-
Parents Helping Kids Buy Homes Today
With a career spanning almost 4 decades I have worked with clients as young as 18 and as old as 98. One thing I have experienced, is when a homeowner is in the 65+ range, they start to look at where they will direct their assets. These can be their personal residence, rental properties or…
|
-
Should you Consider a Power of Sale Property?
Looking back at the history of Real Estate in Ontario, I remember a time when there were more homes being sold under power of sale than by happy homeowners. We had a boom in the late 1980’s that ended in 1989. From 1990 – 1991 the market values dropped about 30% which caused homes to…
|
-
How to Hire… Anyone
Recently I was in need of a local company to install some eavestroughing at my home and started my search by asking a few friends who they may know that I could trust. Before we go any further, trust is a big word when hiring anyone… a plumber, electrician, contractor, financial advisor or heck even…
|
-
Real Estate Hacks- Increasing value by $50,000
Is it possible to increase your home value by up to $50,000 by investing as little as $5,000? Let’s take a look and see if it is possible. I have narrowed down a few items that Buyers will pay for when they are looking at resale homes, but first how about we tour a model…
|
-
What Upgrades Pay off?
I met with 2 groups last week, one a potential Seller and the other a Buyer I had been working with. After meeting with them, I reflected on how different the two experiences were when it came to valuing Real Estate. The first was a Buyer who I had been working with for the past…
|
-
How Can I Make $4,500 from a $1,000 Investment?
When I started my career in the 1980s, one of the central themes for Buyers was to work toward paying the mortgage off. I remember mortgage document “burning parties” where a group of friends would get together and celebrate a mortgage being paid off and getting calls from a homeowner who shared that they had…
|
-
Understanding Real Estate by Reading Trends
One thing I love to do is to make predictions. In December 2023 I made some predictions about where the values in Oshawa, Whitby and Clarington would be in May 2024. Let’s review my thoughts and see how accurate I was.The 4th quarter of 2023 was challenging time for Sellers, with values declining and sluggish sales. For…
|
-
How Bank Pre-approvals Help Buyers
I had an experience over the past week that caused me to shake my head a little, like a Rob Ford bobblehead. Actually, this experience has been repeated too many times to count over the past year. Personally, I could frame it as “how to kill a home sale before you get to the starting…
|
-
Dealing with the February Blahs in January
Here we are at the beginning of January and looking back to last year, the opening of 2023 was bleak. Bleak from a weather standpoint. A headline from the Toronto Star stated: “It wasn’t your imagination: Ontario experienced it’s darkest winter in more than 80 years.” When prolonged darkness happens many feel the desire to…
|
-
Bank-Owned Power Of Sale Properties: What you should know
The inventory of homes for sale is building. At the end of August, we had 1,065 homes for sale in Durham Region, and as of today, we have 1,771 homes for sale. That is an increase of 66%! This is a good thing for Buyers, right? Well, in some cases, yes and in others, no.…
|