West Vancouver Real Estate with Eric Christiansen

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 grateful, very excited to be meeting virtually with Erik Christiansen. Erik, thank you so much for joining me.

Hey, Matt, excited to be here. Thanks for reaching out. I'm flattered that you want to talk.

Yeah, Eric's been doing this for over 17 years or more now and he's been the number one unit sold real estate agent in West Vancouver for all of those years. And that's pretty darn impressive. Know we're lucky to have them and I just want to jump right in and get going here. So, Eric.

So I've actually been a realtor for 30 years. It's been like forever, but the 17 years has been the top sales.

Oh, cool. Thanks for, thanks for correcting me. I appreciate that. How did you get started in the industry? Like, what made you want to do it?

So I was going to cap College as a 19 year old, 18 year old, 19 year old and was playing basketball there. Had these aspirations of being a professional basketball player like every kid that does any sport. And after sort of a year, I realized I was partying way too much and my skill set wasn't quite there to ever get paid to be a basketball player. So I quit cap college, started working for my girlfriend's dad's buddy. So my girlfriend actually ended up becoming my wife. We met at Cap college, which was probably the best thing that came out of cap college, and started working as a sales rep for a guy named Bill Callahan. And one day we were driving around, his partner said to me, hey, you should become a realtor. And I'm like, okay, realtor, sure. I never thought about it. And then the same day I was hanging out with a buddy who works with his dad. He's still a realtor. And he said, hey, you should become a realtor. So being as superstitious as I am, I thought, okay, this is someone sending me a message. I quickly ran out and took my real estate course. And that's how I became a Realtor. I was 22 and when I got my license in 1990 and haven't really looked back.

Wonderful. That's very cool. Yeah. You know, if you hear something once, you're like, okay, you hear it over and over again, you're like, I should probably do something.

Take the message and take it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. Why do you love what you do? What do you love about the industry?

I mean, there's so many things, but really the main thing is we meet so many incredible people. You're helping them make a decision on their biggest asset they have, whether they're selling or buying. It's. I'm flattered every time I win a listing or if someone chooses me to buy a house, you know, it's like, I just think, wow, this is amazing. People trust me. What a huge asset. And what is their home? So, yeah, those interactions and the friendships, like I do 90% of my businesses in West Vancouver and has been probably for the last 20 years of my 30 year career. And most of these people become my friends. You know, I still talk to them all the time. I'll phone them up and say, hey, how's it going? What are you doing? Hire your kids. Like, it's just, it's, it's not even. The business is done and it's moved on to a friendship and a relationship and, you know, it's. Yeah, I love, I love doing it. I get, I get the same thrill when I win a listing or negotiate a sale for someone as I did when I was 22 years old.

That's impressive. That's probably hard to find out there. I'm sure that you just have to have it in you to just have that passion or that love for something. So that's really cool.

That's what's helped with the success. I think it's sort of a cliche, but you can't be successful at somebody if you don't love it. So I know a lot of people over the years that I've seen come in the business because they allure of these big commissions and all the money. Well, they don't like meeting people, they don't like negotiating, don't like working late at night, and they're not realtors a few years later.

Yeah, it just won't work. Yeah, you have to have both. Exactly.

You know, it's a business where there's a ton of sacrifice, but the reward is huge. But you can't, you can't put up with those sacrifices if you don't love doing it.

Yeah, no, I agree 100%. I mean, obviously growing up around the mortgage world, having my father in that, in that for many, many years as well, I saw what it was and it wasn't, it's not easy. But it's, it's rewarding and I love it too. So I think that's. Yeah, I'm inspired by that. If you weren't doing this though, other than being a professional basketball player, do you see yourself doing anything else?

You know, it's. My parents owned a car dealership when I was a kid. So I worked part time there when I was going to cap college and a bit before I started as a lot boy washing cars on Saturday and then I became a parts driver and then I was an apprentice mechanic and I literally go in on Friday if I didn't have school or whatever and I'd work Friday and that I'd work Saturday washing the cars. And I thought I was always gonna be groomed into being a car dealership guy. And not everyone knows, but I like, I love cars, I'm passionate about cars. I think the answer to that question, I know the answer to that question is if I wasn't a realtor, I'd be a car dealer. Like, I just love cars. I love everything about it. It's still sales, it's still organizing. It's just something I'm passionate about.

