We recently saw a concert at Ontario Place. It was the Tadeshi – Trucks band, and if you like Southern guitarists, you would love this group of Southern rockers. I thought as we were waking into the show, literally in a sea of people, that we had really no control over what direction we were headed and it was next to impossible to interrupt the flow of the people all heading, well heading over “there.” I did notice one couple walking in the opposite direction, heading back to the gates where we had entered. They were all on their own, lumbering along slowly and smiling. What this brought to mind was a quote by Earl Nightingale;
“Whatever the majority of people is doing, under any circumstances, if you do the exact opposite, you will probably never make another mistake as long as you will live.”

The numbers are out for July and with no surprise, the number of sales, along with values are down. This happens every year as the hot summer days, patios, cottages, and vacations take the attention away from Real Estate. Sales for detached homes dropped 11% from June to July, with Whitby seeing a drop of 17% and Clarington sitting at the same number of sales month over month. Values in Oshawa slipped by 3%, with both Whitby and Clarington dropping 4%.

It would be easy for me to look at these metrics and predict “doom and gloom” however I take a different view than what others might.

Currently, the trend is distraction, and some properties are sitting a bit longer than others. This all depends on how hot the area is that the individual homes are in along with how they are priced. We had two of our listings sell in July, one for $100,000 over asking and the other $95,000 above the listing price. In fact, one of the homes sold with 68 showings and the other sold to the 2nd Buyer who walked through. Not only that but the one in Courtice that sold for $100,000 over ended up selling for $30,000 more than a similar home sold on the street a month earlier. What this shows is that things are selling, however, the average time to sell is longer. Here lies the opportunity.

The average home in June sold for 10% over asking and that average dropped to 6% in July. This is reflected in how the values dropped… or did they? What we sometimes see when we do a bit of digging is that we notice lower-priced homes are selling more often than higher-priced ones, and the result is the average price appears to drop. Here is a good example. In Whitby, if you bought a home for between $900,000 – 1,000,000 in June vs July, you would have (on average) paid $50,000 less for the home the previous month. The same holds true in Clarington with the average home that sold for $1,000,000 was purchased for $50,000 less than in June.
The opportunities are around, they just need to be discovered. What it takes to secure a “deal” is working with a local full-time Agent who understands what price bands the ones are where a Buyer can find a great property at a price lower than the previous month.

The term “deal” has so many definitions. A few years ago, a deal was just being able to buy a house, and today a deal is one where when a Buyer is working with a skilled realtor, the deals need to be researched and purchased in a strategic manner. This is the time in the market when experience pays off in getting an excellent property at a below-market price. This is a “time-limited” opportunity, and by looking at last year the average price for a detached home in Oshawa jumped by $20,000 from August – September last year.

If you are in the market for a “deal” I would love to sit down and share with you what price ranges the deals can be found in.

I can be reached at lindsay@buyselllove.ca or 905-743-5555.
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