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Grocery Bags, $100 Bills, and Why Real Estate Isn’t the Wild West Anymore
There was a time in real estate when things felt… looser. One seller once told me how he bought his home years ago. Negotiations had stalled. The seller wanted more money. So he arrived with grocery bags filled with cash. Around $200,000 in paper bills. Transaction complete. Another time, I watched a buyer count out…
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Strategy is the new Staging – It is Selling Homes.
Let’s just say it plainly.The market has slowed. And when markets slow, skill starts to matter again. Not panic. Not headlines. Skill. Inventory is still relatively low, but it’s rising. Buyers are re-emerging, and we are seeing selective bidding activity. In the past week alone, 44% of homes in Oshawa sold at full price or…
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Swiping is good for Food Delivery – Not so Much for Buying a Home.
A recent survey showed that nearly three out of four restaurant meals are now eaten off-premises. Delivered. Picked up. Consumed on a couch, half-watching Netflix, often in pajamas. Who needs to talk to a waiter when you can swipe. There’s no question technology has changed how real estate is delivered.But it hasn’t changed how people…
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Snowballs, Sold SIgns and Winning Winter Sales Strategies
This morning I stared out the window at a landscape that looked like it was being curated by a particularly dramatic snow globe and thought, “How can it be this cold — and why does the sky keep promising encore performances?” And yet, there I was at my desk, creating strategies of how to launch…
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When your Realtor lives an hour away
A question came up recently that’s worth addressing:Does it make sense to list your Bowmanville home with an agent whose office is in Woodbridge—an hour and fifteen minutes from your property? I started thinking about this after reading a Woodbridge agent’s “areas served.” Their list spanned from Ajax to Aurora to Brampton to Caledon to…
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Pricing homes – Guesswork or Fact Based.
Over the weekend, we received a 1-star Google review. Out of 152 reviews—all 5-star except this lone outlier—it stood out like what it was – an unhappy comment from a stranger. We’ve never met the reviewer, never spoken to him, and he doesn’t live anywhere near the neighbourhood he claims we “undervalued.” So before anyone…
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Can a Buyer Renegotiate After a Home Inspection? Yes. Should They? That’s the Real Question.
A colleague in Arizona told me something that made me set down my coffee. In her market, buyers routinely make an offer, complete the home inspection, and then return to the negotiating table as if the deal were merely a draft. Nothing catastrophic discovered—just a second swing because, well, why not. Ontario felt very different…
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What do Rental Furnaces and Bad Tenants Have in Common?
I was chatting with a Realtor friend in Arizona when hot-water heater rentals came up. I mentioned that a recent Seller couldn’t even figure out what they were paying each month. My friend stared at me like I’d just said Canadians lease their snow. “People rent water tanks in Canada?” Apparently in Arizona, that’s not…
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How Pricing Homes has Changed in 2025
October in southern Ontario smells like wet leaves, espresso, and hesitation. Open houses are quieter. Agents linger in doorways pretending to check their phones. And though no one wants to admit it, the market has taken a pause. We’re not in a full buyer’s market yet — but you can smell it on the wind.…
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Durham Region: Why buying now may be like a lottery win
Ontario’s housing market has a meteorological streak—it changes moods like the weather. One season it’s all bidding wars and bravado; the next, it’s silence and sweaters. Right now, the market’s in that rarest of states: still. In Durham Region, east of Toronto, the data suggest a pause. Homes that once vanished in a weekend now…
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