Yeah. And then in that sales based, serving people role again, you could bring that same level of passion over. I know we're in a very unique time, you know, at time recording this start of April 2020, we're in the midst of sort of the early stages or a few weeks into this COVID 19 situation. But on that, I mean, I mean historically or just today, do you have any advice on the current market and just what, what homebuyers or sellers should potentially be looking at right now?

Yeah, definitely. You know, as any time, we're obviously in unprecedented times now where nobody has any clue really what's going on. And whether it's media going crazy or people hiding things that are really happening, like no one knows it's unprecedented. So it's a tough question to answer. But you know, I think in any market, whether it's a bad market like 2008 financial crash or a bull market in 2011 and 1615, hire the right realtor, so many people, I'll have a bunch of beautiful listings in West Bend. And a realtor from Chilliwack shows up with their client to look at five and six million dollar houses. They can't find the house, they don't know the neighborhood, they don't know the train track is right below the house. They have no clue. So if you're making that even a million dollar condo, if you're making that purchasing decision, which is a huge decision. Hire someone in the neighborhood. Hire someone who knows that neighborhood, knows what they're doing. I again, I said to do 90% of my business in West Van. It's because I know West Van. It's not a, you know, a choice of, I don't know, I don't want to go anywhere else. It's like, even if I'll have a client, the high net worth client says I want to buy a two bedroom apartment downtown for my daughter. I'll refer them to a good friend of mine that specializes downtown. I won't try to do it myself because I just, you know, you punch up two bedroom condos. Vancouver, west side, there's, you know, 1280 listings. I have no clue which is a good building, which has got a bad reputation, which one has a noisy neighbor. So first of all, hire the right realtor and just make sure you do your homework and pick the neighborhood you like first. You know, when my wife and I sold our little townhouse before we had our second our son. So we had our daughter with son. The way we need more space, we chose, we wanted to live in Caulfield. So we just basically looked at every house in Caulfield and picked one to buy because that was our neighborhood. So again, location's important. Don't buy a fancy house on a busy street because you want to be in a fancy house, because you're just, your equity's not going to grow the same way it would if you buy a little bit of a beat up house on a nice cul de sac.

Yeah.

So you know, that advice holds true whether the market's going crazy or a Covid market.

Yeah.

Hire the right realtor, pick the right locations. Location, location, location.

Yeah, that's nice you say that because that's what I always tell clients too. It's where do you want to be? Yeah. Because I think too many people just so what can I, what can I purchase or what can I get into instead of where do you really want to be? Where do you see yourself? So I love that advice. I think it's great. I have a kind of an ad hoc question here of if you think of like, is there what would be the most memorable property that you've sold or helped the client purchase over the years?

Oh, man, there's so many. It's like it's impossible to pick one. You know what, I don't know, it's. I can't even think of a list. I'd say any time I Negotiate an amazing deal for a client, whether it's a buyer, that's a memorable moment. And so, okay, it would be really easy to say, okay, the $16 million house that I sold, it was amazing. But you know what, that sale was actually really easy and the client just wanted the house and we bought the house and it was done. You know, I could probably think of deals where I was negotiating for a buyer on a 1.2 million dollar condo and we, we got the condo, we won the bid against other people and the kid probably was crying, they're so happy. It's like that's more memorable. So, yeah, tough question. There's just too many, there's too many memorable moments.

Yeah. Because you can truly, in certain situations, you can truly help and be of service. That's really cool. What does. I like that. I just, I think it's fun when I talk to clients. What does house rich mean to you? Because we hear house poor all the time. What do you, when you hear house rich, what do you think?

