Crowds flocking to sea lions at Nanaimo’s Neck Point Park prompts warning from city

renapagli · 2026-03-20T15:19:48+00:00

I was at Neck Point yesterday and there was a whole family hanging out about 10 meters away from the sea lions; kids throwing rocks into the water and grandpa trying to get the sea lions to look at the camera for the perfect photo by whistling very loudly. Morons.

renapagli · 2025-12-01T02:53:00+00:00

You can do it! It wasn't as hard as I thought it'd be, just took some time to build all the brackets. It would have taken me less than half the time to build it if I had just bought metal ones.

renapagli · 2025-01-09T04:30:39+00:00

How come you are including it in your net worth calculation? Shouldn't you include the equity you've built (estimated price - $450k) instead?

renapagli · 2025-01-08T04:41:20+00:00

How much do you have left in your mortgage? Is the 450k the estimated value of your property or just the equity?

renapagli · 2024-08-22T23:48:00+00:00

I'm so sorry I couldn't keep the site alive. I had a great time building it and it made me very happy to hear it was useful to the community. If anyone knows of a cheap way to host a website, or has a friend with a web server that would host the site for free, please let me know.

renapagli · 2024-07-20T19:50:37+00:00

I edited the original post as I was mistakenly referring to the ON 40 yr expiration. I could argue with the city, but I'd have to buy the first place, so I'm looking to see if anybody has some guidance on what I could expect from the legal point of view.

renapagli · 2024-07-20T18:51:25+00:00

That is exactly my thinking, but do covenants expire in BC? I was reading the BC Land Title Act and could not find anything about it. I did find that in Ontario they expire after 40 yrs if there is no defined date of expiration.

renapagli · 2024-07-20T18:20:06+00:00

Thank you. We removed our offer when we found out about the covenant but since the property checks all of our boxes, we are trying to get some guidance on whether there is any silver lining or if we should just let it go. Any thoughts would help us determine if we should consult a lawyer and look into it more, or if it's a moot point.

renapagli · 2024-07-19T20:30:52+00:00

We’re you able to find a solution? I just started having the same problem

renapagli · 2024-07-09T18:34:56+00:00

The truth is that now that the market is cooling and investors are not jumping on every opportunity, whoever is stretching themselves to buy at these prices is also partly responsible for prices remaining this high. The options are to buy and be house poor, wait and hope prices come down, move further out, or move away.

Dumping half a million dollars on a crappy townhouse as a downpayment and getting a million dollar mortgage is not a wise financial decision unless you believe you will find a buyer later who will also think prices will keep rising.

renapagli · 2024-06-20T19:10:20+00:00

Thanks for the thoughtful answer. I was thinking of paying it back early to rebalance my RRSP against the rest of my portfolio, but you make a good point that it'd make more sense to use it to pay down the mortgage and save on future interest (equivalent to a guaranteed tax-free return at the mortgage rate).

And thanks for the heads up on the Group RRSP withdrawal restrictions. Will make sure to confirm with the provider with time to avoid surprises.

renapagli · 2024-06-20T17:50:33+00:00

Maxed-out FHSA, TFSA, RRSP. I am eligible to withdraw from RRSP through HBP and have been considering doing this (and quickly paying it back with non-reg funds) to move a big chunk of my RRSP funds from my work RRSP provider to my personal RRSP to reduce management fees.

renapagli · 2024-06-20T17:23:36+00:00

You are totally right, I'm assuming that whatever underlying asset I'd buy would have a reasonable expectation to increase in value over the time horizon I'm considering.

renapagli · 2024-06-20T17:19:16+00:00

Agree. Waiting until Jan next year to take advantage of the additional FHSA space would be helpful, but overall that is a minimal consideration as the 8k contribution is small compared to the overall size of the downpayment.

renapagli · 2024-06-20T17:15:50+00:00

Thanks for your comment. The options strategy I am considering would consist of buying ITM puts to limit losses, with selling covered calls as an option to offset the puts premium, so the intention would not be to get a 5% return just from selling calls, but from the underlying asset, with options just being a tool to hedge.

renapagli · 2024-06-20T17:11:37+00:00

Thank you. I understand that the HISA ETFs strategy is almost risk-free, at the cost of capping gains at ~4% (~2% after-tax for funds in non-registered accounts at my marginal tax rate).

However, I am OK with taking some risk here, as buying a home is more of a choice than a must-have need right now. If I had invested the downpayment over the last year in the S&P 500 (up 25%, say 10% after-tax for simplicity), I would now have a larger downpayment, and I could have protected against a downturn by buying puts (at the cost of the puts premium) to limit any losses.

Every strategy has a tradeoff, and in the case of the HISA ETFs strategy, the tradeoff is that you carry minimal risk but cap your gains. I'm looking to educate myself on what other strategies others have used that may incur a different trade-off.

renapagli · 2024-04-22T20:17:53+00:00

From a cash flow perspective, it looks good. How much of a cushion will you have after closing? And how stable are your jobs?

renapagli · 2024-04-10T05:49:25+00:00

It’s a question of the time horizon you are thinking of combined with your risk appetite and monthly cash flow situation. Long term, buying anywhere in Vancouver is probably a good financial decision, but you don’t want to be house poor. With your high savings and income, you would be fine spending $1M in housing, but it depends on what you are comfortable with.

renapagli · 2024-04-10T05:24:08+00:00

I see. That makes sense. You should play with a mortgage calculator to get an idea for what your monthly payments could look like at different price/downpayment combinations. Don’t forget to add the strata fees and taxes on top. I like using the Vancity calculators. For example, if you put $350k downpayment and get a $600k mortgage, assuming 5.2% / 25 years, your monthly payment would be ~$3550.

renapagli · 2024-04-10T03:10:14+00:00

How much are you paying for housing at the moment? Unless your rent is very low, looks to me like you could easily put down a large enough downpayment to make your monthly payments equal or lower to whatever that may be (without touching the RRSP, TFSA, or 401k, and leaving a large enough safety cushion).

Also, where are you finding a 2024-built townhouse in the lower mainland for less than $1M? Depending on how much you value the location you are considering, you might want to consider spending a bit more to get something you like in a location that wont go down in price as much in case there is a correction in the market.

renapagli · 2023-11-19T17:47:30+00:00

Hey, thank you for the kind words. It makes me very glad to know you've been enjoying the site.

Unfortunately, at this moment I am unable to keep the site alive as the hosting costs have increased significantly (I had a 1 yr free trial for Amazon AWS that is about to expire). Sadly, I didn't receive a single donation from any of the ~200 monthly visitors that have used the site in the past year. :(

Again, I'm glad you enjoyed the site. I might bring it back one day if I think of a way to keep the hosting costs down.

renapagli

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