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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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Motivation Is Not a Marketing Feature
Last week I saw a listing on MLS that made me do that slow head shake you do when something just feels… off. It also sent me back to something most people don’t realize realtors agree to follow: a formal Code of Ethics set out by RECO (the Real Estate Council of Ontario). In plain…
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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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Thick Skin, Thin Takes, and Why Hoping for a Housing Crash Misses the Point
One thing I’ve learned from writing columns for local news outlets and contributing to blogs like this one is that a thick skin isn’t optional. If you put opinions into the wild, the wild writes back. Sometimes politely. Sometimes… less so. After a recent article, several comments landed in the familiar bucket of “I can’t…
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2025: The Year that Politely Cross-Checked Canadians
2025 came in like a lion and went out like a blindfolded sheep trying to find warmth in a polar vortex.Not great. Not subtle. Like a very Canadian winter. A lot of the year’s energy got vacuumed straight out of the room by… well… everything: Basically, the news cycle spent the year on Red Bull.…
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The Story of a $22M Power of Sale
Ontario’s housing market has a way of reminding us that no one—neither the family in a 900-square-foot bungalow nor the owner of a 14,000-square-foot estate—is immune to shifting economic weather. At the upper fringe of the market, past the three- and four-million-dollar mark, most of us assume life unfolds in a different financial atmosphere. The…
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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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Thinking of Moving to Albuquerque? Or Nunavut? Or That Random Florida Swamp Your Aunt Forgot She Owned?
You’d be shocked how often I get calls that start with, “Hey… this is going to sound weird, but can you help me with… [insert wild location]?” Case in point: a past client casually drops into a conversation that she inherited “swamp land” in Florida. In a smug way I dig around, call a guy…
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