to you?

I mean for me it's kind of, you know, multiple assets that have equity built up either with your principal residence so you know, that tax free sale one day or, or with multiple properties that you don't need to be rented or tenanted, paying down a mortgage. You know for me it's, I've been fortunate enough to own a bunch of real estate and we own our office space in Lower Lonsville that you know, you always got to think long term, you can't just focus on the short term. So for me it's that retirement plan, you know, being able to take that equity out one day and retiring is what it kind of means to me. And I'm always obviously in real estate, I'm always pro buying land and especially like now with such, you know, so much uncertainty that you know, you don't wake up one day and your house is worth 30% less but you wake up and your portfolio can be 30% less.

Yeah, so true. So true. Great point. I know a lot of people probably want to connect with you just to get your advice and your expertise. Where would be the best place for homeowners or sellers to reach out to you personally?

Personally, probably best place to reach me. Kittandcoop.com It's K I T A N D C O O P.com Our office is in Lower Lonzo, located right beside Ernest ice cream. So pretty hard to miss.

Wonderful. Well Kit, I really appreciate it. Grateful to have you here. Thanks for sharing all your wisdom and we'll put all of that information for people to reach out to you as easily as they can. And thank you again. I appreciate it.

You're welcome. Thanks for having me.

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