Home prices are up significantly in Barrie. Some people who have been in their home for more than 5 years could easily have seen their homes increase by six figures in value. This gets people very excited. That means home owners have significantly more equity in their home, often without having done any work to the house.
What does this mean for you? What can you do if your home has gone up in value?
The natural inclination is to say lets sell our home and take advantage of these high prices! The question then becomes though, where are you going to move? If you’re going to stay in Barrie and want to buy in Barrie then odds are the homes you are going to move up to has gone up value too so you’re not really getting ahead. If you want to move outside of Barrie to a different market then you can definitely take advantage of the rise in value of your home.
Another option is to refinance your home. If you’ve grown to the point that now you have a lot more equity than expected, refinance your home so that you have 20% equity. Then take the remainder thats left, in some cases that can be $50,000 or more. Everyones situation will be different. Take that money and buy an investment property. You could use that money as a downpayment on a rental near Georgian College and now have the home pay for itself and potentially even a little profit on top too.
Using the money to invest, unless you are going to move away from Barrie, is the only true advantage to having your home go up a lot in value at the moment. There are other benefits but they aren’t as big as giving you the option to invest and grow your real estate portfolio.
If you want to look at this as an option for you the first step is talking to mortgage broker to see if its possible. If you don’t know someone just let me know and I’m happy to put you in touch with someone.