I think of two things. Again, we're in an interesting world. So you always hear that house rich, cash poor term where I see a lot of people do it and same thing again. Society today is a bit strange in my mind. Like people don't save a lot of money and they, you know, if I qualify for a 3 million dollar mortgage, people are like pushing it, man. I'm trying to qualify for three too because I really want that fancy house on whatever street. And I'm like, you know, how about you back it off a bit, Buy a less fancy house and only have a two million dollar mortgage because your lifestyle is going to be way better. So you know, the house rich, cash poor term is people that overextend themselves and get way too big a mortgage for. And again, you're a mortgage broker, so I'm sure you see this. Yes, I know when I was first starting out, I went to qualify for a mortgage and they said, you know, I wanted to borrow a couple hundred grand to buy a little townhouse. And they're like, oh, you qualify for a million dollar mortgage. And I'm like, you've got to be kidding. Like there's no way. So I got a $200,000 loan, had 75 grand down. We bought a townhouse for 275. Yeah. So that's the house rich cash flow, where people overextend themselves to, you know, maybe they, maybe they need a big house, which is different. But quite often it's for this sort of appeal of Saying, hey, you know, I've got a big fancy house and so I'll have all my friends over. And then the other one is my other thought on house rich. If you bought a house for $2 million, in less than, you know, 2010, that house probably got to a peak of $5 million. That's how crazy the market was. People might have put a million dollars down and bought a million dollars. You know, fairly decent ratio for what I see for a lot of people purchasing, they've got 3 million or 4 million in equity in their house, it's gone from 2 million to 4 or 5 million and they start borrowing against it. We're house rich with all this massive equity, they start borrowing against it, they go buy a place of Whistler, they go buy a fancy car and now suddenly they're house rich. Market drops at a million dollar mortgage, which is now a $3 million mortgage that was only worth three and a half. So they've got less equity than they started with 10 years ago. Right. So those are my two sort of thoughts on the, you know, what do I think house rich is? What I really like to see is people that bought their house for 2 million, paid off their mortgage over the years and now they have a $5 million asset, that's 5 million in equity in their pocket that they can go used to, you know, retire or have a better life.

Yeah. Not overextend. I was, yeah. When I talk to clients, it's number one, it's what do you want to pay? Like, what's a comfortable budget? And then we can talk about what you can qualify for. But too many people go, what can I get into versus what should I get into? Yeah, no, I think that's again, really good insight there. Where would be the best place for clients to connect with you, to reach out and learn more about your service and just get your advice?

Yes. You know, my website's a great source if you, if you're not comfortable phoning me directly. So I know a lot of people like to do a bit of research, just go on my website. It's very intuitive, easy to use. It's not a frills trying to be a movie star website. It's very simple. I think you said you popped on there while before we.

I did, yeah. We'll include the link to everything below the in the show notes, in the, in the videos and everything so people can find you quite easily. Is there a phone number that you want to give out as well?

I was going to say yes. Anytime you Want to phone? I'm really good at answering my phone, and if I don't answer, I call back really quickly. If I don't call you back within a couple hours, something went wrong with Telus, and I get the message, like, I'm pretty very quick at calling back.

Perfect.

And then also, I don't know if any other realtors are watching this. I'm more than happy to help with advice for young realtors, because I really didn't get anyone else new in the business, you know, thankfully for one of the partners in the company, I first started with, a guy named Max. He's not. Passed away. He was helpful when I was really young. And then a realtor named John Jennings, who's a very successful Westman Realtor. He helped out a lot when I was in my mid-20s and sort of escalated my business and got me in the right direction. So, yeah, it's important, you know, to talk to mentors. Feel free to call me, text me, let me know, you know, I'm new in the business. I want some help. Give me some idea, and I'm happy to talk.

Awesome. Well, what's the number, Eric? I don't know if we said the number.

604-312-9999.

Oh, cool. I like that one.

Yeah, it's a friend of mine worked for Telus back in the day, and I was with Rogers, and before you could switch phone numbers, and he phoned me, said, hey, I want you to switch the Telus. I'm like, no, I'm not switching. I got this number for you if you switch. So I switched.

That's a good story. I love that. Well, thanks again. Grateful to have you. I've learned a lot. I'm really. It's been a pleasure. And is there anything you want to leave us with or.

You know what? Yeah, just happy. Happy to be a part of it, Matthew. Really appreciate it. Good for you for doing this. And it's. It got me to, you know, shave this morning and fix my hair.

Yeah.

My wife said, wow, what's going on?

Yeah, I was gonna laugh. We're all gonna have really long hair and beards at the end of this.

No kidding.

Thanks again. I appreciate it. You take care. Okay.

Have a great day. Enjoy the time with the kids.

Yeah, you too.

Okay.

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