"Autumn is a second spring
when every leaf is a flower."

— Albert Camus

Stats Center! 📈

Looking Back at October 2024

Headline: Buyer Demand Surges in October

Sub-Head: Pricing Still Slowly Sinking

The benchmark price for a property in Metro Vancouver is currently $1,172,200.

(September: $1,179,700 /August: $1,195,900 / July: $1,197,700
/ June: $1,207,100 / May: $1,212,000 / April: $1,205,800)

This represents a 0.6% decrease compared to September 2024

and a 1.9% decrease over October 2023.

Mortgage Rates 💰

Key interest rate now sits at 3.75%.
One more meeting left this year on December 11th.

Employment numbers are ugly - expect another drop of .25 maybe .50 once inflation numbers are released closer to December.

What did I do last month?

Read This! This is Your Mind on Plants by Michael Pollan

November is radon awareness month!

What’s radon? It’s a radioactive, colourless, odourless, tasteless gas that seeps through the ground everywhere in the world.

Why should you care? A build up of radon is very dangerous and when inhaled it can damage your lungs and cause cancer. It’s the leading cause of lung cancer for non-smokers.

Radon is measured in BQ’s, which stands for becquerel - a unit used to measure radioactive decay. And radon is everywhere - outdoor levels hover around 5-15 Bq/m3. Indoors we ideally want a readying of 50 Bq/m³ or below. 50-100 Bq/m³ is Good. The government recommends that is you have a yearly average reading over 200 Bq/m³ you should explore a radon mitigation system. And if it’s above 600 Bq/m³ to get that installed asap.  

Great… Should you be worried? If I sold you into a condo - don’t worry the risk is less and less the higher you are from the ground - move on to the jokes at the end of the email.

However if you have a foundation that has direct contact to the ground - YES - you should be aware. And if you spend more than 4 hours in that location OR there is a ground floor bedroom you should consider a testing unit for peace of mind.

That being said - the worst area in BC for radon is the interior where 30% of homes have high levels. In the lower mainland the percentage is around 1% of homes and the Fraser Valley is around 4% that exceed 200 Bq/m³.

Here’s a map of the province that shows the level - MAP

I have a basement home office that I spend a good amount of time in so I have been curious about radon myself. So I went out and purchased the monitoring system from Home Depot you see above for $180. You can borrow them from the library too - but the wait time is long. You can get cheaper kits for $20 but you have to mail them into a lab for testing. There are also more deluxe ones with phone apps too.

Results? It’s been two weeks now and my average radon reading is 65 Bq/m³. Initially it spiked up to 170 Bq/m³ but it’s also sat around 20 Bq/m³. I need a larger time scale to make a proper assessment as readings can fluctuate constantly and seasonally.

Curious yourself? - Well I bought a second unit that I’m planning to lend out to you my dear clients. So if you want to see where your basement radon levels are at just reply to the email and I’ll swing it by.

Something Funny Before You Go

The Gift of Five Stars

Curious what I’m up to? Voyeurism via Social Media is the key!